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Review by j1349705 See Profile

  • Location: Raleigh, Wake, NC, USA
  • Cost: $10 per month
Everything
Nothing
Reliable and affordable VoIP
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

VoIP.ms is a very good choice for those who want reliable, cost effective VoIP service and who have the technical knowledge required to set it up.

Paying per minute even for local and toll free calls (on the premium route) may seem unusual if you are used to something like Vonage or even a traditional land line. However, the cost per minute is extremely low, and there are no hidden surprises.

There are a few issues with so-called unlimited services: First, if you use them too much, there's usually something in the terms of service that give the provider the freedom to discontinue your service or move you to a metered plan. Second, if you don't consistently use a ton of minutes, you're overpaying.

There are some months when I hardly use the phone at all, and other months where I might be on several long calls. With a more traditional service, there would be some months where I would be massively overpaying. Those days are gone now that I only have to pay for what I use.

The call routing features are very nice for a residential or very small business user. IVR (Auto Attendant), multiple voicemail boxes, DISA, Caller ID filtering (lets you route calls differently based on Caller ID) are all useful.

Businesses with more than a few phones will want to install an IP PBX like Asterisk, or get creative and use a device or small Asterisk server to deliver the SIP trunks to a legacy phone system over a PRI interface (or even analog lines if that's all the system supports).

Call quality and reliability have been excellent so far. I had a few issues calling certain numbers, but support determined the cause quickly and had a fix in less than 30 minutes. This isn't an issue that is unique to VoIP.ms... I have had similar issues on business class service delivered over T1s (and they took longer to fix). It is just one of those things that happens sometimes.

There really isn't anything bad to say. Just realize that you have to configure the service and that it isn't like Vonage where you can pick up a piece of hardware, plug it in, and forget about it. You need to have a basic understanding of networking. This applies to any BYOD VoIP provider.

member for 17.9 years, 6476 visits, last login: 1 day ago
updated 11.3 years ago