Interview with CallButler’s co-founder

CallButler is a software-based IP-PBX, auto-attendant, Voicemail, IVR and everything you need from a telephony system. Unlike other Linux-based IP-PBX, like any Asterisk-based soft-pbx, it’s based on Windows, like their main competitor 3CX.

Mike Tomazic, VP Business Development and co-founder of CallButler, responded to a series of questions I asked him. They also just opened a blog, well understanding that blogging can be a great PR tool and help to market the product in the proper way. I bet pal Andy recommended this to Jim Heising, CallButler’s CEO…

The market of soft-PBXs, dominated by Digium, has been becoming more and more crowded during the last months. CallButler is one of the players which are trying to differentiate themselves from the competition, with a product that they state is as easy that even your “grandmother can use it”. Mike highlighted this fact again during his interview.

Luca: What are the main differences between CallButler and other windows IP-PBX like 3CX?

Mike: Functionally, CallButler pretty much does all the things that 3CX does. What really makes CallButler different is its ease-of-use and extensibility.

Ease-of-use: while 3CX and some Asterisk-based solutions have improved the user interface, most business owners still find these too difficult and daunting to implement and manage on their own. In developing CallButler, we focused on creating an intuitive graphical interface that allows the business owner or IT resource to easily see (and manage) the call flow as well as do common things like add an extension or create a new auto-attendant option. Most business owners can have their entire PBX set up in less than 30 minutes.

Extensibility: CallButler was developed as a telephony platform (not simply a PBX/auto-attendant). This allows CallButler customers to easily extend their phones systems to be integrated with their CRM/SFA/ERP applications or databases. Some examples of this:
> Realtor who enables callers to get information about featured homes from the phone by integrating their listings database with CallButler
> Delivery company who enables callers to check the status of their order by integrating CallButler with their MySQL delivery database
> Mortgage broker who has integrated CallButler with Outlook – he can call into his system, automatically “look up” and dial any contact
> Hotline that dynamically feeds advertising messages to callers based on daily ad budget, caller’s location, time of day, ad effectiveness, etc.

This enables CallButler customers to extend the functionality of their PBX in entirely new ways, create customer self-serve tools, deliver all new business models. While many of these functions were technically possible previously, CallButler takes them out of the realm of one-off custom integration projects that typically required specialized skills, tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars, and week/month of development time to something that can be easily implemented in hours/days.

Luca: What about an appliance?

Mike: We are currently developing a CallButler appliance that will include PSTN options. Expected launch December 2007.

Luca: How many customers?

Mike: While not public, we have over 1000 customers.

Luca: What are your goals for 2008?

Mike: 2007 – Key goals for 2007 where really to drive the product to where it is today:
> CallButler PBX
> Hosted version – CallButler LIVE
> CallButler Enterprise – enterprise solution capable of handling 100+ concurrent calls
> Key add-on modules including Conference Bridge, External Dial-tone, Auto-dialer
> Establish solid affiliate and reseller base

2008 – Key goals for 2008 focus on both driving our channel strategy and creating industry specific offerings:
> Reseller
> Affiliates
> OEM
> Retail
> Industry offerings: real estate, law, retail, professional services, trades5) Why

Luca: Why Windows and not Linux like Asterisk, TrixBox etc. ?

Mike: There are a couple of reasons for this:
Ø Small to midsized enterprises (SME) overwhelming rely on the Windows platform. Windows OS market share is 90%. A much smaller percent have Linux boxes and, more importantly, have Linux development resources. So developing a Windows PBX reduces SMEs total cost of ownership by utilizing existing PCs/servers and not requiring new IT skills.
Ø We did look at developing CallButler using Asterisk. We found Asterisk to frankly be too inflexible, specifically as it related to integration of other applications (many of which were Windows based). Use of the .NET framework has allowed us to dramatically reduce the time and cost associated with adding additional functionality/features.

Luca: Why not a totally free version like 3CX ?

Mike: Frankly, this is a business model decision. We offer a 15 day free trial and a 30 day money back guarantee. So this allows customers 45 days to test CallButler risk free.
Ø We experimented with free versions, one of the challenges was that we had lots of people who downloaded but never installed the product.
Ø If you look at 3CX’s free version, it is fairly restricted – no ability to place or transfer calls (some fairly basic requirements for most businesses). So most organizations will move to the Small Business Edition anyway.
Ø Additionally, the we felt strong customer support to be important (3CX’s free version is only supported through their forum), especially in during the evaluation process. Many SMEs simply need a little coaching to be on their way.
Ø Finally, we have lots of customers who have tried 3CX before coming to us. We believe that CallButler is a superior PBX.

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UPDATE: 3CX guys pointed out that the 3CX FREE Version ALLOWS to place and transfer calls. I think Mike wrongly looked at the features table of the 3CX Windows Call Assistant, that doesn’t include those features in the free version, but that’s another story. I apologize for not having double checked myself.
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CallButler’s management system, according to the screenshots provided on their website, seems really easy to use. The integration with third party applications seems to be one of their strength points, since they even offer a scripting tool to make this process as easy as possible.

Two versions of the software are available: one for the Professional/SOHO market with up to 5 extensions allowed and another one with unlimited extensions. Both look alike in terms of features, a really impressive set. I have to say that the difference in terms of price is not that much, only $150, and the cost for the professional version is very aggressive, only $249,99.

CallButler has also been awarded with the Internet Telephony Expo 2007 “Excellence Award”.

I look forward to trying their new appliance out. If the cost is reasonable, I believe that can really be a business-booster since they can start using other channels to push their product to the market.

DISCLOSURE: CallButler is one of the affiliate sponsors of this blog.

callbutler, luca filigheddu, soft pbx