Clarification of Answer by
rippo-ga
on
03 Jan 2003 15:05 PST
Hi brandbuilder-ga,
Happy to offer further clarification on the above.
First, the software vs. service distinction is an important one. Of
the solutions listed above, some may offer services in addition to
software, however in my research they all seem to be software-based.
You should note there are advantages and disadvantages to the
service/software options: if you own the software, you have greater
control over the details/timing of your campaign but must deal with
installing/learning the application; if you use a service, you have
the convenience of not installing/learning the application, but yield
some control over timing and details of your campaign. This is an
important consideration for a business, so you should carefully
evaluate what is most important to you before making a decision.
Based on your clarification request, however, I'm hearing that you're
most interested in a service, so I did a little extra research for you
in this area. I found three web-based autodialer services. The first
is called NotifyQuick (http://www.notifyquick.com). Their pricing is
as follows:
Phone announcements cost 10 cents per call. Initial fee of $50 covers
first 500 calls, good for one year. When there are no other lists in
the queue, your list will begin running immediately, regardless of
priority level. Volume discounts are available for clients who commit
to 5,000 or more calls over a one year period:
Quantity Cost per call Minimum Pre-pay
5,000 9 cents $250
10,000 8 cents $400
20,000 7 cents $700
50,000 6 cents $1500
100,000 + 5 cents $2500
Above discounts are based on a message length of 30 seconds or less.
Add 0.6 cents per call for each addtitional 10 second increment.
(Non-discount pricing allows a 60 second message.) More detail on
pricing for this service is available at:
http://www.notifyquick.com/pricing.html
In addition, I found another web-based service called Emagitel:
http://www.emagitel.com/default.htm
Emagitel offers a free trial and monthly pricing that varies from
$48/month to $950/month, depending on how many minutes you use. (This
service may not be ideal for your size of company however.)
Finally, I found a company called Voiceshot that may offer a service
more in line with what you are looking for and also offers a free
trial:
http://www.voiceshot.com/default.asp?ref=autodialer
Their pricing is 12 cents per "successfully delivered call." A
VoiceShot "successfully delivered call" is 60 seconds or less in
duration. All calls exceeding a 60 second duration will be billed an
additional 12 cent charge for each additional 60 second interval.
Calls will be delivered within the United States and Canada only.
VoiceShot is a prepaid service. VoiceShot pricing applies to all
successfully delivered calls including operator transfer.
I figured you are also interested in pricing detail for software-based
solutions as well. There are some solutions that are larger systems
while others appear to be desktop-based (Teletech), while still others
are server based (Autodialer Central's LDL). Take the company Octopus'
product: to operate an OCTOPUS system, you'll need their software, a
dialogic voice board (which requires an IRQ and an ISA slot inside
your computer), and a computer of your own. Pricing varies -- as it
likely will for any software or service you consider - based on the
number of phone lines you want to use. Octopus offers systems for use
with 2 to 96 telephone lines. Examples of pricing for OCTOPUS Software
& Dialogic Voice Boards are:
2-lines $1195
4-lines from $1395
12-lines from $2,585
24-lines from $3,895
Additionally, the NextCentury auto-dialer and predictive dialer
solutions are available for anywhere from $1195 to $1495. The
Autodialer Protocall solution is available either as a standalone
desktop for roughly $4000, or if you have your own desktop to run it
from, it will be priced roughly the same as the 2 - 24 line pricing I
listed above for Octopus (slightly more expensive for more lines).
Other solutions, such as the TC TECNO solution, come as software
available via CD ROM, with the dialogic voice boards, however they
don't list pricing on the website. You should note that all of the
links above contain links to phone numbers where you can contact any
of the companies for very detailed pricing (and you should). But as a
general price point, if you are interested in using a few lines, a
software solution may run you close to a thousand dollars on the low
end up to a few thousand on the high end or higher if you are
interested in massive numbers of outgoing calls. That estimate is
based on pricing information available for the solutions listed above.
Additionally, I found a tenth company for you called Five9 that offers
a software solution for around a thousand dollars. If you are
interested:
Product Page:
http://five9.com/products/products_ad.jsp;jsessionid=75ks718j0bam0
My suggestion is that you take a little time to test the free trials
of the web-based services offered above, see if you like any of them,
and then consider the cost/benefit of going with deploying one of the
desktop-based solutions in-house.
I hope the above clarification provides the detail you were interested
in, and feel free to ask for any further clarification prior to rating
this answer.
Best regards,
rippo-ga
Google Answers Researcher
