Sophisticated, Centralized Telephony Services–On the Cheap
October 4th, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 9 CommentsTweet This
Many web workers collaborate online from home, hotspots, and on the move, relying solely on basic cell phone and VoIP features for their telephony tasks. If you’re not an office nine-to-fiver, and you want to upgrade the professionalism and feature set of your workgroup’s telephony options, definitely look into some of the online, virtual telephony providers. Especially for small workgroups with far-flung employees, they can make it seem like you’re all in a big office with a full-blown PBX at your command.
Online providers such as GotVMail, Virtual PBX, and Onebox can centrally direct calls to any location, provide centralized auto-attendants offering multi-level menu options to callers, online tools for tracking call data, conference calling, departmental queing, dial-by-name directories, and more. I’ve used these services, and my experience is that even the small things they do well—like offering a workgroup a professional-sounding main greeting to callers—make a difference.
The services I’ve mentioned all have plans that can create a robust, centralized telephony solution for small workgroups of three to five people at about $10 a month, and $20 a month tends to serve about 25 employees. There is no hardware or software to futz with, and they even offer useful universal mailbox features where you can have your faxes, voice messages, and e-mails all in one inbox.
In several kinds of cases, the virtual telephony services can boost company image and save small businesses significant money as well. For example, you can get plans for about $100 a month that give you a toll-free and local number with about 20 mailboxes and far more monthly calling minutes than you’re likely to use. A toll-free number that’s inexpensive to maintain is a very professional calling card for a tiny business to have.
Keep in mind that these services will start to deliver costs that escalate if your needs for services like huge numbers of monthly calling minutes escalate very quickly. But for small groups who want to sound professional, and go with the kinds of feature sets that PBX systems offer in offices, these are good deals.
Do you have any good tips on telephony solutions for web workers?
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It was mentioned in the article… but the gotcha of all of these plans is in the per minute charges. Also sound quality can be an issue, but you get what you pay for.
I would also suggest http://www.grandcentral.com for Freelance professionals. Some great features and it is free.
RingCentral.com if you’re willing to pay — great interface, great features, more than just voicemail. I’ve been happy with it so far.
I am a RingCentral customer (Virtual PBX only) and I love it (you can read my review here: http://small-business-phone.com/?p=4)
For phone service in conjunction with my RingCentral account, I use Vonage and Skype, both of whom I don’t see disappearing anytime soon, despite troubles. (Read my review of Skype here: http://small-business-phone.com/?p=13)
Good luck,
-J.B. Malik
MBA/MS
http://www.Small-Business-Phone.com
My firm has been using virtual phone systems for a while and we found that we needed more than just the standard set of features. After some research we found PowrFone.com and it integrates with our CRM system as well as records all the calls into my company so that they can be regularly audited to identify quality assurance issues. You can find them at http://www.powrfone.com
My company uses Callture-Telcan’s services and they provide absolutely everything we need at excellent prices (I’ve compared their prices to that of competitors). In terms of quality they do not give anything up either. Great company, great service.
My company uses Callture-Telcan’s services and they provide absolutely everything we need at excellent prices (I’ve compared their prices to that of competitors). In terms of quality they do not give anything up either. Great company, great service.
http://www.callture.com
I have to agree with both Jordon and J.B. Malik on their recommendation of RingCentral. RingCentral has been one of the best services that I have used for Virtual PBX. They provide great services at a reasonable rate. I would have gone with GrandCentral but they don’t have pricing up (at least not since they were bought by Google) and I need to make sure that my company’s phone numbers stay online.
Another piece that I didn’t find with all Virtual PBX providers is that RingCentral allows me to port my number away from them or to them. That means that my number is owned by me in case I want to switch companies later.