What each option costs
Every figure below is the real monthly cost of our ten cold-calling lines, built from their own call records for June, July and August 2026 - 8,480 outbound calls, 3,960 minutes to Australian mobiles and 946 SMS parts a month. Nothing here is a headline price off a website.
The full ranking
| Option | Per month | Per seat | vs today | Fixes it? | What it asks of us |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stay as you are - Unlimited Australia Plus | $427.77 | $42.78 | — | No | Breaches the policy. Nothing changes. |
| VoIPline: best Timed X / Timed MAX mix per agent | $427.34 | $42.73 | -$0.43 | Yes | Lowest risk. Zero migration work. SMS keeps working, but every part is charged from the first one. |
| VoIPline: everyone on Timed MAX | $476.40 | $47.64 | +$48.63 | Yes | Low. Costs $49 a month more than picking the right plan per person. |
| VoIPline: everyone on Timed X | $533.76 | $53.38 | +$105.99 | Yes | Low. Costs $106 a month more than picking the right plan per person. |
| VoIPline SIP trunk (8 channels) + your own PBX | $310.25 | $31.02 | -$117.52 | Yes | You have to run a PBX. Agents lose outbound SMS unless you buy seats back. |
| VoIPline SIP trunk + a Timed X seat for the 4 who text | $401.15 | $40.11 | -$26.62 | Yes | You have to run a PBX. The other six agents cannot text. |
| Crazytel call-centre trunk + Crazytel's own app | $374.32 | $37.43 | -$53.45 | Yes | Cheapest on paper. Must be proven to give each agent their own caller ID and call recording before you commit. |
| Crazytel call-centre trunk + 3CX | $470.15 | $47.02 | +$42.38 | Yes | Number porting. 3CX licence and hosting. Rates need confirming in writing. |
| Zoom Phone Pro | $366.80 | $36.68 | -$60.97 | No | Their acceptable use policy bars telemarketing and autodialling. No Australian mobile number product. |
| Dialpad Pro | $495.00 | $49.50 | +$67.23 | No | No Australian 04xx mobile numbers, and their terms bar sales call centres. |
| Dialpad Sell | $649.00 | $64.90 | +$221.23 | No | Still no Australian mobile caller ID. 50% more than today. |
The three that actually matter
VoIPline: best Timed X / Timed MAX mix per agent
Move each cold caller to whichever metered plan is cheaper for their own volume. Nothing else changes: same numbers, same phones, same portal, same day.
Catch: Lowest risk. Zero migration work. SMS keeps working, but every part is charged from the first one.
Crazytel call-centre trunk + Crazytel's own app
Same trunk and the same $7.95 mobile numbers, using Crazytel's softphone instead of a PBX.
Catch: Cheapest on paper. Must be proven to give each agent their own caller ID and call recording before you commit.
VoIPline SIP trunk (8 channels) + your own PBX
Drop the hosted seats. Keep every number exactly where it is, no porting. Australian mobile drops to 4.9c a minute.
Catch: You have to run a PBX. Agents lose outbound SMS unless you buy seats back.
Where the money actually goes
Two things dominate this bill, and neither is the thing people assume.
1. Number rental, not talking
Nine of these ten lines are Australian mobile numbers at $9.95 each. With Ham's landline at $2.00 that is $91.55 a month before anyone picks up a phone - about 21% of the bill. Crazytel sells the same thing with two-way SMS at $7.95, which is $18.00 a month cheaper on its own.
2. VoIPline bills by the second, and that is worth a lot
Our cold callers' average answered call is 35 seconds. A provider who rounds every call up to the whole minute would bill us for 107% more minutes than we actually talk. Concretely: 3,960 real minutes a month at VoIPline's Timed MAX rate of 2.65c is $104.94. The same traffic at a "cheaper" 2.0c with per-minute rounding becomes 8,190 billed minutes, about $163.80. Any quote we take must be checked on the increment, not the headline rate. Crazytel bills in one-second blocks too. Dialpad and Zoom bundle minutes so it does not arise.
Why Dialpad is out
You remembered paying around $57 a user. That was right, and it has not changed. Dialpad Pro is $45 per user per month plus GST on monthly billing, which is $49.50 including GST, and $38.50 on an annual commitment. Add a number and it lands where you remember.
- Their own terms rule us out. Dialpad's Terms of Service bar Unlimited Services from "bulk call-in lines (e.g., customer support or sales call centers not provided by Dialpad)". The tier that does permit outbound sales is Dialpad Sell at $64.90 a user including GST - 50% more than we pay now.
- No Australian mobile numbers. Dialpad issues geographic Australian numbers. Our entire model depends on showing an 04xx mobile caller ID, because that is what gets answered. This alone rules it out regardless of price.
At $495.00 a month for Pro or $649.00 for Sell, Dialpad is more expensive than staying put and does less.
Why 3CX does not save us money here
3CX is worth understanding properly, because it gets recommended a lot and it is not what people think. 3CX is phone system software. It is not a phone company. It gives you no numbers and no call minutes. You still buy those from a carrier, and that carrier still has a Fair Use Policy. So 3CX on its own does not fix anything.
Licensing is by simultaneous calls, not by user, which is genuinely attractive for us: our peak is 7 calls at once across all 23 lines, and 5 across the cold callers. An 8-call licence covers the whole company. But that licence is about $95.83 a month (roughly AUD 1,150 a year), plus somewhere to run it, plus the trunk and numbers on top.
Paired with a Crazytel trunk it comes to $470.15 a month - about $42.38 more than we pay today, and more than double the cost of the Crazytel trunk on its own. 3CX earns its keep at 40 or 60 seats, or where you need queues and wallboards we would otherwise buy separately. At ten outbound seats it is an expense, not a saving.
The one real argument for it: once we own the phone system, changing carrier becomes a credentials change instead of a migration. Given that no carrier's policy truly welcomes our traffic, that optionality has some value. It is not worth $95.83 a month today.
Assumptions behind these numbers
- All prices are Australian dollars including GST, because every VoIPline and Crazytel document states prices are GST inclusive. If our invoice shows GST added on top, every figure here moves by 10% - see Gaps and checks.
- VoIPline Call centre rates used: Timed X $10.90 a seat, mobile 6.9c a minute, local 1.55c, 13/1300 25c a call. Timed MAX $30.90 a seat, mobile 2.65c, local 1.45c, 13/1300 20c, with $20 of calls included per seat.
- Number rental: VoIPline mobile $9.95, local $2.00. Crazytel virtual mobile $7.95 with two-way SMS included, local $2.00.
- Australian calls are billed per second on both VoIPline and Crazytel. International is billed in whole minutes on both.
- SIP trunk options assume 8 channels, sized from our measured peak of 7 simultaneous calls across the whole company.
- Crazytel's call-centre rates are quoted on consultation, not published. We have used their published PAYG rates as the estimate. They must be confirmed in writing before this becomes a decision.