Short answer: an IVR for a small Indian business is billed on up to four meters: a plan or package fee, number rental, call minutes, and the cost of changes. The headline plan price is one of four meters, and which of the other three a provider includes is what makes two apparently similar quotes differ by a multiple.
On Edesy the numbers are public: Rs 1 per minute, plus text-to-speech at Rs 0.50 (Standard) or Rs 2.00 (Premium) per 1,000 characters, with no per-call fee and unanswered calls free. Numbers rent from Rs 449 a month. Current detail on the IVR pricing page.
The Four Meters
| Meter | What it covers | The question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | The IVR software itself | How many flows and numbers are included? |
| Number rental | Monthly cost per phone number | Is a number included, or extra? |
| Minutes | Inbound call time | Is answered time metered separately? |
| Changes | Editing prompts or flows | Can I edit it myself, or is it a service request? |
| Speech | Text-to-speech for prompts the IVR reads out | Is it per character, per call, or bundled? Are uploaded recordings free? |
That fourth row is the one that surprises people. Some providers treat a prompt change as a support ticket with a turnaround and sometimes a fee. If your business changes its hours, runs seasonal offers, or has outages, you will edit prompts often — and a per-change cost or a two-day turnaround is a real operational constraint, not a line item.
What Edesy Includes
| What you pay for | How it is billed |
|---|---|
| Calls | Rs 1.00 per minute, per started minute, from a prepaid wallet; no per-call fee |
| Text-to-speech | Rs 0.50 per 1,000 characters (Standard voices) or Rs 2.00 (Premium voices); uploaded recordings have no TTS charge |
| Unanswered calls | Free |
| Phone number | Landline Rs 449, mobile or 92-series Rs 499, toll-free Rs 999 per month; Rs 0 setup |
| Done-for-you package | Rs 2,500 setup + Rs 1,299/month with 1 number, the IVR, forwarding to 4 numbers and 500 minutes |
| Free credit | Rs 20 on sign-up, no card |
A worked example. A 45-second inbound call that plays a 300-character greeting and menu in the default English or Hindi voice (a Premium voice) costs Rs 1.00 for the minute plus Rs 0.60 for the speech: Rs 1.60 before GST. Two thousand such calls a month come to about Rs 3,200 plus number rental, or about Rs 2,300 with a Standard voice or Rs 2,000 with uploaded recordings. Model your own volume with the IVR cost calculator.
Flows are self-serve: you build, test on a real call, and publish yourself, so changing a prompt is an edit rather than a request. Calls are paid from a prepaid wallet, and per-call logs and recordings are part of the product. Time-of-day routing and ring groups are not available yet, so check those against your requirements before comparing.
Comparing Quotes Honestly
Build the comparison on total monthly cost for your shape, not on the plan price:
Plan + (numbers × rental) + (expected minutes × rate) + expected changes
A low plan price with a separately billed number and metered minutes is not automatically cheaper than a higher plan that includes both. Run your own numbers through the arithmetic before concluding anything.
Then ask the questions that do not appear on any pricing page:
- Can I edit prompts myself, immediately?
- Are call logs included, or a paid add-on?
- How many concurrent calls does the plan support?
- What happens when I exceed the plan — overage, or blocked calls?
Concurrency is the sleeper. A plan that handles a certain number of simultaneous calls is fine until your busiest hour, when callers beyond the limit get a busy tone that never appears in your reporting because the call never connected. To size that limit, the Erlang B calculator turns your busiest hour's calls and average call length into the number of lines you need.
What Drives Cost Up
Concurrency, not total volume. Ten thousand calls spread across a month is a small plan. Two hundred calls in one hour is not. Size to your peak.
Number count. Separate numbers for campaigns, cities or departments each carry rental. Often one number with a good menu does the job of five.
Long menus. Every second of preamble is billed across every call. A ten-second greeting on 20,000 calls a month is over 55 hours of paid audio that helps nobody. See IVR menu design.
What Drives Cost Down
- Trim the greeting. Free, immediate, and it reduces both cost and caller annoyance.
- Remove dead options. An option nobody selects still costs time on every call.
- Put the common option first. Most callers press a key sooner, so average call length falls.
- Do design work on free tools. Script, flow and prompts can all be built before you pay — see what a free IVR gets you.
Is It Worth It?
The comparison is not against a competitor's plan; it is against what unanswered calls cost you now. For most small businesses a single recovered order a month exceeds the Starter plan.
If you do not know how many calls you currently miss, that is the number to find first. It usually settles the decision on its own.