The money
Nobody will give you a number, and here is the honest reason why.
Almost nobody in this market publishes a figure, and there is a real reason for it rather than a conspiracy. Worth understanding before you talk to anyone, us included.
There are two billing models, and only one of them can surprise you
Everything in this market is one of these. Knowing which you are being sold matters more than the figure attached to it.
Per minute, or per call
You buy a bundle of minutes and every call eats into it. Past the bundle, you pay overage.
Where it bites
Your cheapest possible call is a short one. Wrong numbers, sales calls and the customer describing a noise their furnace makes all cost the same as a real job. And your bill is highest in the month your phone rang most, which is the month you were busiest.
Flat monthly
One figure for the plan, scoped to your volume and how many lines you run.
Where it bites
You are paying for capacity you may not use in a quiet month. In exchange, a long conversation costs the same as a short one, so nothing is incentivised to rush your customer off the phone.
We are flat monthly, and we are not going to pretend that is universally correct. If you take four calls a month, a metered plan will cost you less and you should take it.
What actually moves the number
When somebody says “it depends”, this is what it depends on. None of it is mysterious, and you can work out roughly where you sit before anyone asks you.
- How many calls you actually take in a month, which is usually not what you think until you look.
- How many separate lines or locations need answering.
- Whether it just answers, or also books onto a calendar.
- Your trade, because an emergency plumbing line and a salon booking line need different handling and different rules.
- How much setup your business needs — a price list and a service area take longer to load for some businesses than others.
Six questions to ask on any call
Including ours. If a provider dodges one of these, that is the answer to it.
- 01Is it per minute or flat? If per minute, what counts as a minute, and does a wrong number bill?
- 02What happens in my busiest month — does the bill move, and by how much at double the volume?
- 03Is setup separate, and is it refundable if it does not work out?
- 04Is there a minimum term, and what does leaving actually involve?
- 05What is not included that I will discover later — extra numbers, extra users, after-hours, integrations?
- 06If I cancel, do I keep my number and my conversation history?
Work out your ceiling before you ask anyone
The strongest position on a pricing call is knowing what the problem costs you, because then a figure is either under it or over it and there is nothing to negotiate about.
Count the calls you missed last week from your own phone log. Multiply by what an average job is worth to you. That is the weekly number, and it is yours rather than anyone’s marketing. The arithmetic is here, with a calculator and a note on how to get the first figure honestly.
If that number turns out to be small, the right answer is to do nothing and spend your attention elsewhere. Plenty of businesses are in that position and nobody should talk them out of it.
Why our own figure is not on this page
Because volume, line count and trade move it enough that a single published number would be wrong for most people reading it, and a wrong number is quoted back at you on a call long after you have taken it down.
What we will commit to in writing: it is a flat monthly figure rather than a meter, a long call costs the same as a short one, and you will be told the number in the first conversation rather than after a discovery process. Bring your call log and we will work out whether it is worth it before we talk about price at all.
Questions about the money
Why will nobody just publish a price?
Two different reasons, and it is worth telling them apart. Some are hiding a number that varies wildly by customer and would frighten half of them. The rest genuinely cannot quote without knowing volume and line count, because those move the figure more than anything else. The test is whether they will explain the model plainly when you ask. A company that will not describe how it bills, in words, before naming a figure, is the one to be careful with.
Is a flat monthly always better than per minute?
No. If your call volume is genuinely tiny — a handful a month — a per-minute plan may cost less than any flat figure, and you should take it. Flat pricing wins when volume is real or spiky, because that is exactly when a metered bill is largest and least predictable.
How do I know what I should be willing to pay?
Work out what the calls are worth before you talk to anyone. Count the calls you missed in a week from your own phone log, multiply by what an average job earns you, and that is your ceiling per week. Anything costing more than a fraction of that is not worth doing, and you will know it without needing anyone's brochure.
What about setup fees?
Ask whether there is one and whether it is refundable. Setup is real work — hours, service area, job types, pricing rules, carrier registration — so a fee is not automatically a red flag. A fee nobody mentioned until the contract arrived is.
15 minutes. Bring your call log.
We'll count what you actually missed last month and tell you what it cost. If it's not worth fixing, we'll say so.
Or go break the demo first. It costs you nothing to test.