ALMA · FAQ
Direct answers to the questions buyers actually ask before signing up for an AI voice agent.
Pulled from real Google search behavior in 2026. If your question isn't here, you can talk to ALMA directly on the live demo above.
ALMA starts at $149/month for a single phone line plus one WhatsApp number with 200 voice minutes. The Business tier is $499/month and covers 5 lines, 2,000 voice minutes, and 10,000 WhatsApp messages. Most US AI receptionists charge $200–$600/month for comparable volume; ALMA is multilingual EN/ES/HE out of the box.
An AI receptionist answers incoming phone calls and WhatsApp messages 24/7, qualifies the caller, and either completes the task or routes to the right person. ALMA specifically books hotel rooms via Channex, schedules property tours into your calendar, returns missed CallRail leads for contractors, sends follow-up emails, and operates your dashboard by voice command.
Yes. AI voice agents like ALMA use real-time speech models (Gemini Live, GPT-4o) to handle full duplex conversations with sub-second latency, multilingual auto-switching, and tool calling to your booking system, CRM, or calendar. They are legal in most jurisdictions provided you disclose the AI nature when required.
AI calling is legal in the US, UK, EU, and most of LATAM. The relevant laws govern unsolicited outbound calls (TCPA, robocall rules). Inbound AI receptionists answering calls customers initiate to your business have no special restrictions. ALMA discloses its AI nature when asked and never initiates spam outbound calls. Always check your local jurisdiction before deployment.
AI doesn't replace a receptionist — it covers the off-hours, the overflow, and the repetitive tasks. ALMA handles after-hours bookings, WhatsApp on weekends, returns every CallRail miss within seconds, and reads today's check-ins out loud while your receptionist drives to work. Your team focuses on the human work that actually needs them.
It depends on your vertical. For hotels, real estate, and construction, ALMA is purpose-built — it integrates with Channex (PMS), CallRail (lead tracking), and Google Calendar out of the box, with Spanish/English auto-switching. Generic options like Smith.ai or Goodcall work for any business but don't speak your booking system natively.
There is no free production-grade AI answering service — voice infrastructure (Twilio + speech models + LLMs) costs roughly $0.10–$0.40/minute at the provider level. ALMA's Starter tier at $149/month is the closest to entry-level pricing and includes 200 voice minutes plus 1,000 WhatsApp messages. The live demo on alma.cr is free and unlimited.
For service businesses that lose bookings to missed calls, yes. A typical hotel or contractor misses 20–40% of calls outside business hours. At a $200–$2,000 average booking value, recovering even one missed call per week pays for ALMA's Business tier ($499/month) several times over. The break-even point is usually 1–2 recovered bookings per month.
ALMA auto-detects the caller's language at the first turn and switches accordingly. English, Spanish (Costa Rica / LATAM neutral), and Hebrew are supported today. Mid-conversation switching works seamlessly — a caller can ask in English and switch to Spanish without restarting the call. Adding more languages is a configuration change in your dashboard, not a code change.
ALMA is built specifically for hotels, with native Channex integration for real-time availability and bookings, multilingual front desk handling, and voice commands like 'read today's arrivals' or 'switch to KC Hotel'. Generic AI voice agents (Retell, Vapi) require custom Channex tooling you have to build and maintain yourself.
RingCentral is built for general office reception. ALMA is built for service businesses that book, schedule, and follow up — hotels, real estate, contractors. ALMA includes Channex bookings, CallRail returns, voice-controlled dashboard, and EN/ES/HE multilingual at a price point ($149/$499/mo) below most enterprise UCaaS receptionist add-ons.
Yes — ALMA is built in Costa Rica and the .cr domain reflects that. Spanish is a peer language, not an afterthought. We support local phone numbers via Twilio, WhatsApp via Evolution / Cloud API, and the dashboard is available in EN and ES. Customers in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Spain are also supported.
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