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 Review by user17600 
member for 10.6 years, 384 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 8 days ago
 Boston, MA
 $10 per month about 1 days "PayGo; Cheap (0.9 CPM); works across hardware firewall" "None so far" "If you don't need a bucket of monthly minutes, this may work for you"
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Searched and tried out a number of VOIP companies. Not looking for a huge bucket of minutes or anything overly cheap, but many products would work intermittently or not at all with my hardware/ firewall configuration (RT31P2 and WRTSL54; whether NAT or DMZ). No matter the configuration, something always seemed to be a problem. Tried localphone and found that it works across NAT or in the DMZ, doesn't matter. And I can buy as much or as little as I want. Currently using with GV and iNUM, and working fine. This is a second line to my POTS, used for roll-over and home office, but the reliability has been spot on.
Update: January 2011:
Continue to be satisfied with localphone, though they have now been relegated to second provider in our household. Have moved over to a more "full-service" provider, with IVR, failover choices, and porting. I did contact localphone about porting, and they do have some limited ability to do so, but could not do my Manhattan number.
I still love the effortless aspects of localphone, working across firewalls, etc. and wish the other VOIP co's were as effortless, but my needs are becoming more sophisticated, and localphone's offerings are not.
They are still super for quality and price, and if you just need an incoming line or a cheap outgoing line from your ATA, give them a go.
My kids use this line all the time; it's hooked to their GV incoming number (via G5), and works like a charm. Wish we could set the outgoing CID to the GV rather than either blocked or the iNUM, but that is apparently not an option with localphone.
Update March 2013
Localphone has now become our third-tier provider. I've tried two or three times to have them port a number from a major city in order to give them more business, and each time been turned away, because the number is not portable (seriously?). Subsequently ported to other providers.
So we use them for cheap outgoing calls, where we transmit only the Localphone account number, so CID is sent, but it is meaningless. I tried an incoming number from them for a few months, but setting up another new number was a hassle, so we just ported elsewhere.
Bottom line: still a solid provider, just not all that flexible.
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Review by cb14
member for 62 days, 59 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 12 days ago
- Miami Beach,Miami-Dade,FL
- Contract price not specified.
- "Excellent value for the money, variety of services"
- "Some features just basic"
- "Absolutely recommended."
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I have been using Localphone since November 2011. Localphone provides a number of services, you just use what you need.
VOIP service. Very good an inexpensive, but somewhat basic.The pricing of DID's is unbeatable for a number of countries, e.g. US, UK, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands , Sweden, France but somewhat pricey in others.
The choice of area codes is excellent in some countries e.g. Netherlands, Belgium, UK. but far less so in countries like Germany or Austria. There is a pretty good choice of US area codes.
Porting is available for $ 25.-.
You can set all your registered phone numbers or DIDs as an outgoing caller ID.
There is no call waiting or three way calling available. Voice mail can be listened to from your own phone or via internet, no remote phone access from another phone.
Incoming call quality on DID's I have rented is excellent, outgoing call quality is generally very good, some problems with low audio in certain destinations occasionally, improved recently.
Calling rates are extremely competitive. You do not need to rent a DID and pay monthly fees to have an outgoing service. Also the virtual calling card feature is very interesting, making it possible to make cheap international phone calls from other phones. With the Local Number service you can get local numbers in your area which forward the calls to distant destinations, e.g. You live in Miami and have a friend in Australia so you get for any registered phone a local 305 or 786 area code number and the call gets forwarded to the Australian number at minimal costs.
Services work for international travelers as well. One flaw- you get only one virtual calling card access number and you have to cancel it and get a new one every time you are in a new destination and need a local access code.
Localphone provides outgoing SMS service, incoming service only for UK DID's for calls originated from UK.
The web site has improved, but needs some more improvement IMO.Localphone recently announced a new, improved web site coming soon.
Payments possible through Visa/ Mastercard or pay pal and you can open an account with just one dollar. You have choice of 3 currencies. Caveat : You cannot change the currency after you chose one! also, many US credit cards charge for foreign transactions even if they are in US $ ( BOA, Citibank) some other s do not ( Capital one). If your credit card has a billing address in an EU country you will be charged VAT.
It is very easy to start up most of the Localphone services however setting up the VOIP service was somewhat complex, there was no support for configuring my Obi ATA.
They are no hidden fees and the company does not use any deceptive practices.
Localphone regularly offers specials like free calling to certain countries for a limited time to their customers, also one month a year where you can sign up for a DID without a set up fee ( currently in February)
Localphone provides free i-numbers
Customers service can be reached by via e-mail or by phone, very unusual for a low cost provider.
Localphone currently won a ITSPA Best consumer VOIP award 2013
Localphone does not have the popularity in the US it deserves which is unfortunate.
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 Review by Oinktastic
member for 7.6 years, 1540 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 41 days ago
- Scarborough
- $1 per month
- "Great call quality, great prices"
- "They only deal with USD and GBP. I had to convert CAD."
- "Highly recommended for simple do-it-yourself VoIP"
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I've been using the service for several months (since midway through December) to call from Toronto Canada, to landlines and cellphones in the US. I have also used it to call the Caribbean, with great results. I haven't had a dropped call yet, and the call quality has been very good so far.
I've been running it over a 5M/800K DSL line with QoS setup on a Linksys WRT54GS router with Tomato installed.
They use a pre-paid setup, so they have an account in your name that you can review and add money to, which gets debited when you make a call or buy a phone number. When you first sign up, you must choose which currency your Localphone account will use, USD or GBP. I chose USD, because I'm using a Canadian credit card to add funds and I'm going to gamble that it's safer for me to convert CAD to USD than to GBP. I added $20 to begin with, and was charged 1.2% on top of that by my credit card company to convert CAD to USD. I was expecting that already, so that wasn't a problem.
I started by purchasing a US number for $3.00 and the system automatically charged me for that month's (incoming DID) fee at $0.99. Since I have been using the service for three months, my Localphone account has been debited $0.99 two more times for that (DID) number, just as you would expect.
Now, they have several different services that I have made use of already:
1. VoIP service - I had never set a VoIP system up before, so I just followed their guide (they have guides for all sorts of VoIP adapters) to set up a Linksys PAP2T.
2. Calling card - I didn't get a physical card, but you can dial their Calling Card service phone number, enter a code that they give you beforehand and then call whoever you wish to call, and get the same rates that you would get if you used their VoIP service.
3. PC app - Make calls from your computer, using your internet connection with their app. I use my laptop on WiFi and the calls are very clear, but I recommend headphones to eliminate the echo from microphone feedback. Get the same rates using your PC that you would using their VoIP service.
4. Mobile phone app (Android or iPhone) - Use Wifi/3G/whatever connection your phone has to call or text a long distance number. Just make sure that you choose your call type carefully in the app. There's a toggle button that selects either your cellphone provider's normal minutes, or Localphone's internet service to place the call. Make sure it's on the correct one before dialing long distance, or you might be in for a surprise on your cellphone bill. Get the same rates using the app that you do with their VoIP service when you go through their network.
5. Local access numbers (this one was a first for me, and I found it really cool) - On their online dashboard, create a contact for the long distance number that you want to call. Then provide it with an area code that is local to you. It will generate a local phone number that you can call from any phone, that gets forwarded to the contact you just created online. The phone number seems to stay the same month after month and you can just call it like a local number. The rates you pay for this are the same per-minute rates that you pay for using the VoIP service.
Example: You want to call someone in New York, USA and you live in Toronto, Canada. Go online to Localphone.com, log in to your account, and create a contact "Uncle Bill" and enter his number 212-xxx-xxxx. Then under settings, choose your local area. For me it's 416/647. It will provide you with a 647 or 416 number (whatever your local area code is) that, when you call it, you get connected to your Uncle Bill at 212-xxx-xxxx. You pay whatever their standard rate for calling that long distance 212-xxx-xxxx number would be, same as if you called it with your app or VoIP.
If you have the app installed and your VoIP service set up (with a DID), you can call between them for free. Also, you can call your mobile app from your PC app for free, and if course you can call another Localphone member for free on their Localphone number/app.
They offer all kinds of phone numbers, including international (iNum) phone numbers. Some are cheap, some are pretty expensive. They also have a referral program that gives you a percentage of the credit that your friend adds, and their phone numbers are free to setup until March 1st, 2013.
Let me know if you have any questions about the service.
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Review by steve1111
member for 3.5 years, 462 visits, last login: 17 days ago
updated 119 days ago
- New York,New York,NY
- $1 per month
- "cheap and reliable service"
- "Localphone is a decent and dependable Voip provider"
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NYC Dec 10 2012. Localphone is a decent and dependable Voip provider. They provide a cheap and reliable service which does not have sophisticated treatments for incoming calls but which can block or accept calls. Localphone is based in the UK. There is no 911 support and no contract. The service is PAYG and BYOD. Tech support is good. Localphone is not often mentioned in DSLReports.
Some time ago Localphone were renting out 212 DIDs for just one dollar per month. A 212 DID is a phone number with a Manhattan area code and some people consider a 212 DID more prestigious than a 646 DID. When I first acquired this exalted 212 number I didn't know quite what to do with it - if I gave it to my landlord or my bank, then maybe I would command greater respect. But after Hurricane Sandy I decided that two DIDs, one from each of two Voip providers, would be more reliable than one single DID. So I gave the 212 number out to my friends saying, behold, I now have two numbers. Try reaching me on this number and, if you can't, then try that number.
There are now no new 212 DIDs available but Localphone is still renting out 646 and other DIDs for one dollar a month. They also give out free iNums and provide free Sip forwarding. Prices for outgoing calls within the United States: if you have one dollar to spend, then you can get either 50 minutes with Callcentric, 100 minutes with Callwithus or 200 minutes with Localphone.
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Review by cell14
member for 1.2 years, 52 visits, last login: 106 days ago
updated 120 days ago
- Miami Beach,Miami-Dade,FL
- Contract price not specified.
- "Absolutely best value for the money, honest way of doing business"
- "Some calls have to be redialed due to bad connection,"
- "Fully recommended"
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IMO the best choice for international calls for anyone who needs to budget and still wants to have a decent quality and reliability. There are some cheaper possibilities but they are really bad. Some calls have to be re dialed because of bad connection, if you e-mail them they will credit you for the call .Off course, it is often not worth to spend time writing to the CS in order to get a 2 cents credit..
If you do not need a DID there are no monthly fees, no sign up fees and the minimum refill amount is only one dollar. You can also choose to pay in UK pounds or in Euros. However, you have to make the choice before you create the account and cannot change it, which is not quite clear from their web site If you choose payment in Euro or UK pounds or if your billing address is within an EU country, you will be charged VAT US customer should note that some US credit cards charge fees for transactions outside for the US even if it is in US $ (!). After being ripped of by BOA I started making payments through Capital One. Localphone does not accept American Express.
The DID's are a bit basic. Also,you cannot choose your number. They provide porting for $ 25.- however it takes several weeks.The DID prices are extremely competitive, but not for all countries.
Also the area code selection depends on the country. US, UK, Netherlands have a good selection of area codes while Germany or Austria do not.
There is no remote access to your voice mail. You can only call from your soft phone or from your ATA. Currently, they also provide phone support.
You can set any of your registered phone numbers or DIDs as your caller ID.
You can set up call filtering in order to block unwanted callers.
Localphone provides outgoing SMS service, however incoming SMS are limited to UK DIDs at this time.
Their calling card service is awesome for both domestic use and international travel.One disadvantage- you can have only one assigned calling card access number at a time and you have to cancel it and get a new one when you travel to a different location.
I like the way they do business- no BS and no deceptive practices and hidden charges so typical for many cheap( and not so cheap) VOIP providers.
A little nicety are their special offers- like a week of free calling to a certain country or a free DID sign up.
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1 edit | Localphone.com The supplied localphone.com softphone does not allow any choice of audio device. (But it is possible to use a third-party softphone such as X-Lite).
If you pay in Euros or UK Pounds, adding a credit of 5 units will cost you up to 6, depending on the VAT rate at your Credit card address. I don't know if you pay in USD if Sales tax applies.
Also, all the time of a call seems to be charged for, even if the other party does not answer. | |
| | cell14
join:2012-01-04
Miami Beach, FL Reviews:
 ·localphone.com
| Re: Localphone.com said by NickDishman:The supplied localphone.com softphone does not allow any choice of audio device. (But it is possible to use a third-party softphone such as X-Lite).
If you pay in Euros or UK Pounds, adding a credit of 5 units will cost you up to 6, depending on the VAT rate at your Credit card address. I don't know if you pay in USD if Sales tax applies.
Also, all the time of a call seems to be charged for, even if the other party does not answer.
With US credit cards there is no sale's tax included.
They never charged me for a call which was not connected.
I was unable to register X lite for unknown reasons.
I use ATA ( Obi 100) | |
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| | cell14
join:2012-01-04
Miami Beach, FL | Re: how much was transaction fee? BOA charged 3%( a rip off, no costs to them whatsoever) | |
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Review by real_goose
member for 11.9 years, 2051 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 174 days ago
- Apollo Beach,Hillsborough,FL
- $8 per month
- (month by month)
- about 1 days
- "Better quality European calls at low price to cell and landline"
- "Slow support - main business is not VoIP"
- "Wife Acceptance Factor is high so I am happy"
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Localphone solves the biggest VoIP issue in my house: poor quality connections on calls to Greece. Even better the calls (especially to cell phones) cost less than other providers we've tried.
Several fine providers have tried to respond to issues we have with calls to Greece. Even premium routes are often not acceptable. From the first call my wife and her sister in Greece have proclaimed the calls to be the best quality every time. As the local telephone support staff in my house, this makes my job much easier.
I pay $5/month for an Athens DID with free incoming calls. The outbound calls are very reasonable and less than the standard rates at other companies we have used.
In addition, we have US phone numbers we can call when away from the house to contact anyone we list in advance with Localphone. This is the "local phone" aspect that seems to be the reason for the name Localphone. So when away from home we don't need to try to run a SIP client on a cell phone to make a call. We just call a US number and get connected to the corresponding European number we set up in advance. The rate for the call is the same as if we called from the OBi line 2 in the house and the connection is just as good. My cell phone has minutes I don't use every month so there is no additional cost.
Support was a problem. There is a mechanism to create support tickets, but no real ticket system or response. I sent screen print of OBi setup screens and they told me that this was the first time they had heard of OBi. Many days can go bye before responses are received. I finally called the support number in England and after checking was told the support staff had not responded to my second problem and she would have them take a look at it. So there is phone support, but they can not handle VoIP technical issues.
My major problem turned out to be a parameter in call forwarding. Even though I had call forwarding turned off, a call forwarding after 10 seconds default was causing calls to be dropped after 10 seconds. I asked them to treat this as a bug and suggested development should fix it.
Since there is no mention of server locations, I asked and received the response: "Currently our servers are located in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, I understand there are plans to also open servers in Virginia in the near future. The AMS servers handle all the failover as there are duplicate servers for all systems." The device guides for some devices show turning on DNS SRV.
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Review by rsriram22
member for 6.6 years, 89 visits, last login: 14 days ago
updated 187 days ago
- Lexington,Fayette,KY
- Contract price not specified.
- "0.5 cent/minute US calling!! (Next best to free Google Voice)"
- "no E911 support"
- "bang for the buck (almost)"
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got an obi 100 recently and had to move out of vonage (costs are moving up steadily),
and given that i cannot port my # to GV,
I tried different providers(anveo,callcentric) and zeroed on localphone (for incoming calls). i ported my # to callcentric so i can receive incoming calls on it. i also have E911 with callcentric
for outgoing calls, initially i tried setting GV as SIP provider, but the voice was breaking up for both parties intermittently; and the other problem with GV was that I could not set the caller ID to my home phone #
localphone has good quality, very reliable (for the last 2-3 weeks that I have set it up), pretty quick responses for support tickets..
best part is, these guys have 0.5 cent/minute calling to US#, which i have not seen an y other provider match/beat it..
i put $0 above in monthly cost as this is a pay-as-you-go sort of service..
their website is pretty intuitive and was easy to setup my obi with localphone as SIP service..
and by the way, they support iNum! ( i dont use it, thought might be useful to someone who does)
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cell14
join:2012-01-04
Miami Beach, FL Reviews:
·localphone.com
| thumbs up for Localphone I consider Localphone the best deal under the sun as far as the price/performance ratio. However I would not go overboard with 100% ratings.
They improved their web site, but it still needs some more improvement( yes, i know, it is still 100 times better than Anveo's)
I had to go through hoops with the set up( made even worse because in my area ther calls had to be re routed) and I can tell you that 90% of non-IT inclined would have given up.I even got an answering machine because it took 2 months to sort out the problems with my voice mail. Callcentric is definitely easier.
The quality on inward calls is excellent and that includes foreign DID's. With outward calls I had some occasional problems but I will reevaluate it down the road because it seems that there is some improvement taking place.
On the other hand I would not blame their for not having 911 service. they are UK based and although I do have 911 through Callcentric I even wonder whether it is the $ 1.50/month worth. | |
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Review by XIII
member for 2.8 years, 507 visits, last login: 52 days ago
lodged 244 days ago
- Scottsdale,Maricopa,AZ
- $2 per month
- about 100 days
- "Cheap, reliable"
- "Porting (varies by current provider)"
- "Great cheap reliable VOIP service"
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Local phone support (sales,billing,tech) has been great.
Went with them as one of the numbers we have was not being used very often but have had it for so long and still get calls on it once in a while, that made it worth keeping, but not worth $25/month.
The Good:
Localphone charges $0.99/month for the number, free incoming calls, $0.005/minute outgoing. For the $25/month Cox is charging you get a phone number and just over 4800 minutes (80 hours, 3.5 days), and it carries over. In about 4 months of service with them we have spent about $10 on everything, excluding the port fee of about $30.
Now for the bad:
This was all due to Cox.
Porting can take a while and you have to wait and you may have to pay to port it, prepaid that is as localphone is all prepaid. Localphone's process was smooth, however the number was coming from Cox and they need to get some serious knowledge in the porting department. They killed both lines for a few hours and then brought one back, after about 3 days everything was they way it should be...or so we thought, it took Cox until August to fix a routing issue where the number that was ported to localphone would come up as disconnected when called from a Cox line. (more in the Cox review)
Bottom line: Great cheap reliable VOIP service
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Review by PDE
member for 7.5 years, 65 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
updated 1.7 years ago
- united kingd
- Contract price not specified.
- "Excellent call quality, international orientation, Great prices,"
- "perhaps it would be nice to have telephone support, trouble getting an issue resolved"
- "Great, inexpensive and honest VOIP provider"
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Localphone is a UK VOIP provider with a very international profile. I've tried lots of different providers over the years - some good and others not - and I have to say that for my purposes, I've been most satisfied with localphone.
What I wanted:
1. low-cost DIDs in multiple countries (LP charges USD 1.20/month for DIDs in the EU and USA!)
2. International call forwarding at low cost (you just pay the regular rates which are very low)
3. Use any SIP device (softphone, SIP ATA, IP phone - they have a no-configuration softphone that's pretty good too)
4. No contract (no plans, no subscriptions: just simple Pay as you go and auto top up when it falls below a certain level)
5. Local access numbers throughout the world (numbers everywhere I go, works flawlessly to call out using the voip system from any phone)
6. Low cost calling to the U.S., EU and East Asia (for example: 1.1cent/min to the U.S., 0.7cent/min to most EU countries and 1.1cent/min to China)
7. Responsive customer service (reply support tickets same day, resolutions very quick too)
8. Last but NOT least: Excellent uptime and calling quality (no issues except echo a few times - see below)
9. An user-friendly website. (it was pretty decent before, but they just made improved it considerably with easy groupings of functionality, more help functions and a very nice interface)
With localphone I got all the above and more. The ability to add international numbers online and have them converted to local numbers wherever I am in the world has also been great.
I'll continue updating this review, but in the past year using them I've had no issues whatsoever: Call quality has been essentially perfect except for the extremely occasional echoing (it's happened MAYBE twice out of thousands of calls).
Since they're Pay as You Go, there's no risk in trying them out. Definitely recommended!
UPDATE on July 12. My service continues to be excellent in terms of voice quality and reliability. Nothing whatsoever to complain about. However, I have been trying get support for a glitch when using an iPad soft phone client (voicemail will not connect properly). The problem has been traced back to localphone after several weeks of troubleshooting, but there is no support to be had. The first time I raised the issue, I received a quick reply asking for more information. I supplied that and later followed up several times to supply information from the soft phone developer that might help resolve the issue, but have received no response whatsoever. I would at least expect a note saying that they are looking into it but no response at all is unacceptable.
I'm lowering my rating for support because of this. No customer should have to ask for help three times without at least a simple response.
Still, I'm generally very happy with their service and would recommend them.
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Review by Bogtrotter23
member for 3.8 years, 305 visits, last login: 2 years ago
updated 2 years ago
- East York,ON
- Contract price not specified.
- "Sounds good; reliable, cheap"
- "cheap, but whistelphone is cheaper"
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update 15 March 2011
I made a long call the other day which had a persistent, loud echo. Otherwise, it has been fine. However, whistlephone to the US is cheaper (zero cents / minute), and voip.ms is cheaper to the UK (7/10 of a cent/minute), so I'll let this one go by the boards. I understand they have good use as a DID supplier but I can't comment on that.
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I put $5 into this vosp several weeks ago, and now that my subscription to magictalkbox (another good outfit) has run out, I am using this as the default outgoing vosp.
Calls to the US and Canada *and* the UK are $0.009 per minute (9/10 cent per minute).
On a one-hour call to the US, the sound was fine with no dropouts or other artifacts.
All of the shorter calls I have made have also sounded good, and always connected.
These people are certainly worth a try if you want a cheap payg outbound service.
If Localphone continues to work this well for the rest of the $5, I may continue using it for the US and UK calls.
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Great review of Localphone
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