Having worked with many small businesses, I know that shopping for a telephone solution can be a nightmare. First, it’s tough to know what you really need. Second, telephony solutions always seem to be ridiculously expensive! Enter VOIP, a new way to take telephony more flexible and useful. VOIP is definitely something you should consider when shopping for your telephony.
If you think you haven’t heard of VOIP before, you probably have and didn’t know it. Some common VOIP providers in the residential space include the “Magicjack”, and Vonage.
So how do you learn about VOIP, particularly for small business? I have found a few websites that will help you along the way:
- Voipreview.org – Lots of reviews, and a great article on 8 Things You Need to Know About Setting Up Small Business VOIP.
- WhichVoip.com – Info, Pricing Quotes, and an article which sums up “The VOIP Business Case.”
- Asterisk.org – Open-source PBX software (as mentioned by Stephen’s comment) with some pretty powerful features! This software is also packaged and sold with hardware by Digium.
- ConsumerSearch.com – Quick-list review of Cable VOIP v. Vonage v. Skype (geared more towards VOIP for home)
Again, thanks to Stephen for the comment about Asterisk and Digium. Those are both two providers worth checking out!
As always, if you need any help researching a solution that works for you, feel free to Contact Me!
Related posts:
Thanks for the post Stephen! Interesting stuff!
Let me throw in my weight behind Asterisk and their commercial entity, Digium. If you have someone available who is a little techy, you can set up an Asterisk phone system for very cheap.
We run 700+ outbound calls a day through a cheap server and it runs like a champ. Also, if you have multiple offices with internet connections, you can link the boxes together. The VOIP protocol used by Asterisk is very light weight.
http://www.asterisk.org
http://www.digium.com