simultaneous call licenses

[Cesarius]

Hi everyone!

Through our distributor we wanted to buy simultaneous call licenses, and they inform us that this licensing model is no longer marketed. Is this real?

Where can you see the plans and licenses that are currently marketed?

 

I will appreciate any information.

[Vodia PBX]

Simultaneous call licenses are indeed a thing of the past. I would say we were flirting with the model a few years ago, but the main problem remains that is is hard to predict how many calls you need. It might have made sense if there was a PSTN gateway with a hard limit on the number of calls you can do, but in the context of SIP trunks and abundant bandwidth this has changed fundamentally. If you are too low, you are loosing business which is ridiculous IMHO and if you are too high customers feel ripped off about paying for a license that is not needed 99.9 % of the time. Extension or seat-based-models are much easier to understand and practically the whole SaaS world follows that model today, including Email, CRM and ERP software solutions. Let the big companies explain the model, all we have to do is use the same model.

[rtl]

I find sim call licences much easier to sell than per seat. It's straightforward to estimate the number of calls in a sim call environment...we've been doing it with 3CX for 13 years now. The per seat is much more tricky. Customers gain and lose staff so we continually have to adjust the licence which is a pain. Sim calls simply mean we sell the licence, extensions can be added as and when and we adjust the sim calls as and when necessary. Customers prefer it and ask for it which is why we're staying with 3CX and moving vodia installations to 3CX where we can.

On 5/12/2022 at 9:53 PM, Vodia PBX said:

. Extension or seat-based-models are much easier to understand and practically the whole SaaS world follows that model today,

Just because everyone else does it isn't a valid business case for doing it. You should be leading not following and listening to what resellers want. We want it because we can sell it and it's what our customers want.

 

On 5/12/2022 at 9:53 PM, Vodia PBX said:

if you are too high customers feel ripped off about paying for a license that is not needed 99.9 % of the time

I have several customers who have a sim call licence that's too high. They don't know that neither do they care. What they care about is do they get a service with which they're satisfied and content and they are. They're too busy with their own businesses to look at the number of sim calls they're using.

 

[Vodia PBX]

7 minutes ago, rtl said:

Just because everyone else does it isn't a valid business case for doing it. You should be leading not following and listening to what resellers want. We want it because we can sell it and it's what our customers want.

RingCentral, 8x8, DialPad (if you consider them PBX) and Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, zoho, ... follow seats. Frankly, we are not in the position to teach them a lesson how to sell their software. There is no leadership here on our end, it would be delusional . The main problem with concurrent calls is that with focus shifting away from the call to other things like texting; the concurrent calls don't capture the situation any more. I would even argue that many resellers simply calculate their concurrent calls based on seats. Did you ever sell a concurrent call license without knowing how many seats they have?

Of course clients don't care about all of that. They look at their bill and compare it to other options in the market. From our experience, most customers look at the big hosting providers for comparison. IMHO resellers do best with an understandable month-based post-paid license model that can be used as part of their invoice for service provided to clients — which can be compared to those big hosting companies. There is a tremendous opportunity for most resellers because they can actually compete well with that. 

[Vodia Support EU]

Hello,

Yes, I know that from 3CX. I think that a really big disadvantage is that you can leave a lot of things unclear with the simultaneous calls. If you are then told that the conversion is 1:3 or 4, and in the case of very high telephone volumes rather 1:2, a customer can feel very left alone. Regardless of how well a partner/reseller means it with the customer, if there should be any discrepancies, will always remain a bitter taste. Whereas the extension is always an extension and if the extension should be, for example, a workshop, it can also be supplied with more than one telephone without any problems. There will then be no unpleasant message like, "the number of calls sit reached, please contact the administrator. I think there are good and also counter-arguments for both licensing models and yes, perhaps the particularly frugal customer will be more inclined to the simultaneous calls. But then he will also have to live with the fast 100% capacity utilisation of the calls and this message.