Most people shopping for a dialer compare the licence price, pick the cheapest one, and stop. That works right up until the first carrier invoice arrives.
Here is what nobody puts on a pricing page. The dialer is the cheap half of your phone bill. The expensive half is the company that carries the calls, and it is usually five to fifty times bigger.
Every rate below is published by the provider itself. Checked October 2026.
- Your dialer is the cheap half of the bill. Your SIP provider is the expensive half.
- US domestic minutes run $0.005 to $0.014. That is the cheapest traffic in the world.
- 20,000 minutes to the Philippines costs about $6,000. The dialer that made those calls costs $30.
- Ecsow charges $10 to $100 a month by line, and never per minute.
- The per-minute rate you negotiate matters more than the software you choose.
- Ask for the rate to your three main destinations, in writing, before you sign.
What a SIP provider is
A SIP provider, also called a SIP trunk provider or just your VoIP carrier, is the company that carries your calls over the internet.
Ecsow is the software that dials the numbers and puts agents on the line. Your provider connects the call and bills you for the minutes. You buy them from two different companies, and both send a bill.
Ecsow charges a flat fee per line: $10 for one, $30 for five, $50 for ten, $100 for thirty-two. It never charges per minute.
Your carrier charges for every minute of every call, priced by country. That second number decides whether your operation makes money.
The dialer stays flat. Minutes grow.
One team, four call volumes
Ecsow licence and carrier minutes side by side, at $0.005 a minute.
Carrier minutes
The blue bar barely moves. You pay for lines, not minutes. Some carriers also charge per channel, which is one of the questions below.
So shop accordingly. If you dial a few thousand minutes a month, software price matters. Past about 50,000 minutes it is noise, and the only number that moves your business is your per-minute rate.
What providers charge
These are the advertised starting rates of the seventeen SIP providers Ecsow works with. Almost all are US domestic rates, and I will explain why that caveat matters in a moment.
Cost of 20,000 outbound minutes
Using each provider’s advertised starting rate.
Same 20,000 minutes. The cheapest carrier here charges a nineteenth of the most expensive one. That gap is not quality. It is packaging, minimums, and who is reselling whose network.
Five more do not publish a per-minute number at all. CallCentric sells monthly plans from $5.95. VoIPLine Global advertises unlimited outbound for $14 a month. RingCentral charges per seat. OnSIP charges per user. Voxter prices by destination. None of those models is wrong, but you cannot compare them without a quote.
The full list, with links and a setup guide for each, is on the SIP providers page. There is a calculator there that puts your own numbers into this.
The part that actually bites
Every rate above is US domestic. Almost nobody reading this calls only the US.
International calls are priced by destination, and the spread is enormous. Here is one carrier’s published table. Yours will differ, sometimes by three times, so check the countries you actually dial.
What 20,000 minutes costs to each destination
One carrier’s published mobile rates. In Asia, landlines often cost more than mobiles.
Twenty thousand minutes into the Philippines costs about $6,000. The dialer that made those calls costs $30. If you remember one thing from this page, remember that ratio.
This is where small outbound teams discover the shape of their business. The software choice saves tens of dollars. The carrier choice saves thousands. I sell the software, and I am telling you the carrier is the bigger decision.
One worked month
Ten agents. Five lines. 15,000 outbound minutes at half a cent.
| Ecsow licence, 5 lines | $30 |
| Carrier minutes, 15,000 × $0.005 | $75 |
| Phone numbers, 5 at about $1 | $5 |
| Total per month | $110 |
Now put the same team on a per-seat dialer at $110 an agent. The licence goes from $30 to $1,100. The minutes do not change at all, because you buy those from a carrier either way.
That is the whole argument for per-line pricing. It does not make your calls cheaper. It stops your software bill from growing with your headcount.
Five questions for any SIP provider
- What is the exact rate to my three main destinations, in writing? Not the US headline rate. The countries you actually dial.
- Is billing in six-second or sixty-second increments? On short calls this changes the invoice more than the rate does.
- Do you charge per channel, or only for minutes used? A per-channel fee on top of per-minute billing is how a cheap rate becomes an expensive month.
- Which countries can you reach, and which codecs do you support? Coverage varies more than the price list suggests.
- Is there a minimum deposit, and does the credit expire? Prepaid balances that expire are a quiet cost.
One more if you dial at volume: ask about caller ID reputation. Carriers start flagging numbers at about a hundred calls per number per day, and a “Scam Likely” label can take two to three months to clear. That is a rotation problem, not a dialer problem, but it lands on your answer rate.
Where Ecsow is worse
- We do not carry your calls. No network, no minutes, no rates. You bring a provider, which means one more account and one more invoice.
- We add no per-minute markup, and no per-minute safety net. A carrier with bundled minutes is easier to budget. With us, a bad rate is entirely your rate.
- No inbound. If you receive calls, this structure is the wrong shape for you.
- Windows only, outbound only, 32 lines maximum.
- Email support, answered within about a day. If your carrier goes down at 8pm, neither of us is picking up.
How to use this
Get one written quote from two or three carriers for your exact destinations. Multiply it by twelve. Put it next to the software price. That comparison takes an afternoon and usually settles the question.
If you have not chosen a carrier, the SIP providers page lists all seventeen with rates, and the calculator there does the totals for you.
The software side is easier. Download Ecsow, run a campaign of up to 20 contacts, and see if it dials the way your team needs. Licences start at $10 a month for one line, with no contract and a 15-day refund.
Questions
How much does a SIP provider cost per month?
US domestic rates run about $0.005 to $0.014 a minute, plus roughly $0.50 to $1.15 a month per phone number. International destinations cost far more, usually $0.05 to $0.60 a minute.
Is a SIP provider the same as a dialer?
No, and this is the most common confusion. The provider carries the call and bills per minute. The dialer decides which number to call and connects an agent. You need both, from two companies.
What is the cheapest way to call internationally?
Get the destination rate right first. Twenty thousand minutes to the Philippines costs about $6,000 at $0.30 a minute, against $30 for the dialer. The carrier rate is the cost that matters.
Do I need a phone number for outbound calling?
Usually yes, because the number is what the person sees. Numbers cost about $0.50 to $1.15 a month each. Most teams want several so they can rotate them and protect their reputation.