From signup to your first campaign on VICIfast

The gap between signing up for VICIdial hosting and actually running your first Campaign can be days if setup is manual. With VICIfast it collapses to under an hour — and most of that hour is your Carrier paperwork, not our system. This post walks the exact sequence so you know what to have ready before you start and where the real waiting happens.

The full path

sequenceDiagram
  participant You
  participant VICIfast
  participant Hetzner
  participant Carrier
  You->>VICIfast: Sign up + choose plan
  You->>VICIfast: Pay (Stripe)
  VICIfast->>Hetzner: Provision dedicated VPS
  Hetzner-->>VICIfast: Server ready
  VICIfast->>Hetzner: Deploy Ubuntu + VICIdial + TLS
  VICIfast-->>You: Branded subdomain live (under 40 seconds)
  You->>VICIfast: Log into VICIdial admin
  You->>VICIfast: Upload lead list (CSV)
  You->>Carrier: Get SIP trunk credentials
  Carrier-->>You: SIP credentials + DIDs
  You->>VICIfast: Add SIP trunk in VICIdial
  You->>VICIfast: Create campaign + attach lead list
  You->>VICIfast: Launch campaign
  VICIfast-->>You: First call dials out

Step 1: Sign up and pay

Pick a plan sized to your Agent count — Starter for small teams, Growth for mid-size, Scale for high-volume operations. Payment goes through Stripe. See exact prices on the pricing page.

Step 2: Your box is ready in under 40 seconds

After payment, VICIfast provisions a dedicated Hetzner VPS, runs the automated Provisioning worker, installs Ubuntu and a secured VICIdial build, issues a Let's Encrypt TLS certificate via DNS-01, and brings up your Branded subdomain over HTTPS. You get an email with your login URL when the box is ready. The whole sequence takes under 40 seconds.

Step 3: Log in and orient yourself

Your VICIdial admin panel lives at your branded subdomain. The default admin credentials are in the welcome email, and the first thing to do is change them. The next things to configure are system settings such as timezone and caller ID, your trunk, and at least one inbound or outbound DID. VICIdial's admin interface is dense but consistent — spend ten minutes on the System Settings page before touching anything else, because several later screens inherit values from it. If you have run a dialer before, the layout will feel familiar; if not, work top to bottom and resist the urge to change settings you do not yet understand.

Step 4: Connect your carrier

VICIfast does not sell minutes. You bring your own SIP trunk from any VoIP carrier. In VICIdial admin, go to Admin and then Carriers, enter your carrier's SIP credentials and hostname, and save. If your carrier provides a DID (direct inward dialing) for outbound caller ID, add it under the DID section. Once the trunk registers, which you can verify in the Asterisk log, you are ready for calls. This step is the one most likely to take real time, not because of our system but because activating a trunk and getting numbers approved is paced by your carrier, not by you.

Step 5: Upload your lead list

In VICIdial, go to Admin → Lists, create a new Lead list, and import your CSV. The required columns are phone number, first name, last name, and status. VICIdial accepts most standard export formats from CRMs. Once your Lead records are imported, they are ready to be attached to a campaign.

Step 6: Create and launch the campaign

Go to Admin → Campaigns, create a new campaign, attach your list, set the dial method (preview, progressive, or Predictive dialing), and assign your agents. Set the campaign to Active. When your agents log into the agent screen at your branded subdomain, calls will start routing.

What to have ready before you start

Two things determine how fast your first call goes out, and both are yours to prepare. The first is your carrier account: have the SIP credentials, hostname, and any DIDs in hand before you log in, because a campaign cannot dial without a registered trunk. The second is a clean list. Export your contacts with a clear phone column and consistent formatting so the import is one pass rather than several rounds of fixing rows.

With those two ready, the path from payment to a live call is short. The box appears in under 40 seconds, the Webphone is already on the plan so agents need nothing to install, and the only real waiting is on the carrier side. Once your first agent goes ready and the dialer pulls a record from the hopper, you are running a normal VICIdial operation and the work becomes tuning pacing and reading dispositions.

See what VICIfast adds to VICIdial for the full feature list. If you want to understand how provisioning works in more detail, read VICIfast 40-second provisioning.