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Review by scottb8888 See Profile

  • Location: Dublin, Franklin, OH, USA
  • Cost: $10 per month
  • Install: about 1 days
Great service, quick turn up, not real expensive
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

I have SIP trunks into my home PBX with multiple DID numbers from Voip.ms. Things are working great. I have severe; sip phones that I take on vacation. I have 8xx service as well as local service.

member for 23 years, 3079 visits, last login: 38 days ago
updated 9.5 years ago







Review by aldo See Profile

  • Location: undisclosed location
  • Cost: $15 per month
Lots to praise
Nothing to complain about
Lots to praise and nothing to complain about
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

Update 2014-08-07
Voip.Ms continues to work flawlessly.

I have always liked voip.ms for it many features, especially the
IVR. But it wasn't until somebody casually mentioned, several months
ago, that he used the IVR as a challenge, saying something like:
Press 1 to ring the phone, that the penny dropped and I realized I
could stop whitelisting during the day, and that the telemarketer
robots would hang up when they hear the answering machine, while
human callers would know enough to press 1.

The usefulness of an IVR has suddenly jumped up a couple of
notches if recent posts here are any indication.

At night I continue to whitelist and the phone continues to stay
quiet unless it is somebody I want to hear from.

Voip.ms has solved its server problems judging from the lack of
complaints, and the one I use has a short ping time, sounds good,
and there is no delay, and no down time that I have noticed.

It would be nice to have the enter 1 for confirmation, but they
say that will be here soon.

Lots to praise and nothing to complain about.

member for 10.5 years, 6 visits, last login: 9.6 years ago
updated 9.6 years ago


crazyk4952
Premium Member
join:2002-02-04
united state
Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite
Ubiquiti UniFi AP-LR
Polycom VVX300

crazyk4952

Premium Member

no PBX required

voip.ms definitely has a lot of useful features and that allow advanced functionality without having to worry about a PBX.

Here is how I use the time conditions and IVR features:

During the day, all calls are allowed to ring my phone (unless you are blacklisted). At night, however, all calls go to an IVR that prompts callers to press "1" if the call is urgent and the phone will ring.

Review by teddy See Profile

  • Location: Kingston, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $7 per month
  • Install: about 25 days
Incredibly feature rich for low cost
Website lacking documentation
Great value if you don't mind getting your hands dirty during setup
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

Update July 2014: Nearing 4 years with voip.ms. No reliability issues. My eBay purchased PAP2T seems to be the cause of some static on my line now, but voip.ms keeps chugging along. I estimate I've saved well over $1000 since ditching my Cogeco home phone. Thinking about picking up an OBI ATA, but not even considering dropping voip.ms. I only wish they supported fax for the odd time I do need it.

Update Feb 12, 2012: No changes since last update. Still very reliable and cheap! Looking forward to many more years with voip.ms

Update Jul 31, 2011: Another update. Haven't had even the slightest hiccup since my last update. Have converted 2 coworkers full time over, another planning to move over. Simply cannot beat the value! I have been using the montreal server for a number of months. Overall everage cost per month is under $7 (which includes the $1.50 E911 and $1.99 DID fees)

Update Apr 12, 2011: It's been nearly 5 months since my phone# was ported. Aside from a few hiccups in the early stages the service has been rock stable. I'm loving the call features and especially the savings!! Today a friend signed up and is super excited by everything. He's taking a work trip to the US and is looking forward to making SIP calls from his Galaxy S saving a bundle over using long distance.

Original review:

I signed up for voip.ms near the end of October 2010 shortly after receiving my PAP2T in the mail. Used the service for outgoing calls for testing and to play around with the ATA and voip.ms features.

On October 28th I submitted a request to port my number from Cogeco. Nov. 1 voip.ms set the port status to processing. It wasn't until Nov 25 that something finally happened - Cogeco disconnected my phone service. Unfortunately my port didn't seem to be complete, for 2 days I could not receive any phone calls. Thankfully once I contacted voip.ms support, they were very helpful in keeping me up to date on the progess of getting my number working. Although it was not their fault they refunded the $25 porting fee which I felt was generous.

So far there have been a few little hiccups in the service. I've switched between the montreal and toronto2 servers a couple times, but it seems toronto2 is the best.

Without Mango's fantastic documentation I doubt I would have come close to happy/confident enough to actually port my number »www.toao.net/25-linksys- ··· guration, a must read for anybody with a PAP2T on voip service.

Overall I've been very impressed with voip.ms thus far and can see myself being with them for a long time. I've even got a few people at work family ready to jump ship in the next little while from their current providers based on the price and features of voip.ms alone. My porting experience is not something I speak badly of against voip.ms, frankly I'm happy I'm able to do it at all otherwise I probably wouldn't have switched at all!

member for 22.1 years, 4830 visits, last login: 2 days ago
updated 9.6 years ago


suppafly
Premium Member
join:2009-11-27
97000

1 edit

suppafly

Premium Member

Regarding ports

The porting date depends completely on the losing provider, as they issue it. Sometimes they do release the numbers without giving prior notice. This seems that was the case here.

However we do not like to blame others and pass the blame around, so it is our policy to waive the porting fee for any number that may receive a downtime higher than usual during the port, to prevent to lose the customer's preference.

I see you also mention the learning curve. Please note that, besides the ticketing system, we have Live chat from 9 AM to 10 PM EST, Monday to friday and also on saturday (9 AM to 5 PM EST) where you will be always attended by a trained technical support representative who will be able to help you set up and troubleshoot in case required.

We hope your experience with our service will improve soon, now that the number is in our network .

Regards,

teddy
join:2002-02-20
Kingston, ON

teddy

Member

Re: Regarding ports

Hi Peter,
I've updated my review to have a little more positive tone. Upon re-reading it a few hours later I feel it had more of a negative impression than I intended. Though there was the rough patch with my port I don't regret my decision in the least.

I wasn't aware the live chat was available those hours, for some reason I was thinking it was only 9-5 Monday-Friday. That's fantastic to know!
Teddy

Review by Motofreak See Profile

  • Location: Oshawa, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $150 per month
Glad to see they relocated their servers, faster porting times & free (USA only)
I have no issues for my needs,
I give it now 8.5/10 and rising for the past few years.
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

06/06/2014
Since they moved to Steadfast their Chicago service are flawless, We mainly use them for a DID provider now and toll free and backup sip outbound.

Keep up the good work.

7/30/2012

They fixed all the issues I had with E911. I used the E911 a few more times in the past year, with out a hiccup

a few minor hiccups with servers dropping off once it a while. 7.5 to 8 out of 10

thanks

11/11/11 review

its been a few years using them. And I feel torn about this review

The pros:

* Cost, their prices around a good stand point. a true savings over companies like Rogers and Bell, even Vonage (if you don't talk a lot)
* Easy to order new numbers from a great selection of DIDs they truly have a great selection,
* Their porting department has improved by leaps and bounds
* Features , well I don't use most of them, but they have a ton of calling features!
* The amount of information on their website and wiki dwarfs the competition (maybe too much info? )

The Cons after two years

* E911 failures happened twice for me with two different DID's one for a gravely ill man and the NRC had the wrong address even though the address was correct in the VoIP.ms E911 section, it took a long time to get to the the correct PSAP, The second issue was a fire, and took over 4 minutes to get a PSAP dispatch to get the fire trucks rolling. This is caused by the CRTC mandate, again out of the hands of VoIP.ms but I have ZERO confidence in the E911 services/NRC that VoIP.ms uses. I know its not VoIP.ms that mess this up, but it's VoIP.ms that selected this company to offer to its customers, so really I feel VoIP.ms partly fault to blame to some degree for this. Because I know I am not the only one that has the address issue with this, I read another report on this forum of having the same address issues when he called 911. (ref's will be post when I find it)

* Tech support is mostly great, but a few times I have VoIP.ms personal not even bothering in actual reading the ticket to find out what I was asking, they just quickly reply to keywords in my ticket to the wiki or FAQ type answers, it was very frustrating when you have to ask the same question five times before someone actual answered me. And by that time I was so mad, I didn't even say thanks!

* The value routing is lacking, does not pass CLI so the callee doesn't know who is calling, I stopped sending outbound calling to VoIP.ms, because of grey routes/aka value routing, I found many other carriers that offer that pass CLI for the same price of the VoIP.ms value routing.

* Their Canadian toll-free routing is lacking in passing the correct ANI number of the callers phone number, making it extremely difficult in calling many Ontario and other Canadian Toll free numbers

So I guess you can read why I'm torn,



member for 14.6 years, 3367 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
updated 9.6 years ago

Mango
Use DMZ and you get a kick in the dick.
Premium Member
join:2008-12-25
www.toao.net

Mango

Premium Member

Fine-Tuning

You don't mention what specifically it is about their servers that need to be fine-tuned. There are lots of members here who use VoIP.ms with great success. If you'd like to tell us about some specific problems you're having I'm sure the forum members here would be happy to help!

m.

Motofreak
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
Oshawa, ON

Motofreak

Premium Member

Re: Fine-Tuning

actual I talk about on other forums, Tbusa on the DH

They had issues with a few of my DID numbers a while back, Causing a lot of dialing in issues with the Carrier they used, until they switched to a new in my area, the big thing for me is Registration of ata adapter, something like if you make a change to a sub account, the ata adapter registered to that account looses the connection to that server until the next time slot the adapter gets renewed. Plus since I have only been with VOIP since March leave it to me to find serval bad routes I could not call in the 905 and 705 calling area.

I also got stuck on the my backup trunk using New york server just a few weeks ago crapped out but they fixed it fast.

CNAM issues on CA1 vs CA2 servers. Call forwarding issues when the connection gets drop has bit me a few times. Although they seem to a lot of issues, not all of them makes it the server issues section of their site because only a select few gets hit by them.

Although most the issues I have experienced in just matter of a few months, I can look pass it, because their DID selection is great for Canadians and besides shit happens.

Like I said they seems to a few minor hiccups once every few weeks.


suppafly
Premium Member
join:2009-11-27
97000

suppafly

Premium Member

Regarding feedback about the service.

Dear Motofreak:

I have sent you a PM in hope of clearing some things up and also improving your feeling towards the service.

Please note that the Caller ID not being guaranteed in value route is not a bug/issue, as it is documented in the wiki:

»wiki.voip.ms/article/Val ··· _Premium

Regarding the e911, we take the provision of this service very seriously, and have staff dedicated to validating each and every address submitted. I do not know what is your customer or ticket number, thus can not give a more informed opinion at the moment, so I would love to have the ticket in order to take a second look and fix anything that may be required regarding the address for your e911.

We notice that you also say the support is mostly great, even though the score you provided for it ranks 25%. We would love to hear your feedback in order to improve if necessary.

Thank you again for your feedback

Motofreak
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
Oshawa, ON

Motofreak

Premium Member

Re: Regarding feedback about the service.

Suppafly

* I have reply quickly to your pm with a ticket number for your request to bring you up to speed.

* I understand the difference in the VoIP.ms Value vs Premium routes, but back then when I signed up, value routing use to pass the CLI, and I figured the differences between value & Premium was call quality not call function, but that's me. I don't like it but it does clearly state its not guaranteed.

* As you will see in my tickets that even just today, I had to ask support more than once, just to get a direct answer for E911 address validation. And with the timing the DSLR message asking to update my review of VoIP.ms is why I gave it a harsh 1 out of five for support. The timing was bad, I must admit it of the updated review message, but I corrected to what I feel is a more reasonable to the overall of 2+ years dealing with VoIP.ms tech support. As you will see most of my tickets mostly related to porting/CNAM/CLI or just valid technical VoIP type questions were solved fast, just the last few months, I have notice a change in the type personal responses that were received, that has raised the frustration level in me.

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

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

911 emergencies

Motofreak, you are of course absolutely right that the 911 problems must be resolved! I'm sure that the company agrees totally.

I think that part of that problem is that in Canada, the CRTC made a bureaucratic effort to make things better with 911 but actually made them worse.

The requirement for a national call center for VoIP 911 calls in Canada adds an extra layer of confusion and an extra chance for error.


Motofreak
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
Oshawa, ON

1 edit

Motofreak

Premium Member

Re: 911 emergencies

PX I know, your right the CRTC has made a mess of it. and I'll add in more info to the review to include that.

Please don't take me the wrong way, I like VoIP.ms as a company and will continue to use them, it's just I have trust issue now, not with VOIP.ms but the system of the NRC/Call center in general!

In my eyes, it has fail twice in the past 10+ months for me when we needed it the most. If I can do a address look up to see what address comes up on the screen as E911 operator gets, just to verify the address is correct then a lot of my worries will be gone. Right now we can only verify the Caller ID only and hope the address is correct. The other issue is the delay to the PSAP, but that's caused by CTRC making it this way.
PX Eliezer704
Premium Member
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

Re: 911 emergencies

said by Motofreak:

Please don't take me the wrong way, I like VoIP.ms as a company and will continue to use them, it's just I have trust issue now, not with VOIP.ms but the system of the NRC/Call center in general!

Yes, I fully understand, and I agree with you completely.

MartinM
VoIP.ms
Premium Member
join:2008-07-21

1 edit

MartinM to Motofreak

Premium Member

to Motofreak
The Toll-Free affecting certain users due to the ANI is recent due to the company we use changed owner. We're in the process of transferring all Canadian Toll-Free call to ISPTelecom and Fibernetics.

We have daily calls to 911 and we rarely had complains, but I understand issues can happen in this fairly new world of E911. Our provider covers a big percentage of the current VoIP providers. I would be glad to report your issue if you can PM me a ticket our provider does take mistakes very seriously.

WE use a lot of providers on the value route and CLID is known to work on most rate centers, please if you can PM me some CDR entries, will be glad to switch the provider for the areas. However, it's already indicated on our website that we can't guarantee CLI delivery on the value route, although we do our best to make it work properly.

Edit: I'm sorry I just realized Suppafly is already helping you via PM. Please ignore my email then. I should have read the whole thread. Shame on me
gogreen0
join:2010-09-10
Virginia Beach, VA

gogreen0

Member

Re: 911 emergencies

Who is your E911 provider?
MartinM
VoIP.ms
Premium Member
join:2008-07-21

MartinM

Premium Member

Re: 911 emergencies

»www.911enable.com/about_ ··· mers.php

XCOM
digitalnUll
Premium Member
join:2002-06-10
Spring, TX
(Software) pfSense
MikroTik CRS125-24G-1S-RM

XCOM to MartinM

Premium Member

to MartinM
This was my main concern in this thread I open »[General] 911 Testing

I got a lot of "it just works" but it is clear that I was right. There is no telling how E911 will be prepared for your situation specially when you are not in the same geographical area. There has to be a way to test this "E911" centers properly. voip.ms I hope you take priority over anything on this matter E911 should not be ignored and issues with it should be treated at most top priority!
MartinM
VoIP.ms
Premium Member
join:2008-07-21

MartinM

Premium Member

Re: 911 emergencies

said by XCOM:

This was my main concern in this thread I open »[General] 911 Testing

I got a lot of "it just works" but it is clear that I was right. There is no telling how E911 will be prepared for your situation specially when you are not in the same geographical area. There has to be a way to test this "E911" centers properly. voip.ms I hope you take priority over anything on this matter E911 should not be ignored and issues with it should be treated at most top priority!

Our provider which is one of the industry leader is aware of this isolated report. Mixing geographical centers and actual address is usually not an issue according to the thousands of calls to 911 we have in our CDR and we're not ignoring anything if you read our comments 2 reps from VoIP.ms answered, and this customer is still using our services and has been assigned a senior rep se he can attend his customers more efficiently.

XCOM
digitalnUll
Premium Member
join:2002-06-10
Spring, TX
(Software) pfSense
MikroTik CRS125-24G-1S-RM

XCOM

Premium Member

Re: 911 emergencies

said by MartinM:

said by XCOM:

This was my main concern in this thread I open »[General] 911 Testing

I got a lot of "it just works" but it is clear that I was right. There is no telling how E911 will be prepared for your situation specially when you are not in the same geographical area. There has to be a way to test this "E911" centers properly. voip.ms I hope you take priority over anything on this matter E911 should not be ignored and issues with it should be treated at most top priority!

Our provider which is one of the industry leader is aware of this isolated report. Mixing geographical centers and actual address is usually not an issue according to the thousands of calls to 911 we have in our CDR and we're not ignoring anything if you read our comments 2 reps from VoIP.ms answered, and this customer is still using our services and has been assigned a senior rep se he can attend his customers more efficiently.

Relax. I am not accusing voip.ms of an unresolved or ignored issue. All I am asking is to take the issue seriously as there is no way for us the customers to test this service accordingly.
Take the pride aside and understand the "customer" for a second. I have to trust my family's safety on your E911 service base on he said and she said. I am a voip.ms customer and a happy one. Take a second and come down the cloud to earth and sit down here with us the customers. not every reply should be a "defensive one"
MartinM
VoIP.ms
Premium Member
join:2008-07-21

1 edit

MartinM

Premium Member

Re: 911 emergencies

I'm very relaxed and there's no pride issue.

The issue has been followed up in private with the customer and I'm not sure why you're assuming we were not already taking this as a top priority. I was simply replying to your comment. The way your comment was written indicated that we should take action/put in top priority something we were already doing at the time of your reply. We decided to provide assistance to the customer in private rather than transforming this thread in a public support ticket. Hope that clear it up.

Review by batfell See Profile

  • Location: Ann Arbor, Washtenaw, MI, USA
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Solid reliability, excellent sound, low price, and innovative features
Solid reliability, excellent sound, low price, and innovative features
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

2014 08 02
Not much to add. Voip.ms continues to be at or near the top in all respects, yet is also one of the cheapest. I don't know how they do it, but they do.

2013 05 31
Still nothing much to report; voip.ms just works, no muss, no fuss.

2012 12 27
Nothing much to report; voip.ms just works, no muss, no fuss.


2012 05 23
This excellent service continues to do its job. More features than you can shake a stick at; excellent sound; great reliability.

The sub-accounts feature is a gem: recently, I have made a few calls from wi-fi hotspots, using my Nokia 'smartphone' and a Voip.Ms sub-account. It was a pleasure to be able to call long-distance from a cell phone for 1.25 cents per minute instead of the cell phone rate of 40 cents per minute, and to talk for 30 minutes without worrying about the cost.

member for 12 years, 13 visits, last login: 9.6 years ago
updated 9.6 years ago


Review by jacour See Profile

  • Location: Matthews, Mecklenburg, NC, USA
  • Business customer Business customer
  • Cost: $5 per month
  • Install: about 1 days
Great service
Porting is a pain
Love this service
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

I hate most telecomm carriers, HATE them, but this is an exception. They charge me a whopping $1 a month for each DID that I maintain, and a penny a minute for US calls. I got them mainly because I was looking for a lower cost to call overseas than what Vonage could provide, but I am so glad I went with VOIP.MS. They provide most of what you would get on a premise-based PBX system without charging much for it.

The wiki is fairly good, although I wish they would make it a little more visible on their web page as it would be easier to find answers if they did. Once in the wiki, most of what you need to know is presented there quite clearly.

The technical support chat is amazing; their technicians have actually been trained and know their stuff. I have yet to have a question that could not be answered promptly and correctly. It a huge contrast with the call center hell you find at Sprint, AT&T, or T-Mobile.

The only glitch I had was trying to port a DID away to a cellular carrier. The issue is that VOIP.MS is a reseller so THEY appear as the customer on Level 3's computer systems. If you give the cellular carrier your customer information, the port will never go through due to the mismatch. However, this was quickly resolved by the eve-useful tech support department (see above) who got me the exact information I needed to guarantee a successful port.

member for 22.3 years, 4574 visits, last login: 140 days ago
lodged 9.6 years ago


Review by wxmancanada See Profile

  • Location: Canada
  • Cost: $25 per month
Dirt cheap, easy to setup, amazing features, works great
Prices in USD, no option to use web to control VM greetings, no custom hold music
The best VOIP I've used so far
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

I've used DSL reports to read reviews a plenty, but never felt compelled to write a review, until now.

I've started a new at home business and needed a reliable and cheap business line. Hard to find. I have used services like Toktumi (now Line 2) in the past, but there was always a large price tag associated with it, and not all the features I wanted. I tried several VOIP providers back in 2008 and was left with a sour taste in my mouth from it, but after reading some reviews on here about Voip.ms (and having a family member who has had great success with them) I thought I should give it a shot.

I signed up for an account, loaded $25 (minimum payment amount) into it, paid for a local phone number, and started going nuts setting things up.

The IVR was a breeze to setup, I recorded some voice prompts via my phone's WAV recorder and uploaded them to the website where I then built the IVR, call groups, time conditions, and hold cues. The only thing I couldn't change via the website was the greeting for each of the voicemail boxes, but some Googling revealed that if I submit a support ticket, they can assign a recording to the VM greeting. Done and done.

I'd also like to see custom hold music, but I've read that's got some complications to it. Hopefully someday, as I actually own the rights to music I want to use on hold.

All in all, from setting up the account to making and receiving my first call I probably spent about 15 minutes. My primary SIP account runs a Cisco 7940, I then have a sub account which is configured in the SIP dialer for Android. I plan on adding a few more Cisco phones for other locations. I also have two cell phones as part of a call group.

I started calling everyone I know to test the line out. They say I sound great, much clearer than on the cell phone. There is very, very little delay as well (echo test verifies this for me). Even when I took the Cisco phone to rural cottage country this past weekend and used it via a rural WiFi network.

Tech support is amazing, usually replying to my tickets within 30 minutes. I had to submit a ticket to have the voicemail greetings changed, as well as asking for help with a call forwarding option.

Worth every penny. I've had zero issues so far (going on a month). That being said, it would be nice if it was Canadian pennies!

member for 9.6 years, 12 visits, last login: 7.3 years ago
lodged 9.6 years ago


Review by wideglide36 See Profile

  • Location: Altoona, Blair, PA, USA
  • Cost: $5 per month
Everything seems to work as advertised
I'd be nitpicking, but their website could use some tweaking
So far, so good.
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

We've been using Voip.ms for almost a year now and I thought I would write a quick review.

We currently have one DID and are in the process of porting another. This will be our second port and so far it's going as smoothly as the first one.

As you can see by our monthly costs, we're not heavy users in any sense of the word.

But when we do use the service, it works great. We really haven't had any problems at all.

Customer support was excellent when I had a few questions. They really went the extra mile and we were really impressed. Support was fast, accurate and very effective.

We definitely don't use all of the features they offer so I really can't speak to those.

All in all, we're really pleased with what we get for what we pay.

Now if they could only get their web site looking half as good as Callcentric's and they would be perfect in my mind.

Hope this review was properly written. I know other critical reviews of certain providers were not well received by this forum.

Hopefully mine will be..........

Update: August 8, 2014

Well, it's been a while since I updated, so here goes.

We use Voip.ms for our main service and it has been outstanding as far as I'm concerned.

We now have quite a few DID's and I'm constantly learning how to route them.

I also created a few sub accounts and they also work perfectly.

It's a blast figuring out all these features they offer so I'm constantly learning .

If they could just update the site they would be perfect.

I've tried a few other providers in recent months but always come back to Voip.ms.

Did I mention they still offer free porting.........

member for 20.4 years, 3162 visits, last login: 188 days ago
updated 9.6 years ago


N9MD
Too busy to chat
Premium Member
join:2005-10-08
Boca Raton, FL

N9MD

Premium Member

Well-done!

Well-written, fair and objective. Good post!!

(Excellent syntax, sentence structure and spelling not to mention proper use of punctuation.)
wideglide36
join:2003-11-08
Altoona, PA

wideglide36

Member

Thanks

N9MD,

Thank you for those kind words.

I try to be objective as possible when reviewing anything, and very rarely give 10 out of 10 scores or as in this case, 100% scores.

I didn't want to give all 100% scores as I felt that it wouldn't be accurate, but by the same token, I didn't want to grade any area too low for fear that it would cause the entire review to look negative. I really was nitpicking about their web site. Their web site is pretty easy to navigate and I can usually find what I need.

I just think it could be jazzed up a bit. It's sort of drab in a way.

Reviews are usually a balancing act anyways, but in my review of Voip.ms it really was pretty easy to score things.

Voip.ms has been great so far for our family and this review was fairly easy to write.

I'll write a review of Callcentric at a later time......

Review by NefCanuck See Profile

  • Location: Mississauga, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $8 per month
Low cost, excellent tech support
Website confusing, no mobile friendly option
A good alternative to POTS
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

Writing this review at roughly the two month mark of using VoIP.ms.

After finally cringing while opening my monthly Bell POTS bill (Last full bill was $52) I chose to explore the world of VoIP service.

I selected VoIP.ms as my provider for a number of reasons, chief among them was the fact that it is a Canadian company and I could use my own ATA device (In my case a Bria softphone on an iPhone 4) The port of my Bell # to VoIP.me was fast and without hassle.

ViOP.ms has servers spread throughout Canada and the US (with a European server location as well) which appealed to me both for redundancy and for when I travel in North America (their website, though initially overwhelming, does make it easy to switch servers as needed)

The VoIP.ms website initially looks very confusing and although they do provide a wiki to explain it, I did have to make use of the tech support to help me understand how the voicemail system worked (the tech was excellent by the way, professional and prompt)

I went with the unlimited incoming and premium routing option because I wanted to be as sure as I could be that I could both get Caller ID on incoming and show proper Caller ID on outgoing calls and that I had a handle on the monthly costs (I make very few outgoing calls while at home)

The ability to filter and deal with incoming calls has been a godsend and I can honestly say that it brings a joy to my heart to send telemarketing spammers straight to voicemail without even being annoyed by the phone ringing once.

Forwarding calls to my cell phone on the weekend while I'm away from home works as expected as well.

Call quality on my 5mb/800kb home connection is usually perfect, mobile VoIP use is hit or miss though (blame my cell provider Telus for that)

If there are any suggestions I could make, a mobile device friendly version of the website would be a top suggestion, it would make it much easier to make changes while on the road if a server goes down etc.

UPDATE: August 8/14

It's been a long time so I figured I'd post an update, some equipment changes on this end (Including adding Zoiper software so I can make calls from my PC as well) and a faster DSL Internet connection (first 25/7 and now 25/10 as provided by Bell Canada)

Service has been for the most part steady, while there have been glitches but VOIP.ms has been good about emailing customers when issues arise (this is an opt in service, I would recommend it)

The website is still not my favorite part of the service, but since I use it so rarely (last time I used the website to make any serious changes was in 2013 to change my POP while I was vacationing in Japan) and still doesn't have a general release mobile friendly website (There is I believe a beta mobile site, but I've never used it)

I also do teleconference calls from home for work and there have been no complaints about the call quality from my end that weren't as a a result of the audio mixer hardware I have attached to my PC.

member for 16.7 years, 4278 visits, last login: 202 days ago
updated 9.6 years ago


Review by TechMike See Profile

  • Location: Denver, Jefferson, CO, USA
  • Cost: $5 per month
Excellent inexpensive service with a great feature set
Requires your own equipment and offers only guidance in configuration of equipment
Excellent inexpensive SIP provider if you're willing to configure your own equipment
Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

I've had voip.ms for a few years now and have used it with various bits of equipment.

The service is extremely reliable and has only gotten better since I signed up. They have quite a few different PoPs now, including one located less than 5 miles from me in Denver. Supports G.711u/a, G.729 and GSM. Supports SIP and IAX2.

I originally had it setup routing the DIDs into an Asterisk box. Since they've added features such as ring groups, I've since removed my Asterisk box and have my phones connecting directly to their PoP over NAT. The NAT traversal works well, and seems to work best without STUN.

About the only caveat I have is they really only provide configuration assistance. No big deal for me. Others who are less familiar with SIP devices may not be comfortable with that.

member for 15.8 years, 175 visits, last login: 9.5 years ago
lodged 9.6 years ago