Voip Recommendations

[chippy348]

Looking to replace our old clicking phone system and Voip keeps coming up.

To be honest it looks a mind field of "call us for pricing" or super dooper CRM / Video calling, tablet systems, cloud V no cloud ETC

Just want 6 + desktop phones sets on 2 phone lines.

Any PH deal in such stuff

[akirk]

we have used voipfone for many years - never had an issue, they are very helpful and their control panel is good - currently run our business on their systems

[48k]

Another vote for Voipfone here. Cheap and "just works".

[EViS]

Another vote for voipfone. Been with them for a decade now and they've been faultless.

[megaphone]

chippy348 said:

Just want 6 + desktop phones sets on 2 phone lines.

Any PH deal in such stuff

It doesn't work like that. You pay per user/per phone. So in your case you'll pay for 6 users. Each will have it's own 'line' and can have a dedicated number if you want, of course you can set them up to work on your existing main number. Cost is anywhere between £10-£20 per user per month, depending on call packages and if you buy or rent the phones.

[trickywoo]

I’m with BT Cloud and it’s been pretty good. The attraction for me with BT was the ability to keep my number if I change providers.

At the time I did it which is probably 4 years ago not all voip providers were then able to guarantee they could let me keep my number.

May have changed now but worth checking if that is important to you.

[akirk]

trickywoo said:

I’m with BT Cloud and it’s been pretty good. The attraction for me with BT was the ability to keep my number if I change providers.

At the time I did it which is probably 4 years ago not all voip providers were then able to guarantee they could let me keep my number.

May have changed now but worth checking if that is important to you.

I ported my BT number to voipfone...

[skwdenyer]

megaphone said:

chippy348 said:

Just want 6 + desktop phones sets on 2 phone lines.

Any PH deal in such stuff

It doesn't work like that. You pay per user/per phone. So in your case you'll pay for 6 users. Each will have it's own 'line' and can have a dedicated number if you want, of course you can set them up to work on your existing main number. Cost is anywhere between £10-£20 per user per month, depending on call packages and if you buy or rent the phones.

In fairness, it can "work like that" in the sense that you can have a "PBX" on your premises connected to a VOIP provider via a SIP trunk. But for 6 desktop phones it is unlikely to be worth the cost or hassle.

The key thing is bandwidth - availability and stability. You'll ideally want a router capable of reserving sufficient bandwidth (upstream as well as down) to maintain call quality, and of course a decent broadband connection.

I've used Voiphone and Gradwell in the past. Based on current experience and others' reviews, I'd choose the former right now.

[Badvok]

We use yay.com really good control panel and extremely good pricing ( got a better deal than posted web pricing )

30 day contract, free mobile app, works in chrome - brilliant!

[morrisk1]

soho66 here, with 4x Grandsteam handsets. As others have said, make sure you've got a good connection, particularly upload speed.

[PT88]

Vonage and their app has been extremely good for us during the pandemic.

The ability to have the 'office' on your mobile has created great flexibility. call recording, messaging system etc... lots of functions.

[trickywoo]

akirk said:

trickywoo said:

I’m with BT Cloud and it’s been pretty good. The attraction for me with BT was the ability to keep my number if I change providers.

At the time I did it which is probably 4 years ago not all voip providers were then able to guarantee they could let me keep my number.

May have changed now but worth checking if that is important to you.

I ported my BT number to voipfone...

Yes - that way has never been a problem. Its porting it again that was / is an issue for some providers.

[chippy348]

Thanks all,
Went with voipfone after the recommendations, purchased 2 phones to test, plugged them in and we are off making calls using there test number, going to get it all set up with 4 more phones and then port over the numbers.

[VEX]

How easy is it to run voip in my mobile?

I am bringing someone on who isn’t office based, but transferring between home and mobile base would be a big advantage.

V

[S6PNJ]

Should be easy. I use Zoiper on my mobile on an ad-hoc basis over WiFi or GSM data. It's a free app so give it a try.

[48k]

VEX said:

How easy is it to run voip in my mobile?

I am bringing someone on who isn’t office based, but transferring between home and mobile base would be a big advantage.

V

Very easy. Plenty of apps available. Voipfone's app has a "geodivert" feature so when you move out of range of your office network it automatically diverts calls to your mobile, and undiverts them back to the desk phones when you are back in range. I'm sure other apps have similar functionality.

[itsnotarace]

Number portability is available from all UK telecoms providers, stated under Ofcom regs

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-inter...

And yes plenty of softphones (software based phones) available. If you have Microsoft subscription based services you can use MS Teams as a softphone and they have a PBX system available for Office based users and integrates with Office365 etc

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/wh...

[dirky dirk]

We have Panasonic ones i think,

but with working form home they have all peen ported to a Panasonic app on our own mobiles

im not sure if you have to pay for licences for the original phones or not, but i cant imagine we will be getting them back if we can use our own and an app

[anonymous-user]

During the early days of lockdown number porting was temporarily suspended, caught a lot of businesses out who had delayed looking at Voip until they had to. It is back to normal for now.

3cx offer a free basic SIP soft pbx and mobile/desktop app that works fine on mobile networks. You just need somewhere to host it (a linux box will do) and the sip trunk/channels from a telco.

[anonymous-user]

Avoid Tariff audit/telecoms audit or whatever they call themselves this week. Random £1000 charges for things and a verbal 5 year contract that they charge you for should you question anything. (Rude and arrogant too)

We use Xinix world have been excellent for the 2 years we have been with them. Prior to that we used Vonage for around 12 years which works fine until it doesn't. When it doesn't support is tragic.