Performance Review: Kall8

This is the first of what I hope will be an ongoing series here at AutomaticMoms. I’m calling this series, “Performance Reviews” and putting some products and services of interest to the work at home parent and parent-in-general to the test!

This “performance review” is for the voicemail and fax service that I personally use. It’s Kall8 and is extremely popular with the work at home crowd for it’s simplicity, ease of use and affordability.

I’ve been a customer of Kall8 since March 2008, or over two years at the time of this review. I joined because I was looking for a reliable voicemail service that would make financial sense for someone like me who receives very few calls yet needs to have voicemail regardless for those occasional calls. I also wanted to be able to accept faxes at the same number, and have the number be toll-free as a service to those who used it to contact me.

Features:

* Voice mail and fax mailbox (both with personalized greetings if desired)
* Call tracking tools
* Call blocking
* Custom call blocking
* Conference calling
* Virtual calling card
* Web call button (receive calls directly from a button on your website)
* Call notification emails (emails alert you to messages and send your faxes directly)
* Caller ID
* Online account management (access everything from one dashboard)

Additional Features (additional fees apply)

* Call recording
* PBX integration
* Payphone blocking
* Call announcement (plays a short message to you before you’re connected to let you know which phone number was called and/or which ad the caller is responding to! Great for conversion tracking!)

You can also transfer your existing toll-free numbers to Kall8 if you already have one!

Costs:

Standard toll-free numbers (888, 877, 866) with the above features are only $2 per month.
1-800 numbers and local numbers are also available for $5 per month.
Vanity numbers, international numbers and premium numbers are also available for an additional fee.

Per-minute rate for standard toll-free numbers: 6.9 cents/minute
Per-minute rate for local numbers: 5.9 cents/minute

International rates are available on their site.

My review:

I’ve been very pleased with the Kall8 service in the two years I’ve been using it. Admittedly, I don’t get many calls because the bulk of my business occurs online and via email, but I’ve been very happy with the reliability. I love that I get an email notification each time I receive a call or a fax. I personally don’t use the service which transfers my voicemail calls to a regular phone so each time someone calls I get an email notifying me to listen to the message or download the fax.

Faxes arrive as PDF attachments in my email and are very clear. Any distortion on the faxes is usually the result of the sender’s fax machine’s limitations. There is a setting which allows you to alter the quality of the fax if you notice some issues.

Voice mail notifications are very fast, and happen in near real-time. I tested the service by leaving myself a short voicemail and received an email notification in less than 45 seconds from when I ended the call.

Retrieval of voice messages is easy from any phone with a pin number. You can also opt to have voice messages sent to you in an email as an attachment which comes in .wav format. You can also access your messages in the Kall8 dashboard, but I personally find that a redundant feature unless for some reason you don’t have access to your email for some reason. Although I can see that as a nice backup in case of an email outage.

I have not used the web call button, but it sounds like a great feature for a salesperson. When a visitor to your site clicks on the button, the button transforms and allows the visitor to enter their phone number. Kall8 instantly initiates a call to the visitor and to you where you can talk live. Pretty cool! I can see this as being really useful to anyone who is in direct sales!

In short, Kall8 can be as much as you want it to be or as little as you want it to be. The options are very flexible and you can change them anytime. I’ve been very pleased at the reliability of the service, but this frugal business owner has also been thrilled with the price! Most months, my bill is no more than $4!

Try Kall8 now!