Why per-minute faces punish a busy day

Hosted by Mrs. NetShow.

Every business owner wants a busy day. More people through the door, more visitors on the website, more questions from people who are close to buying. A busy day is the day the work pays off.

Now put a talking face on your website, and bill that face by the minute. Something strange happens. Your best day becomes your most expensive day for the face. The busier you get, the faster the meter runs.

This post is about that trap, and about the way NetShow avoids it. Our faces cost $0 a minute to keep on screen, on a quiet day and on a packed one.

How a per-minute face is billed

Many talking faces are streamed. A server draws every frame and sends it down the wire, like a video call. That server is working for as long as the face is on screen, so the face is billed by the minute, or by the second.

Hosted-avatar vendors say this plainly on their own public pages. Our live avatars page links to their own words, with sources, so you can read them for yourself. One vendor's help page puts its rule in one line: "Agent pricing is based on the Agent's speaking time."

A meter like that is easy to understand on a slow day. It gets harder on a busy one.

Why the busy hour costs the most

Think about what a busy hour looks like. More people arrive at once. More of them stay to ask a second question. Some of them leave the page open while they think it over.

With a per-minute face, each of those minutes lands on the bill. The visitor who stays longest, often the one most interested, runs the meter the longest. The hour you worked hardest to fill is the hour the face costs you most.

The same vendor's help page describes what happens at zero credits: "the Agent will stop responding until more credits are available." So a busy day can do more than raise the bill. If the credits run out, the face can go quiet at the very moment people are asking.

What owners do to protect the bill

When a face is billed by the minute, owners start to ration it. They show it only on one page. They hide it after a short visit. They switch it off at busy times to keep the cost down. Each of those choices means fewer visitors get a greeting.

Rationing makes sense when every minute has a price. The better fix is a face that has no per-minute price at all.

How a NetShow face is drawn instead

A NetShow face is not streamed from a server. Our live avatars page explains it in one sentence: "The avatar is drawn by your visitor's own browser instead of streamed from a server, so an hour on screen costs what a minute costs: nothing."

Each visitor's own phone or computer draws the face they see. A quiet hour and a busy hour cost the face the same, and that cost is nothing. The visitor who stays longest does not run up a meter, because there is no meter on the face.

That changes what a busy day means. You can let the face greet every visitor on every page. You can leave it open on long visits. You can even put it full screen on a TV, a kiosk or a projector, "still $0 a minute however long it runs."

What a busy day still uses

Being exact matters here. The face is free to keep on screen. The thinking behind it is not. "You pay for your agent's thinking on your plan, never for its face being visible."

So on a busy day, your agent does more work, because more people ask questions. That work runs on your plan, shown plainly on the plans page. What does not grow with the minutes is the face itself.

NetShow faces are voice-first and hands-free, and they speak first. The microphone opens only when a visitor presses Talk, and the browser asks for permission first.

FAQ

Is a NetShow face billed by the minute?

No. The face is drawn by your visitor's own browser instead of streamed from a server, so there is no per-minute meter on it.

Does a busy day cost me more for the face?

No. A quiet hour and a busy hour cost the face the same: nothing.

What does grow on a busy day?

Your agent's thinking. What your agent thinks and says runs on your plan, and the plans page shows it plainly.

Where can I read what other vendors say about their billing?

Our live avatars page links to hosted-avatar vendors' own words, read from their public pages, with sources.

Let the busy day stay a good day

A busy day should feel like a good day, for you and for your visitors. Our live avatars page shows the face that has no per-minute meter, the eight looks, the voices and the full reason it costs $0 a minute. It also shows two ways to get yours: build it yourself on a plan, or let our team set it up, teach it your business and put it on your site. Meet the host there and press Talk to ask it anything.