Review by Mango 
UPDATED: 59 days ago
member for 331 days, 468 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Vancouver,BC
 $23 per month
 "Multiple servers, BYOD, great sound quality, PAYG, lots of configuration options, no echo."
 "Tech support is slower than competitors, but is improving."
 "A great VoIP provider with plenty of awesome (and free!) calling features."
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Latest edit: I haven't had to talk to technical support in weeks. I hesitate to say this for fear of jinxing things, but VoIP.ms could very possibly be the very first VoIP provider I've ever used that "just works".
Okay, back to the original review: Last month I spent $5.25 for my telephone service. In case you didn't get that, let me say it again: Last month I spent $5.25 for my telephone service. If you're after a breakdown of the costs, it went like this: I spent $1.99 on my telephone number (DID) and $3.26 for nearly five hours of calling all around North America. (Edit: I have updated the monthly cost above because I have ordered more DIDs and e911 since I originally wrote this review.)
Setup time was fast. And by "fast" I mean I had my IP phone online and making calls within literally a minute of my PayPal payment. They had to set up my DID manually but did it in less than an hour even though the site said it would take four.
VoIP.ms is a geek's dream. There are a seemingly endless array of configuration options that I can play with to my heart's content. It's all very well explained (easier to learn than Asterisk!) so that non-geeks should enjoy it too. There is no rating for features on this review, but if there were, I would rate TEN stars - I am not aware of any VoIP provider with features like Calling Queues and IVRs other than expensive hosted PBX providers. Some notable features are:
- CallerID Filtering - a very powerful feature that for some reason is not common amongst telephone providers. Now I can route those pesky telemarketers to »www.toao.net/pub/MangosTelemarke···pper.wav
- Recordings - you can upload a WAV file and route calls to it.
- Sub accounts - you may set up SIP credentials for multiple devices.
- Voicemail boxes - you may set up multiple voicemail boxes, with their own SIP addresses if you like. Good for setting up overlines/multi-line hunting.
- Ring groups - perfect for my dad who has an apartment overseas. He can set up his IP Phones to all use the same telephone number and same voicemail, in spite of the fact that the phones are thousands of miles away from each other.
- DIDs - you may order a theoretically unlimited number of DIDs from around the world, and also toll free. While the ability to order DIDs not in your local calling area is a feature of other VoIP providers, what stands out here is that I can route the DID to any sub account, voicemail box, or ring group that I want, with no interaction from tech support.
- Diagnostics - you can tell whether or not your extensions are registered, what IP they come from, and when the next registration is expected. My last two providers didn't have anything close to that. If you had a problem, you just had to guess at it.
The next thing that wowed me, after all the features, is that VoIP.ms has SEVEN severs around the United States, Canada, and even the UK - enough for a different server every day of the week if you like. I pinged all of the servers and picked the one with the lowest latency. Another reason that this is a bonus is that you can occasionally see packet loss to a specific server due to a routing issue. It's not your fault, it's not the VoIP provider's fault, and neither of you has the ability to fix it. But with VoIP.ms, you can simply switch to another server, using a simple process that should take the average user 30 seconds or less.
If that weren't enough, there's another advantage to having multiple servers. The American servers use American carriers and the Canadian servers use Canadian carriers. Often, Canadian toll-free numbers will only work in Canada and American toll-free numbers will only work in the USA. My calls are by default routed through US3. However, adding the following sequence to my dial plan allows me to route toll-free calls through CA1 if I dial 1-800, or US3 if I omit the 1.
18[6780][6780][2-9]xxxxxx<:@sip.ca1.voip.ms>S0
(This plan will also match some non-TF area codes such as 867, but that's fine.)
Some other nice things: I discovered is that there is no noticeable echo when using VoIP.ms. With my previous provider, I had to tweak the volume of my phone at every call to eliminate it. With VoIP.ms, I don't need to think about it at all. VoIP.ms also handles NAT very well. I do not know exactly how they accomplish this, however much to my delight I no longer need to open ports in my router as I did with previous providers.
Because VoIP.ms is a Pay-As-You-Go service, outgoing and incoming calls are charged separately. You can use only termination, or only origination, or both, and you only pay for what you use. This may be hard to get used to for those who are used to flat rate plans, however this is actually a good thing for the customer because the provider does not have to charge more based on what the customer *might* use. Unlike regional telephone companies where one does not have to pay for local calls because local calls are often other customers of the same telephone company, VoIP providers have to pay per minute for every call they make. So, Pay-As-You-Go is the best way for the provider to make sure that their income is directly proportionate to their expenses, and it allows them to lower their prices. Unless one makes more than 4000-5000 minutes of local calls per month, PAYG VoIP is often a very cost effective choice.
There are three routing options for termination (outgoing calls):
- Special Routing, about $0.0045/minute to Canada. I found the call quality here too poor to be of use.
- Value Routing, $0.0049 to $0.0114/minute to Canada; $0.0105/minute to the US. Call quality was not as good as Premium Rates, but very usable. (And yes - that's less than half a cent per minute!) I had to set DTMF mode to Info for DTMF (buttons on a touch-tone phone) to work here.
- Premium Routing, $.0125/minute to Canada and the US. Call quality with these rates was excellent, and this is what I decided to use. The other advantage to Premium Routing is that Outbound Caller ID Name works properly to Canadian destinations.
DID origination (incoming calls) has the option to be billed per minute with a small monthly fee or, for residential users, a slightly larger flat-rate.
As far as I am concerned, there are only a couple of missing features:
- Ability to set separate failover destinations for busy, no answer, and device unreachable.
- Outbound CallerID Blocking.
- The ability to set an IVR or recording as a failover destination
- Calling Card-style access. It would be great if VoIP.ms had a toll-free number that one could call from anywhere in North America, enter their account number and a PIN, and be presented with a dial tone. Even if we had to pay the toll-free fees on top of origination and termination, this would still be cheaper than Telus' $1 for card calls.
- Speed dial/customized Caller ID Name. I actually don't foresee myself using this but it's been mentioned many times on the forums.
The good news is that VoIP.ms lists all their upcoming features on their website and says they are working on all of these. I have never dealt with any company so eager to implement customer suggestions. So if you have a feature request, let them know. They have implemented several of mine.
VoIP.ms is my only phone provider at home and I have no hesitation in recommending them. In my opinion, they are the top VoIP provider in Canada and arguably North America.
Followup comments:  
wgraz
@comcast.net
| Voip.ms needs Contact Lists In addition to CNAM, a crucial feature that adds to the Caller ID expericne are Contact Lists. I believe that Voip.ms should add Contact Lists because CNAM doesn't work in some regards, esp when cell phone calls come in, one only sees the name- "New York" or "Cellphone" and not the callers' name. With Contact lists, one can custom name ALL contacts and how they would appear in your caller id. In my opinion, Voip.ms needs Contact Lists more than any other missing feature. | |
|  | Mango
toao.net
join:2008-12-25
Vancouver, BC | Re: Voip.ms needs Contact Lists Great idea! | |
| hockeynomad
join:2007-06-19
Mississauga, ON | Callerid How does callerid distinguish names and "PotsPhone"? | |
| | | 
VirtualSlew
join:2008-01-18
Ambler, PA
 ·ooma
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Just signed up for voip.ms I just bought a Linksys SPA3102, went to VOIP.ms, created an account, added $25 to my account with a credit card, plugged in and configured the ATA, and was making calls within a few minutes. I have not yet purchased a DID, since I'm just playing around right now.But for $0.99 per month for a DID and about $0.01 per minute incoming and outgoing, it's cheap to try out. I will be replacing my Verizon POTS line early next year and will have plenty of time to tweak the voip.ms service to my liking. So far, I'm impressed with the ease of setup, and the price. I too would like to see the ability to create a custom contact list for incoming Caller ID. After I've used the service for a few months I will write a proper review. | |
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onecansay
| voip.ms and wireless broadband Well, I have the PAP2T-NA. I have been trying to get this thing to work for incoming calls only with voip.ms. I have done resets. I have entered parameters as per instructions. I do have a DID number. I do not have a sub account. I can get dial tone. I can call the phone, and phone rings. BUT I cannot receive a call and the caller on the other end keeps ringing till busy signal which is the 60 second timeout. I have broadband wireless. I may be behind a proxy due to this internet access situation. Any suggestions to get this to work. Have tried another service with no luck at all.
Any help would be greatly be appreciated. | |
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I'm sure you'll be pleased.