Why is DeskBuddy free?
Short answer: the $0 plan is a trade, not a giveaway. We hand you the full Professional plan for one to three months; you tell us honestly how it goes and let us write up what happened.
It's a brand partner programme, not a promotion
DeskBuddy is a young product from Tencent RTC. We can build features by guesswork, or we can watch real salons, groomers and gyms use the thing on real calls and fix what actually breaks. The second option is worth more to us than a few months of subscription revenue.
So we made a straight swap. You get the Professional plan free for one to three months. In exchange, you talk to us about what works and what doesn't, and you let us turn your results into a case study. That's the whole arrangement — no credit card, no auto-renewal trap, no strings we haven't written down on this page.
The exact trade
What you get
- One to three months of the Professional plan, free
- 300 AI calls per month — the same allowance as the $99.9 tier
- Up to 5 locations under one account
- 1-to-1 technical support during setup and beyond
- No credit card required to start
What we ask in return
- Actually use it on live customer calls — a dormant account teaches us nothing
- Honest feedback when something is wrong, confusing or missing
- Permission to write up your results as a case study
- A short conversation or two with our product team
The questions everyone asks first
Is it really free, or is there a catch?
Really free for the agreed one to three months, and no credit card is required to start. The catch — if you want to call it that — is the feedback and the case study. If you'd rather not do either, the Standard ($39.9/mo) and Professional ($99.9/mo) plans are there and you can skip the partner programme entirely.
What happens when the free months end?
You choose a paid plan or you stop. Because there's no card on file, nothing can silently start charging you. We'll tell you before the partner period is up so the decision is yours, made on time.
Will you sell my call data or train other companies' models on it?
No. Calls run on Tencent RTC infrastructure, recordings and transcripts stay tied to your business account, and they are never sold or used to train third-party models. Every caller is told they're speaking with an AI assistant. Our AI disclosure page spells out exactly what gets captured and how long it's kept.
Do I have to put my business name in the case study?
No. We agree the wording with you before anything is published, and we're happy to describe you generically — "a three-chair salon in Queens" — instead of naming you. What we need is the story and the numbers, not your logo.
Is the free plan a cut-down version?
No. It's the Professional feature set: 300 AI calls a month, up to 5 locations, 1-to-1 support. We're asking you to judge the real product, so giving you a hobbled one would defeat the point.
Who gets accepted?
Businesses that take enough calls for the AI to be genuinely tested — salons, spas, nail and pet studios, clinics, gyms and similar local services. We keep the intake small on purpose: 1-to-1 support only works if there are few enough partners to actually support.
Sounds like a fair trade?
Setup takes about ten minutes and needs no credit card. Start the trial, and tell us how it goes.