Phone Service Decision
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Hello,
I support a small sister company that has 5 phones. I just got a look at their current phone bill and it is over $600 monthly. They are still on copper lines and an old AT&T merlin system without features like caller-id.
At the moment I've got time, so thought I'd look to tackle this issue and get them something modern and fresh. I am stuck on which direction to go however.
Am I better to just outsource it with someone like Ring Central or 8x8? I've been playing with FreePBX and Vultr hosting it. I've got a sip trunk with voip.ms...
What route would others go? I don't see a lot of growing at this company so there wouldn't be a lot of adds and changes...
Thanks
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At FIVE phones.... I'd go RingCentral or similar, yeah.
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Even if they will not use most of the features or anything? I don't see the mobility and IVR stuff being utilized. Basically just a ring group and a inbound/outbound calls.
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@mmicha said in Phone Service Decision:
Even if they will not use most of the features or anything? I don't see the mobility and IVR stuff being utilized. Basically just a ring group and a inbound/outbound calls.
Right, it isn't about features, it's about scale. Those services are really for the 1-12 user market. Their features are just silly and essentially no one uses them at any size. They price "per user" and are how you typically handle the home and SOHO markets. Running your own PBX takes too much time and effort to justify at that size.
At ten people, sure, maybe you can justify running your own PBX. But at five? By the time you set it up, host it, add the trunk(s), etc. you aren't saving any money.
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@mmicha said in Phone Service Decision:
I don't see the mobility and IVR stuff being utilized. Basically just a ring group and a inbound/outbound calls.None of those are features anyway. But it's not really a feature discussion. Your FreePBX would have thousands of features, as well, that they would never use. But you don't count unused features against a product in a comparison, it's just something you ignore.
What you care about is the price (TCO, not just the purchase ;price) and the features you will use.
In this case, any option has plenty of features. But only one option is cheaper.
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Keep in mind I oversee a competitor to RingCentral and am still recommending them
This size is their sweet spot. RC is essentially unbeatable from 1-10 users because that's when they offer their $20/mo rate.So for five users, that's $100/mo. Flat, easy, done.
Now you want 11 users, call me, I'll beat RC every time. But at 5, you can find a few options at the same price. But you really aren't going to find someone cheaper.
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Now, of course, you can do it 100% yourself. but your time is worth too much. You still have to pay for and manage trunks, you have to build and maintain the server... all for less than $1,200 a year total to make it make sense. And that is very hard to do.
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Sadly they still use fax enough and I'll probably have to go the 24.95 route to have that feature, but it is still around 5k savings annually for them.
Thanks for the insight Scott!
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@mmicha said in Phone Service Decision:
Sadly they still use fax enough and I'll probably have to go the 24.95 route to have that feature, but it is still around 5k savings annually for them.
Everything has fax to some degree. Some better than others. But whether you are looking at FreePBX, hosted PBX, or hosted VoIP like RC, all the players have fax handling of some sort.
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@scottalanmiller said in Phone Service Decision:
Keep in mind I oversee a competitor to RingCentral and am still recommending them
This size is their sweet spot. RC is essentially unbeatable from 1-10 users because that's when they offer their $20/mo rate.So for five users, that's $100/mo. Flat, easy, done.
Now you want 11 users, call me, I'll beat RC every time. But at 5, you can find a few options at the same price. But you really aren't going to find someone cheaper.
Same recommendation here as I also compete with @scottalanmiller in this space.
There is no way to beat $100/month flat.
