Voice over IP vs. Landline Phone line

AnitaJohnson1269

We currently have an old fashioned land line which took tech support 5 days to fix our "no dial tone" issue.  Owner asked to reach out to the Forum to see who is using the VoIP and get pros and cons.  Thanks for any input! 

themage

If you have just one line / extension, the right VOIP system can be really easy, but if you need to install a complete system with multiple extensions, it can get complex fast. This really just means that problems can be harder to diagnose and fix.

If you have decent internet and your ISP doesn't traffic shape / limit/ block VOIP, it usually works really nice and clear. 

If you still need a fax machine (We use ours maybe once a year), it may not work as well with VOIP.

GSI03

If your internet goes down, with VOIP so does your phone.  we have Comcast and we lose both at least 2x a month.  I wish we had separate.   

themage

We have DSL for internet, so when the phone goes down, the internet does, too. We are fortunate, though, since telephone repair is almost always here within an hour.

AnitaJohnson1269

We were told we could log in from any data device (cell phone) if internet goes down and forward our calls to another working number.  Has anyone that lost internet done this? When the landline went down, there was no way for us to forward the calls.  We are the only landline in a 2 mile radius so they don't get in a hurry when it goes down.

CoffeeZilla

If you're using VOIP and then you lose power, you could log in from your cell phone and use the same calling system that way, but the ability to take payments online would be stalled until power repair, right? Unless you can log in Sitelink from your cell phone? Would you get paid for using your cell phone to keep the business/office up and running during such times?

I personally have an office landline, forwarded to a cell phone I got for free from Verizon because I'm paying them for my current personal cell plan. Thankfully we haven't had a loss of power, but if I do this winter, I'll update this thread with how it goes.

Orkocean

You can operate myhub via your phone. Personally if i've ever been in a situation where stuff is down and I still have customers to deal with I pull out a laptop, throw hotspot on my cell phone and get back to work. I would rather do all that to get back to web edition than use myhub. 

themage

@AnitaJohnson1269 Many landline phone providers allow you to log in to your account with them and adjust call forwarding, etc. Some of them you have to call. For some companies, call forwarding is an add on feature.

At times, we have been able to set ours to forward to a cell after a high-ish number of rings, so the office phone would ring first. We did it for maintenance purposes when we would have contractors on site after office hours, but it should work even if the local end of the landline is down. 

With a VOIP system, you can definitely adjust those settings from any device with internet. The specifics will depend on your VOIP host, but most of them have decent customer support if you have any difficulties. It is a useful tool, too, for when management has to be out of the office but needs to be able to answer the phone. You can even set up a cell as an extra extension so it automatically rings whether or not the office phones are working.