Review by Lenagainster 
UPDATED: 71 days ago
member for 3.6 years, 914 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Silver Spring,Montgomery,MD
 $16 per month (month by month)
 about 7 days
 "Total Control over your phone"
 "none so far"
 "Best value for the buck"
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Update 6/10/08 Still reliable. Wondering why there are so few recent reviews of VoicePulse; is it because few have anything to complain about? Are users so satisfied, they wouldn't even consider anything else? Why has VP lost it's gold star award on the BBR chart, yet is still one of the top VoIP providers? Insufficient recent reviews? Perhaps this bump will help. I look at all the other providers all the time, especially the top rated ones, to see why some are praised so lavishly, and IMHO, none of them provide the outstanding set of features for the price that VoicePulse does.
Update 3/24/08 Coming up on 15 months with VoicePulse and nothing to complain about. Service has been absolutely reliable and we rarely think about this being a VoIP and not a landline. Hardly ever get a sales call, because whenever a telemarketer call comes in, a filter is created for that number telling the caller that our number is not in service. No mis-dialed calls waking us up in the middle of the night with the scheduled Do Not Disturb in effect. No more guessing who is calling from a cell phone that does not transmit the Caller Name; our VoicePulse Contacts list provides the name as we have programmed it. We hardly ever have to dial a complete number, with our 99 speed dials from VP. And the bill for this fantastic service is still under $16 per month. Can't be more pleased.
Update 7/16/07 Six months with VoicePulse and the service has been stellar. Not even a problem when the credit card I use for my VP billing was reported lost and I forgot to change to the new card number on my VP account. Just got a friendly email from VP that the charge wouldn't go through. Changed the information in my account, called VP, and the bill was reprocessed and went through. I'm even bumping my rating of the website up a notch, because of its simplicity, it loads fast and I have learned to navigate around quickly. The filters are doing the job of blocking unwanted callers and we never get disturbed by late evening callers and wrong numbers with the Do Not Disturb feature. The local plus 200 plan has proved adequate for us, as we have never approached the 200 free minutes for Long Distance. VoicePulse is a keeper.
Update 4/15/07 I realize that this review is entirely too long, especially for those who are trying to get an idea of the quality of VoicePulse from many reviews. So let me state that after three months, the service has been exceptional and we couldn't be happier. In the lengthy review, I mentioned that there was a problem with the volume on one of the cordless phones in the house, and the VP techs helped me adjust the volume settings in the TA to compensate. I have since found that by replacing the mishmash of different types of wiring to the phone jacks in the house (TV flat lead, twisted pairs, zip cord) with all standard phone wiring, the volume issue disappeared and I have reset the volume settings in the TA to 0 in and 0 out. And finally, I would like to mention that the nemesis of telemarketers has virtually disappeared. During the past three months, whenever I got a telemarketer, I would block the number with the "Not In Service" tone and message. In recent weeks, I have not received any calls or attempted calls from telemarketers. This service is fantastic!
Original Review:
Note: originally I had planned to wait about six months before writing a review of VoicePulse, so that I had time to test out all the features extensively, and get a good feel for the long term reliability of the service. However, due to a recent rash of rants that have skewed the rankings of the various VoIPs, I felt compelled to write this review after only one full month of using VoicePulse. I still intend to rate VoicePulse as honestly and objectively as possible, and will update this review as necessary.
Without telling my age, I had phone service when we still had to pick up the receiver and tell the operator what number we wanted to call. It was a relief to get a rotary dial phone and be able to make local calls without going through an operator. Long distance was another story, and we rarely made those expensive calls. Enter touch tone dialing, but I still don't understand why they put the numbers on the dial pad opposite from the way they are on a calculator. Finally, we could own our phones and not rent each one forever. Ahh! Cordless phones with a 12 inch antenna. But keep a corded phone plugged in at all times, Ma Bell warned, so you don't miss a call. Answering machines with 8 minutes of tape. Caller ID and no more kids calling with phone pranks. Caller ID with Name! A smörgåsbord whereby Ma Bell was milking us dry. The privacy conflict resolved with the ability to block our phone number and the ability to block anonymous calls. The Do Not Call list and all the incessant telemarketing that we endured before it was enacted.
And all this time, I wished I had the ability to control my phone, the service I pay for, the way I wanted and not the way Ma Bell or Bell Atlantic or Verizon saw fit. I pay for the service, the taxes, the fees. I buy my own phones. I don't want my line open for anyone in the world to ring my phones any time they feel like it. I had begun to wonder if there was some way I could create a computer program that could filter calls much the way that programs filter spam out of emails. Could I create a “pass” filter that would only allow numbers on a call list to ring my phone, and send all the others to the answering machine? Could I just permanently block some numbers? I'm sick of my phone ringing in the middle of dinner from a telemarketer.
Then I found VoicePulse. The founders, Ravi Sakaria and Ketan Patel, must have been reading my mind. They created a phone service that allows the USER to control their phone, not the phone company. By providing such features as unlimited filtering, call blocking, telemarketer blocking, anonymous call rejection, Do Not Disturb and incoming Caller ID customization, I now have control over who can call me and when they are allowed to call. These feature, IMO, make VoicePulse stand significantly ahead of the many VoIPs there are to choose from.
I signed up online with VoicePulse on 1/09. Let me say that the signup form needs some work. I had 15 minutes to complete the application and could not fill out the five pages in the time allotted. (I was able to do it the second time around) I had problems filling out phone numbers in the format that VP wanted, and had to do it over several times. They showed me a list of phone numbers from which to choose a temporary one, and I spent too much time trying to find one that was easy to remember. And on the very last page, there was a statement to make sure my router supported DHCP addressing. I had absolutely no idea what that meant, and in the middle of a mad scramble to find my router's manual, I got bumped. Scared me a bit, because at that point, VP had my credit card information and I had no verification that I signed up. So I went through the process a second time and saw that the number I had chosen was still available, and figured my first attempt went nowhere. If I had to do it all over again, I think I would start the application until I got to the page where I had a list of numbers to choose from, write down the number I wanted, and then quit the application, and call VoicePulse, apply over the phone and ask for the number that was offered online. Some have commented that VoicePulse's website is rudimentary but I like it because it loads fast, is easy to navigate, and does not have a lot of extraneous clutter on the pages.
Seeing that VoicePulse's “local” calling area includes my entire state (MD), DC and northern VA, there was little need for an unlimited long distance plan, so I chose the $14.99 plan. The 200 minutes per month of free long distance is more than adequate for my needs. At 3.9 cents per minute for long distance calls over the 200 minute allotment, I figured I could use up to 456 minutes per month of long distance without paying more than the $24.99 unlimited LD plan. However, in the fine print, forwarded calls, even those that are forwarded to one's cell phone if the service or the ISP is down, cost 3.9 cpm with no allowance. If I start running my bill up to $25, I may switch to the unlimited LD plan just to take advantage of the call forwarding without worrying about cost.
My account was set up with the number I had chosen on my application, and the telephone adapter (Linksys) arrived four business days later. I plugged it in behind the router, and after less than a minute of blinking lights, it stabilized and I could get a dial tone and start making calls.
My first encounter with tech support came when I discovered that on one of the six phones in the house, callers could not hear me. The other phones worked fine. The rep showed me how to access the settings in the telephone adapter and change the outgoing volume setting so that all phones worked satisfactorily. Problem solved. Another problem was the result of user error, and a quick call to tech support got it straightened out. Was I just lucky or what? There was no waiting either time to talk to a VoicePulse rep.
Let me cover first the features that attracted me to VoicePulse. Anonymous Call Blocking. I enabled that feature immediately. Callers without Caller ID information do not get through. VP also offers Anonymous Call blocking with prompting. This will allow an anonymous caller a chance to enter a phone number and you can then accept or reject the call. I have not tried this feature because I am just too hard nosed and if you block your Caller ID, then don't bother me.
Telemarketer block. This feature allows one to put a tone on the line that indicates to automated dialing systems that the number is not in service. One can enable telemarketing block on just anonymous calls or on all calls. I do not use this feature. If the call is anonymous, my anonymous call blocker stops it from ringing my phone. I do not want to have everyone who calls me be subject to the obnoxious not-in-service tones. So the telemarketer get through the first time and then I block that number with a filter.
Filters. One can route calls in many different ways using filters, but my primary use is to block the number of every telemarketer from ever ringing my phone a second time. They get a not-in-service tone and cannot get through on that number again. One can use filters to send certain callers directly to voicemail, to always forward certain callers to one's cellphone, to allow certain callers to bypass Do Not Disturb, or to send them to a “humorous rejection hotline”. Filters are the best feature a phone ever had.
Do Not Disturb. One can set a scheduled Do Not Disturb for an uninterrupted night's sleep, or set it for a short time for a quiet dinner without phone calls. Once Do Not Disturb has been set up in the online account, it can be enabled or disabled from any phone in the house. In an emergency (or if they are just plain rude), callers can get through when Do Not Disturb is in effect by dialing a 3.
Many other of VoicePulse's features just make the deal sweeter. Of course, they have Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, and Voicemail. In addition to the stutter tone on the line when there is a voicemail message, one can opt to receive an email as a reminder. If a blocked caller attempts to call again, one can opt to receive an email to indicate the event. Blocked callers show up on the call log, but their calls do not go through.
One can customize what shows up on their Caller ID when someone on their contact list calls. If Harry calls from his home number, you can set the Caller ID to show Harry at Home, whereas if he calls from his cellphone, you could have your Caller ID show Harry on cell.
Speed dialing. In addition to allowing 7 digit (for same area code calls), 10 digit or 11 digit dialing, one can set up 99 speed dials. To call someone on the speed dial list, just hit one or two digits followed by the # sign. While there is a three second delay with 7 digit dialing (how else will the system know if you are calling a 7 digit number or a ten digit number?), speed dialing is, as its name implies, fast.
VoicePulse may not transmit your name, only your number, to the Caller ID of the person you are calling, if that person's phone company does not subscribe to the CID database that VP uses. My personal feeling is that I would prefer to have my name sent, but most of our friends can either recognize our number on their Caller ID, or have our number programmed into their phones, whereby the name under which our number is programmed shows up. As far as incoming calls are concerned, most of our contacts are programmed in to VoicePulse's system, and we see their name on our Caller ID as we have programmed it.
There are a lot more features, all included for free with VoicePulse, and are fully explained on their website. What I have tried to cover are those features that really give the subscriber full control over their service and make VoicePulse an exceptional value.
Perhaps the most important feature of all is voice quality, and if VoicePulse was not outstanding in that category, it would make all the other features meaningless. The sound is clear in both directions. No echo, no static, no cross coupling of conversations. Unless we tell them, callers are not aware that we are using VoIP and not on a landline.
One month into VoicePulse and I am extremely pleased. And my joy increases when I get that bill on my credit card and think of what I would have been paying for a bare minimum landline with no control over who can call me.
3/1/07 Updated to make a correction regarding bypassing Do Not Disturb (dial 3 to get through, not 1)
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