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Review by cfusion 
member for 7 years, 3 visits, last login: 5.7 years ago
lodged 7 years ago
 Haslett,Ingham,MI
 $8 per month- (24 month contract)
 about 3 days "Excellent sound quality, Good features." "Telephone number systems can be iffy" "The best at $8 per month"
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I have used Packet 8 for 2 years, SunRocket for 2 weeks, and Viatalk for around 1 month now.
ViaTalk has, by far, the best call quality of any of these services.
Service has been up 100% and worked right out of the box. I have heard some bad things about support, but personally I had my tickets answered promptly and the worst thing was fixing incoming calls after I signed up, which involved a 30 minute call to tech support in which the problem was fixed instantly.
The price can't be beat, at roughly a 65% discount to what I had paid Packet8 monthly.
The only real problem I've had has been hitting numbers on automated telephone systems. For some reason, some systems don't recognize the tone that Viatalk is emitting.
Either way, I would fully recommend this service to anyone based on my own experiences.
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 Review by SteveLV702
member for 9.1 years, 1975 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Virginia Beach,Virginia Beach City,VA
- $15 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 1 days
- "easy setup with asterisk pbx, great call quaility, great/fast support."
- "control panel aka web portal isn't all that great. Number ports take forever."
- "Great Service at a Great Price... Beats Vonage, AT&T, Packet8 out of the park."
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I ordered a Business Account with Viatalk a few weeks earlier and so far love the call quality oh and the free fax line is alot better then Vonages. As with Viatalks Fax line your not limited to outgoing faxes you get UNLIMITED outgoing faxes. Plus when I had faxes 95% of the faxes wouldn't go through always would get a page back saying communication error... So far I haven't received any errors from viatalk and all faxes go through first time with no problem...
Setup with Asterisk PBX was a snap.. Less then 5 minute setup and works perfectly.....
Support I have submitted a few tickets but mainly just checking on status of my number ports and I ordered a Residential Account so I asked if there was anyway to merge them into one control panel so I wouldn't have seperate logins and passwords to remember.. When I submit the Priority Support Tickets I received responses within 5-10 minutes... Except one that I submitted over the Memorial Day Weekend but ill give them a break on that one... 
From the time I ordered to the time I received my service was 2-4 hours but I did the "Bring your Own Device" Plan with "Priority Setup"
I love the Custom Caller ID where I can go in and label certain numbers whatever I want...
Such when my mother-in-law calls instead of say Michelle M, Smith it will come up and says Mother-In-Law. Or if you have an annoying person that keeps calling but you dont wanna totally block them then just label it as "Dont Answer"
**********WARNING********** No Animals were harmed in this review. All names in the review are not real... So sorry if the name matches yours.. Get over it.
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Review by womprat200
member for 8.8 years, 166 visits, last login: 6.6 years ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Mascoutah,Saint Clair,IL
- $9 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 3 days
- "Call quality and price"
- "some lag in support during sale"
- "Has been pretty good for us"
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After 1 1/2 years with Packet8, I finally decided to switch companies. Price was pretty much the driving factor. P8 had been fine for me, but their fees added on to the base price, made other companies look a little better. I ordered the begining of April, well before the sale, and I got the PAP about 3 days after ordering. Just plugged it in and haven't had any problems with it. We don't use our phones a ton, so I went w/ the 500 minute plan.
We've had the service 2 months and no problems. My number didn't port, but that has more to do with my new address than ViaTalk. The call quality has been better than P8 so far. There have been one or two times the call volume has dropped during a call. Our voices aren't breaking up or anything, it's just that the volume that the other party hears drops. Like you pulled the phone away from your mouth. Another nice feature is the Caller ID /w Name. Even most cell phones give name. Of course now P8 has that, but it's been years in waiting. But it's nice to have again. We did have to make two calls to Germany and those went very well with no hitch.
Rated support at 4 only because one ticket took a PM to Brenden to get an reply, this was submitted right during the sale. Before the sale, my one ticket was resolved quickly. I think they have taken a bit of a hit here in the last month.
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Review by amejr999
member for 12.4 years, 3422 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Fair Lawn,Bergen,NJ
- $12 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 5 days
- "tech support, price, call quality"
- "not a great install"
- "for the price, it works well once it's set up"
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I ordered VT on 4/14 with a 1-year contract, unlimited plan, 2 months free, and the DSLREPORTS coupon code. Alltogether, it was about $174 for 14 months. My order was shipped in a day or 2 (this was before the sale). I got the PAP2 adapter very quickly, and I plugged it in. I was able to make and receive calls well.
I faxed in my documentation to port my number from Vonage. I didn't get a confirmation about the port, but I opened a support ticket and I was told that it was received on 4/25. On 5/11, incoming callers to my number started getting an error. I called Vonage, and after being bounced around for a while, was told that the number was ported to Viatalk. Apparently, Vonage never actually told Viatalk that they had released the number for them to pick up. I tried to call VT, but they were closed (despite claiming to be open 24/7). I opened a ticket marked as urgent which wasn't responded to until I called the next day, and the problem was promptly resolved.
Immediately, we started to have a lot of problems with the phone. People calling us would go right to voicemail, our outgoing calls would not go through, the phone light on the adapter would randomly go off, and so on. I opened a ticket, but it took about a week and a half for all of the problems to be fixed. I think part of the issue was my own network (though it worked fine with Vonage) and part of it was their network.
Call quality is good overall; we haven't had any issues with that. When we had Vonage and our internet access slowed down, we would have hiccups with the phone- I would assume that would happen with VT as well. We haven't had any service outages other than the overall problems we were having.
Tech support was generally knowledgeable and courteous, though they need to make their hours listed accurate. I definitely like that their CEO hangs out at BBR.
Overall, I would definitely consider Viatalk. My setup experience definitely seems out of the ordinary. For the price, it's definitely much better than Vonage.
Update 9/16/06
I bumped down the reliability rating a notch. Since their 'upgrades' they've had quite a few bugs and outages. Until they can be resolved, I can't recommend getting the service.
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Review by fredb4
member for 8.5 years, 189 visits, last login: 4 years ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Springfield,Fairfax,VA
- $8 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 20 days
- "Quality, reliability, price"
- "Had to wait 3 weeks to receive PAP"
- "A very good move"
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2 weeks after activation I am very satisfied with Viatalk.
I am an IT manager and have implemented a VoIP phone system at my company 2 years ago. With that experience I thought it would be too risky to use VoIP over the Internet given the fact that you don't have control over QOS once your packets leave your LAN. However I decided to give it a try when the 2 years for $200 deal was offered. It took them longer than expected to process my order, but that is understandable with such an offer.
I had some glitches initially that I ended up solving by swapping my Linksys BEFW11S4 with the latest WRT54GL. I can't stress enough the need to have an up to date router, and mine was really too old and slow. My line speed went from 3.5 mb/s to 6 mb/s (Cox Virginia) by just swapping the router and configuring its QOS! After the switch all the problems went away.
Customer service was impeccable and very responsive.
I plan on saving over $2,200 in the next 2 years without compromising too much on call quality.
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Review by televoip
member for 7 years, 5 visits, last login: 6.6 years ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Louisville,Jefferson,KY
- $16 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 16 days
- "Just works, lots of nice features, fast register time."
- "Slow order to delivery time"
- "Best service I've used. (and I've used several)"
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I am a computer engineer with a specialty in telecom and Voice over IP. Because of this interest, I have tried several of the residential VoIP providers. I used Vonage, Sunrocket, and now ViaTalk. ViaTalk is by far the best service I have tried.
I ordered ViaTalk shortly after their famous 2 day "3 Day Sale" so my deliver time was delayed as they got caught up. It took 2 weeks (and 2 calls) for my order to be processed . Shipping was very quick and when the adaptor arrived it registered within seconds. In fact, it registered faster than any other service I tried.
I ordered the monthy 500 minute plan while I evalute the service. The cancellation fee is pretty steep, so I want to be completely happy before I upgrade to the unlimited plan and pay up front for 2 years.
I haven't had any outages and the service and features have all worked as designed. I tested every feature. Everyone worked just fine. I did have a few issues and as far as I am concerned, this is where ViaTalk really shines. First of all, the tech support people are in the US and speak english. Every person I talked to understood my question or issue and gave me straight answers. I never got a canned response. I did find that I got faster results with a ticket than I did on the phone. I asked for the setting for a soft client and an Asterisk server. I had the information within a few hours of sending the ticket. They even sent me the information before my adaptor arrived and I was able to use my Asterisk server right away. Once my adaptor arrived, the first problem I had was the message waiting indicator (MWI) light on my phones would not work. I sent a ticket to tech support and had a response within 15 minutes!
It seems they disable that feature by default. The response appologied that I had a problem and they had it fixed before I got their email response. It even included detailed instruction on how to restart my adaptor (I didn't need them, but it was nice they sent them anyway).
I do have one issue. I have an alarm system and an old Tivo. ViaTalk's web site clearly states that they do not support either device. I tested them and my alarm works just fine every time, my Tivo, however does not. I sent another ticket and by the next morning, I had a response. While they can not fix my problem, they did send an email and offer suggestions of some things to try. My Tivo is old so it's not a show stopper but I do wish it would work. I currently am using Vonage, and my Tivo works just fine with them.
One item I don't like (but I understand the reasons). I would like to have my adaptor and my Asterisk server register at the same time. That way when my wife is on the phone, I could still make a call with my Asterisk server. ViaTalk will only allow one device to register. If I want to use my Asterisk box as well, I have to get add a BYOD account with another number. I can do this for as little as $10 a month, but it just isn't worth that for an occasional call.
All in all, this service has been great and a good tech support is just icing on the cake. My next step will be move my number from Vonage to ViaTalk and cut my bill in half.
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 Review by SliderNC
member for 10.5 years, 2622 visits, last login: 194 days ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Cornelius,Mecklenburg,NC
- $8 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 18 days
- "Good Call Quality, Control Panel, Helpful Tech Support"
- "Online Support Slow To Respond"
- "Good VoIP services/features for a great price"
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I signed up for Viatalk on the 2 years for $199 plan. There was a backlog of orders and it took them quite awhile to fulfill mine as I was probably one of the last few people to signup.
I received my adapter and set it up in about 5 minutes behind my router.
After reading a few threads here about forwarding ports and having tech support adjust the provisioning on their end, I called their tech group. I waited about 5 minutes and they helped me out getting it all setup.
10 digit dialing was slow, as was 7 digit. I received the admin password for the adapter and turned off provisioning and changed the dial plan again after reading some threads here. 10 and 7 digit dialing are now quick.
Overall, the service works well and is almost as good as my old POTS line. I'm currently a Sunrocket customer, but I couldn't pass up this deal when it came around. So far, I'm happy with Viatalk's customer service, just wish they would respond to online tickets faster.
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Review by Helix721
member for 7 years, 2 visits, last login: 7 years ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Mccordsville,Hancock,IN
- Contract price not specified.
- (12 month contract)
- about 11 days
- "Price. Excellent features and use of online functions"
- "Long support wait - used to be fast until they started charging for it"
- "Overall good VOIP company and good value for the money"
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Ordered 4/17/06 - activated on 4/27/06. Had some issues in the beginning but was resolved with tech support. HOWEVER, I cannot access voicemail using my local phone. Have tried numerous times to get it corrected, but finally gave up.
Tech support has been VERY slow recently (>1 hour wait time) since they started charging for it. Emails are quick on the FIRST response, after that, non-existant. However, tech support people are very nice and they are easy to understand since they speak English.
I love their online control panel. I can access my voicemail through it or using any other phone EXCEPT my home phone (go figure).
Overall. this is my first VOIP and will probably complete the full 12+2 months with them and see what happens. VOIP goes downs sometimes but it is not their fault; it is the ISP.
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Review by SCalum
member for 9.5 years, 147 visits, last login: 4.1 years ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Huntington Beach,Orange,CA
- $8 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 17 days
- "Easy to set-up; Plug and play"
- "Wait for order fullfillment"
- "So Far, So good"
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Just hooked it up so I can't describe reliability. Call quality seems just slightly worse than Time Warner VOIP (my primary provider). Will evaluate for a while before porting my number. Last of the $199 two-year sale fullfillments I think.
I want to have a second line installed using the same modem but haven't figured out how to do that yet. Received a Linksys PAP2 modem. I may have recieved someone's cancelled phone number because their calls were on my phone log despite just initiating service.
Getting hold of service was tough during the sale fullfillment period. However, when you finally got through customer service was courteous and knowledgable. Hope it improves after they get over the hump.
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Review by dkirk53
member for 9.3 years, 78 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
lodged 7 years ago
- Millington,Tuscola,MI
- $8 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 14 days
- "Company president online and accessible - new features coming often"
- "Overwhelmed by awesome sale"
- "VERY happy that I switched from Vonage"
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Been a Vonage user for two years ... had to wait a bit for the sale orders to be processed but in the end it was all worth ... I plugged the PAP2 device into my router and it worked without any port forwarding or other tricks, it just worked. Vonage started sales calls to my Vonage phone and lack of features led me to ViaTalk, and "the sale" sealed the deal. Thanks Brendan for offering the service.
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