Voxer focuses on enterprise, brings push-to-talk app to the Web

Voxer, which has started to shift its focus from providing a free, network-agnostic push-to-talk app to being a communications provider for businesses, accelerated that push Tuesday by introducing a Web-based client for its service.

With enterprise adoption booming, this summer Voxer introduced two professional-grade apps. Voxer Pro, priced at $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year, added new features like Live Interrupt Mode, allowing users to hear chats outside of the app, and Extreme Notifications--i.e., shrill, repetitive alerts. The company's Voxer Business service offers IT managers administrative controls and private network communications support alongside headset integration and real-time maps with geo-tagged employee location data. Voxer Business is priced at $4.95 per month per user.

The new Voxer for Web service is aimed at the Voxer Business user base, and specifically at vertical markets that have a history of using PTT, such as transportation, construction, hospitality, logistics and public safety, according to Irv Remedios, Voxer's head of product. From working with transportation companies, Voxer learned that dispatchers needed to use the app in a stationary, in-office environment in which the mobile phone wasn't a particularly useful tool, he said.

The Voxer for Web service will be able to send messages out to one or many employees at the same time, use live and messaged audio, send and receive images and text messages and use team chat capabilities--all from users' desktops. Users can now have access to multiple team chats on one screen, listen to multiple chats in real time and use headsets.

"We think the Web product scales well beyond that really into any environment where someone needs to communicate to people outside the office from their desk within the office," Remedios said.

Remedios declined to say how many Voxer Business customers the company has signed up since the service went live this summer but he noted that around 20 percent of the company's user base was using its free app in a business capacity already.

Voxer said that Web client will cost $4.95 per user per month for Voxer Business users and will increase to $9.95 per user per month starting Jan. 1. For existing customers and those who sign up prior to Dec. 31, pricing will remain at $4.95 per user per month until Oct. 31, 2014.

The free Voxer Walkie-Talkie application expands on traditional PTT by offering voice communications that are simultaneously live and recorded, enabling users to respond to messages in the moment or at their convenience. Voxer--available for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS, Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android and Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone--operates across any Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G, 4G or Edge network worldwide. Since going live in 2011, the app has attracted tens of millions of users worldwide, including employees in 80 percent of the Fortune 1000, and raised $30 million in funding from investors including Institutional Venture Partners, Intel Capital, SV Angel and CrunchFund.

For more:
- see this release
- see this TechCrunch article
- see this The Next Web article

Developer Workshop: How Voxer is pushing push-to-talk apps into the future

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