Key takeaways
- Power Dial places one call per rep and starts the next one after wrap-up and a fixed 5-second countdown.
- Retries are off by default; switching Retry unanswered contacts on sets 3 attempts, with a maximum of 20.
- Default retry waits are 4 hours after No answer and 24 hours after Voicemail; Other has no default.
- A claimed contact is released to the team after 5 minutes without a heartbeat from the rep’s Dialer.
- Seats are $5 a month or $49 a year with no long-term contract; a cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period.
Power Dial: what it does for your team
- More conversations per hour
- No copying numbers, no hunting for the next row in a spreadsheet. The queue hands each rep the next contact once the last call is wrapped up, after a five-second countdown the rep can skip.
- Every call gets an outcome
- Power Dial waits for wrap-up. A rep picks an outcome (and notes or a callback time) before the next call starts, so your reporting is complete by design.
- Nobody hears dead air
- Because it dials one number per rep and only after the rep is ready, a lead who answers always reaches a person who knows who they are calling.
Power Dial, step by step
Open a list in the Dialer
Pick a contact list or the due follow-ups queue and leave Power dial switched on; it is on by default in every browser tab.
Start, then talk
A five-second countdown runs before each call. Cancel it, skip to the next contact, or choose Dial now. The talk track and the contact’s details stay on screen while you talk.
Wrap up
Hang up and choose one of your outcome buttons with a click or the number keys. Add notes, or a date and time if the lead asked for a callback, and press Enter.
The next contact is claimed
Due callbacks come first, then contacts in import order. Contacts outside the list’s calling hours, Do Not Call leads and retries that are not due yet are skipped.
What it does not do
Plain limits, so you can decide before you sign up.
- Power Dial is sequential: one call per rep at a time. It is not a predictive dialer, and it does no parallel or multi-line dialing.
- Answering machine detection is off by default; when on, a detected greeting lets the rep leave a live voicemail or skip, and Rapidialer never plays a recorded voicemail.
- The five-second countdown is fixed, and Power Dial runs in the web dialer, not in the Chrome extension keypad.
Can several reps power-dial the same list?
Yes. Each contact is claimed by one rep at a time, so reps can share a list without double-dialing anyone. A claim stays alive while the rep’s Dialer is open and is released after five minutes without a heartbeat, so a closed laptop never locks a contact for good.
Skipping behaves differently by queue: a skipped list contact is set aside for good, while a skipped follow-up is snoozed for an hour and comes back.
How do retries work in Power Dial?
Retries put an unanswered contact back in the queue after a wait you choose, instead of closing it after one try. Open the list, choose Settings, then the Dialing rules tab, and switch on Retry unanswered contacts.
Switching it on sets Max attempts per contact to 3, and you can raise it to 20. Each retryable outcome has its own “retry after (hours)” box: No answer starts at 4 hours, Voicemail at 24, and Other is blank, which means “Don’t retry”. Waits go in half-hour steps. The count includes the first dial, so with 3 attempts a contact rings at most three times.
Only those three outcomes bring a contact back; Callback becomes a follow-up and every other outcome closes the contact. Deciding how many times to call a lead is up to you.
How many calls an hour can a rep make with Power Dial?
The number depends on how many calls connect, because conversations take the time, not the dialing. An unanswered call rings for up to 30 seconds, which is Twilio’s default dial timeout and one Rapidialer does not change (Twilio Dial docs). Add a keypress to log No answer and the 5-second countdown, and each miss costs about 40 seconds.
Run the arithmetic for one hour. Five conversations of about four minutes, each with a minute of notes, take 25 minutes. The other 35 minutes, at about 40 seconds per unanswered attempt, fit roughly 52 more dials, so the rep makes about 57 dials. Voicemails left live take longer than a miss. Use this to plan how many cold calls per day a rep can make on your lists, and treat it as a worked example, not a benchmark.
Do you need a CRM to auto dial a list?
No. Upload a CSV of up to 5,000 rows per file into a list and Power Dial works through it; every contact you call becomes a lead in Rapidialer’s built-in lead pipeline, with its calls, notes and stage. If the list lives in Google Sheets, export it as a CSV first; the steps to power dial a spreadsheet are otherwise the same.
If you do use HubSpot, Rapidialer can import HubSpot contacts into a calling list and log each call on the matching HubSpot contact. Other CRMs connect through signed webhooks (via Zapier, Make or n8n), the REST API, or a CSV export of leads.
Is Power Dial an auto dialer?
Power Dial is outbound dialer software of the sequential kind: it dials from a list for you, but only one number per rep and only once the rep is ready. “Auto dialer” is used loosely for any software that dials from a list, including predictive systems that ring several lines per agent, so it helps to know what an auto dialer is before comparing tools. Power Dial never dials ahead of the rep.
Start a Power Dial session
Open a list, go to its contacts and press Start dialing. To work callbacks instead, choose Dial due follow-ups from the command palette (Ctrl+K or ⌘K). The Dialer opens with Power dial ticked: press Load contact to claim your first lead, read the card, then press Start.
From then on you never press Start again. Each time you save a wrap-up, the next contact is claimed and the hint reads “Dialing in 5…” while the countdown runs. Every lead starts from a CSV upload, so the queue is only as clean as the file you import.
- Cancel stops the countdown and keeps the contact loaded, so you can read their notes and press Start when you are ready.
- Skip sets the contact aside and loads the next one.
- End session releases the contact you hold, so a teammate’s Dialer can claim it.
Why did the Dialer stop loading contacts?
The Dialer always says why it stopped. Each message points to a setting or a wait:
- “Everyone left is waiting for a retry”, with the time of the next one: wait, or shorten the retry delay in the list’s Dialing rules.
- “Remaining contacts are outside this list’s calling hours”: they come back as each contact’s local window opens.
- “No more callable contacts in this list.”: every contact has been completed, skipped or marked Do Not Call.
- “Save the last call result before dialing again.”: the previous call still needs an outcome, so finish wrap-up and press Enter.
- “Lead is on DND. Loading next…”: Power Dial passes a Do Not Call number and claims the next contact.
- “Your free trial has ended. Upgrade seats on Billing to continue dialing.”: an owner or admin needs to add seats before anyone can dial.
What does power dialing cost for a 3-rep or a 10-rep team?
A 3-rep team pays about $79.95 a month and a 10-rep team about $266.50, assuming each rep bills about 1,000 minutes a month (about 50 a day on 20 working days). Rapidialer is $5 per seat a month, and Twilio bills calls separately on your own account.
For three reps the Rapidialer line is $15. Twilio adds $42 for 3,000 outbound minutes at $0.0140, $12 for the browser leg at $0.0040, $7.50 for recording at $0.0025 a minute, and $3.45 for three local numbers at $1.15 each (Twilio voice pricing). Ten reps scale the same lines to $50, $140, $40, $25 and $11.50.
Usage is the larger share, so your bill follows talk time more than headcount. Short, unanswered calls can add Twilio surcharges, which the cost per dial breakdown explains.
Can you get a power dialer with no contract?
Yes. Rapidialer has no long-term contract: seats are billed monthly at $5 per seat or yearly at $49 per seat, and a cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for. On the monthly plan that makes it a month-to-month power dialer, and seat changes are prorated when reps join or leave.
The 14-day free trial covers one seat and needs no credit card. Twilio bills your calls and numbers on your own account, so ending a Rapidialer subscription leaves your numbers and recordings where they are. The Rapidialer pricing page has the plan details, and our guide to power dialer pricing and contracts compares the terms other dialers ask for.
Who is Power Dial not for?
Power Dial is the wrong tool when the goal is raw dial volume and you accept that some answered calls hear a pause or a drop. Teams that want to ring several numbers per rep at once need a multi-line dialer, and they take on the abandoned-call limits that come with it. Under the FCC’s rules, a telemarketing campaign may abandon no more than 3% of answered calls over a 30-day period (47 CFR 64.1200(a)(7)). This is general information, not legal advice.
Features that work alongside it
- Call outcomesCall dispositions in one click, with custom outcome buttons that can move a lead to a pipeline stage.
- Calling hoursPer-list calling windows checked in each contact’s own time zone.
- Follow-upsCall, email and to-do follow-ups, with a queue that power-dials the calls that are due.
- Call scriptsStaged talk tracks on screen during every call, with merge fields for contact, company and last notes.
Power Dial: questions and answers
Is Power Dial a predictive dialer?
No. A predictive dialer calls several numbers per available agent and drops or queues the extras; Power Dial calls one number per rep, only after the rep has wrapped up. See power dialer vs predictive dialer for the difference.
Can I turn Power Dial off?
Yes. Untick Power dial in the Dialer and Rapidialer loads the next contact without calling it, so you can read the lead’s notes and press Call yourself. Working that way is preview dialing, and it suits high-value accounts where research before each call matters more than pace.
What happens to callbacks?
When a rep picks the Callback outcome, Rapidialer creates a follow-up at the time the lead asked for. Due callbacks jump to the front of the list queue, and call follow-ups can be power-dialed from the follow-ups queue.
Does Power Dial work with my own Twilio numbers?
Yes. Every Power Dial call goes out through your connected Twilio account and is billed there. The caller ID is a number you own: a line the rep picks, a local caller ID that matches the lead’s area code when local presence is on, the rep’s assigned line, or your default number, in that order. Twilio Verified Caller IDs cannot be used: Rapidialer syncs only numbers bought or ported into your Twilio account.
How many times will Power Dial call the same contact?
Power Dial calls a contact once, unless the list has retry rules. Turn on Retry unanswered contacts in the list’s Dialing rules and the attempts default to three (you can set up to 20). Only No answer, Voicemail and Other bring a contact back. Callback turns it into a follow-up, and every other outcome closes it.
Which keyboard shortcuts work during Power Dial?
In wrap-up, the number keys 1 to 9 pick the first nine outcome buttons, and Enter saves the wrap-up, which starts the next countdown when Power dial is on. In the notes box, press Ctrl+Enter or ⌘+Enter to save. While a talk track is loaded, the left and right arrow keys move between its stages.
What does an hour of power dialing cost?
Rapidialer is $5 per seat a month, or $49 per seat a year, and Twilio bills calls separately on your account. An outbound call to a US number is $0.0140 a minute plus $0.0040 for the browser leg, with partial minutes rounded up (Twilio voice pricing). To see a monthly figure for your team, estimate your Twilio bill with your own call volume.