Do you trust Vonage for business?

Posts: 19 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 31, 2006 Posts: 19

To preserve my business phone number, I am contemplating porting it to Vonage when I move my office in 2 months. Then I am totally depending on Vonage to receive all of my incoming phone calls. SBC will not carry my number despite being only 2 miles away!

The added advantage of Vonage, is the ease it is to transfer the phone calls between my 2 businesses, and home. And not having to physically drive to the location to manually transfer it. SBC does not have remote phone transfer yet in SE Michigan.

The big question is: Can I trust that Vonage is reliable enough to receive all phone calls??

Next : Can I trust that Vonage is reliable enough to send and receive all my faxes??

Please honestly tell me from your experience... Is two month enough time for them to port my phone number over?

Posts: 109 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 109

you can still get Voip but i would go with your cable company being the provider instead on Vonage just because you will be able to spend a lot less time on the phone with customer service and can get a real technician to come out install, and do repairs.

the difference i see would be the level of support you will receive.

don't get me wrong i love my Vonage service but is it worth the problems you see posted and have to solved by the user or the wait involved for customer service vs the ability to schedule a tech from the cable co to come do a repair when it comes to picking a provider for your business. you want reliability, the home user want the lowest cost

Posts: 19 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 31, 2006 Posts: 19

Unfortunately, both Comcast and Wow cable will not have business Voip service available at least for 5 or 6 months more.... Wow currently only have residential Voip service and not phone service.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 31, 2006 Posts: 1

I have tip toed in the water. It has been on my house for probably going on two years. About 5 months ago, I turned on a line for the business. We have not had any problems, on out going calls. Some of the phone book ads will start using it in April. We have got some incoming calls but I have it set up to ring multiple numbers. The only problems I have seen are when faxing to some machines. It is not as reliable as the land lines. We also have experience a couple of times where you seem to not hear the other person but this could be the other end cell phone so not sure.
Our biz leaves and dies by being available so you have my sympathies. I am using it but with land line backup.
Hope this helps.

Posts: 24 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 30, 2006 Posts: 24

I ordered it for my home on Monday and am waiting for my equipment. I'm going to evaulate it at home for a while and see how it goes. If all goes well I'm going to use it for my business. I think it will be okay because 99% of the time I have my office phone call forwarded to my cell phone. I plan on pretty much doing the same thing with Vonage and even if my ISP gets flaky i should still be able to get calls through Vonage's features.

Posts: 57 · Full Forum Member Joined: Sep 03, 2005 Posts: 57

There are a number of things you need to consider when you use Vonage. In addition to technical problems, your electric could out , your internet service could go out and your Vonage router could burn out which will take a number of days to replace. All these interuptions maybe ok for a home user, but not for a business.

However, even though I had all the issues above, I have never missed a call. I simply turn my call forwarding feature on and all the calls get forwarded to my cell phone.

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

Mousey,

You pose a very good question. From my readings on this forum a number of issues must be properly weighed before you make this plunge.

1. In Business, missed phone calls = missed business, which very well might be lost revenue... You must have a quality line(s).

2. What about if you experience power failure. This means, you need a significant duration Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS).

3. How is your internet connection? Although there are issues with Vonage at times, the majority of issues are ISP related. So if you have a high quality ISP, then you should have no problems with this service. However, if you ISP is a bit flaky, then your service will definitely be flaky which is not good for business. By the way, you would want to get a higher tier service for better speeds.

Now to compensate, Vonage does have call forwarding and Network Availability numbers so that you don't miss a call. It also has simulring which seems to help. So chances are you won't miss a call but you never know.

For the home user, the above issues are no big deal. But for a business, I think they are critical.

One suggestion is to get one line and try it. If it works, then expand it. Once you reach the capacity you want and you are happy, then I would port my phone number over. In the meantime, I would forward my current business number to the Vonage number to see how that works.

Hope this helps. There are a few members on this site who have abandoned their Vonage because of business reasons but again the main reason is because their ISP is not so good.

Posts: 19 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 31, 2006 Posts: 19

Thanks guys. I think I will take your opinion very seriously.

I think I will have SBC maintaine my 2 business numbers, and pay a forwarding fee of $40 a month for the 2 lines, and 7 cents a minute to forward to my Vonage virtual business numbers.

Then, if everythings goes smoothly, I will port them over.

From what I have read, Vonage faxing is only 95% reliable, or worse if you have got bad ISP.

How reliable have you found their simuring features, their call forwarding, and their other feature that transfer phone when your isp is down?

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

I find the call forwarding extremely good. When I went on vacation, I forwarded my primary number to my cell, worked just fine. Just recently, I got a softphone number in my mother's area code, so she can call toll free. When I don't have the softphone actually running, I forward that number to my primary Vonage number and it rings as if she called the house, but it's toll free.

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 26, 2006 Posts: 12

I am going to be having a relatively large fax volume each month and I would like to try and get away from paper as much as possible. From what I am learning on this site, it sounds like a fax modem and winfax pro may be the way to go.

Few questions:

1) I would like to dedicate one of my Vonage lines to being fax only (So I can have unlimited outbound fax as well). What configuration changes do I need to make to that account so that it is fax only?

2) I am guessing voicemail needs to be disabled? Is that true?

3) What else do I need to do?

4) The way I understand it - I simply plug a phone jack from the Vonage adapter into my fax modem on the back of my computer. Is that correct?

5) I generally have an excellent connection from my ISP (knock on wood). How reliable will winfax pro be for both ingoing and outgoing fax's using my Vonage line?

6) Would anyone recommend something other than winfax pro?