Digium, the creators of the popular open source VoIP PBX (News - Alert) Asterisk, have announced a new low-cost metered version of its Switchvox Cloud 6.0 Communications (UC) system.

The metered rate of $12.99 per month per user is intended to broaden Digium’s (News - Alert) customer base.

"Switchvox Cloud's new, lower cost, metered offering starts at $12.99 per user, per month, reducing the barrier to entry for customers looking to migrate to cloud communications," Channing Hinkle, product manager for Switchvox (News - Alert) Cloud.  "Companies with variable call volumes, due to seasonality or other events, can save money by paying for only the minutes they use.  It's the perfect complement to our current Switchvox Cloud unlimited minutes offering for users with more consistent call volumes." 

A mail-order retailer that does most of its business during the holidays could keep a smaller staff during most of the year and hire a bunch of temporary representatives in the busy season using Switchvox. Highly seasonal businesses won’t pay for extra UC capacity that they aren’t using. They also won’t have to install extra servers or lines just to cope with the seasonal loads.

Switchvox Cloud uses Digium as a base. Switchvox is intended as a turnkey solution, offering phone calls, presence, call recording, and other tools. It uses a custom interface called Switchboard to give users call information at a glance. Users can see presence, access colleagues in an address book and view call queues. Switchboard has been upgraded with the new release with new widgets.

"The release marks a milestone in the evolution of Switchvox by leveraging the capabilities in the latest version of Asterisk (News - Alert) and the ongoing contributions of the Asterisk community to introduce new, powerful features," said Adam Kramer, product manager for Switchvox.  "Switchvox Cloud 6.0 enables the use of a new, real-time engine that opens the door to more advanced integrations such as Salesforce.com (News - Alert) and other CRM tools."