VoIPstudios’ pricing structure has always been fairly competitive and manageable to understand. The nature of such a feature-rich telephony service like VoIP implies that things can get sticky and end-customers can sometimes end up racking up unexpected fees thanks to toll-free numbers, outbound calls, etc. Rob Seymour, Director of Marketing, VoIPstudio, told me with the company’s previous pricing structure comprised of three plans, things got confusing.
For starters, there was a pay-as-you-go plan that came in at £3.99 a month. For national plans, the charge amounted to £9.99 per month, and internal calling plans totaled £19.99 – making VoIPstudio one of the most affordable VoIP providers on the market. “What we’re trying to do is simplify things even more. The nature of this business is that things can get complicated because of the special vanity numbers”
The company’s taken its three plans and consolidated them into two. In the past, having its national plan meant selecting one country to call and obtaining 2,000 outbound calling minutes. Its international plan included calling to 50 countries, and Seymour told me, that keeps growing. “This was all kind of confusing, and customers did not choose the most cost-effective plans oftentimes because they’d have a national plan whilst making international plans and getting charged more for that reason.”
VoIPstudio’s new 2K bundle now extends the use of 2,000 internal minutes at a flat rate on a per-user base. Seymour said it is a better deal all around because customers get more value for their spending. During the COVID-19 period, I’m told, the company’s seen an uptick in signups. The long-term impacts will not get felt for some time to come. He also shared with me, as more of its customers migrate to full-time or part-time work from home environments, the company’s starting to see a rise in support tickets and setups, too.
“They’re doing a lot of things with our system that they never used to, screen sharing, conference calls, etc., have all seen increases as people hope to navigate new WFH structures”
Seymour believes many progressive companies will enable remote work in well into the future, he even added, “I’d hate to have a lot of money tied up in the commercial real estate arena.” And he’s right, progressive companies like Slack, said it would enable permanent work from home for employees who felt safer working from home.
At the end of the day, nobody likes surprises, which is what Seymour said VoIPstudio hopes for its customers to experience. Over the long-term, companies will become even more reliant on collaboration tools that are simple to use, and transparent in terms of pricing and with an advanced set of features out of the box. With the VoIPstudio collaboration and unified comms suite, users can leverage analytics, integration with Zoho, along with screen, and file sharing.
Last year, I wrote a comparison of the leading VoIP phone service providers, and VoIPstudio came out on top for its innovative and standard features. This includes the recent introduction of emergency calling to the VoIP platform. Up next in VoIPstudios’ pipeline, developers there are working on a total redesign of the platform’s user interface, one that Seymour told me will take a fresh approach to customer and user experience.
