Got questions?
Check out these common questions and answers before you embark on your new calling system.
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Account Administration
Of course! Adding a new person to Cradle is as simple as logging into our website and typing in their email address. They'll get an email with instructions on how to sign up, and we'll send them an invitation for a 10-minute training session with one of our team to make sure they can make the most of Cradle.
Yes! You can get numbers in over 100 countries on Cradle, and we can often source numbers that might be harder to get. You will need to meet the regulatory compliance requirements for the numbers that you need.
Cradle will automatically select the number in your account for the country your team are calling, giving your customers that feeling of a local company even when you're calling from the other side of the world!
You can change your calling rules on Cradle's web admin portal, which includes not only your business hours but how calls are treated during and after hours. You don't need to adjust the phones for daylight savings though, as Cradle has that handled for you!
Cradle has many different ways of routing calls that you receive. You can send them directly to people on your team (often called a DDI/DID or direct-dial-in or direct inward dialling number), to a group of people, through a voice menu or IVR, off-net to another phone number, or even directly to voicemail.
We can generally mimick whatever you're currently doing, or help you come up with something even better!
Of course. Cradle is designed to be largely self-service. You can change settings, add users, add more numbers, and change the way your voicemail or voice greetings sound, all from your web browser. We have a wealth of help articles to help if you're not quite sure what to do, but you're also welcome to give us a call or chat with us if you need a hand.
There is no theoretical limit to the number of numbers you can have with Cradle! We generally recommend having a clear purpose for the phone numbers that you're setting up, because each number that you introduce to your customers and prospects is one that you'll have to continue to maintain.
We provide a landline in your local area as part of our standard subscriptions, and each additional number is generally charged based on the type of number. Some countries landline numbers aren't included so contact us to check for your country.
Payment and Billing
Cradle's main charges are listed on our pricing page, so we'd suggest starting there. Depending on the calling and features plan your business needs the overall price can vary somewhat.
Our Professional Plus plan for the US and Canada includes fair calls and most other plans require you to purchase a calling bundle. The question we'd throw back at you is how valuable are your calls!?
Not at all. No matter what length of commitment you make, Cradle will charge you for your phone calls on a monthly basis, so that you don't have that one month each year with a bit of a cash flow hit.
Our plans all have a month-to-month option, but you can get yourself a tidy discount by committing year to year. We're confident that you'll love Cradle so you're welcome to start on the monthly option and then switch once you're comfortable.
We take payment for your phone system and phone calls directly from your credit card. You're billing in advance for the next month's user charges and in arrears for any variable calling charges.
We email an invoice directly to the account email that you've registered in the Cradle system.
We don't generally accept payment by bank transfer, however on a case by case basis we do consider it for those customers spending more than $1,000 per month. You will still need to have a credit card on file with Cradle.
We require a valid credit card to be on file for internal purposes that include security, anti-fraud protection and spam prevention.
You can, although any variable charges for calls and the like will be estimated and you may receive an interim bill if your usage is outside your estimated usage.
Getting Started
Two minutes. You read that right! On average, you can be up and running with a trial account in two minutes.
Getting your full system working and set up the way you want it might take slightly longer, and we'd recommend booking an onboarding call with one of our knowledgeable team to help walk through getting your phones set up for success.
Yes, you can. This is called porting your number and involves some paperwork and a bit of time whilst we get the appropriate approvals to bring your number over to our carrier.
Typically this process takes between five and twenty business days depending on your number and current carrier. It's much easier to send us a current phone bill that lists your company name, the number you want to port and your account number with your current carrier. We'll fill out the paperwork and get it back to you for signing.
Generally, Cradle won't need much input from your IT team, however, some networking considerations might require their input. Check out our Common VoIP Issues below for more details.
We only offer Cradle to businesses requiring business level calling and phone systems. We'd recommend contacting your internet service provider to see if they offer phones for your home.
If you do have a business we only allow you to sign up with your business email address. No Gmail accounts please!
During your Cradle trial, your calls will be limited to between two and ten minutes, and the countries and numbers that you can call will also be limited.
To remove these limitations, set up an onboarding meeting and sign up for a full account.
Absolutely. During the trial, you are assigned a number based on the country from which you signed up. We can change this number for you, although we might need evidence of your business' registration details and your address to provide numbers in certain countries (such as New Zealand).
Contact support to change the number you were assigned for the trial.
Common VoIP Issues
That's easy! Good quality connections. The two most important ones are your headset (how it connects to your computer) and your network (how you connect to your router.
We recommend a good quality headset that uses a cable or a specific dongle or dock for your computer.
To connect to your network and beyond that, to the internet, we recommend an ethernet connection. Wifi is great, but it's not great for VoIP!
In over 90% of the instances where people complain of poor quality calls, the problem lies in the connection between their device and the internet. Typically it's not your ISP or even the connection type (VDSL for example, can provide high-quality VoIP calls).
We recommend the following:
- use Ethernet to connect to your office or home network/router
- run a simple speed test that measures buffer bloat at the same time as the test
- turn off SIP ALG and other packet inspection features of your router, even temporarily, to help identify the problem
We have many more help articles for your reference and you can contact us for specialist help overcoming challenges with VoIP quality.
The honest answer is don't try! We've spent thousands of hours testing Wifi for the perfect VoIP setup, and it's not possible to create the same level of consistency on a VoIP call over a Wifi connection.
The easiest way to think of it (for you gamers) is that you're trying to create the perfect gaming environment, with low latency and jitter. If your team insist on using Wifi, we'd suggest:
- Finding specialist hardware (Wifi Access Points / WAPs) and having it professionally installed and set up. Make sure you tell your installer you want to use VoIP on the Wifi.
- The more devices you have connected to each WAP, the more likely you are to have poor experiences, so ensure you have sufficient WAPs for the device load you have.
- If other users tend to download or upload large files over the Wifi this can saturate the network and interrupt your phone calls - get those users onto ethernet!
- We've found that OpenWRT, which tends to run close to the hardware on an open-source Linux kernel, is the best operating system for reliable Wifi based calling experiences.
- Most commercial WAPs have been designed to prioritise ease of management, not VoIP/real-time performance.
- Roaming between WAPs (especially when walking about an office on your mobile) can cause big gaps as the internal network re-routes packets.
- Please, for the love of all things sacred, don't try and use the included router that came with your internet connection. It's likely a massive bottleneck to the productivity of your team.
SIP ALG stands for Session Initiation Protocol Application Layer Gateway. SIP is the technology that most VoIP providers use to make calling work over the internet, and ALG is a feature of some routers that aims to facilitate SIP connections between the router's onboard calling functions and your internet provider's VoIP service.
SIP ALG will modify the information flowing between Cradle and your computer, slowing down the information and possibly rendering it useless when it arrives. Cradle doesn't need it, so please turn it off.
If you're having trouble getting your current VoIP provider to help get you set up, please contact us. We will run through an onboarding session with you where we evaluate your network and help ensure that you'll have a good experience using Cradle, making recommendations for how to configure your network and your computers.