Personal experience. How we connected international telephony: comparison of 6 virtual PBXs
Not so long ago, I was faced with the need to choose a virtual PBX. Some changes have occurred in the business of my company: new services have appeared, including those aimed not only at the b2b segment, but also at b2c. And with the advent of private clients it turned out that many people still prefer to communicate by phone.
I do not have such a big start-up, but there are clients all over the world, so I needed a solution that was appropriate in that case. I also wanted to start interacting with Russian-speaking developers.
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An important clarification : I didn’t have any knowledge on the subject of telephony, I had to google from scratch, so there may be inaccuracies in the text. Correct / supplement the material in the comments - it will only make it better.
So let's go!
Who participated in the comparison
A couple of days of reading reviews and reviews helped to form a shortlist of systems for further analysis. It hit:
The main point at this stage was a large number of references, reviews and articles about these products - we didn’t want to connect the crude system that had recently appeared on the market for the development of a new business line.
Comparison
Since we were just starting any kind of interaction with potential customers by phone, we didn’t need much “confused” functionality of the PBX. More important was ease of use, flexibility, and, of course, price.
Here, what points I paid attention to when analyzing:
Integration
The PBX itself is not as interesting as it is in combination with other business-important systems, such as CRM, tools for working on projects and communication tools. Therefore, we analyzed the available options of the products from which we chose.
Telephony from “Yandex” has two debugged integrations - with Bitrix24 and amoCRM. In this case, the API is listed as a beta version. The function is available in trial mode and in the tariff for 1299 rubles per month.
Mango office has a much more extensive list of ready-made integrations. They are even categorized, for example, there are lists of integrations with resources for specific industries (medicine, tourism, etc.) This may be useful to someone, but in our particular case 99% of these integrations will not be useful to us.
In the case of Zadarma, a plus can be called a more versatile list of systems for connection. It includes not only CRM (and not only Russian, but also foreign), but even instant messengers - as a result, you can send alerts, for example, that the manager missed the call, directly to his telegrams.
Sipuni is integrated only with amoCRM, which we do not use. I prefer Zoho. Telfin has only 4 own ready-made integrations. Not much more than MegaFon (5), and all of them are aimed at working with different CRM.
Cost of
I repeat once again the introductory ones: telephony was needed for a new business line, it is currently experimental, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the infrastructure for receiving calls.
The basic version of the PBX Mango Office costs 685 rubles per month. For this money they give three users included in the tariff, 3 numbers of 10 channels each. At the same time, additional functions cost money - so connecting the most basic version of call tracking will cost another 3050 rubles / month.
Billing Yandex. Telephony is based on a batch approach. The “Start” base tariff itself is free, you only need to pay for calls and numbers (one simple number is free, then 180 rubles, and the subscription fee for the 8-800 number is 999 rubles / month). But there are packages, for example, one of them combines all web widgets, like a call from the site, a callback order, etc. - its price is 499 rubles. If you need a beautiful room - you will also have to pay extra for it.
The cost of "beautiful" numbers in the service "Yandex"
Zadarma is a free PBX, the fee is charged for the increased storage of records and in minutes. The numbers themselves are frankly inexpensive - the connection fee is often zero, the subscription fee for most not quite exotic countries is 100-120 rubles (for some reason, the Belarusian number will cost 2900 rubles for connection and 950 rubles per month).
List of popular countries for ordering numbers in the Zadarma system
Pricing Telfin seemed to me rather confusing. The absence of a single page with tariffs is embarrassing - information has to be collected in different parts of the site - as well as the word “from” in many prices (such as service from 299 rubles per month). The Moscow number in code 495 is more expensive - 1490 against 990 rubles for code 499.
In the Sipuni service, connecting one number will cost 1000 rubles plus a 266 monthly payment. Basic integration with CRM will cost another 286 rubles.
The subscription fee for using the PBX from Megaphone is 1000 rubles per month (and it does not matter, 1 employee or 7), recording and storing calls will cost the same amount, integration with CRM costs another 500 rubles.
Functionality: overseas calls, callback and call tracking
We needed to receive calls from customers from different countries - at least from the USA, Russia and Europe. It was also important to use the call tracking function - we launched several advertising campaigns, it was necessary to understand where the call came from. The presence of additional functions such as callback widgets was also considered a plus - right now we don’t need it, but we wanted to have a development perspective.
I found foreign numbers only in Zadarma. As for call tracking, it is not in the PBX from Yandex and Megaphone. Telphin also has a URL dedicated to this function, but for some reason there is no page itself.
In all analyzed systems there is - at least declared - the possibility of using a callback widget. Information on this feature is available on all product sites. Is that on the site of MegaFon mentioned the possibility of installing a widget to order a callback, but it was not easy to find.
What is the result
| System | Foreign numbers | Free access | Number of integrations | Call Tracking | Callback widget |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mango office | Not | Yes (only through the manager - you need leave a request and wait for a call) | Many industry services | Yes (3050 / month for the basic version) | Yes |
| Zadarma | Yes | Yes (PBX is free, payment only for numbers) | Popular CRM (including Zoho), Task Managers instant messengers + API | Yes (free, pay for rooms) | Yes |
| Telfin | Not | 14 days | four | Not | Yes (450 rub / month) |
| Yandex.Telephony | Not | 14 days | Bitrix24 + AmoCRM | Not | Yes |
| ATS Megaphone | Not | 14 days | five | Not | Yes |
| Sipuni | Not | 14 days | 1 (AmoCRM only) | Yes | Yes |
That's all. I hope that the material will be useful to those who, like me for the first time, were faced with the task of choosing a PBX for my startup. Thank you all for your attention!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/447232/
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