Small business needs conference calling capability. Hope me!

November 7, 2014 2:10 PM

We're about to add a fourth member to our team, and will want to hold occasional staff meetings on the telephone. There are so many conference calling services out there that I'm just overwhelmed! We just need a way to talk on the phone together. This is for a backroom-type operation so 24/7 customer service, video, and other frills are irrelevant. All potential participants are US-based and the dial-in number need not be toll-free (although that would be a nice thing to have). Low cost is good; free would be better.
posted by DrGail to Technology (6 answers total)

A number of cell phones can manage a couple of calls at a time. We did a four way call from our iPhones a while back. Only the person who put the call together had to have an iPhone.

http://ipod.about.com/od/phonefeatures/ss/How-To-Make-Iphone-Conference-Calls.htm
posted by advicepig at 2:37 PM on November 7, 2014

Google Hangouts? Skype?

My company uses an Asterisk server for this, but if you're as small as you say you're probably not going to want to devote the staff time it would take to set one up and maintain it. It'll be easier if you can use someone else's service that's free or low-cost.
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:48 PM on November 7, 2014

FreeConferenceCall.com -- they have some pretty magical hold music. I've used that service in a couple offices and, as the name suggests, it's free for basic use. All you need to sign up is an email address, if I recall correctly.
posted by AppleTurnover at 2:50 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Actually, sorry to post again, but I got to thinking -- why is FreeConferenceCall.com free? That seemed weird to me. Turns out, it's free because they get kickbacks of some sort from the phone companies who process the calls. So actually, they don't charge users anything because their revenue comes from phone companies, not users. So it's free for all use, including if you want to have 1,000 people on the line for 6 hours. It looks like there are a lot of free conference call services out there. I can only vouch for that one though. Any other ones I've used in offices have been paid.
posted by AppleTurnover at 3:09 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've used FreeConferencecall.com for a few years and it has been just fine. You get a dedicated dial in # and access code, so you can memorize it easily. Have not had any kind of down side (e.g., no mysterious fees, no spam).
posted by msbubbaclees at 7:14 PM on November 7, 2014

FreeConferenceCall is basically taking advantage of an old loophole intended to compensate rural phone companies for providing service in small towns where it wasn't really profitable.
posted by COD at 6:46 AM on November 8, 2014