Review by crazyk4952  - Location: united state
- Cost: $12 per month
Good "inexpensive, reliable, more features than you could want!"
Bad "ported-in DIDs charged at the higher rate, no flat rate outgoing plan offered"
Overall "Awesome VoIP provider!"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
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Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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About a year and a half ago, I decided to stop using cell phones as my primary means of communication and start using VOIP service. My primary goal was cost savings. By doing this, I have cut my communications bill at least in half each month.
After the first VoIP provider that I choose was not able to meet my needs, I chose to port over to voip.ms. The two things that made me want to try voip.ms were
1) No below-the-line fees
2) All of the features and things to tweak! I just couldn't resist!
I have been using voip.ms as my primary provider for about the last year. I have one local DID at the 3500 minute plan ($6.95/month) and a toll free DID. In the last year, I have spend $185 (this includes the $25 fee that I paid to port my number in). This seems like a very reasonable amount to me.
Overall, I am very happy with voip.ms. I seem to average between 300-400 outgoing minutes per month (and enough incoming minutes to at least break-even with the flat rate plan). I use the premium route for outgoing since the cost savings vs. the value route would not be worth the potential reduction in the WAF.
I have a panasonic multi-handset cordless phone and a corded phone connected to each line in a PAP2T ATA. Both lines ring for incoming calls. After getting used the this setup, I don't think I could go back to just having a single line. It's nice to be able to pick up incoming calls from the 2nd line when the primary line is in use.
Many previous reviewers have done a good job going into detail about the numerous features, so I won't do that here.
Bottom line: voip.ms is inexpensive if your outgoing usage is low to moderate. However, if my outgoing usage increases by a few hundred minutes, then it may be cheaper for me to choose a provider that offers a flat-rate for incoming/outgoing minutes.
Also, you will need some technical understanding on how to set up and tweak the settings on an ATA/IP phone. There is lots of information out there on this matter.
05/04/12 Update:
Since writing the above review, I am still happily using voip.ms as my primary voip provider.
About a year ago, I switched from using an ATA with cordless phones to using the Gigaset C610A IP phone. This change has made a huge difference (for the better) in reliability and call quality! I also now have an iPhone and I will use the Acrobits app with voip.ms as well. This works just fine over WiFi.
Over the last six months, voip.ms has pretty much stopped releasing new features. This disappointing since they have had many great features "in development" for quite some time now....
member for 11.6 years, 1630 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 1.3 years ago
Comments:
 |  | jobr
join:2004-10-21
Halifax, NS | Re: New Features? Their "Feature Requests" page (only accessible once you log in, I believe) has listed a number of features as "In Development/Testing" for many months now. These are features such as local access numbers, click to call and line hunting.
One of the reasons I chose voip.ms as my provider was their large feature set. I hope this is just a temporary lull and that they will continue to improve and extend their service. | |
| |  crazyk4952Premium
join:2002-02-04
united state
kudos:1
 ·Vitelity VOIP
 ·Charter
·Callcentric
·voip.ms
| said by ArizonaSteve:In your review you said: "voip.ms has pretty much stopped releasing new features". What features are you talking about besides making & receiving calls? Do they have other features? Also you mentioned having 2 lines, how did you do that, pay for 2 different lines? My Aastra phone has 3 lines but I don't know why I'd want more than 1.
Some of their current features (that I use) are: IVR, ring groups, subaccounts, caller filtering, phone book, CNAM, iNUM, SIP address, etc. With voip.ms offering these features, I do not have to add an additional point-of-failure to my system by using an Asterisk box.
As far as having multiple lines, I have 3 DIDs with voip.ms. I have people that call me from different area codes, with the multiple DIDs, they can call me and not pay long distance charges (yes people call me from POTS lines).
Also, I have moved in the last year and I am able to keep the phone number in my previous area code for $1.49/month. I don't get very many calls on it anymore, but I am glad that I still have it.
I have two handsets with my IP phone. If someone is using one handset, I can still answer incoming calls/place outgoing calls from the second handset.
If you only want 1 line, then you can only pay for one line, that's the beautiful thing about choice! | |
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