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The following is a paid review and is my complete and honest opinion. If you would like your own paid review on my blog please visit the advertise page.

In the past few weeks, I have done a lot of conference calling with my friends over at Datepad.com, and there are two things I have learned from it. The first thing I learned was that a LOT of work gets done when you have a weekly phone call with your team to see what everyone has done and what improvements can be made. It makes doing business over the internet as close as it can be to working as if you were three feet away from your team. While conference calling is incredibly useful for small (and large) businesses, it does have one downfall. It is incredibly expensive and can rack up a serious bill at the end of the month. Lucky for you, todays paid review is a startup that hopes to change all that. The site that is being reviewed today is called AffordableConferencing.com.

Affordable Conferencing allows your business to have a conference call with a large (or small) number of people all connected to the same line, much like having your entire staff in your room. By getting everyone together, you can get a lot of work done in less time, and a lot of unique ideas get thrown out that wouldn’t have been heard if you talk to your staff on lets say, instant messengers.

Affordable Conferencing is prominent in offering a very personalized service, and fitting all of their customer’s needs. The company offers many different ways to get your audio conferencing the way you want it. They stride in being able to set you up in 5 minutes for your teleconferencing needs. The owner, Tom, is a down to earth guy and has continually offered me his phone number so that I may talk to him in person if I wanted to. This one-on-one service is what sets the powerful small startups from the ‘big companies’ that take weeks to reply to a simple support email.

The three main products that Affordable Conferencing offers are Econo toll free conferencing, a flat rate conferencing solution, and “Sunday School” teleconferencing. If you have a large company with around 250 employees, a monthly flat rate can get you the bulk price of only $1 per line per month. The weird thing is, if you get MORE than 250 lines, the price per line actually goes back up to $1.50 each, so it is incredibly expensive for a few lines, and for a lot of lines, but it is normal pricing for 250 lines. That seems a bit off in my mind, as you would think if you had 1000 lines, you would get them at a really bulk price of only $0.40-60 each instead of increasing the price from $1 each to $1.50.

Good Things

1. It is easy to use.
2. You can have it setup within 5 minutes.
3. They offer a direct line to call for support.
4. No overage charges.
5. Cheaper than a lot of very large conference calling providers.
6. They focus highly on customer support.
7. No advertisements other than the product.
8. Very brandable name, easy to remember.

Bad Things

1. For many small startups, $0.09 per person per minute is expensive.
2. If you have more than 250 lines, you lose your bulk benefits.
3. The site is an ugly “sales” page, rather than a nice looking site.
4. The right side is hard to read. Lots of information in a one inch column.
5. If you have 9 or less people, you can use a free alternative like Skype.
6. The $0.09 a minute is in ADDITION to your actual cell/phone bill.

Tom asked me if I could give him a little plug, and here is Tom’s quick 5 second pitch:

Conference Call ’til your heart’s content - Get your entire group on the phone at once! Sell more, get more accomplished fast!

In a nutshell, if you have 9 or less employees it is a wise idea to use a free internet alternative like Skype, but if you are a larger corporation it might be more affordable to consider getting flat rate conferencing.