Answers customer texts
Stax reads each text against what your shop has taught it — hours, services, prices, policies, each artist’s record — and replies like a good front desk would. This is the system answering customers at Fargo Tattoo right now.
StaxBox — the AI front desk
Your front desk, answered — even when you’re mid-session.
StaxBox answers your shop’s customer texts, website chat and email, turns first messages into leads and bookings, and only involves you when a person is actually needed. It runs live today at our own tattoo studio. Now it’s coming to yours.
A missed text is a missed booking
When you’re tattooing, behind the chair, or closed for the night, customer messages wait — and the shop that answers first gets the appointment. StaxBox exists so a small shop never loses a customer to a slow reply, without hiring a receptionist or living on your phone.
What Stax does for your shop
Website chat
The chat on your website feeds the same inbox, the same knowledge and the same reply system as your texts — not a second tool to babysit. A visitor can leave their email and the conversation continues by email after they close the page.
Email, same inbox
Customer email is being wired into the identical pipeline: same leads, same threads, same approvals, same receipts. No parallel messaging system to learn.
Every first message becomes a lead
Anyone who writes your shop for the first time becomes a lead automatically, and your forms and booking requests land on the client record — not in a forgotten inbox tab.
“Needs you,” with a draft ready
Anything Stax can’t answer — a private record, an opt-out, a request for a person, a question outside what you taught it — comes to your team with a suggested reply you can send, edit, or replace. It never guesses.
Receipts for everything
Every reply Stax sends, and every approval behind it, is recorded. You can always see what was said to a customer, when, and on whose say-so.
You decide how much Stax does on its own
One studio-wide setting, changeable any time. The mode never sends anything by itself — it works through the same checked, recorded send path as a person pressing Approve.
Ask first
Every reply Stax prepares waits for you to approve, deny, or send back with a note. The default.
Help me
Replies backed by your shop’s verified facts, a client’s own record, or an answer your team just gave go out on their own. Anything Stax had to compose still waits for you.
Automatic
Every prepared reply goes out on its own. Questions it cannot answer are still handed to your team, exactly as in the other modes.
Our own studio runs on Automatic — that’s how much we trust it with real customers.
Two ways to run it — same StaxBox
StaxCloud — hosted for you
Subscribe and your shop gets its own hosted instance: no hardware, nothing to maintain, updates as they ship. This is the version we’re opening first, and the one this page is collecting founding shops for.
StaxBox — in your shop
The same software on a small box in your studio, for shops that want the system under their own roof. It is how Fargo Tattoo runs today.
Built in a working shop, not a boardroom
StaxBox runs the front desk at Fargo Tattoo — a two-artist private studio in Fargo, North Dakota. Real customers text it, it answers them, and the shop’s owner reviews its work in the same inbox you’ll use. StaxCloud is that system, hosted for other shops.
Join the founding cohort
Hosting is being set up now. Founding shops are onboarded in order, get the planned founding pricing first when subscriptions open (see planned pricing), and shape what ships. Leave your email and we’ll write when your shop’s turn comes.
Questions shop owners ask
What is StaxBox?
An AI front desk for small local shops — tattoo studios first, and any shop that books appointments by message. It answers customer texts, website chat and email using what your shop has taught it, turns first-time writers into leads, helps customers toward a booking, and keeps a full record of every conversation.
Which channels does it answer?
Text messages today — StaxBox runs live at our own studio, Fargo Tattoo. Website chat is built and is the first channel that launches on StaxCloud. Email is in build and follows in the same launch, plugged into the same inbox and reply system as texts.
Do I have to let it reply on its own?
No. You pick one studio-wide setting: approve every reply yourself, let Stax send the replies it can back with your shop’s own facts while you approve the rest, or fully automatic. In every mode, a question Stax cannot answer, an opt-out, or a request for a person is handed to your team instead of guessed at.
What happens when it doesn’t know the answer?
It raises a “Needs you” item for your team with a suggested reply you can send, edit or replace. It never guesses past what your shop has taught it, and every send — yours or its own — is recorded with a receipt.
Can I run it in my shop instead of the cloud?
Yes. The same software runs two ways: as a hosted StaxCloud subscription, or on a small box in your shop. Our own studio runs the in-shop version — that is the system answering Fargo Tattoo’s customers today.
How much will it cost?
Planned founding pricing is $149 per month per shop for the Core plan, or $119 per month billed annually, with a $79 Starter and a $249 Growth tier. Sales are not open yet — the founding cohort is forming now and gets these prices first when subscriptions open. Full planned pricing is on the pricing page.