Being able to look at several size options quickly and compare bang for the buck will help save time in the end. We wanted to evaluate the services to see what was out there and find out how useful the information really is. We found that there are different ways of getting this information, and there are a wide variety of services that can be priced. Pricing is an important issue when you are planning to buy services. The final price depends greatly on the carrier salesperson and how generous he or she is.
Larger customers can negotiate better deals than smaller customers.
Therefore, unless you're dealing with someone who can guarantee the price, it's best to use these numbers only as an estimate. Each service has its own way of doing things, which made it tricky to create a test that was fair to all three pricing tools. Our goal was to determine which service gave the best information without sacrificing ease of use. For our test, it was important to see how quickly we could create different scenarios for bandwidth requirements and connection sites. We ranked the three services on the types of circuits that can be priced, ease of use, flexibility, the support available, and the quality of reports generated.