Thanks to Voice over IP (VoIP), you can make voice to friends, family, business partners and just anyone worldwide, through apps like Skype, WhatsApp and the others. However, your calls are free only when you communicate with people that use the same service and app as you. So, when you can call people over non-VoIP numbers like on a landline or mobile phone, you pay, but cheaper.
While VoIP calls allow you to save a lot on communication, they are not always cheaper than traditional calls.
This depends on the service, the destination, the place you are calling from and the type of service your correspondent is using. When you decide on a service or app to use for Internet calling, you need to check their rates and see whether they suit you. In order to make sense of the calling rates here is what you need to know.
Find the Rates Page
Make sure you land on the page of the service where all the rates are displayed and where you can have a clear idea of what you will be charged. For most services, there is a specific page on their website, with a link to it on the top menu or somewhere prominent on the main page. The link text is often "rates" or "pricing". In some apps, the rates are found in one of the features of the interface.
The rates page is basically a list of all callable destinations (countries and in some cases, cities) with their calling country and area codes and the price per minute of call. The prices displayed are for called placed to numbers registered in these destinations, independent of the area from which the call is originating.
Check the Currency
Don't bank only on numbers without having a thought on the currency. Most services show prices in US dollars and in dollar cents, but some detect your location and show the prices in the local currency automatically while others show prices in the local currency of the country that is home to the service.
As a matter of example, Skype rates used to be in Euros by default but have changed to US dollars since it moved over the Atlantic after Microsoft acquired it. Prices can be misleading especially if they are shown in cents.
You can always change the currency as all sites (hopefully) have a drop-down menu allowing you to select what you want.
Look Up Your Calling Destinations
This is probably the most important part of the exercise. You want to make sure that the app or service offers you the best rate for destinations you are calling to - destinations in which are your contacts and where you will be making most calls to. Make a list of these destinations.
With some services, you are offered a context-sensitive search that assists you in searching. These pages show most details, often with differences in rates between calls to landline and mobiles.
More often than not, you have a long list of destinations and their rates. These show in a page in your browser. You can use the search facility in your browser (just hit Ctrl + F and type your search word in the text box that appears in a corner) to locate your destinations and check their rates.
You can also search for rates before destinations. For example, if you want to know all destinations to which calls are, say, less than a cent per minute, you can search for "0.00". If there is more than one match, hit Enter every time and it will take you to the next match. A match will indicate either a free call or a call costing less than a cent, as the digit in the third decimal place it a fraction of a cent. You can use this to compare between services for some specific destinations.
Mind The Hidden Costs
Some VoIP services have a number of hidden costs that add up to the cost shown per minute. Among the less obvious costs are eventual taxes, connection fees, data consumption cost, hardware and software costs.