VICIdial vs Convoso on price

Convoso charges a per-agent monthly fee with carrier minutes often bundled in, while VICIdial is free software where your only costs are the server it runs on and the carrier you bring yourself. That single difference reshapes the whole price comparison.

What Convoso bills you for

Convoso is a hosted, all-in-one platform. You pay a recurring per-seat price, usually quoted monthly or annually, and that price tends to fold in the dialer, the reporting, and a block of voice minutes through their own routing. The headline number looks clean, but it scales straight up with agent count. Ten agents cost roughly twice what five cost, and there is rarely a way to pay less by running leaner.

Because the minutes are bundled, you also have less control over the Carrier relationship. If your traffic profile is unusual, or you want least-cost routing across several providers, that flexibility is limited compared with a system where you own the SIP trunk yourself.

What VICIdial actually costs

VICIdial itself is free and open source. Your real bill has three parts: a server, a carrier, and whatever time or money you spend keeping the box running. A modest VPS can run a small floor of agents, and because VICIdial is Single tenant by design, you are not sharing capacity with anyone else.

• Server: a fixed monthly cost that does not jump every time you add an agent.
• Carrier: you buy minutes or channels directly, often cheaper than bundled rates.
• Operations: patching, security, and tuning the Predictive dialing pacing yourself.

That last line is the catch. The software is free, but a self-hosted VICIdial is not maintenance-free. Someone has to own the box.

How the math actually plays out

For a small team with steady volume, VICIdial usually wins on raw cost because the server fee is flat while Convoso's per-seat fee climbs. For a team that values not touching infrastructure, Convoso's bundled price can be worth the premium. The honest answer depends on how you weigh predictable per-seat billing against a lower but more hands-on total.

flowchart TD
  A[Your call center] --> B{Want flat server cost?}
  B -->|Yes| C[VICIdial path]
  B -->|No, want bundled| D[Convoso path]
  C --> E[Pay for VPS]
  C --> F[Bring own carrier]
  C --> G[Own the maintenance]
  D --> H[Per-agent fee]
  D --> I[Minutes bundled]

Notice that two of the three VICIdial branches are recurring costs you fully control, while Convoso's branches both scale with headcount.

The line items people forget

On either platform, compliance work like maintaining a DNC (do not call) list and respecting TCPA calling rules is your responsibility, not a line item the vendor absorbs. And on VICIdial, Call recording storage lives on your own server, which keeps that data under your control but also makes the disk your problem.

For a fuller side-by-side that goes beyond price, see our guide to VICIdial alternatives. If you want the feature-level take on these two systems, read VICIdial vs Convoso.

Where VICIfast fits

VICIfast keeps VICIdial's flat, server-based cost model but takes the maintenance burden off your plate. We provision a dedicated, hardened box on its own subdomain in under 40 seconds, you bring your own carrier, and your recordings stay on your machine. You get the open-source price structure without owning a server day to day. See the plans on our pricing page.