Consumption based pricing for REW Dialer - understanding how it works

[Morgan]

Hello everyone, I have some very exciting news!

Coming July 1, we have all new packaging and pricing coming to Real Estate Webmasters

One of the best parts of the new packaging is that “contracted” customers on the latest version of Renaissance who choose the small team version and above the dialer and texting will now be “included” which is a savings of over $150 USD per month.

There are however some things you should know about the included dialer/texting.

We use a service called twillio to power the deliverability and behind-the-scenes tech for the backbone/infrastructure and they have a consumption-based pricing model.

As such, each package will have a maximum amount of dialer minutes/texting “included” in the base package, and if you go over, there will be additional billing required.

Here’s an example output from the dialer interface: (things “we” get charged for)

We want you to be able to use these amazing features (things like call recording, or voice insights / voice intellegience - but those things do have a cost for your user and so we will be passing that cost on to customers who use them (we’ll add $.01-.02 or something small to cover our cost of administration, updates etc)

Here’s an example from the new pricing:

Small teams:
Includes 5 users (no extra charge)
Includes the dialer and texting for all 5 users (also no extra charge, saving $164)
Includes 2000 total dialer call minutes and 2000 texts (no extra charge)

What it does not include though is any recording storage (that acculates over time and Twilio charges for that) nor would it include things like insights etc - so if you do want those featuers (and many of you do) you’ll simply add them on in blocks similar to how you pay for blocks of extra texts now.

Some REALLY exciting additonal news on the dialer

We are very close to being able to allow you to have your “own” cell phone number display (and be the call back number) for agents/admins who want this feature.

We are also currently developing “transcripts” (all outbound dialer calls) as well as creating an AI-based scoring and feedback engine to help train agents on how to do better with their outreach.

This is of course in addition to the amazing features it already has

Click to call from responsive backend
Call recording
Automatic conversation logging, and call disposition
Call notes logging
Scorecard rankings

So much more!

Anyways, if you’re curious why the new packages have “usage” based billing for some of the features, it’s because we get charged when you use them, so we need to cover those costs.

Excited to see these new features (and new pricing packages) hit July 1 - and for existing users, yes there will be a promo / incentive to migrate to these new programs at the end of your contracts

[laureal]

Thanks for explaining the new pricing, Morgan. The consumption-based model makes sense since Twilio charges based on usage. I think it’s helpful to know what’s included and what will incur extra costs. Will there be a way for us to track usage so we can avoid unexpected charges? It’s also good to know that features like call recording and transcripts are coming soon.

[Morgan]

@laureal

Will there be a way for us to track usage so we can avoid unexpected charges?

Yes - this is actually part of the reason why users “must” be upgradable to the latest platform, as we are working on features both internal and customer-facing to improve this kind of data collection.

Those on the latest “today” can already gather the following:

Total texts in any given timeframe sent by agents
Number of dialer calls (and who has used the dialer)
Conversation time (makes up most of the dialer consumption but doesn’t report on calls less than 2 mins)

So right now, you can watch and get a good sense of usage, but there are gaps:

These gaps are as follows (there are more)

#1: System texts (this is a big one) - right now, there is no reporting for customers on how many texts the “system” has sent. For example, if you set up an automation that texts an agent when someone has favourited a property - or texts an ISA when a lead has returned after x months of being dormant (anything that is not done by the “agent” - we have no reporting for customers on that, and if you use a lot of automations that can be a lot of texts.

Obviously, we can get this data internally (and bill for it), so it’s not a blocker, but we get that customers want to be able to keep an eye on it in case they set up an automation that they didn’t realize would send so many texts - that sort of thing. So that feature on system texts is “coming soon”

#2: Dialer - while we do report on conversations (and attempts), as mentioned above you can only infer the actual dialer time for a voicemail, for instance - we don’t aggregate that time (could be 15 seconds or 45 seconds), so we are working towards getting full dialer minutes (not just conversation minutes.)

These things aren’t available “at launch” but are targeted for the Sept release if all goes well.

Another thing to note - while we do bill “on consumption” (so it is the customer’s responsibility to know what / how they are using the sytem if they want to control their bills) there will still be an upper limit - so if something crazy happened (let’s say a newbie admin created 100 automations not realizing the cost consequence) it’s not like you can get a bill of $100k without knowing - you’ll hit a limit and the system will cut you off. That limit is not decided yet, but it will likely be something around 10 extra blocks (so at $50 a block, your max risk would be say $500 on a single user account).