Reach clients worldwide
without a corporate plan
Freelancers and small businesses shouldn't pay $50/month for calls they make once a week. Telvio charges only when you call. Rates from $0.03/min. No contract, no lock-in.
Download Telvio FreeCorporate calling solutions are designed for enterprises, not people
Every option assumes you make hundreds of calls per month. You don't — so you pay for hundreds of minutes you never use.
$50–100/month
Business phone plan
You call London twice a month and Mumbai once. The plan charges the same regardless of usage.
Hidden connection fees
Conference call services
Most conferencing tools charge per-participant per-minute for international dial-ins. A 3-person call adds up fast.
IT setup + contracts
VoIP desk phones
Enterprise VoIP requires SIP configuration, IT support, and annual contracts. Not practical for solo operators or small teams.
Pay only for the calls you actually make
Per-second billing with no connection fee
A 6-minute 45-second call to Mexico City costs exactly 6 minutes and 45 seconds at $0.05/min. No rounding to the next minute. No connection surcharge added at the start. What you see is what you pay.
No contract. No lock-in.
One-time purchase. Use the minutes whenever you need them. No auto-renewal, no cancellation process, no minimum commitment. Your balance stays until you use it.
No IT setup required
Download the app, enter a phone number, call. Works on any smartphone. No SIP configuration, no desk phone, no corporate IT department.
Professional quality VoIP
Stable WiFi or 4G gives call quality indistinguishable from a regular call. The person you call hears a standard phone connection.
Two clients. Two countries. Under $2 total
You're a freelance consultant. One client in Mexico City for a 15-minute status call. Another in Mumbai for a 20-minute briefing. You call both from your home office.
Mexico City (landline): 15 min × $0.05 = $0.75. Mumbai (mobile): 20 min × $0.24 = $4.80. Total: $5.55. No monthly plan. No unused minutes. No subscription to cancel when the project ends.
Mexico City call (15 min)
Landline, Mexico rate
$0.75
Mumbai call (20 min)
Mobile, India rate
$4.80
Total for both calls
$5.55
vs. $50+ on a monthly plan with unused minutes
Major business hubs
Per-minute rates to landlines and mobiles. No connection fees added on top.
| Country | Landline | Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 United States | $0.07/min | $0.07/min |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | $0.03/min | $0.03/min |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | $0.27/min | $0.27/min |
| 🇮🇳 India | $0.24/min | $0.24/min |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | $0.07/min | $0.07/min |
| 🇸🇬 Singapore | $0.17/min | $0.17/min |
| 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates | $0.48/min | $0.48/min |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | $0.19/min | $0.19/min |
Sample rates. Full list of 200+ countries available in the app. Rates subject to change.
View all country ratesBusiness questions
Is call quality good enough for business use?
Yes. Telvio uses VoIP over a standard internet connection. On WiFi or 4G/5G, call quality is comparable to a regular phone call. For the best results, use a stable WiFi connection rather than public hotspots.
Can I use Telvio as a business expense?
Yes. Telvio purchases are made through the App Store or Google Play, which provide receipts. Whether these qualify as business expenses depends on your jurisdiction and tax situation — consult your accountant.
Is there a dedicated business plan with invoicing?
Currently, Telvio offers personal minute packages only. Purchases are processed through Apple or Google app stores. For bulk invoicing or team accounts, contact support to discuss your needs.
Does my caller ID show when I call clients?
Caller ID behavior depends on the receiving carrier. In many cases, the call shows as an international number. Some carriers display the number, others may show "Unknown" or "Private." This is a limitation of how VoIP calls are delivered to the public telephone network.
Can I use Telvio for conference calls?
Telvio supports standard one-on-one calls. For multi-party conference calls, use a dedicated conferencing service and dial in using Telvio to connect to international participants.
What happens if my call drops mid-conversation?
You are only billed for the seconds the call was connected. If a call drops due to a poor connection, simply redial. The per-second billing means you never pay for time you didn't use.
Pay only when you call
Download Telvio free. Test the quality with your included first minute, then pay only for what you use.
Download TelvioWhere international calling costs a small business money
Not in the per-minute rate. In three structural things that a procurement comparison rarely captures: minutes billed but not talked, allowances paid for and not used, and calls that fail and have to be made twice.
Minutes billed but not talked is rounding. A support team making forty short calls a day on a per-minute biller pays for roughly a third more time than it uses, every day, permanently. That is a larger number than any rate negotiation is likely to recover.
Allowances paid for and not used is the shape of most business telephony pricing: a monthly bundle sized for the busiest month. If your international volume is seasonal — and for most small businesses it is — the bundle is dead money in the quiet months.
Calls that fail is the least visible and the most annoying. A number stored in local format, a trunk prefix left in, a wrong country code that connects to the wrong country: each costs a call, a callback and a small amount of credibility with whoever was waiting.
Pay-as-you-go against a business plan
| When a plan wins | Predictable, high, sustained volume to a small number of destinations, plus a need for numbers your customers can call you on, call queues, and centralised administration. That is a telephony system, and it is a different purchase. |
|---|---|
| When credit wins | Occasional or seasonal calls, a long tail of destinations, a small team, and no requirement to receive calls. Paying per second for what you use has no floor, no commitment and nothing to forecast. |
| The hybrid most small teams actually run | A normal domestic phone system, plus credit for the international long tail. The bundle covers what is predictable; credit covers everything else without a second contract. |
| What to check either way | The billing increment, any connection fee, whether unused allowance or credit expires, and what happens when you exceed the bundle. Overage rates on business plans are frequently several times the in-bundle rate. |
Making the calls land
- Store every number in E.164. Plus sign, country code, no punctuation, no trunk prefix. It is the only unambiguous form, it dials from anywhere, and it deduplicates correctly in a CRM. A contact database in mixed local formats is a permanent source of failed calls.
- Validate on entry, not on dial. A number with a digit missing is a data-entry error, and it is far cheaper to catch it in the form than in a sales call. The validator shows what the check involves.
- Know the line type before you dial. In most countries reaching a mobile costs several times reaching a landline. Where a contact record has both, the default should be the cheaper one.
- Schedule against the destination clock. Mid-morning local, Tuesday to Thursday, has the highest answer rate almost everywhere. A call that reaches voicemail costs the connection and achieves nothing.
- Fix the audio once. Headsets, not laptop microphones, and a wired connection where the work is calls. It is the cheapest quality improvement available and nobody does it until a customer complains.
What this is not
Telvio places outgoing calls. It does not issue business numbers, run a call queue, record calls for compliance, or integrate with a CRM. If those are requirements, what you need is a hosted telephony platform and this is not it — saying so is more useful than a feature comparison that implies otherwise.
What it does do is cover the international long tail cheaply and without a contract, which is the part of a small company's calling that a telephony platform prices worst. Many teams run both for exactly that reason.
It also cannot reach emergency services, which is true of every internet calling application and matters for a workplace: a business phone arrangement needs a route to emergency services that does not depend on the internet.
Bottom line
International calling costs a small business money in three places the rate card does not show: minutes rounded up and billed, bundle allowances paid for and unused, and calls that fail because a number was stored in local format.
Pay-as-you-go credit fits an occasional or seasonal long tail; a business plan fits predictable volume plus incoming numbers and queues. Most small teams end up running both, because the two cover different halves of the problem.
Frequently asked questions
Is pay-as-you-go or a business plan cheaper for international calls?
It depends on predictability. A plan wins on sustained high volume to a few destinations and when you also need incoming numbers and queues. Credit wins on occasional or seasonal calling across a long tail of countries, because there is no allowance to under-use and no commitment to forecast.
Why does per-second billing matter for a business?
Because business calls are often short. A team making forty brief calls a day on a per-minute biller pays for roughly a third more time than it uses, every day. That recurring overpayment is usually larger than anything a rate negotiation would recover.
How should we store phone numbers in a CRM?
In E.164: plus sign, country code, national number, no spaces or punctuation and no trunk prefix. It is the only unambiguous form, it dials correctly from any country, and it deduplicates properly. Format for display, but store one canonical form.
Can Telvio give our business a phone number?
No. Telvio places outgoing calls and does not issue incoming numbers, run call queues or record calls. Those are hosted-telephony features; many small teams run a telephony platform for the predictable part of their calling and credit for the international long tail.
What is the best time to call a business abroad?
Mid-morning in their local time, Tuesday to Thursday, has the highest answer rate in almost every market. Avoid the first hour, the lunch hour and the last hour of the working day, and remember the weekend is Friday–Saturday in much of the Gulf and Sunday–Thursday in Israel.
Can we use an internet calling app for emergency calls?
No. No internet calling application can reach emergency services reliably, so a workplace needs a route to them that does not depend on the internet connection. That is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions as well as a practical one.
