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[General] Overview of Current Popular VoIP Providers' Offerings

Re: [General] Overview of Current Popular VoIP Providers' Offeri

reply to N9MD
I can help out with the Anveo pricing. I've considering a switch lately, and I've settled on Anveo and will be making the jump soon. Yeah, their site is very confusing. It took me a while to figure out what's going on. It's definitely geared more towards businesses than home users.

The 'Plans & Pricing' page describes their subscription packages. This is the monthly price you pay for the features described, whether you have any phone numbers with them or not.

Their 'Phone Numbers' page describes the pricing packages for having one phone number (DID) and inbound calling on that phone number. The pricing for the phone numbers depends on the Country you want a number for.

So for a simple setup, you'd subscribe to one of their subscription packages and a phone number. You can have more than one phone number on the same account if you wish. I'm planning to use them for my home phone, so I'll just use their free subscription package, with their Personal Unlimited phone number plan at $2/month. That'll give me unlimited incoming calls, and half a cent/minute outbound to Canada.

For my usage, I calculated I'd be paying around $4/month after the 80 cent 911 fee.

Plus you get access to some fancy features that you might use if you're the type that does like to fiddle with neat technology. If you ever have to deal with businesses still living in the 90's, you can set it up to detect faxes coming into your phone number and just email the faxes to you rather than putting the call through to your phone. You can send faxes through the web portal too. There's other neat IVR features that you can use too. All the features are described on their 'Features' page. Some are free, some are pay-per-use, or only available on the non-free subscription packages.

reply to N9MD
took me awhile to figure out anveo's website
my example is going to pick a canadian number and only use /compare the personal plans

1. click on "phone numbers" from the top menu(this is picking your did)

1a. if you choose:
> "anveo value" >value has some free incoming depending on "plans" you choose in the next step 2.)

>"personal unlimited" unlimited is for incoming

1b. scroll down, pick a country for your phone number, eg canada, if you choose:
"anveo value" is $1/mth for your phone number
"personal unlimited" is $2/mnth for your phone number



2. next goto "plans and pricing" from top menu and pick a plan

2a. picking "free" plan, read under its heading for what the plan includes

starter is $7.85/mnth but has more features included if you need them, most notably sip tcp and Users/SIP Accounts included is 1 more than value



example#1
so i picked canadian number(did) w/"personal unlimited" =$2
i picked "free" under plans =$0
e911 =$0.80
total $2+$0.80 = $2.80/mth for unlimited incoming calls with a phone number(did) within canada, outgoing calls are paid /minute at the going rates

example #2
so i picked canadian number(did) w/"personal unlimited" =$2
picked starter plan $7.85
e911 =$0.80
$2+$7.85+$0.80=$10.65/mth +outgoing calls are charged

the "anveo value" and "personal unlimited" both have to pay for outgoing calls at prices setout in the "calling rates" from the top of the menu
calls outgoing/within canada are $0.005(1/2 cent)

example #1 would suit my needs plus if you pay $2*12=$24 upfront you get free porting

edit: cnam lookup(name lookup, numbers come through) is 0.9cents /lookup, less than 1cent
no phone support
free account has only 4 lifetime tickets support

reply to N9MD
Thanks to azmike, cybersaga and vincom.

reply to N9MD

reply to N9MD
Definitely missing in the list is Localphone, U.S. DID $ 0.99/month, outgoing calls U.S. 0.5c/month

reply to N9MD
Whats with the No extra taxes and extra fees apply?

Not picking on voipo but don't they charge the $3 a month for the first year of service in fees and taxes. Making the total $7.71 a month for the 24 month term. Think its paid up front thank god but it still adds to cost.

Sure the others have similar small hidden fees.

Viatalk is $189 for 2 years or $7.88 a month. Lots of taxes and fees. For me it ends up $12.80 a month.

reply to N9MD
Localphone does not have any incoming minute charge. They allow porting in and out. Port in fee is $ 25.-. You have to check whether the number is portable.

reply to N9MD
Very nice.

reply to N9MD
Another to mention is Flowroute, www.flowroute.com. $0.98 outgoing per minute for the 48-states and Canada, $1.25/month for a DID, and one of the few providers who does OUTBOUND CNAM (meaning they populate the LIDB database free of charge). I use ALL the providers mentioned in your post, but I'd have to say that my outbound service from Flowroute has met a 99.999% up time in the past year ... no one else has done that. Perhaps they are not for everyone, but I find them to be very good.

I have a bunch of Canadian DIDs, and Anveo has the best price/performance for Canadian DIDs, IMHO.
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VoIP Geek/Customer of voip.ms, vitelity, flowroute, callcentric, localphone, didforsale, voicemeup among others/Asterisk-PIAF user/FreeSwitch app developer/Consulting

reply to N9MD
What is an even better deal that Future-Nine's Bare Essentials, is the CallCentric free phone number. It allows unlimited incoming minutes. Then they also have a plan with 500 minutes outgoing for $6.95 a month - double the Future-Nine offering.

So what I did for my daughter, is I set her up with a free phone number from CallCentric (it is a New York area code, but makes no difference). Then created a Google Voice account with a local number (again, free), then forwarded the Google Voice number to the CallCentric free incoming number (unlimited incoming minutes and allow her to have a local number).

So now for $6.95 a month, she has 500 outgoing minutes, and unlimited incoming minutes.

We are also using the ObiTalk TA's for this. So she can also call out with Google Talk which is not the quality of CallCentric. It works, but we prefer CallCentric which by the way gives her 911 access.
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Atheists swear there is no Heaven, but pray there isn't a Hell.

reply to dcurrey
Yes, Voipo charges extra fees for their two-year plan; and PhonePower charges fees and taxes *twice*. So, PhonePower costs about $12/mo. But PhonePower gives you "second line"; so you essentially can have two simultaneous conversations over two phones. And I've had much fewer problems with them than with Voipo... I just wish they were a little more honest about their pricing!
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Technical problems are more often than not management incompetence masquerading as technical issues

Pretty sure VOIPo has the "second line feature" too. Future Nine does too - just request it.

reply to N9MD
@Callcentric, it says in their FAQ that an average number port takes 25 days?! Is that true? How come it is 25 days for Callcentric but voip.ms can do it in 5 days?
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www.613websites.com ● Budget Canadian Web Design and Hosting

On average it takes 3-5 weeks to port a number. Sometimes it may take longer. We do our best to expedite porting process, however, the porting process depends on other parties involved such as our carrier, losing carrier and your provider.

reply to N9MD
Ah ok, that makes sense. Also, CallCentric says "Pay Per Minute to Receive Calls" but coverage = USA and Canada. Does that mean international people can't call you if I were to switch to CallCentric?

Lastly, would someone just be able to go with the "Pay Per Call" outgoing plan and combine it with the "Pay Per Minute" incoming plan to only truly pay for what they use?
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www.613websites.com ● Budget Canadian Web Design and Hosting