An AI front desk for businesses that sell by conversation.

What InboxTender is

InboxTender is a software service that acts as a front desk for a small business. A merchant briefs it in plain English on what they sell, what it costs, when they are open and how they like to talk. It then answers on the channels buyers actually use: phone calls, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and website chat, and it prepares email replies for a person to approve.

Every conversation lands in one inbox alongside the contact record, the transcript and the lead details the assistant captured. The point is not to replace the person who runs the business — it is to make sure that the buyer who messages at 9 PM on a Sunday hears something back before they message a competitor.

Who it is for

It is built for businesses where the first reply decides the sale and where nobody is paid to sit by the phone: auto dealers, home services, repair shops, clinics and dental offices, salons and spas, and real estate agents. What those have in common is a stream of routine questions — is it available, what does it cost, when could you come — arriving outside the hours anyone is free to answer them.

It is a poor fit for businesses that need the assistant to give regulated advice, take payments, or make binding commitments. It answers from what it was told and hands off anything it is unsure about.

How we build it

Three rules shape the product, and they are the ones worth judging us on.

• It does not guess

  The assistant answers from the business brief the merchant wrote. When the information is missing or the question is outside it, it says so and flags the conversation for a person instead of inventing an answer.

• A person stays in charge

  Email replies wait for a human to approve them by default, and per-topic controls let a merchant set each channel to auto-send, draft for approval, or off. If a merchant replies themselves, the assistant steps aside on that conversation.

• Buyers are told what they are talking to

  AI-answered calls identify themselves as AI at the start. Texting runs on carrier-registered numbers with 10DLC or toll-free verification, and opt-out handling is built in rather than bolted on.

How it is sold

Signing up is free and needs no card — that plan covers website chat and email drafts. Responder is $19 a month and adds WhatsApp and Instagram. Front Desk is $49 a month and adds phone answering and SMS on a real number, with up to 100 call minutes included and no per-minute overage charges. Plans can be cancelled at any time.

InboxTender is operated from New York City, and it is run by email: there is no sales line to get past and no call to book before you can try it.

Where to look next

The pages below are the fastest way to check whether the product does what this page claims.

• API documentation

  Push contacts into a workspace from a CRM, a form or a script, and read them back.

• Privacy policy

  What we collect, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and how to have it deleted.

• Terms of service

  The agreement between InboxTender and the businesses that use it.

• hello@inboxtender.com

  Questions about any of the above go to a person, not a ticket queue.