I was considering the idea of getting an 800-number or toll free number to provide sales, technical support, etc. for a hosting company. I want to be able to do call forwarding, and would like to have a FollowMe feature. Just had a couple of questions:

1) Where are some good, affordable places to purchase this from?

2) What services do you recommend offering it for? I am afraid if I use it for all technical support, my phone bill may become outrageously high.

Thank you,
Aaron Jensen

Kall8.com provides 877, 866 #s for $2/mo. with some nice features. Check them out

Thanks for your quick reply. :)

Wow... I didn't know they were that cheap... Do you have to pay for minutes? NM they cost 6.9¢ per minute

Standard Kall8 (888, 866, 877) numbers are only $2 to set up and $2 per month for account maintenance, and just 6.9¢ a minute. Volume contract rates are availabe. Traditional 800 numbers are $5 to set up and $5 per month.

Check ureach.com out. You can buy your minutes in bulk there and it has all the features you are looking for.

not quite sure why you'd need an 800 number, with email and IM. sales? doubt it. tech support? probably not.

not quite sure why you'd need an 800 number, with email and IM. sales? doubt it. tech support? probably not.


Because customers look for the most convenient ways to contact the company. If you offer an 800#, it's free to them, and it connects them to a live person. You can't get anymore convenient than that. In addition, having an 800# actually has proven to increase sales a certain level.

Unfortunately customers also tend to abuse the 800#. They'll call you if they have a hangnail and can't type at the moment, and they want you to setup a new email account for them. Sometimes, they'll call just to say, "Hey, I had nothing better to do, so I decided to call and see how your staff was doing today."


On topic though.....
Kall8 and Ureach are your best options though. I certainly wuld not recommend going through your local phone company or long distance carrier.

You could get an 800 number (or 888, 877, 866) from Kall8.com and just forward it to voicemail ... that way, customers who don't have convenient email/web access still have a way to contact you, and yet you don't have all of the costs of maintaining telephone support.

Kall8.com also offers non-toll-free numbers, with a slightly lower per-minute rate (but no extra charge for receiving calls from Canada and the Caribbean).

Digitalmail.com's DMclub service offers UK-based numbers, both toll and toll-free. There are a few other competing services, although Kall8 looks like the best one to me, at least for low-volume users.

Soemone care to explain what's the diffrence between 800, 888, 877 and 866 numbers? :confused:

sanjiv: All of them are toll free numbers, just started running out of 800 numbers (the original toll free number system) and so they started adding more, 855 will be added very soon.

If anyone has heard anything about any of these companies, please let me know how they are:
- http://www.ctvoicemail.com/
- http://www.800-works.com/
- http://www.virtuvoice.com/
- http://www.easyivr.com/
- http://www.gotvmail.com/
- http://www.telcan.net/

Thanks!

I have heard of gotvmail, but have absolutely no experience with them.

I use Kall 8 right now, and have been treated well so far. About 8 months in and the only problem I had was they didn't properly register the changes I made of my cc#'s exp date, then didn't let me know when the 800 number died after the billing cycle faltered. Calling them and correcting this resulted in 24 hours before the number was back online. I take it that’s a slim chance of re-occurrence. I like what they offer, but you can't have directories inside the number IE. Push one for sale two for support. I want that ability and for each of those to be able to route to different land lines. I've been considering http://www.officevox.com/ for a solution to this. They seams to do everything I need and will do the following feature. They will give you a 800 number as part of the service, but if you want to transfer your existing to them it will be an extra 30 bucks. Over all not that bad for what I would gain. I would be interested if anyone has herd anything from the service office vox offers.

Regards,

Steve

Looks like my posts are being deleted. Found a site with 3.9c/min toll-free, but somehow, can't post it. PM me for info.