Why Business Needs Unified Communications

By: John Shepler

Time was when there was only one method of electronic communication. It was that heavy black phone on your desk. Now look what we have. Sure, there’s still a black phone on your desk, but it’s a lot lighter thanks to modern plastics and solid state electronics. There’s also a raft of other ways we communicate electronically. How many of these do you use: email, text messages, mobile phone calls and video chats? How about the platforms: desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones and soon… a watch?

One of the biggest communications issues, especially in business, is that all these different platforms and applications don’t necessarily play together well. One solution is to just make sure you have them all with you. That used to mean a pager on the belt, a cell phone in the pocket, a laptop in the briefcase, and somebody to forward you messages from your office when you were in the field. A better solution soon became a crying need.

Let’s Combine Everything into One
The answer that you might expect is to integrate all of these communications systems into one. That won’t really do. There is no one platform that can handle everything equally well. The desk phone is tethered, as is the desktop computer with the nice big screen. The smartphone screen is way too small for a lot of serious work. The tablet makes a ridiculous telephone held up to your ear.

There are forces still pulling in that direction. Enter the “phablet.” It’s a giant cell phone that’s almost, if not really, too big for your pocket. Tablet computers now have clip on keyboards so you can touch type from the coffee house. Laptop computers are shrinking, getting lighter and some have screens that detach from the keyboard and act like tablets. If there was only a way to get a great big screen that you can actually see along with keys that fit your fingers along with a telephone that lets you take calls privately, handles email and text messaging, and all fits neatly in your shirt pocket.

Well, there isn’t. There isn’t even anything on the horizon that fits this description. Someday, the QWERTY typewriter keyboard may become as quaint as the crank telephone. Siri might actually become your best friend and be able to read your mind as well as understand everything you’re mumbling. Something akin to Google Glass may project that big screen in front of your face anywhere. That’s not today, though. Today we need a solution that let’s us communicate anyway we like anywhere we happen to be.

It’s Called Unified Communications
The development that takes what we have and makes it into the closest approximation of what we really want is UC or Unified Communications. The “unified” part means doesn’t mean trying to get one platform to do everything. It recognizes that each device has its strong points and weaknesses. The master solution is to make all of this stuff play together well. In fact, so well that you needn’t be afraid that you are missing out just because you don’t have a particular platform with you at the moment.

A simple example is the lowly telephone call. Every business is still dependent on the telephone simply because it is the only universal medium of voice communications. For a long time, this meant having a business number that you printed on your business cards and a separate home phone number that was printed in “the book.” If you were at home you didn’t get your business calls unless you had a secretary working late to give the caller your home number or forward the call. You came in the next morning and found a raft of pink “while you were out” call sheets on the your desk.

The introduction of the cell phone only made matters worse. Now you’ve got a third phone number that only certain people know. What if they call the office instead of your cell when you are out? Will you miss the sale? Could be.

Unified communications starts with voice mail to replace the secretary and the telephone message sheets. You don’t have to fear missing a call because they’ll leave a voice message you can pick up anywhere. Even better is a “find me follow me” service that routes your calls to wherever you happen to be. With this type of automation you can hand out a single phone number and have it try your office phone, your cell phone or go to voice mail. You can even have it send you an email with the audio file of the call. Toll free number? Just have it routed to your unified business number.

The Technology Behind UC
The most popular platform for implementing unified communications is the cloud. Why? Because the cloud provides a common place to collect and distribute everything with near-infinite resources. All that processing power can easily handle everything from an independent professional up to the largest corporation. You don’t need to make a big capital investment or try to keep up to date on installing the newest features. The cloud provider takes care of that.

Cloud UC is driven by computing power and that computing power understands IP or Internet Protocol. The “Internet” part of IP doesn’t necessarily mean the public Internet. It just means the technical protocol that is also used by the Internet. For security and highest voice quality, you may not want your internal communications on the Internet at all. You will, however, want access to the Internet both in the office and on the road. That can be done carefully so that you use the Internet when you want to but private channels when you don’t.

What UC Can Do For You
Unified communications can be a gateway to both productivity improvement and cost reduction. It augments or replaces your in-house PBX phone system with a more powerful VoIP system that uses a common network with your computers and other digital devices. You can get tools for ease of collaboration among employees as well as the obvious single phone number benefits. Your laptop becomes your desktop with remote desktop access. Voice and video conferences can take place anywhere with a diverse group scattered in offices and hotel rooms around the globe.

Will all this cost a fortune? It’s probably cheaper than you think and may even offer all the new benefits at a lower cost than you are paying now. There’s only one way to find out. Get a set of competitive quotes for unified communications solutions and review the benefits and costs specific to your situation.



Note: The humorous mousepad about unified communications, along with many other items in the same theme, is available from the Gigapacket Zazzle store.

Unified Communications for the SMB

By: John Shepler

Large companies long ago latched onto the concept of unified communications to improve the efficiency of their business telephone systems and the productivity of their employees. UC, as it is called, may have started out in major enterprises, but it is working its way into the small and medium size businesses. Why? For the same benefits the big companies achieve.

Just what is unified communications? The idea behind UC is that electronic business communications has spread way beyond the corded desk phone. Oh, desk phones are still a staple of any office. But now we have cell phones, smart phones, tablets, laptops, notebooks and the desktop PC. You can treat these as complete separate devices or unify them so that they work as a single system.

Why not stick with separate devices for different uses? One big problem is that we don’t sit at our desks all day. We may be moving around in the office, taking meetings, making sales calls to clients, visiting job sites and collaborating with peers outside the company.

We always did those things, right? True. But how did you stay in touch? Decades ago, pay phones were an important business tool. If you had the option, you left a forwarding number with the secretary when you left the premises. Important clients had your home phone number as well as the office number printed on your business card. If nothing else worked, you could always depend on the answering machine or, later, voice mail.

Sure, this approach works even today. But why are you doing it the old school way when your competitors are embracing the latest technology. While a sales prospect or customer with a big problem sits frustrated after leaving you a voice message, the competition is taking their call while walking down the street. The five members of your committee grind to a halt because you had to leave the office and can’t vote on the issue needing resolution. That company across the street keeps humming along because every member of their team is always connected.

What unified communications does is tie together different communications devices so they work together. No need to list a half dozen phone numbers on your business card and hope a caller has the patience to call each number in order to see if you happen to answer. UC gives you a single phone number and your calls will always get to you no matter where you are.

Cbeyond, a major telecommunications and cloud services provider, is moving unified communications from major enterprises to small and mid-sized businesses. They’re doing this with a new suite of services called “Communications on the Go.” The emphasis is on including smartphones as part of the business communications system. Within that realm, Cbeyond is offering cloud based communications, managed network services, and integration of smartphones, desk phones and computing devices. What this means is that you have access to the same calling features regardless of where you are or what device you are using. You have one phone number and one business phone system to learn.

Cloud communications, also called hosted VoIP, is a real enabler for unified communications. Yes, you can accomplish many of the same things with your own in-house PBX. However, you have the grief of having to cough up a major capital investment to get the equipment and the ongoing maintenance expenses of keeping everything up to data and secure. By moving your communications to the cloud, you move to a cost model of paying for the features you need when you need them. It’s easy to add and subtract users or make changes when people move around. The service provider has ownership of the infrastructure and network connections needed to deliver all the capacity and functionality you need. From your perspective, your unified communications services are infinitely large and always up to date.

Are you looking for a more effective and less costly way to communicate within your business and to your customers? This is a good time to find out what cloud hosted unified communications has to offer for your business, large, medium or small.

Cloud Hosted IP PBX Enables New Telephone Apps

You know how apps have taken the smartphone market by storm. Now even desktop and laptop computers are changing their approach away from traditional software packages and toward apps. Have you been thinking that there should be some apps for your phone system, too?

Well, they’re here. AireSpring is offering a suite of apps that work with their AirePBX cloud hosted PBX system. What sort of things can you do with these apps? Let’s take a look.

CommPortal is the interface that controls your messaging on the PBX. You can check your voice mail online or have them sent to your email. Set up a one-number service that will locate you no matter which device you may be using at the moment. You can choose to prioritize some callers over others and even send some directly to voicemail. Click-to-dial will ring your phone first and then dial the party you want. Contacts are always available on whatever device you are using.

Now CommPortal is available as an app that works on multiple platforms so that you have your PBX with you at all times. Other apps are also available. Two of these are the “Call Me” button and the QuickDial Accelerator.

Call Me buttons make it easy to connect instantly to customers. You install this button on your Web pages or email signature. When the customer clicks on the button, they are prompted to enter their phone number. You phone rings immediately so you can capitalize on opportunities that may disappear in a few minutes.

The complement to Call Me buttons is the QuickDial Accelerator. This cool app lets you initiate a call right from your browser window. Simply highlight any phone number you want to call and the system will place the call for you. No more trying to wrangle two screens at once or risk dialing the wrong number.

Why are we seeing the appearance of telephone system apps at this time? It coincides with the move to cloud hosted PBX systems. The traditional PBX is all about switching calls between desk phones in the office and connecting to outside trunk lines when you need to make a call outside the company. This was cutting edge technology at one time. No more. Today’s telephony is all about unified communications and computer telephone integration. What we’d like to have in a business phone system was difficult to impossible to do previously and expensive to do now using the old school technologies.

Many companies that dream of having the latest business phone features choke when they see the price tag on the latest sophisticated IP PBX systems. They also worry about the day when their present PBX runs out of capacity or becomes unmaintainable and they have to face the music on capital investment. What they may not realize is that all of these issues can be easily avoided by employing cloud hosted PBX services.

Hosted PBX means that instead of buying and maintaining your own in-house PBX system, you pay for use of a much larger and likely more sophisticated PBX operated by a service provider. The service provider has the investment and expertise to support many clients. Economy of scale means that this approach is often less expensive than doing it yourself, even without the capital investment.

Are you dissatisfied with your current business phone system but unsure what to do next? If so, get more information about Cloud Hosted IP PBX solutions and compare with your other alternatives.

Office Telephone Service Via Cloud

When you think of office telephone service, the thing that comes to mind is a phone on every desk with an easy 3 or 4 digit number to call other phones in-house and access to an outside line whenever you need one. Today, that picture also includes your own direct dial phone number and personal voice mail. Transfers, call forwarding and conference calls are easy to set up. So, where is the equipment that runs this phone system?

For most people, the answer is “who cares?” The actual phone system could be anywhere. As long as it works all day, every day, the mechanics of how this is accomplished is beyond the interest of all but a few people. The ones who care are the business manager who pays the phone bills, the IT person or people who quietly keep everything humming, and the provider of the service.

That provider could be the local phone company. That’s how it was for at least half of the last century. For many if not most companies, at least part of the system is in-house. This could be a small wireless phone system with a couple of lines and a half-dozen handsets. It could be a key system using desk phones with a separate button for each of 4 to 6 outside lines. It might even be a PBX phone system mounted in a back room with lines coming in from each phone and going out to the telephone company.

Since very few people are all that interested in running their own in-house telephone switching system, why not ditch the whole thing? Does that mean going back to analog phones connected to the local Telco? Not at all. Today it means going forward to a cloud based solution that will give you all the functionality you have now and more.

Cloud communications is the new PBX. It’s also the new key system and the new small office system with only a few telephones. It may even provide your broadband Internet.

The cloud telephone system is more formally known as hosted PBX or hosted VoIP. You already know what hosting is. Chances are that you already buy a hosting solution from one of the many online providers. This could be a shared solution, a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server of your own. The economics of setting up your own data center just to run a web server don’t make sense anymore. There is so much competition in the hosting field that simple solutions are only a few dollars a month. Dedicated servers are only a few hundreds of dollars per month. That includes the box, the bandwidth and the IT services to keep it all running.

Larger companies that run their own customized packages for business information may have elected to just add one more server for the web to the racks they already have in their data centers. It hasn’t made much sense to go out of house for a solution when you need a large data center and staffing to optimize your business. Well, not till recently. Now these major corporations are shutting down their in-house data centers and moving to cloud computing solutions in droves. Why? For the same reasons that make sense to outsource telephone systems. You don’t need to invest in capital and you don’t need a staff to maintain it.

The point is that cloud services have evolved to the point where both your computing and your telephone can be supplied by a cloud vendor at a lower overall cost with more functionality and lower in-house staffing than doing it yourself. There are other advantages, too. You pay for a cloud telephone system per seat per month. You only buy as many seats as you need. When you need more, you order more. There is no need to maintain extra capacity just in case business picks up suddenly. Provisioning of extra resources is fast and easy because the cloud has all the capacity you need.

Now that you have office telephone solutions in the cloud as an option, is there any reason to be stuck with a technical solution that was “modern” decades ago? At the very least, take a look at what’s available in the cloud, what it costs compared to what you are paying now, and if you can get all new phones included with your service.



Note: Original photo of telephone operators courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives on Wikimedia Commons.

Get a Toll Free Number Instantly

You’re starting a new business or breathing new life into an existing one. You’ve come to the conclusion that a toll free number will help you get more sales prospects and orders. It will also improve your reputation for fast and easy customer service. Now that you’ve made the decision you’d love to get started right away. But you have to wait at least a week to establish a toll free number, right?

Wrong! You can have your toll free number up and running in less time that it takes you to read this article. If you don’t want to wait even that long,order and activate your toll free number now. Yes, you can have an 800, 855, 866, 877 or 888 toll free number for your business or personal use as close to instantly as possible.

How does this work. It’s all thanks to the highly efficient online provisioning process from Kall8. They have gone to the trouble of setting up a large collection of toll free numbers, so all you have to do is select one you like the look or sound of and place your order. You pay for these with a credit card that is also billed monthly for your service, so there is no long approval process involved.

How much will a toll free number set you back? Hold on to your chair so you fall off. The cost is just $2 each for 888, 877, 866 or 855 prefixes. That’s what you pay to get your number assigned and set up for use. Then the cost is just $2 a month to maintain service plus the cost of incoming calls on a per minute basis.

Note that the older 800 toll free numbers are slightly more expensive. Those are $5 each and $5 per month plus the cost of calls.

There are even more expensive vanity numbers that spell out specific words on the telephone keyboard to make them easier to remember. Examples of numbers now on the vanity list are 1-877-9-Alimony (1-888-925-4666) and 1-877-5-BIGMONEY (1-877-524-4666). The prices on these vary from $15 to over $100 for setup and monthly fee. What’s an example of an expensive one? How about 1-877-5-MESOTHELIOMA (1-877-563-7684).

What do you get with your Kall8 toll free service? First, you get your number ready to use as soon as you complete the order process that takes only a few minutes. You specify which phone you want incoming calls to go to. These numbers don’t have their own phone line. Instead, you program them to ring to your office phone, home phone, cell phone or other phone that you’ll be near. You can change this ring-to number any time as your location changes so that you’ll never miss a call.

Do you get voice mail? Yes, it’s included. You can call in to get messages from the system or have them sent to you as attachments to your email. That way you can hear your messages on your computer without having to pick up a phone. You’ll also be able to get FAX messages sent to your email as attachments. No need for a separate fax machine to get messages. Just tell clients to send them to your toll free number.

Other features include call blocking, maximum call length setting, Caller ID, and even conference calling with up to 25 participants. These features are included as part of your monthly service fee, starting at just $2 per month.

How much will you pay for calls? The cost to the caller is free, of course. You pay 6.9 center per minute for calls from the 48 US states and Canada. There is a surcharge for calls that come in from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Saipan. Payphone callers will cost you an extra 60 cents per call, per FCC tariff.

With toll free numbers as cheap as $2 each and $2 a month, plus 6.9 cents a minute for most incoming calls, it’s hard to go wrong getting a toll free number for your business. There are no contacts involved, so if you don’t want the service anymore, you can simply cancel and only pay for the usage to date.

Flat Rate vs Per Minute Toll Free Service

Nearly all companies that sell to the public have or need toll free telephone numbers. People come to expect a toll free number for ordering or customer service. If they have to pay to call you, they may think twice and go elsewhere. It’s a bit like free WiFi. There are so many places that offer it that the ones that don’t seem less desirable. But, did you know that there are two types of toll free services to choose from?

The two fundamentally different approaches to toll free number service are pay per minute and flat rate. Flat rate means you pay a fixed amount each month regardless of how many or few calls come in.

Note that as the business owner you pay for all calls that come into your toll free number. The caller isn’t charged, and that’s the way they like it.

The way pay per minute services work is that the meter starts running as soon as you pick up a ringing toll free call. An excellent service that works on the pay per minute basis is Kall8. For each minute that you are on the phone with a customer or prospect that calls in on your toll free number, you pay 6.9 cents per minute. That rate applies to all calls coming in from the lower 48 US states. Calls from Alaska and Hawaii have a surcharge.

What happens if you don’t have any toll free calls during a particular month? In that case, you pay just the fee to maintain your number. It’s $2 for 866, 877 or 888 numbers and $5 for 800 numbers. All of those prefixes are toll free. Some companies prefer actual 800 numbers because people know what an “800 number” is. Others are fine with the newer 866, 877 or 888 numbers that are also toll free.

For your, say, $2 per month you have exclusive use of your toll free number. It will ring to any phone that you program it to. It’s not a separate line with a separate telephone hooked to it. For instance, you can program your toll free number to ring to your cell phone while you are out and about, change it to ring to your desk phone when you are in the office and even change it again to ring to your home phone so you don’t miss calls in the evening or overnight.

Some other features you get with your Kall8 toll free number are voice mail that you can use the conventional way or have your messages sent to you as audio files attached to email messages. You can block calls from people or areas you don’t want to deal with, conduct conference calls with up to 25 participants and receive FAX messages to your toll free number. The messages can be read online or sent to you as email attachments. That’s a lot of capability for a mere $2 a month.

The competing service is flat rate toll free. A good example is iTeleCenter toll free service that costs $49 a month. For that you get to pick your number from a list of available toll free numbers that are ready to use. You also enjoy 30 features that include online faxing, follow-me call forwarding, and voicemails sent to email or text messages at no additional charge. What’s more, there’s a 14 day free trial so you can see if you like this service before you commit to it.

It should be noted that “unlimited” calling is actually limited to a fair usage amount of 1,000 minutes per month. If business booms and you talk more than this, you’ll pay an overage charge of 4.9 cents per minute. That compares to 6.9 cents per minute for each minute on Kall8.

So, how do you choose between the two toll free services? The pay per minute plan works well for companies with widely varying phone traffic each month or for startups that don’t expect many calls for a long while. Your expenses expand at the same rate that your business grows. However, if you get lucky and your phones ring off the hook you’ll be paying more than you would with the flat rate plan.

Flat rate toll free service is great if you don’t like surprises and want to know what to budget for incoming calls each month. If you are a very small operation and it takes forever to get business going, you will pay more during the slow times than you would with pay per minute toll free service. However, if all of a sudden business takes off, you have the protection of the flat rate. Even overages will cost less than on the pay per minute plan.

Toll Free Number Availability Now

You’re thinking about getting a toll free number for your business, but, oh, the grief involved in trying to find one that’s available and then having to send in a bunch of paperwork and waiting a couple of weeks or a couple of months to get service. Is that really worth it?

NO. It certainly is not, and why should you? There are toll free numbers all set up and ready to go right now. All you have to do is pick the one you want from a list of choices and then take about 5 minutes to get your service started. You do all this online at Kall8’s Instant Online Activation site. No need to wait for standard business hours. Get your number tonight, on the weekend, any holiday, or any time at all. The process is totally automated and self-service. As soon as you are set up, you can start using your new toll free number.

So how much does this all cost and what do you get? How’s $2 to get your 866, 877 or 888 toll free number? Not bad, huh? For every month that you want to keep that number, your credit card will get charged another $2. When customers or prospects call you on that number, you’ll pay just 6.9 cents a minute for the length of the call. Rates are a bit higher for Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Saipan. I’ll bet you didn’t even know that you could take toll free calls from those locations, did you?

Sounds cheap enough, but what do you get in the way of service? First of all, you get the ability to change your ring-to number at will. That’s a powerful feature if you aren’t always at the same phone. For instance, many professionals and small business owners on the go will have the toll free number ring to their cell phone when they are not in the office. That way, they will never miss an important call... or that all-important chance to close a sale. If you are going to be in the office all day, change the ring-to number so that all incoming toll free calls will ring your office phone. At night, set it to ring your home phone. You’ll never have to “check in” to see if you got any important calls. They’ll come directly to you wherever you are.

Of course, you get voice mail with your toll free number. After all, there are always some times when you can’t answer the phone. But, this voice mail can be checked online or you can even have voice messages sent to you as email attachments. The same is true with FAX messages. Just have your clients send the FAX to your toll free number. The Kall8 system will turn it into an electronic image and send that to you as an email attachment. Or, you can get your FAX messages online at any time.

There are many other features, such as conference calling, call blocking and forwarding, and Caller ID, and they are all included for the same price: $2 a month plus the cost of calls.

Advantage of Independent Toll Free Numbers

You may have a toll free number that you got from your telephone company, or you may be considering one. Toll free numbers have tremendous advantages for all size businesses when it comes to sales and customer service. If you shop carefully, they are so affordable right now that even the smallest start-up companies and independent professionals can have their own toll free number. You’ll have the most flexibility if you order an independent toll free number.

What’s an independent number and why is that important? Independent toll free service is not associated with your landline or cellular phone bill. You'll have the ability to have your toll free number ring to any telephone you wish. You can even change your mind and have it ring to another phone anytime you want.

So what difference does that make? It makes a huge difference if you move or want to switch to another phone company. You may or may not be able to take your telephone company supplied toll free number with you. If they allow it, there can be a high fee charged to transfer the number to another service. Otherwise you’ll have to start all over with a new toll free number and change all your advertising and business cards.

You also won’t likely have the ability to decide which phone your toll free number rings to. If it is attached to your landline phone service, that’s the number that will ring when toll free calls come in. That may be no big deal if you are always at your desk or have a full time receptionist to take the calls. Otherwise you can be out and about when you get that important call that means the difference between sale and no sale. If you can’t grab it, the prospect may go elsewhere.

The alternative is an independent toll free service such as Kall8. With Kall8 toll free service, you get to pick from their suite of available 866, 877, 888 or 800 toll free numbers. Find one you like and by the time you are done placing your order online, your number will be ready to accept calls. You get an online control panel that lets you decide if toll free calls will come to your cell phone, home phone, or business phone. Change that any time you like. Some sales people switch it between phones depending on where they happen to be at the time.

You also get Kall8 toll free number features that include voice mail that you listen to online, by calling in or by having a sound file sent to your via email. Any incoming FAX messages will be converted to graphic files and sent to you via email. You also have conference call ability, so that you can conduct a conference call with up to 25 participants at any time for as long as you like. Even use your toll free number in reverse as a long distance calling card at the same rates.

That’s a lot of capability for just $2 to order an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number and $2 per month to maintain the service. Incoming calls are 6.9 cents per minute from the 48 contiguous states and a bit higher for calls from Alaska or Hawaii. Traditional 800 numbers are $5 each and $5 per month for service, plus the 6.9 cents per minute rate for incoming calls.

Low Price Toll Free Numbers

Are you looking for a toll free number for your business, but want to pay as little as you can and still get quality service? Your best bet may be Kall8 toll-free service.

This is much more than just a simple telephone number where you pay the cost of the call instead of the person calling. Kall8 offers a complete suite of telephone services that can make your mobile phone as powerful as your office phone. We’ll take a look at those services, but first you have to hear the price...

Kall8 low price toll free numbers start at $2. That gets you an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number all set up and ready to use immediately. Plus you get an online management account plus all the features that work with this number. You can keep your toll free number by paying just $2 a month for as long as you want it. If you decide to stop using the service, you pay only for the cost of the calls that have come in. Nothing more. There are no contracts or disconnect fees.

Yes, you can also get an 800 toll free number. These have all the same features as the 866, 877 and 888 toll free numbers. The cost is slightly more at $5 each plus $5 per month to keep the account.

But how much will you pay for those toll free incoming calls? Most calls are just 6.9 cents per minute. I say most calls, because calls that originate in Alaska, Hawaii or U.S. territories have additional surcharges. Even so, may businesses pay more than 6.9 cents per minute for just their regular outgoing long distance calls.

Now let's take a look at the features included with your toll free number. First of all, you get to set the ring-to number and change it anytime you want. The ring-to number is the number of the phone that will ring when someone calls your toll free number. In a sense, your toll free calls are automatically forwarded to the phone number of your choice. That can be an office phone, home phone or even your cell phone. If you move around a lot, you can go online and change the ring-to number at anytime.

Kall8 low price toll free numbers all have their own voice mail. You have a choice of how you want to retrieve those voice mail messages. You can call-in and listen to them. You can go to your online account from any Web browser and listen to them on your computer. Or you can have those messages sent as audio attachments to email messages.

Your Kall8 number will also accept fax messages. If anyone sends you a fax message, you can get a copy as an email attachment or go online to read it. Your choice.

Ever want to conduct a conference call, but didn’t have time or energy to go looking for a conferencing service? Now you can conduct conferences with up to 25 participants at any time for as long as you want. No scheduling needed. The regular per minute charges apply for each participant that dials your toll free number and enters the password that you give them.

Your Kall8 toll-free number also works in reverse as a virtual calling card. You just dial any of the voice mail access numbers and use the system to make outbound calls at the same 6.9 cents a minute that applies to incoming calls.

Other features include call blocking, custom call forwarding, choice of Caller ID display, and setting a maximum call length so callers don’t prattle on for hours at your expense.

Low Cost 800 Numbers For You

Have you been considering an 800 toll free number for your business, but are concerned about the cost? Good news! Low cost 800 numbers are available for instant activation and you can have one for just $5.

Does that sound like a price that will work for you? Perhaps it sounds too low, considering some of the other quotes you’ve received. But it’s true. You can order an 800 toll free telephone number for your exclusive use and it will cost you just $5 to reserve it. The cost to maintain service is $5 a month for as many months as you want to keep the number. If you decide you don’t need it anymore, just cancel your service and you’ll owe nothing more than your final bill.

But keep the 800 number and look at all the features you’ll enjoy. First of all, you’ll be able to change the ring-to number at will. The ring-to number is the number of the phone that rings when a toll free call comes in. That can be your office phone, your home phone, your cell phone, a phone at some place you are temporarily staying, or other phone. Some people change the ring-to number during the course of the day so that they can always be reached at the same toll free number. Others simply set it to one phone and let unanswered calls go to voice mail.

Yes you do get voice mail with this toll free service. You can call in to get your messages, listen to them online, or have them sent to your email as a sound attachment. You don’t need a phone to get your voice mail messages.

You also don’t need a phone to get your FAX messages. Any time that someone sends a FAX to your toll free number, that FAX message is received and converted to an image that can be viewed online or sent to you as an email attachment. No matter where you are, if you have access to a computer or smartphone with an HTML Web browser, you can get your FAX messages.

There are also some fancier features such as virtual calling card. You call one of three voice mail access numbers and enter your toll free number and password. After that you can make outbound calls at the same rate as incoming calls. In most cases, that will be a lot cheaper than using a hotel phone.

The per minute rate for outgoing or incoming calls on your 800 number is just 6.9 cents per minute for calls that originate in the 48 US states. Calls from Alaska, Hawaii, US Territories or pay phones have a surcharge. For Alaska and Hawaii it’s an extra 7 cents a minute.

You also have conference calling available on your toll free service. Conduct conferences with up to 25 participants any time for as long as you like. Host them from your cell phone if you want. You’ll be charged the regular per minute rate for each conference participant that dials in on your toll free number.

Caller ID? You bet. You have the choice of setting the Caller ID to display your toll free number or the caller’s number. If you have several toll free numbers for several business opportunities, using the toll free number for caller ID let’s you know how to respond to a particular call.

Let’s recap. You can order an 800 toll free number right now and be using it in a matter of minutes. You pay $5 to reserve the number for your use and $5 a month for the complete array of toll free service features. Any incoming calls from the 48 US states will cost 6.9 cents per minute.

It’s quite a deal, right? This is reliable, high quality toll free service available without any contracts. It bills to your charge card. Want an even better deal? Get the same service features for $2 per number and $2 per month when you choose an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number instead of the more traditional 800 number.

Instant Toll Free Numbers

Do you have a project where you could use a toll free number... right now? Then get one right now. I mean right this minute.

But don’t toll free numbers take a long time to search out and provision? No, not if you use the right service and do it the right way.

The right service is Kall8. The right way to get your number is to simply dive in and pick one from the set of 800/866/877/888 numbers they already have available and ready for use. You simply pick a number and place your order quickly and easily online. By the time you’re done, a few minutes later, your number is ready for use. Is that instant enough?

Oh, but how much is this convenience going to cost? You can get an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number for $2 ($5 for 800 numbers). Once you have it, it’s $2 a month ($5 for 800 numbers) for service plus the cost of incoming calls, which is a mere 6.9 cents a minute for the 48 US states. That’s not much to pay for any toll free number, much less an instantly available one. Then there are all the extra features.

The first extra feature is the ability to change your ring-to number anytime you want. A toll free number is set to ring to a particular telephone number. When someone calls your toll free number it will ring your cell phone, home landline or office phone, depending on how you set it up. With some toll free services, you decide which phone to ring when you set it up. Then it’s either fixed at that number or you have to call up and request a change. Not with Kall8. You simply use your online control panel to change the ring-to number any time you want.

Why is this valuable? Say that you want to make sure that clients, patients, or potential customers can reach you anytime 24/7. You give them your toll free number, which is also printed on your business card. That’s the only number they’ll need. While you are at home, you can have the toll free number set to ring your home phone. That saves cellular minutes. When you leave for the day, reset the ring-to for your cellular phone. That way you are reachable anywhere. At the office, reset the ring-to number to your office phone.

Of course, you can set your toll free number to ring-to a particular phone number and leave it that way. At least you have a choice with Kall8.

Some other valuable features that come with your instant toll free number are voice mail, conference calling, Caller ID, and the ability to have both voice and fax messages sent to your email. Yes, you can have people send a fax to your toll free number and pick it up online or have it sent as an email message attachment.

Your toll free number also works in reverse as a virtual calling card for the same low 6.9 cents per minute rate. Just call the access number to use it this way.

Are you impressed? This is a pretty impressive service. Best of all, you can get this service working for you right now. Order your instant toll free number from Kall8.

There are also more articles about toll free numbers and how they can help businesses or professional practices like yours at Agile 800 Toll Free Service

Scale Into Toll Free Number Service

You’ve been thinking that toll free numbers would be a big boost for your business. But it’s also been hard to commit to plunking down a major chunk of change to order a suite of numbers and their monthly service fees. What if this isn’t such a great idea after all? What if the business doesn’t expand the way you think it will? What if most of those numbers just sit there unused but still require a substantial monthly expense to keep them active?

Whoa! There’s no need to dig yourself into that hole. Don’t go making a major commitment until you know your toll free service will generate a handsome profit. Instead, just dip a toe into the water and see what happens.

That toe is perhaps a single toll free number. What you want is a way to try the service with all the features, but limited to just a single trial number or a few at most. That way you can publish a toll free number and get a feel for how everything works but limit your cost exposure.

Is there a toll free service that offers this ability to started small and grow as large as you need? Indeed there is. It’s Kall8 toll free service.

Just what do you get with Kall8? It’s a service that’s designed for small businesses with the scalability to serve major corporations. The heart of the service is your online account manager. Use your Internet Web browser to set up your numbers and change those settings at will. When you want to expand your number portfolio, you can easily click the button for “Add New Number” any time you wish. There’s also 24 hour customer service, toll free of course, if you want assistance at any time.

Some of the features you can change on the fly include the ring-to number, Voice Mail, FAX reception, virtual calling card, Caller ID, maximum call length, call routing, and call blocking. While you are in your account, you can view call history, pick up FAXes that you didn’t happen to see in your email, and listen to voice mail messages that you also didn’t have a chance to retrieve by calling-in or via email attachment.

So how much of a commitment are we talking about to try this sophisticated toll free service? Would you be shocked to learn that it’s just $2 to acquire an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number and $2 a month to maintain it. That plus the 6.9 cents per minute for incoming calls from the US 48 states. Classic 800 numbers are also available at a slightly higher cost.

Oh, but what about the contractual commitment?

Contract? What contract? There is no contract. You can cancel your service anytime and all it costs is what you’ve paid to date. There’s no cancellation fee unless you decide to keep the number and take it elsewhere. But why would you? This is the best toll free deal going.

Are you teetering on the edge of trying this service? With so little to lose and potentially so much to gain, why not order a toll free number and service right now. It’s an automated online process, so your number is ready for use as soon as you’ve completed ordering. Try it for a few months and see how much you come to depend on your new toll free service. Then go into your account and add more numbers as your needs grow. It’s so fast, easy, cheap and low risk that you’ll wish all your business services worked like this.

Phone Toll-Free Service

In a business environment where it's hard to get anyone to buy anything, the easier you make it for your customers to do business with you, the more likely they'll buy from you instead of your competitor. One benefit that prospects and existing customers consider valuable is the ability to call toll-free instead of paying for the phone call themselves.

It may seem silly that people will make a buying decision on whether they have to spend a matter of pennies or dimes to make a phone call. But consumers are fickle. That even applies to business people under pressure to cut expenses no matter what. Letting them phone toll-free may not be the major part of the decision, but it does remove one more objection. Why not do it when the cost to you is so very little? Plus, when you get the right toll-free service you get additional valuable business tools that make your job easier and more productive.

One excellent provider of toll-free phone services is Kall8. You can get a toll-free number instantly for just $2. Then for merely $2 a month you have the online management system to put your toll-free number to work. Until someone calls, that's all you pay. You are charged just 6.9 cents per minute for incoming calls from the contiguous 48 states, slightly more for calls that originate in Alaska and Hawaii. Can it get much better?

You bet it can. The low cost and instant availability of toll free numbers is just the start of the service from Kall8. The first additional service you'll enjoy is the ability to change your ring-to number at will. That's the number of the phone that will ring when someone calls your toll free number. It doesn't always have to be the same phone.

Some sales people find it valuable to set their ring-to number to their office phone when they are at their desk, and then change it to their cell phone when they leave. At home they can leave it programmed to ring their cell, or they can change it to ring their home phone. That saves cell minutes and ensures that a prospect or client can always reach you immediately. Don't you think you might close more sales if the caller doesn't get frustrated by voice mail and goes elsewhere?

Do you ever get need to receive FAX messages? You may be calling from the road, but the FAX you need will be sent to a distant office machine. Not with Kall8. You just have your caller send the FAX to your toll-free phone number. It will be received by Kall8 and sent to your email. You can get access to it at hotel or coffee shop hotspot or even on your Internet-enabled smartphone.

Voice mail has a similar feature. If you elect to have your messages go to voice mail, you can call into the system to hear them. Or just have Kall8 send them to your computer as a sound file attached to an email.

Need to make a long distance call from someone's home or a client's office? You surely don't want them to have to pay for it. No need to. Call your Kall8 number, enter the access code, and you'll be able to use the service in reverse as a virtual calling card. The cost of the call will be charged to your account at the same 6.9 cents per minute that you pay for incoming calls.

You can even set up conference calls, with up to 25 participants calling in on your toll-free number. Kall8 takes care of the conferencing bridge and charges you the regular per minute cost per participant. This feature is included with your toll-free service and is available anytime you need it.

There are other features, including detailed call reports, that you'll find handy in managing your toll-free phone number. Hard to believe you can get all this for just $2 a month plus the cost of the calls. If you are paying more than that now or have always wanted toll-free service but thought it was too expensive, then learn more and order your Kall8 toll-free phone number(s) now.

$2 Toll Free Numbers Help Professionals Go Independent

At this point in the economic malaise, many talented individuals are giving serious consideration to disconnecting from the corporate environment and going independent. It's a big decision to cut that umbilical cord to one's employer, but there are tools available that can help you leap the abyss to self-employment. One of those is an almost unbelievably inexpensive toll free service that lets you operate free as a bird.

Here's the situation. Those who decide to strike out on their own are often operating out of a limited home office space and are typically on the go much of their day. This is especially true for those selling a service, such as real estate or insurance, or technical professionals acting as consultants on-site. The question is how do you make sure that customers and potential clients can reach you no matter where you are? How can you conduct business on the go with only your cell phone and laptop computer?

Most importantly for anyone just starting out or trying to get their feet wet by moonlighting before they commit to the independent lifestyle is the matter of cost. You want to keep as much money in the bank as you can as a safety fund. It's often hard to know how fast your business will spin up and when the cash flow will begin in earnest. So rather than go out and spend a bundle committing to new equipment and support services, why not spend a bare minimum on a pay as you go basis? Pay next to nothing while you are getting started and only modestly more as your business and income grows.

This is the design of the Kall8 Toll Free Service system. You pick a toll free number, which in most cases is going to cost you a measly $2 to capture. That number is assigned to you for as long as you maintain it. You print it on your business card and flyers as the only number clients need. You make sure that business prospects know they can call you toll free anytime and even send fax documents to that number.

Maintaining your toll free number is also a low cost experience. You pay $2 per month to keep that number assigned to you. You don't pay anything else until you start getting calls. Then it's just 6.9 cents per minute for calls from the contiguous U.S. states. Of course, anyone who calls that number is going to be well worth your while to talk to. After all, they are your business clients and prospects, right?

What you get for a couple of dollars a month plus calls is a complete mobile office communications system. From your online control panel, you can decide where your toll free number will ring. Planning to be in the home office for awhile? Set it to ring to your landline. Going to be in the car or at customer's sites? Set it to ring to your cell phone. Change it from any Internet connected computer as you wish.

Of course, if you can't take the call at all it will go to voice mail. But this is very special voice mail. Your incoming call will be recorded, translated to a audio file and sent to your email if you wish. The same is true for FAX messages. Just tell anyone who wants to get a fax to you to send it to your toll free number. The FAX will be accepted and converted to an email attachment that you can pick up from your computer when it's convenient. Voicemail to email and FAX to email are often expensive add-on services, but Kall8 includes them with your toll free service.

Consulting engineers, contract technicians, recruiters, crafters, artists, Realtors and sales people in all fields have found low cost toll free service to be just the tool they need to maximize their ability to communicate with important business clients.

Add a Toll Free Number For Next to Nothing

You'd like to expand your business phone features, but upgrades can be expensive. Here's a way you can add an inbound toll free number to whatever telephone service you have now, including your cell phone, for just a couple of bucks a month.

Toll free numbers offer a big advantage for nearly any business that publishes a phone number. Within a very localized calling area, customers can call your local number without getting charged. But even a few miles away, that call will be considered local long distance and they'll get dinged a higher rate. Across the border in the next state, prospective customers may really hesitate to make that long distance call.

But give them a toll free number and they'll gladly call you from wherever they happen to be. After all, with an inbound toll free number you pay the cost of the call. It's free to the caller. So much do callers hate to pay long distance charges that toll free numbers are expected for sales and customer service lines. Otherwise, your business may not be taken seriously.

What they don't know is that you're paying next to nothing to have that number available and a very small per minute fee for the calls that come in. Toll free numbers start at just $2 to register and $2 a month to maintain. That's within the budget of any size business and even contract professionals. If and only if you receive a call on your toll free number, you pay just 6.9 cents per minute for calls that originate within the contiguous 48 states and slightly more elsewhere. The only people who will call this number are serious customers and prospects, so it's the most cost effective 6.9 cents a minute you can possibly spend.

But there's a lot more. With Kall8 Toll Free Service your toll free number comes bundled with a wealth of handy features. You get voice mail, call blocking, caller ID, call forwarding and conference calling. Those are typical phone service features. But Kall8 also gives you the ability to program the number you want your toll free calls to ring to. Set it to your office phone, home phone or cell phone. The caller has no idea where you are. They are just calling the toll free number. Mobile professionals will change the ring-to number during the course of the day, so they never miss a call.

Speaking of mobile professionals, Kall8 includes a couple of service that make it easy to maintain an office from your laptop computer. Your toll free number doubles as a fax number. Someone can simply send a fax to your toll free number and it will be sent to you as an email attachment. The same is true for voice mail. You can have your voice mails sent as sound files attached to emails so you can listen to them on your computer wherever you happen to be.

Pretty fancy for $2 a month, right? There's more too, including detailed call reports that you can view in your online control panel. This service is so versatile that marketing companies will buy up a bunch of toll free numbers so they can track the response from each ad they run separately. After all, at this price toll free numbers are one cheap business tool.

Dirt Cheap Toll Free Numbers

You'd know that you'd have more business opportunities if prospective customers could phone you from anywhere without having to pay for the call. It would be even better if you could just print one toll free number on your business card and put it in your advertisements. Clients could then reach you regardless of whether you happened to be in the office or on the go. But who wants to pay a bundle every month for that service? Especially when money's tight? Well, you don't have to. Instead get yourself a dirt cheap toll free number.

So what does dirt cheap mean? You know that hosted PBX services with toll free numbers can run you $20 or $30 a month. Some forwarded toll free numbers cost this much or more. But why pay that much when you can get a full-featured toll free number for just $2 set up and $2 a month plus the cost of calls.

Don't be fooled by offers that include a number of minutes with your service. You'll pay through the nose for those minutes. Plus there could be long periods when nobody calls. You may be better off just paying 6.9 cents per minute for the time that callers actually use. That rate applies to calls from the 48 contiguous United States plus Canada. There is an additional 7 cent per minute surcharge for calls that originate from Alaska or Hawaii.

But what does full featured mean? You get to assign your toll free number to ring to whatever phone you happen to be at. That can be your office desk phone or your cell phone or some other phone you happen to be near on the road. Best of all, you can change that ring-to number any time you want by simply logging on to your own control panel online.

What if you can't take your call right away? Voice mail is included, of course. But this isn't just any voice mail. In addition to recording your caller's comments, this voice mail system will send you an email with an audio file attachment of the caller's message.

How about FAXes? Your toll free number will also receive fax messages and then send them to you as email attachments. No matter where you happen to be, you can simply check your email on a PC and get your faxes and voice mail messages. That's all included in the same pricing. No extra charge.

This dirt cheap full featured toll free number also lets you conduct conference calls, block areas that you don't want calls from, and have your Caller ID display either the caller's number or your toll free number. Just set these features the way you want them using your online account management.

All this for two bucks a month? Yes. Plus a $2 set up charge for each 888, 877, or 866 number you want. Vanity or 800 numbers are a bit more. These rates are so low that some businesses have lots of different toll free numbers so they can track their advertising or direct specific numbers to specific employees. Learn lots more about these dirt cheap toll free numbers and order yours for instant use.

Your Cell Phone IS Your Business Phone System

You can go out and invest in a big PBX telephone system, but what sense does that make for an independent professional? If you make your living on the go in sales or consulting work, that phone in your pocket may be all the phone system you really need.

Let's face it. There's not much point in having clients or suppliers call you at the office if you are never there. If they call your mobile number, you'll be sure to get critical calls no matter where you happen to be. You always have the option of letting calls go to voice mail. But at least you don't have to trudge across town to get your messages off the answering machine.

Your cell phone is already a business phone. Adding a few enhancements can make it a business phone system.

One inexpensive and easy to implement service is the Kall8 toll free service package. Why toll free? Toll free numbers, with prefixes like 800, 866, 877 and 888, let people call you long distance at your expense. That's especially important if you deal directly with the public. Some people think twice before they'll make a long distance call because they don't want to get a big bill for the minutes. The bill probably won't amount to much at today's long distance rates, but the reluctance to call is still there. If your sales area covers two or more states that can easily cost you customers.

For just a couple of bucks a month and the per minute cost of the calls, you can have a toll free number that you assign to your cell phone. Your client dials the toll free number with confidence because they know that no matter how long they're on the line, you're picking up the tab. Your cell phone rings and your Caller ID can tell you either the caller's number or that it's your toll free number coming in.

This is a programmable service, so you can log-in with a Web browser wherever you have Internet access and tell the system which phone to ring for incoming toll free calls. If you are going to be in your office, change the setup to ring that phone instead of your cell. Or not. You also get voice mail that you can program to pick up after a certain number of rings. Or not.

Kall8 makes your phone a conference phone. You can hold conference with up to 25 participants. Participants dial you toll free number to join the conference.

Now here's something that road warriors will really appreciate. Your toll free number is also a FAX number. When someone sends you a fax, you get an email with an image of the FAX message attached. Check your email at a coffee shop or hotel room and you'll get your FAX messages on your laptop computer. You'll also get email notifications of any calls that were picked up by voice mail. You can listen to them on your computer without using cell minutes.

Your toll free service also works in reverse as a calling card. Just call the number you use to check your voice mail messages and you can make outgoing long distance calls at the same low rate.

All this for a couple of bucks a month and the cost of calls? Many toll free numbers are instantly available so you can get set up with this service in a matter of minutes. Learn more and get your toll free business number now.