Third-party fees

Every dollar that goes to someone else.

What you pay us is $40 a month for the website, the Console and the workflow tools, and nothing per tool. That is the whole of what we make, and the pricing page breaks it down. Four things in the system are bought from other companies: a second phone number that answers the calls you miss, your domain, a business email address if you want one, and your card processing. Three of the four you buy directly, on your own account, at the posted price. The domain is the one you buy through us. We register it at Cloudflare Registrar, which sells at cost and publishes what cost is. What we charge for it is below, to the cent, so you can hold it against theirs before you pay it. You can also buy the name yourself and point it at us. That costs you nothing. Checked 23 August 2026; when one of them changes a price we update this page and the date with it.

Why your own accounts

So that leaving costs you nothing but an email. Twilio holds your number, Stripe or Square holds your money, and you are the registrant on the domain. Leave tomorrow and the number and the money go with you that day. The domain follows within 7 days of asking, unless it was registered in the last 60 days — ICANN locks new registrations for that long and nobody can waive it, so until the lock lifts we point the name wherever you say instead.

The map

Billed by Twilio — only if you want your missed calls answered

Your call-catch number (optional)

$20 up front — credit, not a feeTwilio’s minimum opening balance. It stays your money and the charges below come out of it, along with tax and the regulatory recovery fee every US number carries, each as its own line on Twilio’s invoice. We cannot quote you those two, because Twilio sets them and changes them and we would only be guessing — they are the reason a real month runs a little above the rates listed here. Their pricing page has the current figures, and your first invoice has your actual ones. When the balance runs low Twilio recharges your card $20 at a time; at the rate a dozen caught calls a month burns it, that is about once a year, and you can switch the recharge off in their console and top up by hand.
$1.15 / monththe second, voice-only number that answers the calls you miss
~1¢ / minuteof call time while a voicemail is being left, billed by Twilio at their posted voice rate
Nothing, for the wordsturning that voicemail into the text you read costs you nothing. We run it on our own machines instead of asking Twilio, so no per-minute transcription charge reaches your bill from anyone.

Only needed if you want missed calls caught, and the account is yours: you open it, Twilio bills your card, and we never see the invoice. Your own business number does not move. What moves the call is a setting on your line called conditional call forwarding — unanswered calls go to the Twilio number, which answers and takes the message. The message itself reaches you through the app on your own phone, which is why there is no per-text charge anywhere on this page. On AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile it is free to switch on and we send you the exact steps. On a smaller carrier or a desk line it is sometimes a paid feature and sometimes not offered at all. We check whether your line can forward calls before setting up the front desk.

Through our checkout, at the registrar’s price — only if you need a new domain name

Your domain

$10.46 / yearthat is what a .com costs at our checkout today, to the cent — Cloudflare Registrar’s at-cost price, which is the registry fee plus ICANN’s 18¢. A .net is $11.86 and a .org $10.13. A year later the registrar renews it and charges us, and we charge the card on your plan the same figure — after the fact, never before, and never more than it cost us. There is no first-year discount that triples, but registry prices do creep up a few percent most years, like everyone’s. Cancel the plan and we stop: the name is yours, and so is its bill. WHOIS privacy is included.

You are the registrant from the day it is bought. Transfer it anywhere free, within 7 days of asking; that clause is in the terms. If the name you want is held by a reseller as a premium listing, the price is not $10.46 and can run to hundreds or thousands. We do not buy those automatically. We tell you the number and you decide. Already own a domain? We point your site at it for free.

Paid plans are billed by your email provider

A mailbox at your domain

Zoho: free option or Mail Lite from $1/user/monthFor a new Zoho mailbox. The free plan covers up to five users in Zoho's web and phone apps, in selected hosting regions. For the Gmail phone app or Outlook, Mail Lite is billed annually; you pay Zoho directly. The account is yours, and connecting it to your domain is included with your website. Already have business email? Keep your current provider and plan.
Billed by your payment processor — if you take payments

Getting paid

Their posted rateeach of them prices differently, and their own pages are the place to check: Stripe and Square are near 2.9% + 30¢ online, PayPal and Venmo checkout run higher, and Square in person is different again. All of them charge you the same whether the site is ours or not.
The ones people forgeta disputed payment costs about $15 whether or not you win it, same-day payouts cost around 1.5%, and a card typed in by hand or issued abroad is charged above the online rate. Those are the ones people get caught by, and the processor charges them.

Money lands in your own account before we ever see that it exists. Plainsmith takes no cut of a payment and never touches a customer’s card.

What we never charge

Our own price

The $40 can change. On an annual plan it is locked for the year you paid for; on monthly we can change it with 30 days’ notice by email before it reaches your card. That clause is in the terms, along with what happens if a payment fails.

What that adds up to

A one-truck plumber on the $40 plan, with a domain we bought and missed calls being caught. Three things land in month one:

$40the website and your tools, for the month
$10.46the domain, a year up front
$20into Twilio — still your money, and it pays for the call-catching as it goes
$70.46month one
$40 / monthevery month after: the site and your tools, and nothing else touches the card
about $510the first year, plus the tax below

Your Twilio usage runs about $1.50 in a month with a dozen or so caught calls — $1.15 for the number, a few cents of call time, and their tax and regulatory fee on top, which is the part we cannot quote. It comes out of that $20 rather than off your card, so the next $20 is roughly a year away, and the domain is paid for the year too. Take the call-catching off and there is no tool: $40 a month and $10.46 once, so $490.46 across the first year. A mailbox at your own domain is billed by its provider — free, or from $1 a user a month on Zoho, as above; forward it into an inbox you already have and that part is nothing.

None of that is the biggest number if you take card payments. Run $15,000 a month through Square at their online rate and their cut is around $450 — more than everything else on this page put together. It goes to Square, and you would pay it with any website. Their in-person rate is lower; their pricing page has today’s figure.

Sales tax

Those figures are before tax, so month one and the $40 after it are not quite what hits your card. Stripe works the tax out from the address you enter and shows it on the checkout screen before you pay. Today it only applies in Colorado, where we are registered to collect it — and there the rate depends on your street, not just your state, which is why the checkout works it out rather than this page quoting one. Nowhere else in the US do we add any. Twilio charges its own tax and a regulatory fee on the number wherever you are, which is the one above that we cannot quote.

Questions about a specific number? support@plainsmith.co — Jason reads it.