1-866-DRAKNET is no longer DrakNet’s phone number. Well, ok, it may currently still be, but it won’t be for long - I know, it was really, really cool to have our name in a toll free number and all. I’m a little bummed, too. But unfortunately, it’s time to retire it.

Now that we’ve taken on more staff, we’re moving over to Skype completely for voice communications which, honestly, there shouldn’t be much of.

Our new number, 1.512.377.6138, is our Skype-In line, enabling you to call us directly even if the concept of Skype freaks you out a little bit. Our toll-free line was nifty because it was exceedingly vain and had our name in the number and all that, but it was also limited to the United States alone and significantly limited our International clients and how they could contact us since we didn’t have a local number whatsoever.

As a small company, costs are always a factor and we’ve found that the lower accounts that call pretty much just ignore those invoices for calls, meaning an Intro Account on a ten minute phone call has become a loss leader that, frankly, were we anyone else, we would have nuked the account for the repeated phone calls. We also found that those of you that have been with us long term picked up the phone if you wanted to pick up the phone, and that was the end of it.

Phone support does cost a significant amount considering that doing support live while typing and looking into things takes longer - many, many hosting companies have cut out telephone technical support altogether due to the cost. We’ve sought different solutions to that cost/benefit ratio, and our first attempt was charging for support on the phone to balance out the costs of having it at all.

That didn’t go over too well.

Skype is not 100% as reliable as “regular phone service” yet, however, the costs are phenomenally lower than telephone service. It enables us to give cheaper and more widely accessible access that’s easily expandable as we add more staff while not utilizing hardly any extra power to do so (which we also find a really neat green solution) and without having to buy anything (which we find a cool anti-consumerism solution).

And oh, yeah - we’re not charging for the lower account levels anymore. If you’re an Intro account, you can call - you’d have to talk an awful lot for Skype to make your account upside down. (This does not change the fact that Skype goes to 1 person, and the ticket goes to an actual department of multiple people, so remember you’re not going to get serviced as quickly calling unless you get really lucky.)

We also find that a toll free number considering prevalence of cell phone free minutes anywhere simply isn’t necessary - and if you really don’t want to pay and have no other option, Skype us at drak.net - anyone utilizing us is almost sure to have a computer and setting us Skype was much easier than we thought it would be.

We’re also going to begin integrating Skype’s features to connect you to each other, and to us - we’re going to schedule Skypecasts on different topics of interest. If you have a topic you’d like to see, let us know and we’ll try to cover it. We even have some guests scheduled.

So, don’t think of it as losing the cool toll free number. Think of it as gaining wider access to the DrakNet community and staff! And if you’re trying to call us, remember to call 1.512.377.6138 or skype us at “drak.net“.