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Review by signmeuptoo94 See Profile

  • Location: NanoParticle
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
  • Install: about 3 days
Fantastic rates, fast tech support response, great service
website lacks neophyte friendliness, serivce is oriented towards more knowledgable people.
My gateway was giving problems with the service, had to figure it out on my own but service is great once you've got it working.
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
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Tech Support:
Value for money:

I live on a VERY sparse budget. For me, mere pennies are a big deal, no kidding! There are some terrific VOIP outfits, and they each have their pluses and minuses. CWU has excellent rates, better than just about anybody for where I call, and you have the choice of grade of service and which trunks you will allow.

HOWEVER: I haven't found on their site HOW to figure out how to identify each trunk so that I can enter it into my settings. They pronounce the fact that they keep a simple site, and that is true, in my humble opinion, to a fault. They need to hire someone to work with them to make the site easier to use and give better instructions on how to set up an ATA. My ATA is a very common one and their instructions didn't tell me I had to set up a couple settings I needed.

I would have given them a 100% A+ if setup was easier with more detail and better help getting my particular gateway to work with them (crappy ATT 2wire). After a great deal of searching I found out there is a way to get into the 2wire and change settings ATT people can do and I resolved the issue, and then I asked them how things were then and they said all was good now.

The cheapest tier trunk did not work for me to the country I call, but then I set my settings for premium and all was good. I still would love it if they included instructions on some easy to find link on how to find and set trunks.

IF you have the skills and patience to use their service, it is about as good as it gets, rates are great, call quality is decent. But not a service for someone new to VOIP, not until they improve their website.

No US DIDs provided, just something to note.

I would love to know how to set what trunks I use, embarrassingly, I don't know that stuff.

There is no sign up fee, no monthly charge, no contract, no commitment past what you purchase, which is fantastic.

Note that there is a purchasing service fee for orders under 25 dollars (and within a time period), but this is the case with some other competitive services, and if you order 25 bucks after 24 hours of not ordering, it is waived. They use both google and paypal as ways to pay, google is faster, but there is some wait time before the funds are updated.

If you are tech savvy and patient, and have the right hardware, this is just about the best there is from what I can find.

I would love it if they would improve their website and add better tutorials and more detailed instructions on setting up the ATA (analogue telephone adapter). Be aware that this is a bring your own and set up your own, ATA service.

My settings issues were:

Set up STUN properly

and more important:

SIP ALG in the ATT Gateway.

They could explain that better, when I needed help on it they set me to a link on a webpage using tech terms and it didn't help me figure out how to set up the 2wire, but after a bunch of searching online I found out how to fix it.

One service with lower rates is EasyVoip, but they offer a lot less help with setup, have large purchase fees, and calls aren't as good.

Future 9 is easier to set up, didn't have an SP ALG or STUN issue, and rates for me are just a few cents more a minute, and they offer a phone number/incoming calls (for a monthly fee).

But I want to be clear: callwithus is excellent, you just have to put in some effort to use it.

member for 22.3 years, 6329 visits, last login: 9.6 years ago
lodged 12.6 years ago


Review by OmagicQ See Profile

  • Location: Bakersfield, Kern, CA, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
  • Install: about 1 days
Great per minute rates, Multiple routing choices, Ability to set CID
No inbound INum maybe
One of the best PayG providers available
Web-site:
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Update 05/21/2011: Still using CWU occasionally for outbound calls with no issues. It just works. As long as I make a call every once in a while to keep it from going dormant, I expect it will keep working great.

I've been using Callwithus for outbound calling for a few weeks now and so far its been great. I have not had any call quality issues that were not due to my dsl line. I like the ability to set the outbound caller id to my google voice number or another number I control. Although I have not made or used sub accounts, I like that the capability is there, so if in the future I need to, its there.

I didn't see a way to get an INum did for free incoming calls, regular dids are available however. If I had to name one bad point that would be it but it's not a dealbreaker though.

I would not hesitate to recommend Callwithus to anyone who needs an alternative or standalone outbound provider for their PSTN calls. With no monthly charges or fees like "Regulatory Recovery Fee" or "Federal Excise Tax" or whatever. You just pay for what you use, plain and simple.

member for 20.4 years, 1229 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
updated 12.8 years ago

PX Eliezer704
Premium Member
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

Incoming calls

CWU is not an iNum member, but calls can come in via SipBroker.

The CWU SipBroker code for incoming calls is *8052.

It is also easy to forward incoming calls by SIP URI, not just from ipKall, but also from carriers such as CallCentric and Voip.MS.

Just make a SIP call (or forward a DID) to xxxxxxxxx@sip.callwithus.com where the x's represent the 9-digit CWU voip user name, NOT the 10-digit account number.

Review by thegreatfixe See Profile

  • Location: Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Great no nonsense Voip
None
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i use this overseas and its been great i use it on my PAP2 and desktop (X-Lite 4.0)

i am a basic PAYG user and i like the simplicity of everything
CWU offers everything i want in a voip provider
GREAT rates:
Free (USA 800) calling:
works well with IP-Kall
and good customer service through email

i only wish they would have some OEM soft-phone so i can use X-Lite for another account

i was with F9 but they started to get gimmicky and CWU has lower rates

member for 14.5 years, 38 visits, last login: 9.8 years ago
updated 12.8 years ago

yahoo2003
join:2007-11-02
Mclean, VA

yahoo2003

Member

It's a smart move

I too moved from F9 to CWU for US and international calls. CWU has clearly posted rates, F9's rates are more difficult to find out.
I checked some major international destinations, CWU's rates are all better than F9. Rates of some routes of F9 have increased by 40% recently.

Review by kenja00 See Profile

  • Location: Brooks, AB, Canada
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Cheap, straight forward, quick support
Little confusing at first with selecting route
Two thumbs up, no suprises.... Recommended
Web-site:
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I was a little hesitant to sign up with Callwith us, after reading reviews here, I thought I'd give them a chance...

No problems, very straight forward and quick response on support tickets!

Two thumbs up!

Update: Oct 4/09 - After using them for calls to Canada, I've found many of the cheaper routes do not pass on caller id. I started using route 093, but the audio quality was very poor then... Lots of "Blip, bleep, bleep" in the conversation.

Update: Jan 6/10 - What more can I say, just works and does what it's supposed to! No surprises here...

Update: Aug 13/10 - Still using them, no problems! Very straight forward system and no surprise fees!

Update: 3/22/2010 I had them move me to the "premium plan" which essential allows me to skip all the "grey routes" which has made a difference on my outgoing calls... Tech support has gotten back to me, and usually resolves issues within the hour!

Update: 11/15/2010 - Figured out how to properly setup the different routes on my dialplan and have found CWU even better than before!

Update: 2/23/2011 - At times some of my cheaper routes don't go through, but it's easy enough to select a different route. Although lacking features of some of the other companies, CWU makes up for it in selective routes and reliability.

member for 15.1 years, 1268 visits, last login: 158 days ago
updated 13.1 years ago


lcotten
@aliant.net

lcotten

Anon

Lots of blip, blip, beep, beep

It's not clear to me whether or not your comment about getting blips and beeps were for the person that called into (or you called from) your VOIP line or if you were hearing these on your VOIP line. I was getting this in the former scenario, and changing the DTMF Tx Method to InBand on my adapter and it totally fixed this. Now I get no blips or beeps on either end (I'm in Canada and make calls primarily to Canada, but also US).

Arne Bolen
User of Anveo Direct, 3CX and Qubes OS.
Premium Member
join:2009-06-21
Utopia

Arne Bolen

Premium Member

Decide what trunk to use

"Update: 3/22/2010 I had them move me to the "premium plan" which essential allows me to skip all the "grey routes" which has made a difference on my outgoing calls."

CWU has a very nice feature you may not be aware of. Using prefix *4TTT you can decide which trunk to use. TTT=trunk number.

This is actually a lot better than changing to "premium plan" because when you find a good trunk you can continue to use it no matter what your default tariff is.

IMHO the *4TTT feature is something you can't be without.

Review by aks0 See Profile

  • Location: Framingham, Middlesex, MA, USA
  • Cost: $5 per month
  • Install: about 1 days
NO BS service, excellent voice quality for overseas router (I use it for India)
little less feature compared to VOIP.ms and callcentric and no US DID
Value for Money
Web-site:
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I started using this service 3 days before and never would have been more happy.
I will be ditching ALLVOI as my main VOIP provider for this as the sound quality it offers for the calls to US and INDIA and just superb!!! better than my AT&T cell phone.
Though for incoming I have a US DID with callcentric and VOIP.ms as CWU does not provide US DID (I SIP forward to callwithus as I didn't get good result with PBX) and I am evaluating both before deciding on one.
I use premium route for calling India as the rates are same b/w normal and premium so why not use premium..
Their website looks very basic but it is very functional for a normal or geek user. Yes it lacks certain functionality like IVR, recording, 911 but again how many people using VOIP would need those, I don't for sure.
Also there is no extra fees, taxes , govt. fees to pay
I will keep updating as I move on and use more...
aks

member for 13.1 years, 16 visits, last login: 13 years ago
lodged 13.1 years ago


Review by (hidden by request)

  • Location: Boca Raton, Palm Beach, FL, USA
  • Cost: $10 per month
Very Cheap
Tech Support, Call Quality, US DID Support
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CallWithUs started out as a decent provider. I purchased a DID from them
and was, for the most part, a happy customer. A couple of minor issues
that occurred while I was a happy customer:
1. Sometimes people couldn't hear me talk when I spoke. Tech support
told me to add my cell phone as a call route. That seemed to solve that
issue
2. I had to wait 1-2 seconds after answering the phone before I said
hello. The first 1-2 seconds of a call was always dropped.

Ok, fine, I could live with those. After all, I was paying next to
nothing for calls.

Recently, people started to receive messages saying their call couldn't
be completed as dialed when they called me. After a lot of back and
forth with a CallWithUs tech support person (who was quite rude at
times), it was determined that the problem was on the DID vendor's end:

"I'm 100% sure the problem is on didx.net end, that's one of the reasons
I don't offer US DIDs anymore."

Wait a second, I have a US DID, purchased from CallWithUS...

"Port the number out. Never buy DIDs from didx.net or their resellers."

Wait a second, I didn't buy a DID from "didx.net" - I bought it from
CallWithUs. Sounds like someone over there is confused... Maybe they
forgot they sold me the DID? Do I really care who THEY bought it from?
Long story short, this was the "resolution" from CallWithUS:

"Port the number to another voip provider."

They were a decent provider for a while, but it doesn't appear they want
to be in this business any more. I would only recommend CallWithUs under
the following conditions:
1. You don't need a phone number
2. It's OK if technical support doesn't care if your service works or not
3. You're fine with your service simply not working from time to time
and are willing to take matters in your own hands (see #2)

I'm in the process of switching to CallCentric. They're a bit more
expensive, but if they provide better, more reliable service, it is well
worth it to me.

- Joe (Boca Raton, FL)

(review was emailed from domain drivetrainsolutions.com)
lodged 13.1 years ago

Igorella
join:2003-12-19
Thornhill, ON

Igorella

Member

Callwithus

I am using Callwithus for about a year now, with 2 DID numbers - Canada and UK. My experience has been quite satisfactory: customer service through email was very responsive, pricing is one of the best around. Call quality to UK mobile sometimes was not to my satisfaction, so I switched to premium tariff and never looked back (7 - 8 cents a minute became 10-12; Skype charges over 22 cents the last looked.
On the down side, this is a very small provider with rock-bottom prices, so they are not equipped for hand holding. If you need a lot of support on very basic issues, look elsewhere.

Review by Ulmo See Profile

  • Location: San Jose, Santa Clara, CA, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Works pretty often
Sometimes throws a bad route at me. I can select better routes though.
Worth having

I like having CWU. It needs tuning, like any ITSP. CWU requires you choose routes that work decently. I only use measured outbound -- I don't think they offer much of anything else.

member for 18.5 years, 652 visits, last login: 4.3 years ago
lodged 13.8 years ago







Review by SperryRuss See Profile

  • Location: Florida
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
BYOD - Pay as you go. No contract.
No DID in small county.
Excellent value. Good support.
Web-site:
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This is my first experience with VOIP. Bought a PAP2T-NA then searched for providers. Ended up going with CallWithUs because of no contract and pay as you go. Also could not get a DID with anyone else apparently because my area is a smaller county and not active enough to be worth while for voip providers. Could not get a local DID with CallWithUs either but price allows for experimentation.

So I found out about Grand Central and Freedigits or IPKALL and configured them through Grand Central to ring my phone. If everything continues to work for me I will probably buy a DID from CallWithUs in adjacent call area and forward through Grand Central in case these free services go down. CallWithUs has some DID's for 5.00 USD, and 4.00 setup with 3000 incoming minutes. Other DID's with less minutes. 1-800 available also. Best prices I have seen so far.

Outgoing calls had prices lowered since I signed up. Now at .0125 cents a minute in US. Quality has been good so far.

Being new to VOIP I sent some emails to CallWith Us asking different questions. They answered all my questions fairly soon.

I am happy with them so far.

Update on April 24, 2010

Still using them per minutes calls are slightly lower. I have had some disconnects but it could be my hardware not sure at this time

member for 16.1 years, 17 visits, last login: 13.5 years ago
updated 13.9 years ago


Review by SpaethCo See Profile

  • Location: Minneapolis, Hennepin, MN, USA
  • Cost: $5 per month
  • Install: about 1 days
Ability to choose specific routes, competitive calling rates, excellent support
60 second billing (minor detractor)
Perfect for providing the essentials: calling that just works with acceptable quality
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Over the last few months I've been playing voice quality whack-a-mole with my various termination providers. It's not just a matter of cost, because some of my most expensive providers have delivered some of the poorest sound quality I've experienced. The problem I most frequently run into is carriers that only terminate calls based on least-cost routing (LCR) -- call quality might be great for a couple days to a few weeks, and then a new low cost carrier is substituted in and call quality goes to crap.

I recently switched back to callwithus for outbound termination largely because you can specifically choose outbound routes by prefixing your dialed number. In my case I make occasional calls to UK cell phones and that has been problematic with other providers -- CallerID was hit or miss, and call quality was frequently poor. With callwithus I'm able to select a route that gives both CID and consistent voice quality for a higher per-minute cost. So far US48 termination seems to be great sound quality with the carriers being used. The only small downside compared to other carriers I've used is 60 second billing vs 6 second billing. Ultimately with my current calling volume this isn't a big deal.

Overall I've been very happy with the service with callwithus -- I hope this continues to be a trouble-free calling solution.

member for 22.9 years, 5941 visits, last login: 111 days ago
lodged 14.2 years ago


Review by slcotten See Profile

  • Location: Portugal Cove-St Philips, NL, Canada
  • Cost: $11 per month
Great call quality and options, full featured account admin, free incoming SIP
Need to be able to learn some technical details re: VOIP, no 911 service
Great VoSP that gives customer (me) lots of control, and helps to reduce my phone bill
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
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Value for money:

==== Background (skip if this bores you) ======
We make quite a few long distance calls, and after evaluating some options to cut cost I decided to try out VOIP. At the time the best deal for the amount of calling we do was the $30/month local telco phone (no features) and $20/month for unlimited US/Canada calling (inc taxes). (Actually what bugged me most was that the local TelCo advertised $25.96 (inc taxes), and yet somehow through fees and so on that they don't tell you about until they actually bill you it was over $30). Looking around I figured that, after some setup cost and switching over to DSL with the telco for a Value Package so that the phone portion would be the equiv of $10/month, I could stop my long distance package and cut my long distance bill in half.

So in August I switched to DSL and ordered an ATA (Linksys SPA2102) from ebay for $56 (inc shipping). Shipping was slow but I did receive it and it works great. Very happy with that equipment.
====================================

==== Enter: CallWithUs ==================
I setup an account with CallWithUs over a month ago (12 Sep 2009). I chose CWU initially because of a) the good reviews and option to choose trunks and b) they had DIDs available in my local calling area when I could find them no where else. I initially added $10 credit to test outgoing only before making the jump and purchasing the DID and to see if it would be sufficient for my needs.

I was happy with the initial test, and after a few days, decided to go ahead and get that DID. The DID was $3 to setup and $4.50 a month for 3000 incoming minutes, 2 channels. It was setup and ready to use immediately, and worked like a charm.

I did encounter some issues trying to call toll free numbers in Canada. Some of them would give me a "The number you are trying to call is not available from your calling area" type message. After some research and fiddling around I modified my dial plan to use SipPhone for toll free numbers.

I also wanted to setup the DID to ring through to my local phone (and later cell phone) if the ATA is offline or my Internet is down. I couldn't get this to work initially so I emailed CallWithUs support. It was responded to very quickly with the solution: apparently the registration interval on the SPA defaulted to 3600 s (1 hour) which was too long and 3 minutes was suggested. I guess the CWU server was thinking that my ATA was still online within that hour and wasn't failing over. Now it works perfectly.

I am very fond of the detailed call logs and account management web site. It may seem a little rough around the edges in appearance, but it does function, and is very full featured.

I have not yet used the trunk selection features, as the call quality as almost always been very acceptable and most of the time excellent with the default (least expensive) routes/trunks. In fact, call quality to the US is almost always exceptional much better than land-line. I have found that call-quality to Canada is very good for the most part, but occasionally it is not as good (about on par with scratchy cell quality). That hasn't happened frequently enough for me to identify if it's a particular trunk, or enough to worry about using the trunk selection feature. It's nice to know it's available though.
====================================

==== Summary ========================
I am extremely happy with my experience with CallWithUs.

I like the control I have over my phone services, and the possibility I have of integrating with other users using IP dialing, sipbroker, etc. Their web site and phone access features have everything that I have needed so far, with the exception of toll free access to some Canadian numbers (I'm sure the toll free service works great for US numbers). Their billing is straight forward, and you pay for what you get and there are no hidden fees or extra charges.

Total, my setup costs were about $60 for the ATA and DID.
Ongoing CWU costs will vary but seem to be around $11-$15 dollars a month.

What I had (monthly costs):
- Local Phone, no features ($30)
- Long distance US/Canada unlimited, ($20)
Total: $50/month

What I have now (monthly costs):
- Local Phone (kept old number), no features ($10, because of DSL package)
- Local DID (new number), $4.50
- Long Distance, usually 0.99cents/minute (estimating $6-$10/month, $6 last month)
- Caller ID
- Call waiting
- Multiple lines (if SPA Line 1 is busy, Line 2 will still ring, or option to use Call Waiting)
- DID fail over and priority ringing (can have one number ring multiple locations, similar to call hunting).
- 911 service on my land line.
Total: $25.00/month

I like that: I should recover my setup costs within 3 months.
====================================

member for 14.5 years, 267 visits, last login: 10.9 years ago
updated 14.4 years ago

PX Eliezer704
Premium Member
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

911 service

Excellent review.

Just a note, customers of CallWithUs or other services who might need 911 can consider:

»www.digitalcon.ca/voip9- ··· ome.html