Hosted VOIP Phone Systems – Emancipating Businesses from the PBX.
I’m an old school phone guy. From my first days working in the telecom industry in the 1980’s a truly dependable phone system consisted of a main PBX control unit and phones. Any other model of phone system I thought was a risk to my customers that I believed was not worth taking.
To say the least, things have now changed! Today for a company of any size whether it has 1 employee or a staff of 500 if it is not in their plans to switch to a hosted VOIP phone system they are doing their company, their customers and their prospects a great disservice! Hosted VOIP Phone Systems I believe are the single most dependable choice for businesses today. Here are some key reasons why:
- It’s more dependable. Because it is cloud based, phone calls will always be answered even if the office loses power or internet service.
- It costs less to maintain. Instead of dropping $500 to $1000 plus every time the PBX part of the phone system has a problem with Hosted VOIP Phone Systems there is no PBX box to invest $$ in to maintain!
- It always is using the latest technology. No spending $$ in the future to take advantage of new software upgrades. The hosted carrier takes cares of all that..
- In some cases the phones are FREE. More and more carriers are offering periodic promotions where they will actually GIVE free VOIP phones for signing up with their hosted service.
- Online portals allow control of phones from anywhere. One simply logs into their online portal from any internet capable device –most smart phones tablets etc and they can make changes to many items including the phone ringing or the redirection of incoming phones calls to mobile phones“on the fly”!
What are the down sides?
- Different pricing structure for local and long distance calling. Unlike traditional phone systems – for one’s monthly local and long distance phone services — with hosted VOIP Phone Systems one invests per phone (per seat) instead of per line. So for example a 10 phone office used to paying for 6 phone lines will pay for 10 seats instead. However since phones lines with taxes can average around $65 per line, in many cases the since the pricing of Hosted VOIP phone systems –can be as little as $25 a seat – therefore the actual monthly cost for the VOIP phone service could be the same or less than regular phone service. Plus the business winds up with much more dependable service.
- Switching carriers can be a challenge. For mostly cost savings reasons we find that businesses wind up changing carriers about once every 36 months. Changing hosted VOIP phone systems carriers is a little more challenging than simply changing phone lines. This is because just about everything about the phone system when one changes carriers. Is it a challenge? Yes. Is it doable very much so!
- It doesn’t yet work well with other than very basic external paging needs. This is the one area where at least at present some sort of business phone system with VOIP trunks might be the best choice. We have found hosted VOIP phone systems simply cannot do this well. So for businesses with warehouses, car dealerships or other businesses that have to page through many different areas using paging horns or speakers, a PBX style VOIP business phone system is probably a better choice.
Overall then I have come to conclude that it simply makes good sense for most small to medium sized business to “emancipate themselves” from their traditional PBX type business phone system and move to a hosted VOIP phone system!