Free/cheap Vicidial hosting?

[cristian]

I'm considering doing dammed near free Vicidial hosting.

Maybe do 3.4¢ a minute, $40 a month minimum commitment.

Charge for support/fancy setups. Allow resellers.

How would you do it? Think it might take off?

[williamconley]

3.4 cents per minute? US? Domestic? Um ... no comment

Remember that Vitelity is a former sponsor of the site. Check out their pricing. Remember that Vicidial has a "carriers" interface allowing setup of any carrier ... you gonna disable that?

Also: do you have the bandwidth available to handle 1200 channels?

CPU to handle 1200 channels?

You talkin each client gets their own machine?

[cristian]

The idea is low barrier of entry. The bump in price would be the profitability. That's why we all do what we do, capitalism. Keeps atlas from shrugging.

I would host out of IO-Scottsdale. Discount for larger clients, move them up to larger machines without additional cost.

I wouldn't modify VICIdial. Private machine on a non-routable ip, no inet access. Have a border router (asterisk/freeswitch) providing connectivity to the endpoints and doing codec translation. Centralize www/sql services as well.

Thanks conley. I hope you all will be as honest. : )

[williamconley]

Sounds like an interesting concept. Could be viable IF you can set up a "no-interaction" fire-up ... could allow startups to "get it going" immediately and bring a few more people to the party.

[cristian]

I appreciate that.

I don't feel comfortable having customers use my systems without a phone call and gov'erment ID. I wouldn't permit questionable robocalls or high drops.

That said I could have a new customer up in 6 business hours easily. They'd have to have a supported endpoint or go POTS.

Please critique this or suggest other options.

[williamconley]

3.4 cents per minute plus the cost of POTS ...

"Have a supported endpoint" is an interesting phrase. Carry X-Lite/Zoiper/Twinkle install executables on the servers ... ie: give them a supported endpoint.

But if the server in question has no internet ... how do these supported endpoints access the server?

[cristian]

You are 100% on the softphones, I was thinking linksys/cisco endpoints. The POTS time would kill the deal. I'd have to learn how to route packets on windows through an alternate gateway or actually figure out a client side QOS implementation. I've had bad luck with it so far, you?

Private IP servers register via IAX2 and push ulaw/slin to the border device (asterisk/freeswitch). Border device registers to endpoints and provides connectivity to them while centralizing transcoding (scale to Sangoma D500). Also routes endpoints to VM/IVR server and PSTN calls. The private servers would originate in a similar manner.

Perhaps do pre-purchase 100k minute blocks at 2.3¢ with an expiry date. Otherwise full rate. All prepaid/deposit.

[williamconley]

suddenly your "free / cheap" is the same as anyone else's

[cristian]

I guess it's possible to push the price lower, but do I need to? Most endpoint resellers charge 1.9 a minute. The 2.3 should be far lower TCO than any other hosting option.

vicihost.com

$1,000 initial server provisioning fee (covers the 1st month of hosting)**
$500 server provisioning fee per additional server (covers the 1st month of hosting)**
$400 per server per month hosting fee plus the cost of minutes**
1.5 cents per minute for outbound calls as well as inbound toll calls**
2.8 cents per minute for inbound toll-free calls**

I'd like to explore other options as well.

[williamconley]

prepaying for 100k minutes and then paying higher than other providers means high up-front cost and high per minute charges. you lost me in there somewhere ... based on that I'd recommend vicihost (i mean, their support cannot be questioned, right? )

[cristian]

I'm throwing out ideas. This particular idea is 3.4 for low volume or 2.3 for high volume. That's significantly cheaper for 5, 25, and 75 channels.

There is an entry market here that is not being addressed at all. Would you recommend a 5 or 10 seat room call vicihost?

[williamconley]

if they have to prepay 100k minutes ... how much is that again?

[cristian]

$2300 at 2.3/min

It's $800 over Vitelity/vicihost base rate. That $800 would buy you hosting on two vicihost servers for a month; providing a 150 channel capacity. And that's good hosting.

I thought that was going to be a good deal. : /

You've made a good point on the higher output clients and pricing all around.

[williamconley]

Besides which OUR pricing by those standards whups yours hands down. I won't mention them as this isn't my site. But by comparison to yours, The Vicidial Group (hosting with the guys who built this software? does it get any better than that? LOL) ... well, you get the idea.

It went from Free or real cheap to ... well, not.

[cristian]

Numbers are made up on the spot. When challenged I conceded the point and agreed with you.

I'm just fielding ideas Bill, this has yet to go further than this BBS. Your tone came across a bit callous, which I didn't expect. I hope all is well with you.

Thanks again for your help, its always invaluable to me. I would appreciate any other comments you have. Your comments are why I come here.

[cristian]

Perhaps I should give a lower rate (1.7-1.9) with a monthly commitment of $40 a try as offering targeted to new users. I could easily attract a user base.

[williamconley]

If you can offer the "beginners" (say: those with less than 10 agents?) an "in" ... and offer an alternative between using your minutes for FREE and using ANY carrier of their choice with a monthly fee ... you may be on to something.

But remember that g729 is not free (and there is liability involved in "offering it" as free to a client as a result) and anything other than g729 tends to Eat Bandwidth. So watch your numbers.

At that point, of course, if you offer the clients a way to "upgrade" to vicihost (offer the site name and everything) for unlimited agents on their own servers for when they go "enterprise", and refrain from offering that level of service on your site (which would require that you have a massive quantity of equipment and bandwidth) ... you could actually have a winner (and avoid a major portion of the over 10 agents crowd, which tend to become high-maintenance ... profitable, but high-maintenance ... ordinarily if that's what you do, that's ALL you do)

[cristian]

Yea, the bigger call centers get touchy about downtime.


Thanks!

[williamconley]

Downtime, nuthin, they get picky about "it" not working "like this" because that's how "it outta". They calm down when shown how it actually does work, but the read the manual part (that would have resolved the issue) is generally not within their capacity (patience and planning is often not something they allow for). When you get a room that DOES plan, it's a very cool thing. (and as clients, they last a LOT longer).