Some dubious offers of an "award winning free cloud based software for contact centers" are not really free of charge. There you have even to pay for incoming calls. Why do you need to pay for something what you can get FOR FREE?
If you take a look at all the "Award winning" contact center solutions at news.tmcnet.com and you read about the connection between TMC and the magazine Customer, then you'll know that this "awards" are only for making advertisements in their magazines. There is no reason listed why this software should be better than the other ones. So they have even not seen the software for giving their awards, or does anybody really think that they could make a test of 27 call/contact center software within one year? They are producing a newspaper for consumer and not a call/contact center magazine.
if we take a look at the promoted "FREE" Fenero offer and scroll a down nearly to the end of the site, then we see that the software is only in their cloud system available. There is written:
There are no software costs for Fenero - ever. You simply pay for the following, which helps us keep the lights on and continue to provide you with great service:
- $1.75 per month for a local DID
- $2.00 per month for a toll-free DID
- $0.02 cents per minute for inbound (local & toll-free) and outbound calls
- $0.02 cents per session for live customer chats
- $0.10 cents per GB of screen recording storage (call recordings are FREE)
- $250 per month for support (optional paid support plan)
If we are comparing the costs then the price for the VoIP minutes are 3-4 times higher than the offer from the listed VoIP providers in my blog and you will get even charged for the incoming calls. For this are the "NO HIDDEN COSTS" written nearly at the end of page. The price for the VoIP minutes written on the page are only for US calls. Prices for calls to other countries are not available or the same 3-4 times more expensive then other offers. In the case if they are 3-4 times higher than other offers, then it will be very expensive for contact centers calling mobile phones in other countries. Don't forget the Fenero software is only an addon to the base Asterisk system. This information is found at http://www.fenero.com/reliable-scalable/.