Reviews:
 ·AT&T Southeast
 ·Clearwire Wireless
| [General] What to look for in home VOIP providers? (Ooma, MagicJ I am needing to go back to having a landline soon, but not wanting to have AT&T screw up my bill further with bills that vary month to month, for the same service.
From my research, MagicJack WAS the best out there. Now with competition, it looks like they a falling fast. Newer reviews seem more and more harsh. Prices are going up. The PC always needs to be on. And faxes are spotty, if any (from reviews).
Ooma. I can't find much reviews for it. Every time I hear somebody talk about it on consumer sites, they add the caveat of 'if it stays in business', and 'if the hardware holds up'. That scares me a lot.
netTALK Duo looks good, but I only find smaller blogs about them. I LOVE the fact that the PC does not have to be on for it to work. Plus from what (little) I hear, it is friendly with faxes too. Is that true?
Any recommendations?
To throw an extra wrench in the pot, do any offer recording of calls? I may have to do that soon.
Thanks! |
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 Arne BolenHappy Anveo customerPremium
join:2009-06-21
Planet Earth
kudos:1
 ·Anveo
·Callcentric
·voip.ms
| Re: [General] What to look for in home VOIP providers? (Ooma, Ma said by sven_kirk3:To throw an extra wrench in the pot, do any offer recording of calls? I may have to do that soon.
Thanks! Anveo do offer recording of calls. I use it all the time and it works excellent.
Anveo is a high quality provider for both business and residential customers.
--
Main provider: Anveo - Secondary providers: VoIP.ms, Callcentric, Localphone and Rebtel
Hosted PBX: PBXes.org - Phone: Gigaset S685IP |
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PX EliezerPremium
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River
kudos:12 Reviews:
·voip.ms
·callwithus
·Callcentric
·Vitelity VOIP
·Optimum Voice
·Gizmo5
| reply to sven_kirk3
With respect, where have you been doing your research?! 
NetTalk and Ooma are decent choices, but MagicJack?!
I don't know any respectable Voiper who ever considered it as "the best" or even close.
Here, this same website that you are on now has a compilation of ratings and reviews:
»/gbu
You have to decide what type of service you want.
If you want to BYOD, good services include CallCentric, Voip.MS, FutureNine, Anveo, FlowRoute, and others. These are primarily but not exclusively PAYG, and inbound and outbound services are chosen separately except for FutureNine.
If you want the adapter supplied and maintained for you, good services include PhonePower, Voipo, and others. These are primarily flat-rate services that combine inbound and outbound in one plan.
One problem with NetTalk is the lack of inbound phone numbers in some areas.... |
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 crazyk4952Premium
join:2002-02-04
united state
kudos:1
 ·Charter
·voip.ms
| reply to Arne Bolen
Since you are have been looking at MagicJack, Ooma and netTALK, it looks like you are looking for a provider that you can just plug in the ATA and it works with little or no configuration.
I would look at voipo or Ooma. Both of these providers will provide you an ATA that will allow you to use a standard analog telephone.
There was some discussion on the voipo forums several years ago about them offering call recording. I am not sure if they currently offer this feature or not.
voipo also usually has pretty good new-customer 2 year pricing that includes the ATA.
Ooma charges a premium for their ATA, then you can either opt to pay monthly taxes (usually about $3/month) or you can get the premier service for an additional $10/month. People have been saying that Ooma is going out of business for the last several years and they are still here! Their customers really do seem to be satisfied.
I do not think there is an easy way to record calls with Ooma. |
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| reply to sven_kirk3
I've heard good things about NetTalk. The only problem (also mentioned here) is the lack of available numbers for specific areas. Hopefully this will improve, but as far as I'm concerned, I think NetTalk might be the one to go for. |
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PX EliezerPremium
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River
kudos:12 Reviews:
·voip.ms
·callwithus
·Callcentric
·Vitelity VOIP
·Optimum Voice
·Gizmo5
| reply to crazyk4952
said by crazyk4952:There was some discussion on the voipo forums several years ago about them offering call recording. I am not sure if they currently offer this feature or not.
[VOIPo] apparently includes outbound call recording by dialing *28 but they say it is for occasional use only!
I guess it puts more burden on their servers.... |
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Reviews:
·AT&T Southeast
·Clearwire Wireless
| reply to sven_kirk3
Thank you all for your fast an informative responses!
I am looking to go the the dumbphone/ATA route due to (hopeful) less painful setup, maintenance/troubleshooting, and wife from messing it up somehow.
The local number isn't all that important to me. Auto call recording is more of a requirement than anything else. If possible, I need to do it on my end.
Minutes are really not a concern. I barely use a 300 minutes a month on my cell, and that is with me being talkative.
Are there any other (non-extreme tech) user forums out there? |
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nitzanPremium,VIP
join:2008-02-27
kudos:2 | reply to Arne Bolen
said by Arne Bolen:Anveo is a high quality provider for both business and residential customers.
With all due respect, a guy is asking about MJ/NT/Ooma - all non-techie providers - and you recommend Anveo?!? this person will obviously be better served by a less complicated non-BYOD provider. For all it's bells and whistles Anveo is probably the most complicated provider I've ever seen. I run a VOIP company and I can't figure out their plans.
Someone like VOIPo would serve the OP better IMHO. |
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| reply to sven_kirk3
I got Ooma back in late November to replace our second POTS line and so far it has been working great, voice quality is about as good as they say, and call quality is very good too - of course the VOIP service is only as good as the internet connection it runs on so keep in mind that you will need a pretty stable connection.
I have successfully sent a (color) fax from the Ooma line over to the fax machine at my mom's business which is on Comcast. When sending faxes you do need to dial *98 before the number (this activates the G711 codec) to optimize data transmission.
I have our Ooma set up in the basement with the modem (out of sight out of mind), in-line before the router (the way to go for best call quality in my case), and have it backfeeding into the house wiring. If Ooma didn't have that funny dial tone it would be hard to tell that it's not a POTS line in the way that it behaves. |
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jac74
join:2004-11-14
Rochester, NY | reply to sven_kirk3
I can help you if you are looking for a reasonable priced second line via VoIP, and you can use your own device. If you have an SPA 2102, it will auto-provision on our switch and will get constant updates as they come out. Also, if you are looking to go back to a landline for faxing, I can help with that. We have a new product that makes faxing work 99% of the time with no issues
If interested, shoot me a PM and I can get you the details. |
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