I’ve been using VOIP quite happily at home for the last 4 years or so. I took the plunge and ported my home number over to Blueface (an Irish VOIP provider) and it has been super reliable. The move over to VOIP has been slow, but it gives you great flexibility that a traditional phone line connection could never supply. Even the small fact of having your voicemail e-mailed to you is really handy. Given this stuff was getting so cheap, I thought I’d sort something out for Calom since we have to move office in the next few months anyway.
So I wanted to get a voip number for the business and have been scouting the market to see what’s available. Here’s my rough round up, and some of my experiences.
Blueface.
Since I use them at home, I took a look to see what they offer. For €34.95 you get 2 lines, a virtual fax no and unlimited calls to Ireland and UK. Grand, but not really for me, it’s lot of money and I don’t plan on making that many calls. They don’t do a Pay as You Go product with a geographic number for business so didn’t chase this one any further.
Skype
It’s not open like other VOIP providers, but I was just after something easy to set up and their Business Control Panel looked quite neat. So I bought an online number for €57 and tried to take it for a test drive.
Worked for 1 incoming phone call, then stopped. Engaged tones any time after that and nothing had changed on my end.
After 2 days of testing it and not getting any major satisfaction from their customer service I moved on. You need some confidence that your phone number lets people get through to you! At least I got my money back, but it did take some amount of hassling them.
gizmo5
Formerlly SipPhone, these guys have been around for a while and now offer Irish inboud numbers. Rates are comparable with Skype and they use SIP.
I bought an Irish number from them, and it didn’t work. Oh well, contacted support. While waiting for a reply I just checked their website and it was still selling the number I’d just bought, this was a little freaky.
Turns out they require you to send on a scanned utility bill that shows you’re eligible to get an Irish phone number. But they don’t mention it on their site, and your number is not properly allocated until they get that.
The amount of time spent on these things can be a killer. You want cheap calls, but it shouldn’t have to be this painful. And I’m not even sure how important it is to have an Irish Geographic number for your business.