Smokeball Pricing and Smokeball Software Cost Per User With Archie AI

Smokeball's US pricing page names four plans, Bill, Boost, Grow and Prosper+, and puts a Get pricing button under each one. It says the price depends on the number of users, the plan, the contract term and any optional products. So every number you find comes from somebody else, and they do not agree. Capterra shows $49 per user per month for Bill and $89 for Boost. Costbench and Toolradar show $149 a month as the starting price for every plan. Both can be true for different firms, which is exactly the problem when you are trying to budget.

Treat the $49 and $89 figures as the floor for billing only and billing plus matter management. Grow and Prosper+ are where most of Smokeball's automation and AI live, and those are quoted. If a rep's first number is far above $89 per user, ask which plan and which add-ons it assumes.

Here is what the reported per user rates mean over a year. These are license costs only. Add-ons such as Archie AI, payment processing, e-signature or a virtual receptionist are priced separately and are not in the table.

Count seats the way Smokeball will. Paralegals, legal assistants and billing staff who work in matters need a login, so a three lawyer firm often buys six or seven seats. That headcount moves the bill more than the plan does.

Smokeball sells AI in two ways. Some AI ships inside the higher plans: Grow includes Communicate powered by Smokeball AI, and Prosper+ adds Intake powered by Smokeball AI. Archie, the matter assistant, is listed on the pricing page as an add-on, with no price printed.

According to Smokeball's AI page, Archie works inside the matter you have open. It summarizes documents, meetings, deadlines and tasks with links to the source, drafts and reviews documents in Word and Outlook with the matter as context, flags conflicting terms between documents and can check documents against a firm playbook. Smokeball says Archie runs under zero data retention agreements and is visible only to staff assigned to the matter.

That is a real product, and if your firm is moving to Smokeball anyway it makes sense to price Archie with the plan. The question is different if you already run Clio, MyCase or another system and the only reason for the Smokeball call is AI that reads your files. Then you are pricing a practice management migration to get a reading assistant.

Smokeball is worth it when you need practice management built for small firms: billing and trust accounting, matter and document management, practice area templates, automatic time capture with AutoTime and intake, all in one system. Firms that live in Word and Outlook tend to like it, because the documents and email stay attached to the matter.

It is a weaker buy when the firm already has billing and matter management that works and the pain is reading. Hours go into leases, discovery responses, medical records, loan files and contracts, and a new practice management platform does not change how many pages someone has to read. For that job a separate tool priced per account, not per seat, is cheaper and is live the same day.

CaseClerk is not practice management. It does not bill, keep trust accounts, track deadlines or run intake. It reads. You upload the documents for one matter (up to 1,000 files across 18 formats, from PDFs and scans to email and spreadsheets) and ask questions in plain English. Every answer names the document and page it came from, so the lawyer checks the source instead of rereading the file. It also runs contract analysis across the matter: key terms, obligations, risks and differences between versions, each finding cited.

The price is on the page: Solo $99 a month for 2,500 pages, Professional $249 for 10,000 pages, Firm $499 for 30,000 pages, with annual billing at six months' price and an Enterprise tier on quote. It is priced per account rather than per seat, there is no implementation project, and it sits next to whatever practice management you keep. A five person firm paying $89 per seat for Boost pays $445 a month before any AI add-on; the reading job alone costs $99 to $249.

If the platform comparison is really about plaintiff case management, our Filevine pricing breakdown covers what Filevine and its LOIS AI are reported to cost, and CasePeer pricing lists CasePeer's published per user rates.

• The plan and the per user rate in writing. Bill, Boost, Grow or Prosper+, and whether the rate is monthly or annual.
• Every seat by role. Which staff need full access and whether anyone can work without a license.
• Archie AI as its own line. Per user or per firm, monthly or annual, and whether it is available on your plan.
• Add-ons you might not need. AutoTime and Intake on Boost or Grow, payment processing, e-signature, the virtual receptionist.
• Term and renewal. 12 or 36 months, the renewal increase cap, and the cancellation notice period.
• Data export. How you get matters, documents and billing history out if you leave.