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 Review by rx100 
UPDATED: 198 days ago
member for 6.7 years, 1267 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Sunnyvale,Santa Clara,CA
 $8 per month (12 month contract)
 about 1 days
 "top notch support, value for $$, completed the porting in 2 weeks"
 "none so far"
 "the best"
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1. Auto-provision didn't work on my ATA out of the box but after a quick email I got it up and running no problem.Even though VOIPo says no after hour/weekend support, VOIPo support responded to all my issue withing an hour. Excellent support.Hope it stays this way for ever.
2. Had issues when I connected after the router (DIR-655) but with the help of Mike (christcorp) it got resolved.(»VOIPo: ATA not registering thru DIR-655 router)
3.ATA is configured for NAT traverse with a STUN server
no issues with incoming or outgoing calls
4.Call quality is excellent
5.Number porting took about 15 days from Voicepulse. It was seamless
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of VOIPo |
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Review by kevinj
Posted: 214 days ago
member for 214 days, 1 visits, last login: 213 days ago
Ramsey,Bergen,NJ
$18 per month (month by month)
about 5 days
"CS is superb; call quality superb"
"basic features are in place ... bells and whistles being fleshed out"
"I made the right choice"
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I waited a MONTH before joining DSLReports and writing this review. I put Voipo in as a replacement for retreating ATT CallVantage. My internet is FiOS, so I have loads of bandwidth.
As a CallVantage refugee, I was worried about going with a small company - but I had no choices, did I (Vonage was considered but not for long). I should not have worried. Voipo is apparently well capitalized, and is GROWING fast. The real good news is that just as my service was going into place, they were totally upgrading (expanding) their capacity. EXCELLENT!
Customer Service / Tech Support is responsive, friendly, and accurate. I can't comment on their technical depth, because I have had NO TECHNICAL ISSUES ... all of my contacts have been about feature clarification and about general startup questions - mostly stupid questions. Answers were prompt and clear.
Call quality has been flawless ... and the line quality is better than ATT C/V.
My $18 package includes tax ... and they provided me with a Linksys PAP2 (compact, and TWO ports - I have a cloned line -- way cool!).
Bottom line ... Voipo gets an A+ and a sigh of relief ... it JUST WORKS, and works well. I recommend them without hesitation, and I suspect that the tiny handful of naysayers are too lazy to update their bad reviews, or maybe they forgot their passwords ... because after a month and a half of dealing with Voipo, and reading their forum posts, it is clear to me that they will not allow a customer to be unhappy.
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Review by mujibur
UPDATED: 224 days ago
member for 6.4 years, 1 visits, last login: 222 days ago
Jacksonville,Duval,FL
$11 per month (12 month contract)
"Cheap"
"No Fax support"
"DO NOT sign up if you intend to Fax"
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I fax about 2-3 pages each month and have never had problems on Vonage. So before signing up for Voipo, I asked customer support whether I can fax on Voipo. Their response: While it's not a feature of Voipo, faxes can be sent.
So I signed up and tried several test faxes which went fine. I sent about 6 faxes successfully since signing up in Feb 2009. Then they had the Network issues that interrupted service for many customers. Well, whatever they did to fix the network issues, I now get echos on voice and CANNOT send a single FAX. The echos I can tolerate, but no fax is very inconvenient for me.
So I called tech support and was told that while it's not supported, if I open a ticket, someone can at least take a look to see if the settings on my device is optimized. This seemed reasonable to me. I send the ticket and here's the response:
> Hello,
> Since we do not fully support fax and we do not recommend that our customers to use our service for anything except voice service, there's no troubleshooting we can offer for your faxing issue. Faxing is pretty much hit or miss on VoIP service due to the communication over the internet and up time is never guaranteed. Let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you.
So not only do they not support fax, they won't help you in any way to troubleshoot. And their recommendation to only use it for voice seems inconsistent with the information that I received before signing up. I guess it's not worth their time anymore to help out their customers. So anyone considering faxing on Voipo, don't repeat my mistake and go with another provider. I plan on changing as soon as the contract is up.
Followup comments:  VOIPoTim
VOIPo.com
Premium,VIP
join:2006-06-06
Houston, TX
1 edit | Faxing Unfortunately, faxing over VoIP will never be fully reliable so that's why we don't officially support it.
In ideal situations with a clean connection, slow fax machine speed, etc, it'll work, but since VoIP was not designed for faxing and we can't guarantee it won't work, we just don't support it officially.
Many users have found faxing works for them unofficially though and may be able to offer some advice.
Sorry if there was confusion about this, but if we can't guarantee something will work, we just don't support it.
From TOS:
---
Service Limitations
Due to the nature of all VoIP services, VOIPo service is not designed to be used for data connections with modems, home security systems, fax machines and related devices. It is optimized for voice only and you may experience issues and inconsistencies when using VOIPo service in non-voice scenarios.
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| | mujibur
join:2003-06-25
Jacksonville, FL
 ·VOIPo
1 edit | Re: Faxing If this is your policy to never even troubleshoot a fax problem, then all your sales staff should explain this when prospective customers ask. I was never told this when I specifically asked if faxes can be sent on your service.
While I understand that you don't guarantee fax reliability, it is obvious from the timing of my fax problems that it's from something your company changed to fix your network problems that plagued your system. Since I can't access the ATA device to view settings, and I don't know what changes you made, I have absolutely no way to troubleshoot something your company changed. All I asked is for someone to just take a look to see if any of those changes can affect a fax transmission. I would be completely fine with taking a look but still finding no fix. But I guess spending the few minutes to take a look is too much of a burden on your staff. Or you may be too busy spending time finding and replying to all the similar posts that I made to warn others on other forums to have time left over to actually try to help one of your customers. | |
| | | VOIPoTim
VOIPo.com
Premium,VIP
join:2006-06-06
Houston, TX
| Re: Faxing What happens is once we start "tweaking" and making custom changes for customers knowing they may or may not work, it usually turns into a bad cycle of the customer expecting us to fix it again if it doesn't work.
Since faxing is so hit or miss, it could easily turn into a situation where we make a tweak to help with it that "may" work, but then it would stop later and the customer would be upset again.
Based on that happening over and over in the past, support is only able to help with services we directly support and can guarnatee consistent results for.
I know you're frustrated, but by keeping everything standardized, the service will be much more stable for all customers than it would be if we start adjusting things on an individual basis.
Some customers having custom "tweaks" and fixes applied outside of the norm caused a ton of problems in the past and prevented us from making a lot of system changes (since it would likely disrupt service for those customers).
There are pros and cons, but at this point, VOIPo is out of the "tweaking" business and we're focusing on delivering consistent, stable, reliable service across the board. | |
| | | | nitzan
Premium,VIP
join:2008-02-27
·ViaTalk
 ·Comcast
| Re: Faxing Tim, have your techs and the customer take a look at: »www.future-nine.com/faq/index.ph···tlang=en
Just switch this customer's 2nd port on the PAP2 to these settings. If it works - you get a happy customer. If it doesn't - well, at least you tried. 
We have a pretty good track record with faxes, so I'm confident these settings do help. | |
| | | | mujibur
join:2003-06-25
Jacksonville, FL
·VOIPo
| Tim,
This "tweaking" excuse is just that, an excuse not to bother even trying to help troubleshoot. This is the first and only time I ever asked for help to troubleshoot an issue, so its not "a situation where we make a tweak to help with it that "may" work, but then it would stop later and the customer would be upset again"
And your "no tweak" policy is not written anywhere in the TOS, and is completely invalid since you allow BYOD. So if anyone bought their own PAP2 and use it on your service, like I read on many other posts, they can't tweak their device? Of course they can, and from the posts I've read, most of them do. So just be upfront and just say you don't want to bother with helping a customer out instead of coming up with lame excuses that aren't written anywhere and don't even make sense with your own BYOD policies.
Here's a novel idea - why not be upfront about your "absolutely no troubleshooting policy" when people ask about faxing before they sign up for your service. I specifically asked and was never told about this policy. Of course you run the risk of customers not signing up, but at least that would be honest. Instead, your rep told me that many customers send faxes on your service without issues, which may be half true, since they're the ones probably with their own devices that they can "tweak". | |
| | | 
mddg99
@bellsouth.net
| re: inexpensive fax solution
mujibur,
I know this response does not resolve your fax issue with VOIPo, but for a reliable and low cost fax solution consider »www.maxemail.com. For $14.95/year and $.05 or $.10 per page you can have solid inbound and outbound fax solution via email. This group is the same group that authored eFax; the product has been solid over two-2 years for me; I'm a low volume fax user, so this solution worked for me verses struggling with FOIP. | |
| | | | mujibur
join:2003-06-25
Jacksonville, FL | Re: Faxing mddg99,
Thanks for the info. I'll look into it.
It's nice to see some people offer some help rather than one excuse after another not to even look into the issue from Voipo's tech support. | |
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 Review by Vumes
UPDATED: 232 days ago
member for 330 days, 76 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Beaverton,Washington,OR
Contract price not specified.
"Reliability, Cost, and the Call Quality and SUPPORT (US Based around the clock)"
"Rocky start. (When I first joined)"
"Your money's worth, and then some!"
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I come from another Voip giant which had good service, but their prices and especially their support left a lot to be desired. I decided to give Voipo a shot. At first I had quite a few problems because my device was faulty. I got a new device and everything was good until Voipo exploded with growth (customers) and we saw some problems with the devices. Voipo changed out their device, and ever since getting the PAP2T, I haven't had a single problem.
Call quality is great, the price is super, its reliable, and best of all, when I was having all those problems at the beginning, Voipo support was their around the clock answering support tickets. I have to give it up for Tim and his team. They work what seems at all hours, and are very helpful in getting you fixed up should you have a problem. I tell you what though, now that the PAP2T is the flagship device, I think most users will be trouble free. It's plug and play with your router so you have virtually nothing to figure out.
I don't regret my decision at all for leaving the other Voip giant, and I would do it all over again. My wife can call anywhere at anytime without any issues so if the "Wife" is a factor, fear not, you'll be ok.
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Review by voipinit
UPDATED: 235 days ago
member for 1.1 years, 5 visits, last login: 199 days ago
Hampton,Henry,GA
$11 per month (12 month contract)
about 2 days
"customer service, reliability, value, ease of installation"
"the web interface while better then most could be better organized"
"Excellent VOIP service"
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I have had the service since mid January and have had very few bumps. The few bumps that I had were quickly resolved and my service is rock solid. Their customer service is second to none including very quick turnaround when a support ticket is opened. The VOIP services I have had are Vonage (4 years), SunRocket (2 months -now defunct), Packet8 (13 months), VT (6 months), and now VOIPo. Without question, VOIPo has been the best so far. I highly recommend them if you are considering VOIP service.
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Review by kevm
Posted: 237 days ago
member for 2.7 years, 41 visits, last login: 126 days ago
Parkesburg,Chester,PA
$9 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Exceptional customer service and involved owner"
"some rough spots lately, but seems due to rapid growth"
"It would be hard to do better overall"
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I have had VOIPO for several months. I wont sugar coat it and say it hasn't been a bumpy road cause it has been. That being said, if you read and participate in the user forums and you spend any amount of time trying to understand what has been going on, I think you will find that most of the issues are due to growth, or supplier equipment problems, the latter of which is beyond the control of VOIPO.
You will also find that customer service and even the President of the company participates regularly in the forum and they all genuinely want to help their customers. This is very evident to me, and well worth it to stick with them to ride out a short storm. I give VOIPO high marks for their customer service, caring nature, and voice quality that is top notch. The reliability has been very good lately
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Review by dvijen
UPDATED: 237 days ago
member for 1 year, 201 visits, last login: 4 days ago
Baton Rouge,East Baton Rouge,LA
$134 per month (12 month contract)
"Great service, superb call quality and outstanding customer service"
"None so far"
"Best voip provider in business"
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I dropped vonage after 4 years and joined voipo in November (pre launch special). Got GS first, started working in seconds, behind my linksys (DD-WRT) router, absolutely no issues at all with anything. I was upgraded (IMO) to pap2 sometimes in Feb, again, plug and play, no issues so far. Recall only one time when service dropped for a few hours, due to data center outage, the fallback worked seamlessly. Voice quality is superb, customer service outstanding, all questions answered very quickly. In current times, customer service makes or breaks a business, and if it is good, a lot of other otherwise important issues take back seat (rightfully so). They have a great business model, great pricing (willing to pay them more to get such customer service), and a recipe for success. I have recommended them to my friends, a couple of them have signed up with them, again, very happy with the decision. May be the trick is DD-WRT, and I may have lucked out due to that feature.
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Review by stason99
UPDATED: 238 days ago
member for 244 days, 4 visits, last login: 235 days ago
Brooklyn,Kings,NY
$16 per month (12 month contract)
about 15 days
"Good customer service, lots of convenient features, price."
"Very unreliable"
"Get it if you don’t care about reliability. You might have to restart your ATA often."
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Good customer service, lots of convenient features, price.
Very unreliable.
Get it if you don’t care about reliability. You might have to restart your ATA often.
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Review by bubbanc
UPDATED: 238 days ago
member for 2.5 years, 267 visits, last login: 57 days ago
Garner,Wake,NC
$8 per month (24 month contract)
"Great price, no hidden fees, excellent tech support!"
"vPanel is clunky, unable to use custom callerid with restricted/blocked callers"
"Run into a few issues; at least tech support is willing to help."
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Update: 4/6/2009
No issues recently other than a bit of echo when calling to my Voipo line (notice it on my cell phone that I can hear myself when calling home). Didn't appear to lose connectivity the other night during the DC meltdown (at least my script didn't report losing registration).
Update: 3/28/2009
Support mentioned that other folks in the Voipo forum had had issues with Tomato 2.23, so I have reverted to version 1.19 (which I used to run problem free with my previous provider).
Still seeing a delay intermittently when answering calls and saying hello. Typically there is a 3-4 second delay in call setup that requires saying "hello" twice and the calling party only hears it the 2nd time.
We'll see if the firmware downgrade fixes either of these problems.
Update: 3/26/2009
Tried to call my Voipo line from my cell phone. Wife said that she picked up the phone and said hello but there was dead air. On my end, I got sent to voicemail. Called tech support (was NEVER on hold; immediately got a tech support representative) and they recommended me move my PAP2T from DMZ to non-DMZ and forward ports:
Registration: 5060 - 5080 (UDP)
Audio: 35000 - 65000 (UDP / TCP, random assignment)
Shortly after making this change I called my folks. During the call it went dead. I have inquired with Voipo to check and see if this drop occurred on our end or theirs. Will update when I hear something back.
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Update: 3/24/2009
Voipo resolved my outbound calling issue by forcing G711u codec for all calls. PAP2T was hanging up on certain calls is because of the codec being negotiated, usually G729a/etc and this is usually not an issue for the PAP2T's. Calls for the past 4 days have been great! No echo, no static. Still seeing some minor delay when answering the call and saying hello, but that may also be operator error.
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Update: 3/20/2009
I've had various issues over the past month: DTMF tones during phone calls heard by the other party, delay in hearing the other caller (or the other caller hearing us) when initially answering the phone. Those issues appeared to be resolved (and were perhaps my issues) once I upgraded code on my router and let Voipo provision my PAP2T. Now, as of yesterday, I'm having issues calling out to my area code. Needless to say the WAF has dropped significantly in the past month, so back to the dog house I go. Luckily, Voipo customer service is working with me to try and fix the issues. I have to give them more credit than my previous provider. Looks like I spoke too soon... the wife called me from Voipo and I had to say hello twice; she only heard it once. She still can't call her folks but she can call me. Calling her folks works fine on her cell phone. Ugh.
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Prior to ordering I emailed sales support with my questions and received and answer back from Tim almost instantly. He did a great job of answering my questions and sold me (along with the positive reviews on BBR) on Voipo.
Signup was a breeze and after signing up I opened up a ticket requesting SIP credentials and asked to be BYOD. They quickly provided me what I needed to get going and I was up and using their service about 3 hours after placing my order. Also, they configured the outgoing caller ID information to be the number that I will eventually port so no questions from folks we're calling about why we have a new number and which number they should use (like I had to deal with at my old provider).
Call quality has been very good and no dropouts or dead air like with previous provider. Tech support has been FANTASTIC! They are quick to answer questions and even quicker at routing to upper level support if they don't know the answer instead of keeping the customer guessing forever (like my previous provider).
Only issues thus far is the inability to create a custom caller ID entry for blocked/restricted phone numbers and have that information show when the caller calls. This worked with my previous provider, so I became spoiled when knowing when my in-laws were calling. Not a show stopper, but at least they provided a detailed explanation as to why it worked with my old provider and why it doesn't work with Voipo. Another issue (which may now be resolved!) is that custom caller ID entries names did not show in the voicemail email messages as being from that person. Instead, the phone number was listed twice.
Also, a few other features that I would like to have: Schedule/Calendar for setting up DND on a daily basis.
Will update once I've used the service a bit longer.
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Review by ralfaro
UPDATED: 238 days ago
member for 323 days, 27 visits, last login: 238 days ago
Fort Lauderdale,Broward,FL
$8 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Excellent call quality, best tech support I have seen, excellent value"
"Control panel very basic but being worked on."
"Highly recommended"
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04/06/09:
Just wanted to do another update as I have now been with Voipo for over 3 months and generally speaking, their tech support still remains t be the best I have seen. I have had a couple of minor issues but they were taken care of swiftly and effectively. Most of my issues were taken care of when they replaced my GrandStream with a Linksys PAP2 as the GrandStream suffered from registration issues. Voice quality is still the best I have experienced among the various providers I have used. I'm still highly satisfied with this company.
01/29/09
As promissed, I am updating this review to reflect the fact that the one outstanding issue I had was resolved thanks to Voipo seeing it all the way through right up through to one of their carriers, Level3.. I signed up for the 1 year promotion which was a terrific deal. Their call quality and tech support continue to be first class.
I have only been with Voipo for a week, but I can't over emphasize how absolutely excellent their tech support has been. I have submitted a few support tickets, and all of them with the exception of one, were resolved within a day or less. I still have one outstanding ticket that has proven to be somewhat problematic, but hopefully, they are working on it. Once that ticket is resolved, I plan to take advantage of their current 1 year promotion. Their call quality is the best I have heard from any of the voip providers I have had any experience with. I am currently with Comcast, but have had both Vonage and CallVantage in the past. I was actually fairly happy with our comcast digital Voice service, but they raised their prices on us so they were no longer a reasonable solution at almost $50 per month with an unpublished number.
Unfortunately, Voipo was not able to port over my Comcast number but so far it looks like their quality of service will be worth biting the bullet and sacrificing our old number. I am just waiting for this last issue to be resolved so that I can cancel Comcast.
I will update this when and if my final issue has been addressed.
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Move from the DMZ?