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Review by mkwhyte 
Posted: 5.4 years ago
member for 5.5 years, 7 visits, last login: 4.3 years ago
 Austin,Travis,TX
 $15 per month
 about 4 days
 "Uses Sipura SPA 2000, Great sound quality, All features are free"
 "At first did not have numbers in Texas, but now have many numbers in my area"
 "One of the top players in VoIP and overall leader with features"
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(ratings match consensus)
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I ordered BroadVoice and VoicePulse at the same time to do a side-by-side comparison before returning one of the units.
Installation:
VoicePulse was plug-and-play and included a very thorough user manual. BroadVoice included the President's business card and nothing else. After I sent many emails asking why it wasn't working when I plugged it in, I figured out that the unit was sent completely unconfigured and had to be walked through it. VoicePulse's on the other hand was already setup and was working 30 seconds after I opened the package.
Call Quality:
VoicePulse's quality has been perfect so far. None of the tones like Vonage has or echo like on my BroadVoice line. I have reported an echo to BroadVoice technical support but they haven't done anything to fix it yet.
Reliability:
I have had a couple of dropped calls with BroadVoice, but not a single one with VoicePulse so far. Unlike VoicePulse, BroadVoice also has no incoming CallerID with name! I thought everyone had this by now.
Tech Support:
I have not had a reason to contact VoicePulse technical support so far.
I have had to contact BroadVoice technical support numerous times and have received numerous emails from a David Epstein "The President" claiming that he gets CC'd on every email. Is that really the most efficient way to do things? As far as I can tell, they have one (*maybe* two) technical support people available. Now it seems like emails go unanswered but if you catch one of these two guys on the phone, you'll get a response. These guys are definitely a small shop with very few customers. If you have a problem, ask Dave for a refund, it seems to be their way of keeping customers quiet while working on a problem.
Value for Money:
VoicePulse has so many features for free, including ones that are not even offered by any other providers. I thought BroadVoice was a good matchup, but by the time I added the advanced features to be able to do the same things I can do on VoicePulse (for free), it was costing me almost $26/month. Not a big deal, if I didn't have to ALSO pay a $40 signup fee (Voicepulse = $30) and three "Feature Signup Fees" of $9.95 each! (Voicepulse = all free) By the time I was setup, I was already $70 in the hole just for activation charges.
It looks like VoicePulse's tech support may have been going through some "growing pains" but that also happened with Vonage and Packet8. VoicePulse is on the cutting edge when it comes to this technology and has been good with adding new features. I think VoicePulse is one of the top players when it comes to VoIP unlike smaller new companies such as BroadVoice.
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 Review by Ronnie1055
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 5.4 years, 1337 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Carrollton,Denton,TX
$14 per month
"Easy order / Quick Response / Easy Setup"
"None"
"So Far... Great Experience"
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It took approximately six days from order to installation. I received the adapter yesterday afternoon via UPS. I had already set up my router so I was ready for a "plug and play".
The whole installation took about 30 minutes from un-packing to dial tone. It would have only taken 5 minutes tops, however, the ethernet cable they sent was bad.
The quality thus far has been excellent. I also like the features and management options that are available on their website.
I am currently using this along with my Verizon FIOS... no issues!!!
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 Review by polymers
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 7.2 years, 892 visits, last login: 147 days ago
Petal,Forrest,MS
$15 per month (month by month)
about 6 days
"Price, Call Quality, Ease of Use"
"No 911"
"Worth the mothly fee, even better value when 911 is supported.."
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I have really been interested in VOIP for a while, but just haven't taken the big step. Well, come to find out, it's not really that big of step. The install was super easy...add a couple of lines in the router config file, plug the SPA-2000 in and start making calls.
My rational for my rankings:
Website .. I have not used other VOIP configuration websites. VoicePulse's site seems to be laid out pretty well.
Ease of Installation...Just went over that .. no problems here.. 5 minutes total
Call Quality .. Most calls are as good as POTS. However, I have had a few echos so far.
Reliability .. No problems here, although I really don't have any problems with my broadband service either.
Tech Support .. Yes, I know that VoicePulse is only e-mail support and I agree it would be nice if they actually used telephones. However, every time I have contacted them (3 so far), they have responded very quickly.
Value for the Money .. Unlimited in state calls for $15 a month. Yes, I would say that is value for the money.
One other thing to note, VoicePulse has seven digit dialing now. I have not noticed this posted anywhere else on BBR. This feature makes VOIP even more useable.
To sum it up, I like the service. I still have my POTS though. Maybe I will get rid of it when VOIP gets 911.
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Review by obie22
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 1622 visits, last login: 1.2 years ago
Hamden,New Haven,CT
$22 per month
about 3 days
"Voice Quality - Price - Advanced Features (Call Filter) (Bandwidth Saver) ....etc... Too Many To Name."
"None"
"Voicepulse Is The Undisputed Champion of VOIP Providers"
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I have been with Voicepulse since October '03. So far I have not had any problems at all. I'm paying $14.99 p/month for unlimited in-state calls - 200 free long distance. I also have a $5.00 p/month virtual number. Voice quality is as good as a land line phone. Callers can not tell the difference between land line or VOIP. My sister has Vonage and she is not happy with service. My cousin has Packet 8 and he is not happy with service. The phone filter works perfect for me. I can get text messages sent to my Verizon cell phone when someone leaves a voice mail on my voicepulse phone. I think Voicepulse is the most under rated VOIP. They need to start advertising more. Because my family has tried every VOIP service. And everyone is switching over to Voicepulse. Too bad Voicepulse doesn't have the advertisement like Vonage.
P.S. - Voicepulse has the most features than the other VOIPs. Comcast IP – Netgear router - Siemens 2.4 GHZ cordless phone.
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Review by shivahota
Posted: 5.5 years ago
member for 5.5 years, 2 visits, last login: 5.5 years ago
Leesburg,Loudoun,VA
$15 per month
about 5 days
"Easy Setup"
"Bad Initial voice, No customer service at all, no refund for bad service"
"Don't go with cheap companies which don't have Customer Service"
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Started this service. Initial payment was about $60.00 and installation was easy.
But call quality and call breakup was frequent until router upgrade and other setups were done.
Soon realized that many people couldn't call my home number from the local area. No telephone customer service, so sent complaint via e-mail. Some initial feedback but then when they figured out they can't fix the issue, they completely stopped responding to all my complaints. Never provided an ETA for resolving the issue or gave back any credit to the account, eventhough the web-site clearly states that there is a "money back guarantee". Kept trying to get an answer for my issues or any credits to the account but nothing happened for 2 months. Totally frustrated by then I went ahead and cancelled the service.
Never got any money back or an answer from the so called broadband VoIP provider. In my humble opinion, don't even bother trying them. Go with someone who can atleast provide some customer support
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Review by dmitriy_525
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 2 visits, last login: 4.5 years ago
Bronx,Bronx,NY
$16 per month (month by month)
about 5 days
"great call quality, low rates, ease of installation"
"none"
"highly recommended"
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I have had VoicePulse for over a year now and very satisfied with it. Prior to that I had Vonage for about a year as well which also a great service, but I found that VoicePulse's call quality is much better, especially on international phone calls.
VoicePulse has great set of features and seems like a well managed company. However I can't comment on their support since never had to talk to them  . (I hope it'll stay that way.) Besides everything you can't go wrong with their monthly rate of $15/month (unlimited local calling and 200 long distance minutes).
Anyways, VoicePulse = outstanding service and value, highly recommended.
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Review by shiftysheik
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 24 visits, last login: 2.1 years ago
Wyckoff,Bergen,NJ
$15 per month (month by month)
about 4 days
"Clear connections, Excellent features"
"Poor tech support, Occasional service disruptions"
"Overall good value"
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Been using them for about 3 months. Call quality is excellent. Much better than Packet8 which I tried first. I kept my landline but got rid of caller ID and voice mail since these are included with VoicePulse. I have my landline calls forwarded to my VoicePulse line. That way I still get caller ID and voicemail on all my incoming calls. If my VoicePulse line goes down I simply turn off call forwarding on my landline.
Connecting my VoicePulse line to the “Line 2” jack on my 2 line phone was all that was needed to connect the VoicePulse line throughout my house. The VoicePulse line passes through the 2 line phone and into the internal telephone wiring for 2 lines.
I’ve had 3-4 service disruptions. Sometimes everything went down, other times it was just incoming calls or voicemail. One outage lasted about 30 hours; the other outages were 1-4 hours. There is no telephone support. They only offer email support. That is the biggest drawback with VoicePulse.
I call Europe almost every day. About 95% of my international calls go through fine. The other 5% of international calls either don’t connect or have noise on the line. Domestic calling is much more reliable.
I really like the features. Their call filter option which works great. You can program certain incoming calls to always go to voice mail, always busy, always ring, or always get a line disconnected message. Great for blocking unwanted telemarketing calls.
It’s a good service for the money. I saved quite a bit just by dropping caller ID and voicemail from my landline.
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 Review by skullz5
UPDATED: 5.6 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 2683 visits, last login: 112 days ago
Clementon,Camden,NJ
$15 per month
about 4 days
"Everything"
"Web site needs improving"
"Was my 1st VOIP, tried others but came back to Voicepulese"
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I have been reading up on VOIP for a few months now, and after a rather unpleasent experience with verizon last wednesday, I said we are done with verizon and the big monopoly phone companies. My wife and I do not use that much long distance so we signed up for the 14.99/ package which includes local, regional and 200 minutes of long distance. The features are better and they have more than verizon. I ordered Friday 1/30 and as of yesterday (Tues. 2/3) everything was up and running and the call quality is great. The local calls take me into 2 other states, so I would highly recommend this for anyone who wants to try VOIP and ditch their monopoly LAN line companies.
--Update 10/3/05--
Its been a while now that I have had voicepulse and I have to say I am still impressed. I did cancel and tried a few other VOIP's but ended up coming back to Voicepulse. You can not beat the price, I pay 15.89/month (with tax) for Local & Regional unlimited plus the 200 mins of Long distance. The call quality is clear and the features work good. The web site is still a bit outdated, a better website should be done soon but other than that it is still the best value for the money.
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Review by kwest
Posted: 5.6 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 2239 visits, last login: 5 days ago
Dallas,Paulding,GA
$14 per month
about 3 days
"Price And features"
"No Phone Support, Only email"
"Best value for the money"
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I have tried them all and VP has the best price plans to meet you needs.They have the best feature set, twice what others have.
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Review by francishsu
Posted: 5.7 years ago
member for 9.4 years, 509 visits, last login: 150 days ago
Wyoming,Kent,MI
$15 per month
about 14 days
"great value, generous local calling area, features, continuing to improve"
"lack of 911, communication with support"
"great value for the money, but will they be able to grow successfully?"
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I've had Voicepulse running for around 2 months now, and overall I am very pleased. I also have a landline, but I am satisified enough with the reliability of VP to ditch the landline in the near future. Here's a comparison of costs/features that makes the cost/value advantage of VP vs. my SBC landline clear.
1. SBC landline plan - approx. $20/month (about $12 for the plan and $8 in taxes)
50 local outgoing calls a month, unlimited incoming, no additional features
2. Voicepulse plan - approx. $15.50/month ($15 for the plan and $.50 in taxes)
unlimited incoming, unlimited local outgoing, 200 minutes LD, voice mail, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding and a bunch of other features I'm not yet using
VP has the clear advantage here. But for me, it gets even better. VP's local calling area for my location includes my area code AND 5 neighboring ones. As most of our friends and family live in a neighboring area code, we can call them all we want without LD charges. I may also get a second line for special uses like faxing and receiving business calls. For this, I can get the second line for $5/month extra.
You get a bunch of calling features with VP; I don't know how they compare exactly to other VOIP providers, but from what I have read VP is near/at the top. You can manage their features conveniently on their website by logging into your account. I found it very easy to navigate, and there's some concise help information on each page to aid you. For all the features I use, they work nicely.
Reliability has been great. I don't recall any unexpected downtime where I was unable to place a call, or access my voice mail.
The call quality is generally very good. Every once in a while, there's a problem where I hear my own voice echo. Also I have had one incident where the voice at the other end sounded shaky to the point where I had to listen very carefully to figure out what they were saying.
Finally, they have recently added several features like 7 digit dialing and bandwidth saver. This signals to me a desire to continue to improve the value of their service.
Now for the bad..
I was not able to use VP for about two weeks after my order. It did take a few days for me to receive my Sipura device, but VP support gets the rest of the blame for the delay. After I activated my account on VP's website, I could not get a dialtone. I e-mailed VP support twice, but got no response to either. I also went through their Knowledge Base, broadbandreports, and voxilla.com trying out different things to see if something was wrong at my end. Finally, I posted my problem (on voxilla and/or broadbandreports) and got some helpful information indicating that VP probably forgot to authorize my Sipura to register with their server. I then e-mailed VP with this additional information. Apparantly, VP fixed the problem within a couple of days of that because I was suddenly able to get a dialtone one day. Then I finally receive an e-mail from them after the fact, where they said that they believed they fixed the problem. That's great, but it would have been nice to receive some communication before that. From what I have read on a couple of forums, it appears that they sometimes respond quickly and other times don't. If they expect to grow successfully, they will need to improve their communication. I guess I would recommend that when you e-mail them, you give as much information as possible. I was close to giving them a 2 for tech support, but I decided to give them a 3 only because I have had worse service from other companies, where they give you the runaround because their knowledge is lacking. My gut feeling is that while the communication aspect sucked, it is most likely due to lack of resources/organization rather than lack of competence. One other thing that annoyed me is that they still billed me for the entire month even though I didn't have service for 2 weeks. But because they give me such a good value, and because I have been happy since, I'll let it slide.
Lack of 911 is a problem to me. Personally, I have never used 911, but I want it to be there if I ever need it. Since I am planning on getting a cell phone that has 911 or at least pseudo-911, I can live with 911 not being on VP. Otherwise, I would have to keep my otherwise useless landline.
In conclusion, VP is a great service and they appear to be committed to improving. Communication is lacking, but resources like broadbandreports go a long way to alleviate problems in that area. I am concerned about VP's sucess in the future, as more and bigger players enter the VOIP arena. I wish them the best.
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