We quite often have conversations with business owners that recently spent thousands of pounds on a big name brand telephone system. As soon as the business grows or they start changing the way they work, they quickly find out that getting the phone system to cope with the changes requires yet another large investment, even if it is just a year old. There is a very simple reason for that: Big name brands make buckets of money on licensing. Here’s how it works:
When you buy a new telephone system, you need to purchase equipment. Fair enough, if you want to make a call you obviously need something to talk into. Once you have the hardware, you need to buy a license for it. The license is usually based on capacity, so if you want to make 8 calls at the same time, you need an 8 channel license. If you want to have 20 extensions running of your phone system, you need 20 licenses for the phones. And so you have a phone system that can handle 8 calls and 20 extensions.
Need to add Voicemail? You’ll need a license for that, and quite often extra hardware too. Want to connect two branches together using VoIP? You’ll need a license for that. And so every small feature you need to make sure you can stay in contact with your customers requires a license and sometimes extra hardware. And so the costs mount and to add insult to injury, these systems are usually incompatible with other Vendors, so if you decide to change your phone system, you often need to replace your telephone handsets too.
However, there is an alternative — the world’s most Powerful and Popular Telephony toolkit used by Micro Businesses, Small Businesses, Corporates, Charities, Governments and also Emergency Response Centres – called Asterisk. The best part is that there are no licenses to pay so you don’t have to worry about paying twice for everything. Standard features like Voicemail, Call Queuing, Call Transfer, Music on Hold, Auto Attendants, IVR, etc are all included and doesn’t require additional hardware.
How much does it cost? To use a recent example of someone wanting to make some changes to the way their phone system worked: They spent about 40,000 on their phone system 1.5 years ago and licensing alone for the changes are in excess of 6,000 (excluding equipment and labour and everything else required). Our solution with Asterisk costs half the amount they originally spent 1.5 years ago and includes doing everything they want it to do today.
So when buying a new telephone system — watch out for those licensing fees and get a rough estimate on costings when you want to make changes later. And if price is important to you, as it is with so many start-ups, why not consider Asterisk, or one of the other alternatives to the big name brands out there?
Author: Carel Solomon
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker
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