Paid softphone VS free dialers
It’s wonderful to make people happy. We like to see how they get acquainted with our product, how open their eyes wide, and how they say: really? indeed? even so, isn’t it?! It is.
But usually it follows another question: what are your pros? Why pay attention to a paid softphone if there is a free one… say, Microsip? Or Phonerlite. Or Bria Solo (now late, rest in peace, long live the new king).
Certainly, the word FREE is too powerful aphrodisiac to leave the question unanswered. And the answer is the following.
Documentation and knowledge base
Clear, understandable, structured manuals — it’s very, very important. We have it for all the roles: for users, for admins, and for developers too. Try to find something similar at other, free softphones — we think the search might be fascinating but not necessarily effective. Sure, there is a way out: you can get the necessary experience empirically or ask around in online groups or forums.
In both cases it takes time. For enterprise customers who value time and count money (time is money!) availability of such documentation is an important argument. Know where to see and keep calm.
Integration with CRM and industry software
Everyone knows Zoho, Salesforce, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Pipedrive, Hubspot — but we don’t really think the whole market is limited thereto, right? There are other solutions and programs — specialized, niche, a lot of. As it’s said, the banana is big, but its skin is even bigger :)
Besides, many companies use other programs which in some way are connected with making and receiving calls — Softphone.Pro can be paired with any via event handler.
Sure, now one can say that Microsip is an open source league so why not to study (plunge, dive, stuck) the source code and make something for yourself… but let’s remember for a while a famous roof scene from the “The Naked Gun 2½” where one of the characters attaches various stuffs to its weapon and finally gets an almost anti-missile station.
The open source gun is certainly free but everything else is far from it: a lot of work for programmers so they definitely have to be thankful. You are to pay generously. Get it - sign it:Softphone.Pro is to provide it out-of-the-box.
Provisioning
Admin nightmare — “I didn't touch it, it's not working”. Then follows a headache: find the time, catch the user, reinstall and reconfigure via Anydesk or Teamviewer, take it easy, level up your humbleness.
What is written in the admin's row in your company’s payroll? We guess this sum is hard to ignore. (Good, no figures, no need to align them with the reality of the market and rewrite every year :) So should you’ve got at least a couple of hundred employees and there is some turnover, such a routine is like an unsealed faucet: at first glance, just slightly dripping but by the end of the month it’s a big question why the utilities are so expensive.
Indeed, if such remote configuration takes a quarter hour and repeats twice a week, in terms of month it’s two hours or several days annually. How much does an admin's hour/day cost? That's the point.
Provisioning eliminates the issue completely: admin sends a link, employee downloads an installer which is already configured. Log in, work, enjoy. Configuration change can also be prevented: no malfunction, no cry. It’s an admin’s good night’s sleep, and this is important. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto — and burnout can happen to admins too. As well as loss of interest to major tasks because of the need to deal with a lot of unnecessaries.
With all respect to free and open source software, we don’t know comparable alternatives. One more argument in favor of Softphone.Pro.
Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Enterprise ecosystem includes not only Win or Mac. There may be traveling employees and various situations when a call comes to an Android or iOS smartphone; also don't throw out those who give preference not to proprietary software but operation systems with a penguin on the logo.
Microsip in no way supports Android and iPhone (as of the date of the publication, September 2024). Linux and macOS are supported via Wine. But, you know, when one small free program requires another one, big and heavy, it looks… unusual, to put it mildly. Okay, frankly speaking it’s a silly idea. Enthusiasts might respect, but corporates reject… and choose Softphone.Pro.
Online control and monitoring
It won't be wrong to say that there are an awful lot of different level managers and supervisors who are eager to know how many calls are made and received by their subordinates, individual employees and business units. It should be also noted that they require this info not ever after, but here and now as this is what determines KPIs, salaries, and bonuses.
Should you try to find out the same functionality in Microsip and free alternatives, we will pray for you… but unlikely you’ll manage to find a lot or at least something. Meanwhile Softphone.Pro aside from calls can collect telemetry and pass info to the Team service a.k.a. supervisor’s dashboard where one can twist it anyhow and build whatever reports.
Team is an addon to Softphone.Pro, it does not work alone, but the softphone can run without Team. By the way, it’s a highly demanded service: sales figures show that the softphone is a well-sold product… but for the possibility of analyzing calls, clients are ready to pay even more :)
Support and development
All said above pales in comparison with support. If you know that you can ask and get a quick and concrete answer — it’s very, very important. Money in exchange for commitment is clear and familiar for an enterprise client in contrast to “now save, then come what may” — that’s a red flag and that’s unacceptable for many.
Don't get us wrong: we have great respect for people who contribute to open source. OpenOffice, Rocket.Chat, Apache, MySQL, Chromium, already mentioned Linux — everyone knows them and gives warmest compliments (and we too).
With that, as far as we know, a free softphone development and support provided by a single person. For a corporate consumer this is not an advantage, it’s rather a risk. What if this person gave the product up? What if you already invested money and paid efforts into the use of this free product?
Softphone.Pro has a roadmap, a team of developers and one more team for support. This is why it’s of use in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and both Americas and even visited Antarctica. Should you already use Softphone.Pro, please let us know your experience. напишите нам про ваш опыт. If you don’t, it's time to start :)
Get the latest version of the softphone here and create a Team account here.
And let the call force be with you 💙
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