Frequently asked
Every question we get
before someone buys.
Real answers, not marketing fog. If yours isn't here, email Bruce and we'll add it.
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Section 01
Pricing & tiers
Which tier is right, what's actually included, and what costs money beyond our fee.
Which tier should I pick?→
Use this short rule:
- Pilot ($997 + $97/mo) — one AI module installed in 7 days. The default starter for owners under $300K revenue.
- Industry Pilot ($1,397 + $97/mo) — same 7-day install, but using our pre-built dental / trades / restaurant / real estate / legal / consulting templates as the starting point.
- Solo ($1,797 + $197/mo, waitlist) — one module, deeply customized over 14 days. For $100K–$1M businesses.
- Operator ($3,997 + $497/mo, Founding 10 pricing) — all 7 modules integrated in 30 days. For 5–50 employee operations.
- Enterprise ($14,997+) — multi-location, regulated, or heavy custom integration.
Still not sure? Email Bruce with two sentences about your business and he'll tell you which one fits — or that none of them do.
What's NOT included in the install fee?→
Third-party tool subscriptions. We install the AI on YOUR Twilio, YOUR Synthflow, YOUR Google Workspace — and you pay those vendors directly, at their published prices. A typical Pilot adds ~$15–$30/mo in tool subscriptions on top of our $97/mo retainer. Every quote shows the full landed cost before you pay anything.
Are there hidden costs I'll discover later?→
No. The Concierge call (free) ends with a written scope listing every recurring cost — our retainer plus each third-party tool. If the project runs long, that's on us, not on a change-order. If a tool we picked underdelivers during the install window, we swap it on our dime.
Do I need to keep paying you forever?→
No. The monthly retainer is optional and cancellable any time. It covers ongoing tuning, prompt updates as your business changes, and a person to email when something breaks. About 60% of Pilot customers drop the retainer after month 3 and DIY maintenance from there — that's fine. The install is yours either way.
What happens to my install if I stop paying?→
Nothing — it keeps running. Every credential is in your name, every account bills you directly, every workflow lives in tools you own. If you fire us tomorrow, you'll lose access to our support inbox, but the AI keeps answering your phone.
Why is Industry Pilot $400 more than the regular Pilot?→
Because we've already done the hard work of building the industry template — dental insurance scripts, trades dispatch flows, restaurant reservation handling, etc. The Industry Pilot starts ~80% configured and we customize the last 20% for you. Most customers in those six verticals choose Industry Pilot for the speed.
What's the Founding 10 pricing on Operator?→
The first 10 Operator customers pay $3,997 + $497/mo and lock that price for life. After we've shipped 10 of them, the price moves to $9,997 + $997/mo. The Founding 10 number isn't a marketing trick — it's honest: we want 10 real installs under our belt before charging full freight.
Still confused on pricing & tiers? Bruce will answer a real question in writing within 24 hours.
Ask Bruce →Section 02
Delivery & timeline
How long until your AI is live, what we need from you, and what slows things down.
How long from payment to my AI being live?→
- Pilot / Industry Pilot: 7 days from kickoff call.
- Solo: 14 days from kickoff call.
- Operator: 30 days from kickoff call.
- Enterprise: scoped per build, typically 45–90 days.
See the day-by-day install timeline for what happens each day.
What do you need from me?→
Less than you'd expect — we handle the technical side. Three things, and “set it up for me” is always a fine answer to any of them:
- About 30 minutes for a kickoff call.
- The basics of your business — hours, services, rough prices, the questions customers ask most. We'll prompt you if it isn't written down yet; bullet points are perfect.
- A quick “yes” on pointing your phone to the new AI line — about a 5-minute step we walk you through on a screen-share, or just do together on the call.
That's it. No accounts to buy, nothing to install yourself. For a Pilot it usually adds up to ~90 minutes of your time, spread across the 7 days.
What happens if I'm slow to send the things you need?→
The install clock pauses. We don't penalize you, but the 7-day Pilot becomes a 14-day Pilot if you take a week to send the KB document. If we're waiting on you for more than 30 days we'll close the install and let you reopen when you're ready — no additional fee within 6 months.
Do I need to know anything about AI to work with you?→
No. Bruce handles the technical side. Your job is to know your business — your customers, your most common calls, the things you say a hundred times a week. Bruce's job is to turn that into a working AI.
Can I watch you install it, or does it happen behind the scenes?→
Both options exist. Most customers want the “hand me the keys when it's done” experience and we just send a Loom each day showing what shipped. Owners who want to learn-as-we-build get screen-share invites for the install sessions. Pick when you book.
Still confused on delivery & timeline? Bruce will answer a real question in writing within 24 hours.
Ask Bruce →Section 03
The AI itself
What model is under the hood, whether we train on your data, and what happens when it gets something wrong.
Whose AI is this — yours, OpenAI's, someone else's?→
We use Anthropic's Claude (Sonnet 4.6 for Pilot/Industry Pilot, Sonnet 4.7 for Solo/Operator) as the brain, Bland AI or Synthflow for telephony, ElevenLabs for the voice, and Twilio for phone numbers. We don't train our own models — we configure the best models in market for your business. When a better model ships, we upgrade you.
Do you train AI on my customer data?→
No. Your call recordings and customer messages stay in your accounts and are never fed back into model training. Anthropic, ElevenLabs, and the rest of the stack have written no-training policies for API customers — and we configure your install on those tiers. If a vendor changes that policy, we move you to one that hasn't.
Does Iris pretend to be human?→
Never. Every Iris install opens calls with a disclosure (“Hi, this is Iris, the AI assistant at Riverside Dental”) and answers honestly any time a caller asks. Lying about being AI is illegal in California, Colorado, and Illinois — and it's the fastest way to lose a customer's trust permanently. Iris doesn't do it.
What if Iris says something wrong on a call?→
Three layers of defense. (1) The system prompt has hard refuse-and-escalate rules for the topics Iris should never speak to (medical / legal / financial advice, pricing changes she hasn't been told about, etc.). (2) Every call is logged and reviewable. (3) During the install window we listen to every call together and tighten rules where she got close to a bad answer. After install, mistakes route to your support inbox so you can flag them — Bruce reviews and patches the same business day.
Can Iris handle calls in languages other than English?→
Yes — Spanish out of the box, ~30 other languages with config. The voice model handles them natively. If you want bilingual receptionist behavior (auto-detect language and respond in kind), that's a standard Pilot configuration.
How do you stop Iris from hallucinating prices or policies?→
We pin your KB to the system prompt and tell Iris to refuse-and-escalate on anything outside it. During testing we run the same five-question scripted call we use to score every competitor on the leaderboard — if Iris fails it, the install doesn't ship until she passes.
Still confused on the ai itself? Bruce will answer a real question in writing within 24 hours.
Ask Bruce →Section 04
Tools & costs
What gets installed, what you pay each vendor monthly, and whether you can use your existing stack.
Which tools do you install?→
Default stack: Synthflow or Bland for voice agent infrastructure, Twilio for phone numbers, ElevenLabs for the voice itself, Google Workspace (you probably already have it) for calendar/email, Airtable or Google Sheets for the lead database, Resend for transactional email, and the Anthropic API for the brain. The exact stack depends on your tier and your industry — every quote lists what we'll install and what it costs monthly.
What's the typical monthly cost of those tools on top of your retainer?→
For a Pilot install in a typical small business:
- Twilio phone number: ~$2/mo + usage (about $0.01–$0.02 per minute).
- Synthflow / Bland: $39–$99/mo depending on call volume.
- ElevenLabs: $5–$22/mo for voice.
- Anthropic API: usage-based, typically $5–$40/mo at small-business volumes.
- Google Workspace: $6/user/mo (most owners already pay this).
Realistic total: $50–$200/mo in vendor costs on top of our $97/mo retainer. Heavier call volume → more.
Can I use the tools I already pay for?→
Often, yes. If you're already on Calendly, HubSpot, Square, Acuity, or a similar mainstream tool, we'll integrate with it instead of installing a duplicate. If you're on something obscure, we'll tell you honestly whether it integrates cleanly or whether the install will be smoother on the default stack.
Do you get kickbacks from the tools you recommend?→
On some of them, yes — Synthflow, Bland, Twilio, Beehiiv, Tidio. The commissions are disclosed on every page they appear and they NEVER move a tool up our recommendations. We pick based on the eight-axis scorecard, not the commission rate. Full disclosure here.
What if a tool I love isn't on your list?→
Tell us during the Concierge call. If it integrates cleanly, we'll use it. If it doesn't, we'll tell you why and recommend the alternative. We don't take builds where we have to recommend a tool we can't actually vouch for.
Still confused on tools & costs? Bruce will answer a real question in writing within 24 hours.
Ask Bruce →Section 05
Support & refunds
How to reach us, how fast we reply, and the rules for getting your money back.
What's your support response time?→
- Pilot / Industry Pilot: same business day for install-window issues, next business day after.
- Solo: 8 hours, business days.
- Operator: 4 hours, business hours (9am–6pm CT, Mon–Fri).
- Enterprise: contractual — typically 2 hours during stated coverage windows.
Bruce handles support personally. There's no Tier-1 outsource team.
What's the refund policy?→
The Pilot is fully refundable — a 7-day money-back guarantee from the kickoff call on Pilot and Industry Pilot, so your first step is risk-free. After the Pilot, you're covered by a “we'll make it right” satisfaction guarantee plus a returning-customer discount on your next install or add-on. Waitlist tiers don't charge until purchasing opens. See the full refund policy for edge cases.
What if I want to cancel the monthly retainer?→
Cancel any time, no questions, no exit fee. Email support@irisbites.com and we'll stop the next billing cycle. Your install keeps running on your own accounts.
What if something breaks at 2am on a Sunday?→
For Operator and Enterprise, there's an after-hours pager that wakes Bruce for outage-level issues (Iris is down, calls are dropping). For Pilot and Solo, after-hours issues route to support@irisbites.com and get handled the next business morning. The underlying tools (Twilio, Synthflow) have their own 24/7 status pages and most outages are vendor-side, not us.
Is there a phone number I can call you on?→
Yes — once you're a customer. We don't publish a sales line because we don't want unscreened cold calls; the receptionist on irisbites.com is Iris herself, and she'll route real prospects to Bruce. After you've booked an install, you get a direct number for your account.
Still confused on support & refunds? Bruce will answer a real question in writing within 24 hours.
Ask Bruce →Section 06
Security & data
Where your data lives, who can see it, and how we handle the regulated stuff.
Where does my customer data live?→
On your own accounts — Synthflow, Twilio, Google Workspace, Airtable. We don't run servers and we don't mirror your data anywhere. The closest thing we keep is an install-log in our project tracker noting which tools are configured and when — no customer data inside it.
Are you HIPAA-compliant?→
Not the way a healthcare SaaS is. We don't store PHI ourselves. For dental and medical Pilots, we configure the install on HIPAA-compliant tiers of the underlying vendors (Twilio, Google) and route call recordings to a HIPAA-compliant storage account in your name. If you need a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), we'll sign one for the install scope — Enterprise tier only.
Are you GDPR / CCPA compliant?→
For our own site, yes — see privacy policy. For your install, GDPR/CCPA compliance is a function of how YOU configure the data flow and what you tell your customers in your own privacy policy. Bruce will flag GDPR-relevant choices during install (call recording consent, retention windows) but the ultimate compliance posture is yours.
Who can see my customer call recordings?→
You, by default — they live in your Synthflow/Bland account. Bruce sees only what he needs to troubleshoot a specific ticket you open, and only after you grant explicit access via the ticket. There's no “Iris Bites admin dashboard” that quietly mirrors your data. Full security posture here.
What happens to my data if I cancel?→
Nothing — it stays in your accounts because it was always in your accounts. We'll export any prompts, KB documents, or workflow configs we wrote for you into a folder you own. Then we walk away.
Can you wipe everything if I ask?→
Yes. Email privacy@irisbites.com and we'll delete every record of your account in our internal systems within 7 days. The data in your own vendor accounts is yours to delete on your own — we'll send you a checklist if you want one.
Has Iris Bites had a security incident?→
Not as of . If we ever do, we'll disclose it on the trust pagewithin 72 hours and email affected customers within 24. That's the policy whether the incident is on our side or a vendor we rely on.
Still confused on security & data? Bruce will answer a real question in writing within 24 hours.
Ask Bruce →Read enough? Pick a path.
See every tier side-by-side, or skip straight to booking the install that fits.