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Review by Bogtrotter 
UPDATED: 81 days ago
member for 166 days, 70 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 East York,ON
 Contract price not specified.
 "Reliable. Decent sound quality."
 "Expensive. Second-rate in some ways"
 "Good as a backup. But as a main vosp? Much better available for less money."
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I have a callcentric account with about $5 in it which I use as a backup. It used to be my first-line vosp but it got left in the dust when I realized how good voip.ms is.
Callcentric is reliable and sounds good, but it is no more reliable and does not sound any better than voip.ms. It is relatively expensive compared to voip.ms, and for that matter, to many other vosps.
It has decent support and call-handling features; but compared to voip.ms and voipo, its call-handling seems pretty ordinary, even a bit inferior.
I see its advocates trying to turn its defects into virtues by saying how its inferior call-handling just means the engineers at cc are working and testing, testing and working, until they get things perfect. Well, voip.ms showed up several years after callcentric, and its call-handling, sound quality, and general reliablity are about as good as you could ask.
And prices. They are supposedly high because of all that working and testing. Yet voip.ms gives you more for less money.
Maybe tomorrow callcentric will come out with call-handling to equal that of voip.ms (I doubt they can surpass it); but, for now, voip.ms is the easy choice to make. Why settle for callcentric when you can have voip.ms?
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Review by MaineMike
UPDATED: 83 days ago
member for 5.4 years, 33 visits, last login: 9 days ago
Portland,Cumberland,ME
Contract price not specified.
 about 4 days
"GREAT website. Fax-to-email feature."
"Required some extra configuration."
"Definitely a top contender."
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I have an Asterisk 1.6 PBX running at my home. I had been using a Vonage soft-phone account for over three years, but wanted to switch to a provider that supports BYOD on my primary number.
I tried these four providers: AxVoice, CallCentric, Future-Nine, and Voip.ms.
I thought that all four had similar call quality.
CallCentric definitely has the best website. When you log on to the website, the first screen is a dashboard that shows a lot of information in a very organized fashion. Some of the information included is account info, balance, device registration status, some basic preferences, the last few calls made, the last few calls received, fax info, E911 address, and active services. When I placed a technical support request, the request showed up also. I really, really liked the website. When ordering a DID number, I was only able to choose the city and didn’t see the phone number until after I placed my order.
CallCentric has a service that will receive a fax and email it to me. I thought that was a great idea.
A phone number in my city was not in stock, so it took four days to get one.
CallCentric does support E911 in my area. They support CNAM inbound, but not outbound.
They invoice on a monthly basis. When I signed up, I paid for one month plus the pro-rated amount for the second month to get me on a “first of the month” monthly schedule. I can use the website to determine if monthly invoices are charged to my credit card or deducted from my balance.
In order to configure a service provider in Asterisk, I have to add a "register" statement and a peer section to my sip.conf file for that provider. I also have to modify my extensions.conf file to determine how inbound calls should be handled. I did this for each of the service providers that I used. For the other service providers, I made a few additional minor changes to my configuration and I was able to get everything working pretty quickly. That wasn’t true for CallCentric.
I was unable to receive inbound calls from CallCentric. Unlike the other service providers, inbound calls from CallCentric come from a server other than the one listed in the "register" statement and peer section of my sip.conf file. When CallCentric was trying to establish an inbound call, Asterisk could not determine which peer was sending the INVITE, so the call was considered a "guest" call. In an attempt to make my Asterisk as secure as possible I had previously set "allowguest=no" in my sip.conf file (which is not the default setting). Once I realized that the CallCentric calls were being considered guest calls, I changed my sip.conf file to "allowguest=yes" and I was able to get a little bit further.
I didn’t know what to do next, so I opened up a trouble ticket. I was surprised to receive an answer very quickly. I was told to add "session-timers=refuse" to the "[general ]" section of my sip.conf file. That fixed the problem and inbound calls worked!
I tried moving that line to the CallCentric peer section of my sip.conf file, but realized that it had to remain in the general section since inbound calls were being considered guest calls. One side effect is that this setting was then applied to all my other sip peers, which I didn’t like. I also didn’t like having to have "allowguest=yes".
At the end of my evaluation, I was deciding between CallCentric and VoIP.ms. CallCentric has a better website and fax support, but requires Asterisk settings that I didn’t like. VoIP.ms supports outbound CNAM. I decided to choose VoIP.ms primarily because I wanted outbound CNAM support.
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Review by RiverMerger
UPDATED: 84 days ago
member for 1.9 years, 45 visits, last login: 19 days ago
Hinsdale,Dupage,IL
$14 per month (month by month)
about 1 days
"Customer/Tech Support,Reliability,Features and Price."
"Very few."
"It Works"
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I wont give just about anything perfect marks there is always room for improvement. That being said I have had very few problems with CALLCentric.
Had one incoming phone call that never showed up anywhere CC's log or anyplace else.
The porting was not a perfect procedure. It took half a day on the port in date where anyone calling me got a CC greeting about the phone number being out of area and unable to connect. Two hours of that I had no response from a ticket that was opened on the port request. The fact that when ever I have had a problem they have resolved it almost as soon as they put their attention to it makes me not worry much during that time.
We reduced our home phone bill by about 80% per month by porting the land line to this service
My baseline cost started off at $3.45 per month that is $1.50 for 911 service and $1.95 for the DID phone number both per month. I then paid $.015 (one and a half pennies) per minute for incoming and $.02(two pennies) per minute for outgoing calls to anywhere in the Nation! Calls to Norway, Sweden, England and Germany are all around the same amount means my genealogy quest just got a big shot of adrenalin.
What makes me like CC is the option to just pay for the minutes you use saves me a immense amount of money.
If you have more than 267 minutes average of incoming phone calls you would go with the personal unlimited inbound plan. That gives you a unlimited amount of incoming minutes for a ported number. Then you just pay for the minutes that you use on outgoing calls.
The Dirt Cheap-DID would be your pick for a new number, unlimited inbound for $2.95. I really didn't know what our incoming minutes were like for our ported number so I had gone with PPM inbound at first and switch later to unlimited inbound for $5.95 per month when the math made sense. Thinking about it now averaging about 9 min. per day inbound is hard to not go over.
If you average more than 920 minutes of outgoing calling per month, you would then go with the North America Unlimited plan for outgoing calls. I pay by the minute.
Free Sip address calling and active Sip broker peering (Vonage has disabled) is a attractive feature to me so even if my family does sign up with a different VOIP provider, as long as they have SIP ability with the provider we will be able to talk to each other unlimitedly for free.
CC is not for the technically challenged. You are putting most of your trust into the Internet. You also need to be able to provision and provide your own VOIP adapter.
Their technical support is only on line so if you are having trouble with your Internet service your having trouble with your phone and you probably cant get on line to contact them. Luckily their call treatment can automatically forward to a phone number of your choosing if the phone is not registered. I do believe though their technical/customer support is CC's greatest strength!
One drawback of this VOIP services I thought was going to be that the outgoing caller ID doesn't show your name. I know some other services now has that ability. It turns out not to be a big deal, most people have my number entered in the phone and it comes up with our name on their side anyway.
They continue to improve their service and in the year that I have had them just as a phone to use as long distance and the last 2 months as home phone service. They have added features that where asked for in the beginning is impressive.(CNAM,Call Treatment options...).
The fact that I could get inbound DTMF(touch tone) to work on their service. DTMF was the most important factor for me. We have a security door in the building that we live in which you must press a digit to let someone in. I had to do some jiggling with the settings under audio configuration on the line. DTMF had to be set to "in-band" and now it works every time. When I had researched other Voips about this service my other top choices didn't support this feature making CC the easy choice.
The other most important thing is not losing our phone number. Since CC has been around as a one of the oldest voip providers is reassuring. They have also reassured me that if the worst should happen plenty of time would be given to port out a number and that it would be recoverable even after that. The fact that they are willing and competent enough to answer these questions builds my confidence.
The other other most important thing was the call treatment. We had been inundated with these "out of area" calls that never leave a message and never answer. One click on the call treatments and all of those are gone. I can not say how much it is worth to have the phone ring now and know it is someone calling to talk. For other possible spoof protection I put in many illegal numbers and unwanted numbers to “number disconnected” or straight to voice mail with their wild card treatment.:)
In the end you don't want people to notice much if any change. I only told only a few people that I switched from a land line to a Voip phone. No one can tell the difference between the two. I sure can though, in my phone bill and in my phone ringing only with people I wish calling.
Callcentric is easy to try, easy to get rid of, easy to stick with. I think if you try them its quite likely you will stick with them. They just do many things the right way.
Sep. 2 edit for content.
Followup comments:  SraM
join:2009-08-27
Ottawa, ON | Changing plan Hi,
I'm with CC and I could not find an answer to the following question: Can we keep our DID if we decide to change our incoming plan? How much does it cost?
Since you did it, you may know how it works. Thank you in advance. | |
| | SraM
join:2009-08-27
Ottawa, ON
| Re: Changing plan Sorry, I just found the answer on CC FAQs:
Can I change between rate plans?
Yes, you can change to a different rate plan at any time. If you wish to change to a higher priced rate plan the difference in price between your current rate plan and the new higher priced rate plan will be charged. If you are changing to a lower priced rate plan, the change will only occur at the end of your current billing cycle.
Is there a service fee to change rate plans?
There is no service fee to change rate plans. I guess we can keep the DID... | |
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Review by dicodread
UPDATED: 86 days ago
member for 1 year, 99 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Miami,Miami-Dade,FL
 Business customer
Contract price not specified.
"Easy to setup"
"Dont have a virtual pbx"
"perfect for home users but companies need their own sip proxy"
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I have been using callcentric personally for about 3 years now with no problems. I was sold so much on their service I recommended them to my company to use them for sip trunks on our ip pbx. We have 3 locations and as we have found out, only one allows the sip trunk terminated directly on the gateway (Cisco Callmanager Express) the other locations use callmanager and MGCP so they have to control the sip trunk and not the other way around. The solution was to get a flurry of pap2 devices to connect via fxo on the voice gateways. This worked fine for outgoing but not incoming as you are only allowed one registration with callcentric.
Callcentric suggested to create multiple accounts and route the incoming via call treatments but we found this didnt always work
Our final solution was found by installation an asterisk pbx on a vm and use that for the sip trunk. The linksys ata's then registered as extensions and now things are working just fine.
It would be nice if Callcentric created virtual numbers under the same account as it would really help small companies who want to use this service and not wanting to register a credit card on several accounts.
Update 28/07/2009
Had a few problems with the asterisk setup because for a good while I would only get one way audio depending on how the call was made. Then when we sorted out the one way audio I found out I couldnt put the call on hold from the callmanager end.
After almost throwing the towel I decided to open a ticket with callcentric. To my surprise they worked with me until I now have it working perfectly.
Feeling lucky I decided to dig up an old issue I had at a customer site with a spa9000. I could not transfer calls via the auto attendant or even an extension, once that call came in via another callcentric number. I opened the ticket and within the hour I had a brand new setting to try on the spa9000 and it solved the problem.
I have always recommended callcentric for home users but warned companies to be sure what they are getting into. As from today I will retract my position and recommend them to all and sundry.
Good stuff Callcentric!!!
Update 09/01/2009
I moved my monthly figure out because I realize it is really an average for long distance spend. Our recurring cost is really about 10.00 for our 4 DID numbers.
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Review by Uncle Fester
Posted: 89 days ago
member for 89 days, 0 visits, last login: 89 days ago
Saint Petersburg,Clarion,PA
Contract price not specified.
"clear sound, reliable"
"To know it is to love it"
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Signed up 2 weeks ago. Best thing I ever did. Perfect sound, perfect reliability. Just the best darn voip provider out there. Forget the rest - this one is the best!
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 Review by tubbynet
Posted: 92 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 1023 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Chandler,Maricopa,AZ
Contract price not specified.
about 2 days
"good call quality, great feature-set, tons of included features"
"outgoing pay-as-you-go is a little pricey, no 6-second billing"
"great for a rock solid vosp"
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decided to cut the telco/mso cord. i had no real need to port my number, so i decided to play around. i researched a lot and decided that i would spend money on callcentric's pay-as-you-go did and outgoing plan. i have a cisco 2811 running the advanced enterprise services and several cisco poe switches and phones, so the hardware cost was free for me (essentially).
after learning how to set up the cisco call manager express software to act like a sip user agent and register my voice gateway, the setup was pretty simple. i set up voip dial-peers for each outgoing translation pattern (local dialing, long distance, international, toll-free using sip broker, internal callcentric, voicemail, speed dials, etc) and set up each of my phones. all in all, once i figured out the outgoing call pattern, i was set (incoming calls worked as soon as my router was registered with callcentric).
the call quality has been very good. i use the g.711 codec when internal in my network, and force a lower quality codec when i vpn in to my house and use the cisco softphone. i have never had callcentric be "down", and usually forward my cell phones to my callcentric did when in house, since its easier if my phones are charging etc.
since initially signing up, i have added voicemail (free) to my account, as well as an inum number (also free). i am always surprised by what they give away for free.
originally, i was paying 1.5c/min for incoming calls with my payg did. i saw that my incoming was exceeding the breakeven point, so i signed up for an unlimited residential did. instead of the $3.45/month for the did (with e911 cost recovery), i am now paying $7.45/month for unlimited (a cost of ~270 incoming minutes). the only downside was that when moving from a payg did to an unlimited residential did, they wouldn't let me keep my existing did. a small price to pay, but ultimately worth it.
the web portal for callcentric is pretty impressive. i signed up with voip.ms with the intention to move to them for the cost savings with 6-second billing and a faster ping to servers in la, and the portal was much less refined than that of callcentric. as soon as i log in, i can see my voicemails, balance, call reports, as well as a summary of the products i have associated with my account.
all in all, callcentric gets a vote in my book. i have a few people who will be moving to them as soon as they are able to upgrade their connections or move to dry loop dsl.
q.
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Review by bdx234x
Posted: 93 days ago
member for 93 days, 7 visits, last login: 35 days ago
Cottage Grove,Dane,WI
$8 per month
about 1 days
"Great call quality, outstanding customer service"
"Very pleased using Callcentric with a Cisco 7960"
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I've been with Callcentric for about 1 month now and am very pleased. Call quality is very good and customer service is outstanding. I converted a Cisco 7960 from SCCP to SIP and although not directly supported was able to use the generic device setup guide to get the phone up and running very quickly.
Had one problem early on with the local trunk provider having an issue which Callcentric resolved very quickly. For the price & quality I'm hugely satisfied with the provider.
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Review by liquidman
UPDATED: 94 days ago
member for 6 years, 18 visits, last login: 94 days ago
Boynton Beach,Palm Beach,FL
$9 per month
about 1 days
"Inexpensive, Quick set up and good call quality, PBX friendly"
"No phone support"
"The good points are well worth it."
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I just purchased a local DID and toll free numbers from Callcentric for a new business. I was able to sign up in just a few minutes, bound SIP trunk to my PBX and was up and running in 10 min. The toll free number did take about a day or so to be assigned to me, but I was in no hurry so it did not matter. I chose the $8.95 per month plan and I pay for outbound minutes. I can adjust my plan at any time if this plan no longer suits me down the road. I did not set up the 911 option as I do no require it so I cannot say if it works or not. Call quality seems to be great so far. Their dashboard control panel is very neat and user friendly. The website has tutorials on how to set up your device or PBX. I did submit an email to them when I first created my account and it took nearly a business day to answer and they do not have contact number. Not a huge deal, but faster response times and maybe even a contact number would be nice. All in all, I would use them again and recommend them to anyone.
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Update 3/27/09
Callcentric has just added CNAM as well as some other DID routing features that I have been waiting for PBX use. The service and quality are still great, and now with the addition of these two key features, I can now recommend them to my clients. Thanks for listening to us!
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8/25/09
i now have 4 Callcentric accounts and am still very pleased with their service. Not as cheap as others but the sound quality is probably the best i have used.
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Review by siptrunker
Posted: 122 days ago
member for 123 days, 5 visits, last login: 86 days ago
Atlanta,Dekalb,GA
$9 per month
about 14 days
"great price and EXCELLENT service"
"missing nighttime DND and FindMe features"
"if you can spell SIP and are not afraid of admin, this is for you"
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Let me say that "igotthisone" from Davidson, NC pretty much has the best review yet and I agree wholeheartedly. While the +1 dialing was initially a pain, it was easily fixed by changing the dial plan to include for NPA-NXX-XXXX patterns (at least it was on my PAP2).
I will MISS the DND feature for night time (which still allowed punch through) as I've ported from CallVantage. Yes, I figured out how to do time of day treatments but that burned 7 out of 30 possible and even so, I have to white list who can get through - not good if it's for someone where my kids might be spending the night - guess that's why we have cell phones.
I'm surprised there isn't a multiple ring function (find me/follow me) as I had that with Vonage in 2003 and we support it on my company's Genband M6 switch.
I had hoped to register multiple devices but it's not really supported. I suppose I can build an Asterisk box and hairpin, but then, this service strikes a good balance of providing the most features for the most potential customers. I did get it working (kinda) with Fring but I'm not so sure I like Fring in the first place. What I really want is to register multiple UAs and let CallCentric do all the things SIP promises us it will do but for now this will do. Perhaps Google Voice one day.
Call quality is good - I'm forcing mu-law (G.711u) but will take G.729a if I must. Don't recall seeing T38 for fax but then, I do outbound fax perhaps twice a year (scan to PDF and email is more likely). They do have a fax mailbox in the sky and I got a simple DID for $1.95 to pick up those calls. Don't think I've even seen eFax-like capability for that price anywhere.
I gave straight fives except for the website and that was hard. It just feels 1990's and looks only slighty better. Don't get me wrong - it works but could be better (sorry).
The only other quibble I have: for emailed voicemail it would be nice to have the CNAME and CID in the subject. They supply it in the body (which makes it easy to call back using an iPhone) so this shouldn't be difficult.
I'll follow up once I'm beyond the first day ....
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Review by hormonx
UPDATED: 124 days ago
member for 3.8 years, 184 visits, last login: 3 days ago
Canada
$25 per month
about 15 days
"By far best and fastest tech suppor i have ever contacted. Very knowlegable and curtious. Very good service, amazing prices."
"None so far."
"Highly recomended VoIP company A+"
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What can i say, as far as i am concerned this is a 5Star company. Moved here from Vonage, and by far on all points they beat them down. I have not used any other company but so far i am very impressed. My bill with Vonage was on average $50 a month, and now my first bill for this month is barely $16.
I had to have my number ported to Callcentric to keep my existing phone number, and it took all of 10 days to get it done, and it was completely hassle free. Sound quality is very good, and equipment reliability is excellent. Even thou my VoIP adapter is not supported by Callcentric, they went out of their way to help me configure it so it works.
Over all highly recommended company with great product and even better prices.
BTW i am in Canada, Only thing that is not supported at this time is E911.
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Update January 2009
So far so good. I have not had any issues asside from my voip adapter, but i know the fault lies with my equipment not with CallCentric.
Still very happy and not planing to change anytime soon.
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Update July 2009
Well i am still with Callcentric and it would seem i will not go anywhere else anytime soon. Service has been superb and newly added features are just fantastic.
Call treatment has ability to ad wild card carachters to a phone number and that is great is you want to block a while bunch of numbers from same exchange, great feature
e911 is now available for Canadian customers ... such as me. Great news, even though it is $1.50 a month .. it is still well worth the money.
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