The pricing page seems... bizarre to me.
- They mention that the tiers have 1, 5, or 10 users supported. Is this concurrent users? Does "user" even mean phone call recipient in this case, or is it just someone who's _dispatching_ the Upcall calls?
- The enterprise tier seems like it should be subdivided; some of the things you pay for are really, really niche, but likely cost a small fortune to get set up on Upcall's end, justifying a much higher price. Looking at you, HIPAA compliance.
- What is, even, a "Logic Decision Tree" in this context? Is this just the fact that the caller should offer the recipient a few specific paths? Isn't it cheaper to do this using a robocall (and widely done this way by many enterprise phone support systems)?
- "Custom inbound voicemail" is a weird feature for a company marketing itself as outreach towards clients rather than the other way around; my understanding is that this is marketing and reactivation, not support, and incoming calls should be minimal in most use cases.
- All the email stuff is probably cheaper being handled by a specialized standalone service; why try to fracture your business's focus by trying to enter a space dominated by well-established players? (Not trying to say competition is bad, but this company clearly specializes in something other than email, so it makes little sense to me that they should be dividing their effort like this).
Telemarketing is wrong. You are working to destroy the value of one of the most marvelous accomplishments of the human race.
I see a lot of criticism of this product by referencing it as a telemarketing solution - it is not.
These are not cold calls: they are inbound leads that you have to source and have permission to call. If someone fills out a lead form on your site and checks the “contact by phone” option, this allows you to scale a bit more rapidly in high-volume top-of-funnel lead gen where you are trying to filter out unqualified or low-value leads.
Edit: sueders101 pointed out that they reference cold calls. With the TOS in mind I bet that’s a copy mistake as they require permission to call berg secured before making a call. Thy definitely could use some copy updates and calling out security/privacy more clearly.
Why the heck is this is Show HN? It's a company with 2.2M in funding.
https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
Also first time submitted was 2 years ago.
When you said triggered I thought it was angry people making phone calls.
I thought this was going to be outsourcing to have someone else call NYTimes to cancel my subscription.
Wow, you can tell it's Monday! Haters gonna hate. Not sure if it belongs in ShowHN, but as someone familiar with the company I can say that Upcall outsources outbound calling for inbound leads. For the uninitiated, that means people who've requested to be contacted by phone and given their phone number for that very reason. As a former tech sales exec, I'm always amused by engineers who think their salary comes out of thin air, or that your VCs don't expect a profit at some point. Someone has to sell what you're coding, and that generally involves a phone call, and there is a correlation between deals closing and the speed with which someone responds to a warm lead. Upcall's goal is to fill that need.
I would like to call out YCombinator for supporting this.
It is a slimy business, it is booming at the moment, but there are a lot of other, healthier ways to make money and I think they built perception to be better then others for good reason. This just doesn't suit them.
I am open to hear opposing views and explanations, sans kposehn who acts as these guys advocate here.
The platform overview video is basically a screencast, and 480P is a really painful resolution for watching small text, even if I open it in YouTube app instead of the postage-stamp inline size the site tried to show it to me in. For a service that’s supposed to talk to people for me, the fact that you apparently could not find anyone to record audio for a 4 min video really doesn’t inspire confidence.
I have a hunch these automated call systems that "do things for humans" (like Duplex, or this) are taking a ride on the Hype Cycle.
The calls at Basic level are $0.29/minute. That's only $18/hour, and with Upcall taking a cut of that, what is the skill and education level if they have a "100% U.S.-based team"?
Who is this product for?
WTF, spam!
I don't see any policies around types of businesses, code of conduct, adherence to Do-Not-Call policies or information regarding privacy or security rigor applied to the citizens that would be effected by this platform.
This just seems like an amoral SaaS service I kind of want to die. Fast.