Hi,

I'm trying to figure out a good place to get a phone which will record conversations and archive them on a seperate computer. I need to the ability to start out with around 5 and go up to 50-100. Does anyone know any good place (with nice phones) that I could purchase phones/archiving software from?

Also, anyone in Canada with a 1-800 number? What's a good place to get one from, and what am I looking at for canadian per minute, and us per minute? (overseas pays for their own).

I'd appreciate a quick response! :p

For Canadian toll free number try www.canadiantollfree.com or .ca I am not sure...they are good :D

I would recommend getting an Altigen phone system - they're not cheap (a "starting" setup will cost a couple thousand dollars - check ebay for lower prices) but they're great systems. You can run in individual phone lines, or use a PRI/T1. How many lines you need is limited only to how many cards you put in the system.

Altigen is a "real" phone system, not a small company's clone of a larger PBX - many large companies (Dell, Gateway, etc.) use Altigen hardware. You can place customers on hold, forward stuff, voicemail is built in, calls can be monitored by administrators/call center managers, calls can be forwarded off-site to your home or cell phone (why anyone would want that I have no idea though .. heh). Plus if you're a "moonlighter" you can even record different greetings for different phone numbers ("thank you for calling company A" answers on one line, "thank you for calling company b" answers on another - all handled by the same system).

At a previous company I ran we had a call center and used this system to route sales/support calls internally. The system I used then cost about $7,000 and we had a 40 person call center. You can record calls as MP3's (saved on the phone server) and pull them up any time. Your voicemail messages can also be emailed to you as MP3 attachments.