Office VOIP Telephone Options

[Tipzy]

Hello!

I currently run my small business from a virtual office address in London. Unfortunately, this does not come with a telephone line.

My plan is to purchase a phone number tied to that area of London and then put that through one of the VOIP services such as https://www.vonage.co.uk/

That way customers can reach me and I can call from an office number when appropriate.

Has anyone had any experience with doing this? If so, any advice and are there any particular services you recommend?

Best regards,

T

 

[james_firmsites]

I have used Vonage for several years now, most of the time the service is really good and the only draw backs I have found are:
- Occasionally you can't find a circuit, so you will dial a number and then it pauses for about 3 seconds followed by a message saying "lines are temporarily busy". Which is very annoying, but normally if you just wait 5 seconds and redial you are fine.
- Our vonage box only works on hardline, which limits phone placement. But my company signed up 3 or 4 years back so maybe the newer boxes have overcome this.

Generally though calls are crisp and clear, customer service has been fast and costs reasonable (even allowing us to have multiple numbers cheaper than a single static line). The box works with any standard phone, and I really like getting the voicemails as recordings via email.

 

[KM-Tiger]

Yes, have had that sort of set up for years.

Avoid Vonage, haven't checked for quite a while, but they used have a nasty lock in.

Choose a service provider who is a member of ITSPA. Apart from being bound by a Code of Conduct, it does guarantee that your number can be retained even if the service provider goes out of business.

I use, and many here recommend Voipfone. Their CEO is a member here.

 

[james_firmsites]

The Vonage site says its £23.99 for termination in the first 12 months. I was certainly not aware of any lockins but may have changed (multiple times I'm guessing!)

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

Have a chat with David Kitchen at County Comms. Lovely chap and I am sure he can sort you out with something. PM me if you want his details.

Simon

 

[gbcv]

We use a company called yay.com they seem pretty good

 

[GraemeL]

Lots of UKBF members use @cjd http://www.voipfone.co.uk/

Excellent service.
Graeme

 

[Rob Ellis]

If you happen to already use Office 365, look at their Cloud PBX option - I've been using it for a single number for a few months now - they can also do toll-free numbers, auto attendant, call queues, etc. all integrated with the Skype for Business client, and works with a range of hardware as well.

 

[Liquid11]

Hi, T.
You can also try SwitchboardFREE to manage your inbound calls. It doesn’t offer outbound calling at the moment but it’s still possible to dial out from your existing phone using your SBF number. Our support team are more than happy to talk you through on how to do this.

 

[webgeek]

If you are the only user of the service, you could use voipfone or soho66, so that you could get all the cool features like voicemail, attendant, etc. You could use a softphone on your PC so you could get your calls wherever you've got internet. With the lag you get from international hops, don't even think about an American solution when you've got so many good UK ones, like voipfone.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

I am with Vonage and I really like it . There are loads of features and you always talk to a human when you need to talk to them
I highly recommend them

 

[Mike_Cartwright]

Haven't tried Vonage but our office has been using RingCentral for quite some time now. I would recommend it. Really reliable VOIP phone system. We integrate it with our HubSpot CRM via a CTI called Tenfold. You can check them out here:

https://www.ringcentral.com/
https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm
https://www.tenfold.com/integrations/

 

[HostOX]

Personally I use yay.com everything is included and not too expensive.