ONDEMAND vs ALLCALLS recording: which to pick

ONDEMAND and ALLCALLS are the two recording modes most teams actually choose between. NEVER is rare and ALLFORCE is for strict compliance, but for everyday campaigns the real question is whether the agent decides what gets recorded or the system records everything by default. The answer comes down to three things: how complete your records need to be, how much you trust the manual button, and how much storage you want to spend.

What each mode actually does

ONDEMAND lets the agent start and stop Call recording as needed. Nothing is captured unless the agent presses the button, so you only get the parts someone chose to record. ALLCALLS, by contrast, starts recording the moment a call is sent to an agent on that Campaign. The agent can still stop a recording in ALLCALLS, but the default is on rather than off. That single difference, default-off versus default-on, drives almost every decision below. ONDEMAND optimizes for selectivity and low storage; ALLCALLS optimizes for guaranteed coverage. Neither is wrong, they just serve different goals, so the right pick depends on what you actually need from your archive.

When ONDEMAND is the better fit

Pick ONDEMAND when you only need to capture specific moments rather than whole conversations. A common case is verbal verification at the close of a sale, where the agent records just the confirmation and nothing else. This keeps file counts low and keeps sensitive small talk out of your archive. On-demand recording also helps when storage is tight, because you are not saving hours of audio you will never review. The trade-off is human reliability: if an agent forgets the button, that moment is gone, so never use ONDEMAND where capture is legally required.

When ALLCALLS is the better fit

Pick ALLCALLS when you want every call on record but still want agents to be able to pause for sensitive data. Because recording starts automatically, you do not depend on anyone remembering anything, which is why quality teams and most compliance-minded floors prefer it. ALLCALLS also supports a Recording delay so you can drop the first several seconds and avoid saving piles of very short recordings from answering machines and instant hangups, which also cuts server load. That delay is one reason ALLCALLS scales better than it first appears: you get full coverage of real conversations without drowning in junk files. If you need the agent to be unable to stop recording at all, that is ALLFORCE rather than ALLCALLS; ALLCALLS keeps the stop control available for pauses.

A quick decision flow

flowchart TD
  A[Need to choose a mode] --> B{Is capture legally required}
  B -->|Yes and no stopping| C[Use ALLFORCE]
  B -->|Yes but pausing is ok| D[Use ALLCALLS]
  B -->|No| E{Only specific moments}
  E -->|Yes| F[Use ONDEMAND]
  E -->|No want full coverage| D
  D --> G[Consider a recording delay]

The shortest version: if you need guaranteed coverage, lean ALLCALLS; if you only need snippets and want to save space, lean ONDEMAND. Either way, make sure agents know what happens during a Disposition so they do not assume a call was recorded when it was not. To see how every mode maps to behavior, read the recording modes breakdown, and for the full picture see our call recording guide.

If you would rather not weigh storage against compliance by hand, our hosted setup sizes the disk and sets the mode for you. See the pricing for what that includes.