Cloud dialler vs on-premise: what UK contact centres should weigh up

On a hosted dialler the provider installs, patches and carries the capacity. Your team runs campaigns, users and the settings that change the calls. On an on-premise system your team, or a contractor you keep, does the patching, the disk, the failover and the upgrades as well as the campaigns. That can suit an organisation that already operates telephony platforms and wants the change window on its own calendar. It is a poor fit if the only engineers you have are also the people running the dialler floor.

626Dialler is hosted for every customer. Support is part of the plan: every plan includes email and WhatsApp support, available 24 hours, with priority handling on Growth and a named account manager on Enterprise. That is support for the hosted service. It is not a promise about another supplier's on-premise estate.

Call recordings, dispositions and the campaign list have to live somewhere. On 626Dialler they live on the hosted platform. You decide who can play a recording back and how long you keep it, as part of your own retention setup. PCI payment processing is available, and recordings can use PCI pause while card details are taken. On an on-premise system those files sit on infrastructure you operate, which some security teams prefer and some do not want to staff.

Alveus holds ISO 27001. That is a statement about Alveus's own certification. It does not transfer a certification to your campaign, and it does not answer a retention question your policy still has to answer. If a customer asks where a recording is stored, the honest hosted answer is: with the provider, under the contract you have with them.

Twilio is available on Growth and Enterprise. You can connect your own SIP trunk. An on-premise dialler typically presents calls through trunks you order and maintain. Either way, the number the person sees is a choice you make. Ofcom treats a withheld, invalid or unreturnable CLI as possible persistent misuse, and PECR regulation 21 requires a marketing caller to present a number.

626Dialler pricing is seat-based. Starter is up to 10 agent seats, Growth up to 50, Enterprise unlimited. See the pricing page for what each plan includes. Adding a seat on a hosted plan is a contract change. Adding a seat on an on-premise system is a contract change plus whatever capacity the servers and the trunks have left. Ask both questions before you compare a headline price.

Hosting does not set your abandon-rate target. You do. On 626Dialler, pacing eases off as the abandoned-call rate approaches that target, and you can report on it per campaign, per day. Ofcom's current statement names no abandoned-call threshold. Predictive dialling is on every plan. Progressive and preview are on Growth and Enterprise. Answerphone detection can be tuned per campaign. TPS and CTPS suppression is on every plan. Those are the same jobs an on-premise dialler leaves with the operation. The software running them does not answer Ofcom or the ICO for you.

626CRM, our own hosted CRM, is included on Growth and Enterprise. 626Dialler can also connect to an existing Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics or Zendesk, with call activity written back after each call. A documented REST API is available. On Enterprise, AI transcription and sentiment are available. If you are comparing an on-premise estate, list the connectors you already pay for and ask whether call activity lands after each call or has to be re-keyed. Do not assume a hosted connector is inside the CRM. These are integrations with a CRM you already have.

Write down who patches the platform, where recordings are stored, how a number is presented, what happens when you add ten agents next month, and which report shows abandoned calls and silent calls for a single calendar day. Then write down the dial modes you need. If predictive is enough, Starter includes it. If collectors or agents must read the record first, you need Growth or Enterprise for preview. The pricing page is the list. The glossary is the vocabulary. Book a demo if you want those settings shown on a campaign rather than described.

This article is not legal advice. Ofcom's statement is on the persistent misuse review page. Marketing-call registers are on the ICO's live-call page. Solutions for outbound work are on the solutions page.