Search this question and every page hands you a range. The ranges are wide enough to be useless, and they are wide for a reason worth understanding: they average three incompatible billing units into one figure. A per-minute rate and a monthly plan are not two prices for the same thing, so a number sitting between them describes nobody.
We sell one of the options below, so take the arithmetic here rather than the verdict. We have not quoted anybody else's prices, because a competitor's rate read off a blog post is not a verified rate, and a stale one would cost you more than no figure at all.
Get two numbers off your own phone bill first
No quote means anything until you know your monthly call count and your average call length. Both are on your carrier statement or in your phone system's call log, and exporting a month of it takes a few minutes. Without those two numbers you cannot tell which billing unit is cheaper for you, which is the entire question.
Average call length is the one people guess wrong. A call that books an appointment runs much longer than the wrong numbers and silent hang-ups sitting in the same log, and those short ones drag the average down while still costing you money under some billing models.
Three units, and where they cross over
Per minute. You pay for connected time. This suits a business with short calls and punishes long ones. Ask for the billing increment, because a rate quoted per minute is rarely metered per second: if the increment is a full minute, a twenty second call and a fifty second call cost you the same.
Per call. You pay a flat amount every time somebody is answered, whatever gets said. This suits long calls and punishes short ones, which is the opposite exposure. It also makes the definition of a billable call the most important line in the contract.
Per month. A fixed fee with an included allowance, then an overage rate past it. Predictable until you exceed the allowance, at which point the overage rate is setting your bill and the headline fee is not.
The crossover is arithmetic you can do yourself. Per-call billing beats per-minute billing when the per-call price is lower than your average call length times the per-minute rate. Our own Starter overage rate is $0.45 per voice minute, so three minutes of connected time runs $1.35. Put your own average against a per-call quote the same way and you have the answer for your call mix, which is the only one that decides anything.
The terms that move the bill more than the rate does
The headline rate is the part everyone compares and the part that varies least. These are the terms that actually change what you pay:
- What counts as a billable call. Wrong numbers, spam, silent hang-ups and a caller who rings three times in a minute are all calls. Whether you pay for them is a policy, and it differs between providers.
- What the clock includes. Ask whether billable time starts when the line is picked up or when the caller reaches a person, and whether hold time, transfers and the greeting sit inside the meter.
- The billing increment. Worth asking twice for a business whose calls are short, because it can matter more than the rate itself.
- Minimum commitment. A monthly minimum, a setup fee or a contract term changes the real cost of a plan you might leave after two months.
- Whether the allowance rolls over. An unused allowance that expires each month is a different product from one that banks.
Get these in writing and a cheap-looking quote often stops looking cheap. Skip them and the first busy month is a surprise.
What we charge, since we are one of the options
Our plans are the third structure above, monthly with an allowance and a metered overage. Starter is $45 a month for 250 voice minutes and 500 SMS messages, with overage at $0.45 per voice minute and $0.05 per SMS. Growth is $139 for 1,000 voice minutes and 1,500 SMS messages, with overage at $0.40 per minute and $0.04 per SMS. Pro is $289 for 2,000 voice minutes and unlimited SMS under fair use, with voice overage at $0.39 per minute. SMS is metered per message rather than per conversation, which is the same distinction as per call against per minute, one level down. The current figures live on the plans page.
When none of this is worth buying
If you take a handful of calls a month, every option here costs more than the work it would recover, and the honest answer is not a service at all. A voicemail greeting that states when you will call back, plus a text to the people you missed, covers that volume for little more than the cost of the texts. Our after hours voicemail greeting and missed call text back tools write both, and why small businesses miss calls is the better place to start if you have not yet worked out when your misses actually happen.
Paid coverage earns its fee once the calls you miss are worth more than the fee. That is a volume question, and the two numbers at the top of this page answer it. A range on a vendor's blog does not.
Compare cost per recovered job, not monthly fee
The cheapest plan that answers your calls badly is not cheap. Once something is running, the number worth tracking is what you paid divided by the jobs it actually recovered. A plan that costs more per month and books one extra job a month has already won on the only measure that pays you back.