Choosing a reliable provider

[hudnut]

I've been using GV at home for a while now with no problem, but now I would like to move my small church (with a $300 phone bill for three lines!) to voip, and I think gv would be inappropriate for that. I'm mostly interested in three things:

1) Reliability
2) Ability to port existing numbers (GV can't import our local 254 area)
3) Price of course, but I think any of them will beat our current bill hands down.

I tried looking at anveo, but it's hard to make heads or tails of their webpage with all its options. I'd just like a simple no-hassle plan that will pretty much just always work. Thanks.

EDIT: 4) Support an old-fashion analog fax.

[Shale]

There are several, including Callcentric and VOIP.ms, who have happy users on this forum.

I agree that Anveo's plan is hard to understand. I may be able to help you with that.
https://www.anveo.com/business/service.asp are the choices for the outgoing line. If you choose the "Free" plan and you are in the US, it is $0.80 per line for 911 and $0.01 per minute for calls out to the US.

Then for incoming calls, you pick one of these: https://www.anveo.com/business/mainphonenumbers.asp Regular Caller ID is included, but $0.009 per incoming call that is not in your phonebook for name lookup.

For number porting, see https://www.anveo.com/faq.asp?code=faq_did_portin In the US, that would be one-time  $15 per number, or free if you pre-pay for 'Office Unlimited' rate plan for a year.

I have a feeling that the church usage is fairly light but with bursts of use, so you might do well with Anveo Value=free + Starter=$1/month +$0.80 for 911 totalling $1.80 monthly on each line plus usage. Then just pay for the minutes at roughly a penny per minute. The first 40 minutes in on each line would be free. Pay the $15 each to port the 3 numbers.  These presume you are in the US. Canada would be cheaper.

Forget the references to FAX in the descriptions. That would be if Anveo was going to handle the FAX rather than you using your own fax machine.

Caveat: I am just a light residential user, so I may well have mis-described something.

[MikeHObi]

CallCentric is another option.  I have accounts with both (home user) and they both are considered reliable within scope  of what might be safe in expecting.  Voip is unlikely to ever be as reliable as POTS phone lines.

Don't hesitate to just contact the providers and discuss with them what you need.  You'll want to figure out how many concurrent calls need to happen, what devices you'll be using to interface from a handset to SIP or VOIP, how you'll handle voice mail, and misc other stuff.

[Lavarock7]

You might consider that Voip.Ms is currently giving free porting for a very limited time. Currently expiring tomorrow.

With Voip.Ms and CallCentric and others you may find that the providers Have some options which might help your organization such as:

* Separate ability to block callers

* Ability to have the same caller id presented on outbound calls yet have each phone assigned to a different number

* Separate call detail records

* Call treatments such as ringing different phones or voicemail after hours

* Voicemail for extensions that don't have phones on them

* Announcements (like dial a prayer?)

and so on.

[Rick]

Callcentric cannot be considered reliable in my opinion.  Last year they had a major denial of service attack for over a month, then Sandy showed they have no backup generators or ability to switch to servers located elsewhere.  I left.

[psuPete]

Does that mean that they did not learn (and correct) from their problems and mistakes?

I experienced those problems (with their services) also.  Since then, I have been pleased.

YMMV.

Pete

[Rick]

To me it wasn't a case of learning from their mistakes.  It seemed clear to me that they were totally unprepared for the denial of service attack, which went on and on.  Then, when I learned that their servers were all located in an office building in NYC, without any generators for a prolonged outage, nor any secondary center to switch to, it seemed clear to me that they didn't warrant my business.

Anyone knows you have to have reliable backup power.  Anyone knows you have to have a secondary center that can run when your primary center is down.  They chose to save money and not do these basic things.

I have no idea what other VoIP providers do, and I'm sure some/many of them are in a similar setup.  Investigate before you rely upon any of them for your "must have" communications.

[carl]

They did learn from their mistakes . Just recently, Callcentric announced some significant changes which will make situations like last year highly unlikely. That off course does not change the fact that they used to cut corners and pocket the money where other providers took precautions and covered up issues until the shit hit the fan but that's in the past. I would not give them a high reliability rating yet but they are clearly on the right track.

[lhm.]

VoIP.ms is all you need. Used them for years, good company. Servers all over the country.

[ProfTech]

Hi. I tried several different providers over the last 5 years. Used Vonage for about 3 years. The trouble with them was you needed multi-line phones if you had more than one line. With the Obi 110 I could tie my ATT land line and my VOIP line together pretty much seamlessly. Sounds like you wanted to get rid of your land line but I plan on keeping mine expressly because it is nearly 100% reliable. Anyway, Anveo has lots of features available for "business" use such as yours might be but I found their call flow to be complicated and they wanted to charge extra for some things Callcentric does for free [and simply]. I wasn't impressed with Voip.ms customer service which is based in Canada. I am in Illinois and they have a server in Chicago but I still had problems with dropped calls, etc. Always came back to Callcentric. True they had issues last October but like I said, I just used my land line a little more during that time. Their customer service has been very good even though it is internet based only.

*edited* I forgot to mention CallWithUs. For low dollar no-frills service they seem to be very good. Haven't made a lot of calls on them but have had no issues with dropped calls or call quality.