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Review is based on 7 months of service experience. Total monthly cost listed is for Dec. 2015, which includes much holiday calling for two voice and one fax lines, premium regular and 800 number connections, cname queries, required e911 service and all taxes*. In other words, the full boat of premium offerings. Voice quality equals my Verizon POTS service when I had highest speed DSL. In other words, the VOIP quality equals the best POTS quality one is likely to encounter and it is absolutely consistent. I was paying more than 3 times as much with another carrier and encountered terrible quality on 90% of calls. There has been about an hour of outage time during my usage period, but I never encountered any problems. I'm aware of the outages only because VOIP.ms lists all issues on their customer portal and keeps them there for seemingly forever. I did have one issue with my inability to reach one, and only one 800 number which their email only tech support resolved in 10 or 15 minutes. More about that later. I did have to acquire my own ATA adapter. I chose a Grandstream HT702. VOIP.ms provides great documentation for installation and setup. My only difficulty was figuring out how to dial out local numbers with or without area codes and LD calls with or without the leading 1. That permits me to omit any instructions to guests, as they can't go wrong, no matter how they dial. VOIP.ms supports a number of ATAs and VOIP phones with equally polished setup instructions. The standard service offerings include simultaneous ring capability which supports the incomparable service NOMOROBO provides. No exaggeration, but it blocks 2/3 of my calls which are spam. It reports all blocked calls so that I can confirm there aren't any false positives. To be fair, that service does cost a 10 second charge to send the call to the simultaneous number. I've set up the voice mails on one of my lines to be sent to my email. I've ordered a new, minimum service cell phone for my wife which I intend to equip with a voip client so that she can use VOIP.MS to get her normal calls over WiFi and keep her cell usage below the low (cheap) threshold. I have set anonymous incoming calls to send an-out-of service tone in hopes of getting their call bots to delete my number - seems to mostly work. In summary, the features are very broad, if not not the easiest to setup. I'm thrilled with the service and I'm saving a lot of money. I couldn't offer a stronger recommendation if you have the talent and inclination to learn how to use the features. *I should note that I live in Buffalo, NY and have selected Toronto, Ont as my POP. It's the closest of many available. (Closer is better.) That may result in the lack of taxes I am charged. It also seems to been the (resolved) issue related to the 800 number problem I noted. member for 8.6 years, 1 visits, last login: 8.2 years ago updated 8.2 years ago
20Dec2015 Now have 4 DID trunks; 1 for fax, 3 for voice (1 personal, 1 business and 1 vanity toll free). Trouble free operation for years using PBX in a Flash. I've been a happy customer now for many years and still recommend them. 28May2013 Still going strong with VoIP.ms. I see I have been using their service for almost 2.5 years now. No complaints, highly recommend them. ___________________________________ I had read quite a few favorable reviews about VoIP.MS and decided to add an extra DID to my Asterisks box as backup. During the DID selection I really like being able to review all available DIDs and select one. I picked two. Overall, I've been quite impressed (I currently have Callcentric as well) with VoIP.ms. Their premium routing for overseas calls is flawless. My international and domestic calls are consistently completed quickly and call clarity has never been an issue. Their web site does take a bit of a learning curve, but the user options are quite impressive. I have to give a five star kudos to their customer support. After ordering my DIDs, I asked for them to place CNAM on them. There was some delays due to the carrier, but they stuck with it and got the job done. I'm a big fan of them now. I would highly recommend VoIP.MS. member for 19.4 years, 7891 visits, last login: 3.2 years ago updated 8.3 years ago
Original review (about 2011 I think) I've had an account with VoIP.ms for several years, but only this year have I started using them seriously. When Google killed Gizmo, I switched my incoming calls to an IPKall number that uses a VoIP.ms registration to deliver the call to my Aastra phone. This has been working great for months, so I was able to convince my wife to drop our last analog phone line. Unfortunately, we had intermittent one way voice issues when I put VoIP.ms onto line 1 of my SPA-2000. (Line 2 is registered to PBXes.com and has been in use for years for outbound long distance and incoming foreign DIDs.) My Internet is from a U-verse RG rather than a cable modem and separate router so I had to keep reminding Alex that I could not connect directly to a modem and I could not make many changes in the router. Even putting the SPA into the DMZ did not help. I finally 'fixed' the problem by putting VoIP.ms onto an OBI 110 with no forwarding or special setup. I'm not sure what the problem was but I suspect something in that older ATA is just different than current models. The units from Obihai are under active development while the PAP line now from Cisco is not seeing many updates or fixes. I found the support process exasperating. First I tried an on-line chat. When I asked questions about the responses, he quickly ended the chat. I then opened a ticket which meant we corresponded by email. VoIP.ms has created a wiki that contains useful information. Invariably. if I asked a question, I would get a excerpt from what is in the wiki. It then took 2 or 3 more responses asking for an answer before I would get a answer to my actual question. Every entry from me took about a day to get a response and the whole process took more than 3 weeks. Calls are good quality with no more wife issues. I really like all the features, but I'm still working out how to fully use everything available. I add telephone solicitor numbers to be filtered, but this is like playing whack-a-mole. Rather than reacting after the fact I'd like to be able to filter know solicitor numbers like Google Voice does. I ported in my ATT number, so the monthly and per minute rate is higher than if I had registered a new number. Because both inbound and outbound minutes are charged, I will probably switch to monthly unlimited rate. 3/31/12 Update I dropped reliability a notch because of intermittent problems making calls for the last 3 weeks due to authentication errors. I was registered, but the 503 error did not allow us to make calls. For at least 2 weeks people tell us they tried to call, but they get not in service messages. Finally on March 28, VOIP.MS had major outages as many customers had the same problem. They did not update the issue tracker when they first started working on the authentication errors and still have not explained root cause or a final fix ETA. Having such issues is bad enough. But they really must do a better job of posting known issues as soon as they know they have a problem. 7/3/2012 Just purchased a new DID for my future new home south of Tampa. They had a number I could not pass up. I have an Obi already there and was using Google Voice as my main number, but GV kept disconnecting after about 20 minutes irritating my wife. The good news is that my wife not longer insists on an analog POTS line. VOIP.MS has been reliable enough running on an Obi here in Detroit that my wife issues are not an issue. 12/15/2013 I've raised my reliability rating. Not only has the service been more reliable, I find them more proactive if there is a problem. I opened a support ticket for what turned out to be a problem with my phone. The response was better than in previous years, but the terrible initial install non-support still keeps me from increasing my rating yet. 11/22/2015 VOIP.MS is our #1 provider. We no longer have 2 line analog phones, but 'line 2' is still Callwithus which has better call quality to Greece. Our local DID is has been rock solid and no complaints about out bound calling. The cost for 911 is OK and not relying on ATA dialing commands means it should always work if needed. No interaction with tech support since the last review. member for 23 years, 4271 visits, last login: 13 days ago updated 8.4 years ago
After some intensive research on the voip field it all came down to two providers... voip.ms and CallCentric. I went to voip.ms because they have IAX2 support and many other reasons. I had a few issues during my initial setups but they where all my fault dues to a misconfigured Asterisk Dial Plan and sip.conf. voip.ms tech support where very quick to point it out and fix it for me and that was a big plus for me! I was barely starting to know how to use asterisk and voip.ms tech support along with the VoIP forum here, and #asterisk chan in IRC I was able to be up and running in no time. Now if you have no technology background or experience in some of the voip areas it can be overwhelming and if you dont like to thinker going with an all in one provider would be a better choice. This will apply to any provider that is BYOD only. I have 3 DID's and one URI. I am also using one of my DID's for faxing and I have not had an issue. Though I am using asterisk for fax to email and email to fax. It has worked out very well so far. I am setup with one main number that is tide to the 4.99 3500 Minute incoming plan and so far I have not gone over the min. I do wish that they had the same plan for outgoing though there per min rate its very cheap! Another big plus for me has been that from voip.ms user to voip.ms user is free and there is no charge for outgoing as well as incoming  I have most of my family in PR setup with asterisk and atas and we can communicate for free. They love it  I have not been able to test there E911 service due to Harris County Laws regarding 911 test calls so I can not comment about that. What I can say is that they do provide it for a small fee. There website was very simple to navigate. Though can be a bit overwhelming for those who have never been in a BYOD provider. Take your time and navigate the site. Get familiarize with the options and settings and it will be clear. The menus are not obscure and are very self explanatory. All in All voip.ms has been a reliable provider and the line quality has been 100% clear. A+ Update 11/17/12: As of today I have not had any issue with voip.ms all has been solid even after the emergency change over back and forward they had to do due to Sandy. A+ in my book. Update: 11/12/15: Super solid. No issues! Awesome upgrades they have done so far! member for 21.8 years, 4721 visits, last login: 139 days ago updated 8.4 years ago
I have been using voip.ms for a long time. It was a happy time, no issues. Recently I got a balance warning email saying my balance is low. I add my fund just a while ago. Check the CDR and find the calling rate increase from 1c/min to 7c/min. Seriously? Increase 7 times without warning? I emailed customer support and this is reply I got. All the rates may suddenly change and you need to check the rates the same day you will be calling certain location since the rates are only valid the day they are issued. You can find this information in item 9 of our Terms of service »www.voip.ms/tos.php Beware, the rate can be $100/min next day. And it's customer responsibility to check it before make the call. I learned my lesson. I will tell everyone I know. THANKS member for 18.5 years, 90 visits, last login: 77 days ago lodged 8.4 years ago
Excellent service, great features, very inexpensive, responsive support staff member for 22.5 years, 3519 visits, last login: a few hours ago lodged 8.4 years ago
Update 17-Oct-15 I have been using the service heavily as a teleworker for about 18 months now, and host several conference calls per week. I have gone through periods this year where I experienced dropped calls - maybe one every day or two. Whereas last year, dropped calls were rare. I have no idea how to resolve this problem since it is so sporadic and I don't have the tools or knowledge to diagnose it. It could be my router/equipment, my ISP, or VOIP.MS. (I am on Toronto 3 and 4) But for the time being, things have settled down. I am wondering if the upcoming server refresh will have a positive impact on this problem? I switched over to the Value route a month ago and experienced some calls with reduced quality since then - say a bit of latency or choppiness. I have gone back to the Prime route. I also switched one of my relatives from Bell to VOIP.MS 6 months ago. The only complication she experienced was with ghost calls which I resolved in her Grandstream phone by disabling direct IP calls, etc. She doesn't perceive any difference in call quality from her Bell service, and she loves paying less than $5 per month for her service instead of $60. I definitely would never go back to Bell! I used to be a great fan of our Bell Canada legacy phone service because it is very robust, has great voice quality, and works through power outages. I had 2 lines before, home and home office. But since moving to a different neighbourhood 4 years ago, we experience periods of static and hum during the spring and heavy rains that Bell cannot resolve. It seems that their copper cable plant is no longer getting the maintenance it needs before it is eventually replaced with fibre. Walking around my neighbourhood, I see several damaged cable pedestals with missing covers and exposed wires that do not get fixed anymore. The other problem with legacy service is the lack of decent analog business phones – you can still get old Nortel Meridian and Aastra sets that work well, but they are no longer attractive devices because of their poor displays and limited functionality when not connected to a PBX. The Chinese-made analog phones (ATT, RCA) you can get at Staples are not good enough for business use, in my opinion. I tried a couple of VOIP services (Vonage – poor call quality and expensive, no user-defined outgoing caller ID), (YAK – terrible support, almost zero documentation, no user-defined outgoing caller ID). When I ordered a DID on VOIP.MS I was able to establish dial tone right away, using the ATA left over from YAK and the WIKI instructions for this device. After 6 weeks of using it for home office calls on a trial basis, I ported my office line to VOIP.MS and haven’t looked back. I use my line about 40 hours per month, burning up one US$25 prepayment (including 3 DID’s) per month, so I spend a LOT of time on this service. I use a Yealink T22P phone set which I got for $87 online and gives me the functionality and display I used to have on my Cisco VOIP phone at the office. I did spend several few hours exploring all the functionality of this phone and all the features available from VOIP.MS, to optimize everything for my needs – this is not a task for your grandma! I use a Plantronics wired headset/amplifier combo with this set that plugs into the dedicated headset jack of this phone. Now we have the best of both worlds – a Bell line for personal calls and a VOIP line for my office work, giving us diversity if one line has a problem. But in fact I have had no outages on my VOIP line except when our power was off for a few hours and the UPS for the cable modem, router, and VOIP phone completely discharged. I had one dropped call which was explained when VOIP issued a server reset alert. I have had other dropped calls for unknown reasons – cable provider or VOIP? But they have been few and far between, were not persistent, and could be resolved quickly by redialling. On rare occasions, I notice a very slight latency which I assume has more to do with my internet access than VOIP.MS. (I typically have a 9 to 11 ms Ping to the Toronto server.) I have not tried to set up VOIP QOS on my router since I do not understand how this works and don’t know if it is even useful. Financially, even with a usage of 2,300 minutes per month I am better off. With my Bell reseller I was spending $40 for a line with Call Display, Voicemail, and a 500-minute Canada-wide LD package. With VOIP.MS I usually spend $27.50, factoring in the US exchange at 10%. But when I am away on vacation for a month, I only spend $3 for my 3 DID’s. I get the very best audio quality sending and receiving, and better than my landline, when I use my Plantronics Bluetooth headset with my Ipad. I terminate one of my DID’s on my IPAD for traveling using the Bria client, and I was even able to call my bank over a slow hotel internet connection from Indonesia. There was severe latency, but it worked. The only negative I find is in getting a cordless VOIP phone, since I would have to use an ATA with an analog cordless system. There is a Yealink VOIP cordless base station but that is extremely expensive when you start adding handsets. member for 9.6 years, 53 visits, last login: 2.2 years ago updated 8.5 years ago
10/07/15 Update: I'm still using these guys as my primary incoming provider for my personal home phone numbers. Over the past few years, my voip usage has declined and has shifted towards mobile since most plans now include more minutes than I can use. It is nice to have a backup number for only a few dollars per month. 05/04/12 Update: Since writing the above review, I am still happily using voip.ms as my primary voip provider. About a year ago, I switched from using an ATA with cordless phones to using the Gigaset C610A IP phone. This change has made a huge difference (for the better) in reliability and call quality! I also now have an iPhone and I will use the Acrobits app with voip.ms as well. This works just fine over WiFi. Over the last six months, voip.ms has pretty much stopped releasing new features. This disappointing since they have had many great features "in development" for quite some time now.... Original Review: About a year and a half ago, I decided to stop using cell phones as my primary means of communication and start using VOIP service. My primary goal was cost savings. By doing this, I have cut my communications bill at least in half each month. After the first VoIP provider that I choose was not able to meet my needs, I chose to port over to voip.ms. The two things that made me want to try voip.ms were 1) No below-the-line fees 2) All of the features and things to tweak! I just couldn't resist! I have been using voip.ms as my primary provider for about the last year. I have one local DID at the 3500 minute plan ($6.95/month) and a toll free DID. In the last year, I have spend $185 (this includes the $25 fee that I paid to port my number in). This seems like a very reasonable amount to me. Overall, I am very happy with voip.ms. I seem to average between 300-400 outgoing minutes per month (and enough incoming minutes to at least break-even with the flat rate plan). I use the premium route for outgoing since the cost savings vs. the value route would not be worth the potential reduction in the WAF. I have a panasonic multi-handset cordless phone and a corded phone connected to each line in a PAP2T ATA. Both lines ring for incoming calls. After getting used the this setup, I don't think I could go back to just having a single line. It's nice to be able to pick up incoming calls from the 2nd line when the primary line is in use. Many previous reviewers have done a good job going into detail about the numerous features, so I won't do that here. Bottom line: voip.ms is inexpensive if your outgoing usage is low to moderate. However, if my outgoing usage increases by a few hundred minutes, then it may be cheaper for me to choose a provider that offers a flat-rate for incoming/outgoing minutes. Also, you will need some technical understanding on how to set up and tweak the settings on an ATA/IP phone. There is lots of information out there on this matter. member for 22.2 years, 3691 visits, last login: 5 days ago updated 8.5 years ago
Using voip.ms on demand, migrated DID and using SMS + e911. This is my principal home line (good bye expensive big brand telephone providers). I bought an Grandstream HT701 with a 5Mbps cable connection. It took about a week for DID portability. I'm knowledgeable in VoIP technology so for me the ordering and install process was quite easy (working with PBX based on Asterisk). Order was simple and implementation too. The hardest part was configuring the HT701 in fact, using the manual. It makes over 16 months I'm with them (as of September 2015) and very satisfied. Including everything (DID migration, DID number maintenance, e911 plus phone calls) it cost about 8.75 USD per months over the last 16 months. I had some connection issues with some servers (I'm in Montreal area and Montreal servers were causing problems) but switched to newyork servers and it makes months I had not a single issue. The tech support is answering in a reasonable time, (using tickets) but you always feel it's too slow when your phone line is not working properly. Chat tech support is very fast. I also implemented the same provider at workplace. (Multiple simultaneous outgoing calls and incoming calls, etc. all works great. Needs a good QoS router - using pfsense.org based hardware.) member for 8.6 years, 4 visits, last login: 5.5 years ago updated 8.6 years ago
I've had POTS all my life and resisted switching to VoIP, but a recent switch from Sonic.net to Comcast made it necessary. Getting set up on voip.ms isn't dead simple, but their wiki answered most of my questions and tech support was helpful. Crazy cheap; the biggest expense is actually the e911 service at $1.50 per month. Sound quality is 95% as good as POTS. member for 18.8 years, 868 visits, last login: 217 days ago updated 8.6 years ago
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