12 voip or 8X8?

We offer a hosted, robust VoIP phone system. We charge $30 per month for 1 DID, one VoIP channel along with unlimited local and LD calling. We recommend and sell the $150-$250 Aastra IP phones unless the user wants a more sophisticated unit. Cheaper phones just don't work.

I think the hosted solution is the way to go. When a companies main strategy is "cheap" you can expect to get just that. I would not trust my business to 12Voip.

I work for Cincinnati Bell and we have a great hosted solution that does not travel over the public internet. That is the best way to go! Why not have all the advanteges of IP without the dissadvantages of poor voice quality because of latency? Besides, they have been in business 137 years and know how to take care of customers.

Dennis, I agree with ddschall. I've worked in the VoIP industry for the last 4 years and with most hosted providers, you should have the availability to use a softphone if you would like. With your size it's hard. I work for an organization called PingTone and we offer the managed hosted VoIP solution with a managed connection, but I think it only really starts to make sense financially for a company that is 10+ users in one office. With a 2 person office, I would probably look at a BYOB (bring your own bandwidth) solution and look at the bigger players in the game, 8*8, Aptela, or Nextiva. I would also go with a month to month service so you can try it out and make sure that the quality and features are where you want them to be. The biggest problem w/ 8*8 is the propriety equipment though, you might be better off buying a few Polycom IP 550 phones or some Aastra phones which will work with most other providers. After your business starts to grow and you start utilizing more bandwith for voice, then I would start looking at a manged solution. If you are interested in more information or have questions about the big Hosted month-to-month players, please feel free to contact me. Just as a note, I have been in this industry for awhile and have never heard of 12voip. I would probably stay away from it for your business.

Strange - I answered this earlier today, but I think the server crashed before it got saved. In short, if you're really PC-centric, you could probably make do with softphones. I think the real benefit is when you're away from the office rather than at your desk. This allows you to have your full set of working tools on the road and being able to talk at the same time. It's great when you have broadband access, and can also serve as a cheaper way to make calls than using your mobile, esp if roaming.

Basically, I'd look as softphones as a complement to your hosted service, and not an outright replacement.

Hi Dennis,

I've been involved with VoIP for over 10 years (engineering, development, and deployment). This included the largest commercial rollout nationwide with thousands of customers big and small. I've worked with hosted, hybrid-hosted, customer premise in both homogenous and non-homogenous environments.

For a small business Grandstream offers a unqiue solution that almost nobody else can touch (from us, or you can get it elsewhere http://www.tekops.com/sub/index.php/products-&-solutions/products/tekgx-series ). And we proudly offer everything from Fonality and TrixBOX to Shoretell, Skype, Avaya, Polycom, Nortel, Cisco and more.

Why is it unique?
1) It's VoIP but doesn't require a PC or a rack or a UPS or cooling, etc. It is like a small notebook and will mount on a wall in a phone room in a very tiny footprint. It's one of the few (non big-boy aka avaya, nortel) systems that actually mounts like a phone system and will work in many environments a pc-based solution (shoretel, fonality, trixbox, etc.) won't.

2) it will withstand power outages (most VoIP solutions require an Uninterruptible Power Supply)
3) It is _VERY_ low cost without sacrificing functionality or quality
4) If you use grandstream phones they will auto-configure and auto-deploy in minutes.
5) It is truly plug and play
6) it is quiet

You could set this on your desk, plug 2 phones in, plug the other side into POTs (or a SIP provider such as Broadvoice) and with minimal configuration be up and running in 15-30 minutes.

Will work with residential POTS (plain-old-telephone-service aka copper aka analog) phone lines or SIP provider via an ATA (analog telephone adapter) or direct connection (e.g., broadvoice or tekops).

Offers voicemail, music on hold, call-center capabilities (including skills based routing), plug and play, comes with a POTs interface as well as a SIP Interface. To grow the system you can plug them together so it is modularly expandable (something very difficult with most of the VoIP solutions out there and generally requires vendor expertise, with the GX series you can do it yourself) Will work with other SIP phones but if you want easy, reliability, and a total cost of

When you are compare companies like 12VOIP to 8x8 or XCast Labs you are looking at one company (12VOIP) that provides very cheap service through your PC and 8x8 or XCast Labs offer a quality business product that is "National Account" quality. Very often you will run into a case of you get what you pay for. Our company has high quality service that has a fully redundant network and all of the features you could need such as access from an IP phone, Soft Phone on your PC, and even an app on your IPhone. You also get call blast up to to 4 phones and vm to email. I have never dealt with 12Voip but,by looking at their website it doesn't appear that they have the full product offering you would be looking for.

I hope this helps.

(sorry for the re-post, it didn't like a character I had in the earlier email and truncated it).

Hi Dennis,

I've been involved with VoIP for over 10 years (engineering, development, and deployment). This included the largest commercial rollout nationwide with thousands of customers big and small. I've worked with hosted, hybrid-hosted, customer premise in both homogenous and non-homogenous environments.

For a small business Grandstream offers a unqiue solution that almost nobody else can touch (from us, or you can get it elsewhere http://www.tekops.com/sub/index.php/products-&-solutions/products/tekgx-series ). And we proudly offer everything from Fonality and TrixBOX to Shoretell, Skype, Avaya, Polycom, Nortel, Cisco and more.

Why is it unique?
1) It's VoIP but doesn't require a PC or a rack or a UPS or cooling, etc. It is like a small notebook and will mount on a wall in a phone room in a very tiny footprint. It's one of the few (non big-boy aka avaya, nortel) systems that actually mounts like a phone system and will work in many environments a pc-based solution (shoretel, fonality, trixbox, etc.) won't.

2) it will withstand power outages (most VoIP solutions require an Uninterruptible Power Supply)
3) It is _VERY_ low cost without sacrificing functionality or quality
4) If you use grandstream phones they will auto-configure and auto-deploy in minutes.
5) It is truly plug and play
6) it is quiet

You could set this on your desk, plug 2 phones in, plug the other side into POTs (or a SIP provider such as Broadvoice) and with minimal configuration be up and running in 15-30 minutes.

Will work with residential POTS (plain-old-telephone-service aka copper aka analog) phone lines or SIP provider via an ATA (analog telephone adapter) or direct connection (e.g., broadvoice or tekops).

Offers voicemail, music on hold, call-center capabilities (including skills based routing), plug and play, comes with a POTs interface as well as a SIP Interface. To grow the system you can plug them together so it is modularly expandable (something very difficult with most of the VoIP solutions out there and generally requires vendor expertise, with the GX series you can do it yourself) Will work with other SIP phones but if you want easy, reliability, and a total cost of under $700 (which is cheaper than most 4-port POTs cards in a PC) then this is a good solution.

ALSO works with Grandstream VIDEO Phones.

There are other good VoIP solutions out there but none of them come in as small of a footprint or the features this offers at this price.

888VOIPSTORE also has them.

Thanks,
David