VOIP recommendations?

CUandUCmom · January 24

We are looking to transition to VOIP as our home phone service and wanted recommendations/experience with providers. At this point, I have heard many use ooma, voipo, 1voip, and AXvoice with varying levels of satisfaction. I am considering those but am open to others as well. We would like 911 (E911?) as a feature. I am comfortable with technology (can do basic set-up/troubleshooting) but certainly not a techie. Can anyone share their experience with the transition/set-up and then quality of service? Thanks!

sgopal2 · January 25

I used Vonage for several years and was very happy with it. But after a while, I eventually disconnected the home line. Everyone in our household has a cell phone. Unless you're in an area where the reception is bad, I would suggest just ditching the land line.

CIEE83 · January 25

I use ooma and am happy with the quality of service. You have to buy their hardware. You can connect it to a wifi router, but if you have a separate cable modem, it has better quality calls if you hook up the ooma to the cable modem and the router to the ooma. I recommend the premium service which is $15/month. It includes a very robust call blocking service, among other features. You can also have it forward calls to your cell; I have my phone set up to do this only when cable is offline.

CUandUCmom · January 25

Thanks! We have Comcast and use their combined modem/router. @CIEE83 - how did you find set-up? @sgopal2 - thanks - while in good weather cell reception is good, we want to keep a "land line" for 911 and for bad weather - when we have hurricane shutters closed we have virtually no cell service. Appreciate all the advice!

CIEE83 · January 25

I don’t remember the setup being a big deal, but it felt like it took forever for the device to boot up. Any questions I had, I would have just googled. One downside to having a device like Ooma — when wifi doesn’t work, it’s one more device you have to try power cycling. Once my cable went out and didn’t come back on, I thought. It turned out that if I disconnected the Ooma, I had service—it needed to be restarted. It has only been an issue a couple of times since we got it, but it’s something to keep in mind.

sgopal2 · January 26

Ok then a landline makes sense. Best of luck!

Bromfield2 · January 26

I can tell you what service not to use for VOIP—Spectrum (used to be Charter). I have a package deal for cable, internet, and VOIP from Charter and would leave in a minute, but its the only cable provider in my area. Their customer service is poor. It is impossible to get information when you need it.

aMacMom · January 26

We've had Spectrum's VOIP for years with very few issues. Thought we'd be the last to have a land line because cell service was abysmal in our house, but Verizon sent us a network extender that solved the issue.

MIL had Ooma. It was always going offline and someone would have to go to her house to reboot it for her. Switched her to Spectrum VOIP and all's been fine. Getting off the Ooma account was a PIA.

CUandUCmom · January 26

Thanks @aMacMom! I have heard that from many about ooma - that canceling is not smooth and billing continues even after termination! Is spectrum also your cable/internet provider? I couldn't find a stand-alone spectrum voip product - not sure if I'm just missing something. Thanks!

aMacMom · January 26

@CUandUCmom Yes, Spectrum is our cable/Internet provider and the phone is part of our package. The phone modem is a separate piece of hardware that Spectrum installed when we added that service. It lives in the garage. Maybe once a year it will go offline and need to be rebooted. Key is to pull the battery during reboot.

vandygrad87 · January 31

We dropped cable and home phone last week officially. We switched to Ooma from a traditional landline. It took about five days to port our number over. So far, so good. I like that we can have all our other old landline phones still working so we have multiple handsets around the house.

@CIEE83 - I was under the impression that premier is 9 dollars a month.

wis75 · February 3

We've had Ooma for several years now and like paying just around $5 per month. We have the basic service. Excellent service- of course internet out means rebboting it. With two of us at retired home most of the time we merely turn on our pay per minute cell phones when away from home. I have warned people that texts et al to my cell phone may not get looked at for months (nor will an email be received instantly).

With a family I can see having a home phone so a caller can talk to anyone and not need to try a specific individual. Whoever is handy can answer and get messages. Calling person A, B and C because they may not be at home or pass the message- ouch. Plus, having a phone with multiple handsets in different areas instead of needing to have a cell phone with you at all times- yuck.

We hooked up our Ooma directly to the modem, with the main phone station there as well.

CUandUCmom · February 3

Thanks so much @vandygrad87 and @wis75! I had been leaning toward 1-VOIP but may now take another look at Ooma. If either of you have any pro's or con's to add about your ooma, I am definitely interested in hearing directly from people using the service. Thanks!

vandygrad87 · February 3

We have been using Ooma exclusively (see my above post) and so far have had no issues or regrets. I canceled our home line completely along with canceling cable last week.

I really think that if for some reason we decided to completely drop Ooma (which I don't anticipate) then we'd probably just do a burner phone or something for a 'land line.' I just like keeping my cell for personal calls and having an alternate number to give out for the many places that require you to give a number, which they then might sell.

dadof2d · February 3

@CUandUCmom
We just ordered 1-VOIP instead of Ooma. I found many horror stories about not being able to cancel Ooma, or large unauthorized charges. We are going to try it for a few weeks before we port our home number to it.

CUandUCmom · February 4

@dadof2d thanks so much for posting! Please update once you have 1-VOIP set up regarding your experience with set-up, clarity of calls, etc. Were ooma and 1-VOIP your final 2? As mentioned above, I was definitely leaning towards 1-VOIP but have been revisiting given feedback here. I have found a lot more info. online from users of ooma than other providers, albeit quite mixed in terms of experience. Please loop back once you're set up! thx.

CIEE83 · February 5

@vandygrad87 - was referring to the total cost per month - line charges/taxes plus premium comes out to around $15/month.

CUandUCmom · February 18

@dadof2d Wondering if you have an update on your experience with 1-VOIP? How has the quality been? Have you ported your home number yet and, if so, how did that go? Thanks!!!

NJres · February 18

I have an Obi device. It was cheap, and combined with free Google Voice I pay nothing extra for it, as in zero per month. It works well - better than Magic Jack. Free calling to US and (I think) Canada, and the International rates charged by Google Voice are very reasonable. 1 or 2 cents per minute to most countries.

sccaflagger74 · February 18

I've had 1-VOIP for about 2 years now. It's reliable, number porting was quick, and costs just under $17/month. I called a few times with questions while switching providers and talking to a real person based in the US was quick and easy.

I considered Ooma, but as others have mentioned I read numerous poor reviews from people that could not cancel the service and ended up with mystery charges. That was enough to turn me off from them.

Sybylla · February 18

For multiple numbers, has anyone used t mobile Digits so they can have a throwaway number?

VOIP recommendations?

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