20 Years Later, Dialpad Disrupts Communications Again

History was made this week As Dialpad launched a free version of their UCaaS platform for up to five users. This amounts to a savings of over one-thousand-dollars. Craig Walker the Founder and CEO of the company launched the original Dialpad just under 20 years ago, an innovative service allowing anyone to call a US number for free over the internet via their web portal.

Craig has been a visionary in the space for the decades we have knowncraig-walker.jpg him. He sold the original Dialpad to Yahoo! to become Yahoo! Voice. He then launched another VoIP company called Grand Central Communications which was later sold to Google to become Google Voice.

I had a chance to meet with Craig in New York – coincidentally in Grand Central Station about his company’s latest product launch.

Dialpad Free is a way for small businesses to try before they buy and grow into the service. Unlike consumer offerings, this service has full feature-list including IVR, transfer, recording, unlimited voicemail, unlimited inbound, unlimited auto attendant and 100 minutes of outbound.

It will first be rolled out to G Suite users then Office 365 and finally others.

Here is a complete feature list:

● One free local phone number per company

● Up to five users per company

● Employees can be reached by extension, Operator, or Dial by Name directory

● 1 room line

● 100 Outbound minutes per month

● Unlimited inbound minutes per month

● Unlimited Dialpad-to-Dialpad messaging/calling

● 100 SMS messages

● Free UberConference account

● Integrations included: LinkedIn, G Suite

● Call recording

● Free number porting

● Single Sign On via OAuth 2.0 for G Suite

● Call usage analytics

● FAQ/Help Center support

I asked Craig, what are some of the reasons a customer might choose to upgrade to a pay plan. He explained, if a company has more than five people on a team or they need after-hours routing or specific department groups, voicemail transcription or integration with Salesforce.

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Craig pretty much helped created the VoIP market which we now call UC or UCaaS. He has once again helped disrupt the communications space. We can expect a great deal more innovation from Craig and the team based on a confidential product roadmap we discussed.

This is pretty exciting because a small business can feel comfortable trying a phone service that doesn’t cost them anything now and will be able to support their needs as they grow.

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Craig is a dynamic speaker. Hear him live at a keynote session at the communications transformation event: ITEXPO, Feb 13-16, 2018 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Other keynoting companies are Juniper, IBM, Mitel and Atlassian.

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