What is the best phone system for a home-based business?

For a single user Google Voice may be your best option. Ring your mobile phone on the road, portable number, free unlimited calling to US and Canada, visual voice mail with free transcription, free call forwarding, VM to email, call blocking...not sure what else one would want.

Vonage has worked wonders for me. Its easy to use, flexible and mobile. As I grew from a single person home-base business to staff in office space, Vonage grew with me. What ever you choose, (there are a lot of options) consider your growth potential and compare the features, flexiblity to add users and price.

The answer has little/nothing to do with whether the business is "home based." The question you need to ask is: "What do my customer's want, need and expect when they call my business?"

Do your customers (and potential customers) want, expect and need "live answer" or will an auto-attendant or voice mail be appropriate? Does answering calls from a mobile phone make you look professional or make you look like someone working out of the trunk of his/her car? If you are at a client site or in a meeting when a call comes in on your mobile phone, do you answer it or let it go to voice mail? Do you answer calls 24/7 or do you have "office hours"? Answers to these types of questions will help you choose.

A phone call is still often the "first impression" potential customers get of your business. If your call handling and phone service does not meet their expectations, your "economies" may not be worth it. Is it acceptable to your callers to have calls "drop" or be so garbled that they need to hang up and call back? Do they call back?

Not all "home-based" businesses are one-person operations. Is yours? If not, how should calls be routed within your organization so that they get to the person who can help the caller? Or are they? Do you require the customer to hang up and dial another number to reach accounts payable/receivable, for example? Do you tell them to call back on Tuesday instead of having them leave a voice mail?

Once you answer the questions about how calls to your business should be answered and handled, then you can make decisions about what type of phones, carriers (traditional telco (e.g., Verizon), cable company (e.g., Comcast), reseller, Skype, Google Voice, etc.

Aaron, I agree with you that a "well thought out" VoIP or cellular solution may well be what a customer wants/needs. "Well thought out" is key here. Yes, you can build your own--or you can buy a cost-effective VoIP solution. The same is true of "well thought out" cellular...

There are two "ifs" here: first, the business owner needs to have some expertise to "build your own PBX using open source software." If they don't, they should consider hosted VoIP. The second constraint is where they are located. If their area of the country has good cellular service, great. But there are many pockets of the US where cellular service is so poor as to be almost unuseable. As for VoIP, you need to be able to buy bandwidth with QOS. If you can't do that, then you should "rely on the century old technology" until you can buy the infrastructure you need to make your phones work reliably.

I do stand by my statement that before determining what type of device &/or what technology &/or what carrier a business should use, they need to think about the "customer experience" they want their customers/prospective customers to have when they call and that will differ for each specific business.

Phones are still a major way for prospective customers and existing customers to call a business. When someone answers, "hello" or, worse, "hello--who's this?"or some other greeting of this sort, it's just not professional. When a vendor is in a meeting with Customer A and takes a call from Customer B, it's not very professional. When customers leave callback requests and never get called back, it's not very professional. When callers get disconnected (often multiple times), when they get garbled transmission, when the company can't transfer a call to the person who can help the caller and other things of that sort, it's a problem. This has nothing whatsoever to do with a business phone system being a status symbol--it has to do with "businesslike call handling." For a one-person home office, a simple phone (landline, cellular, or other technology) with caller ID and voice mail should be sufficient. For a multiple person office, regardless of whether it is a "home office" or in some other location, some sort of "business phone" may be more appropriate. Whether it is VoIP or "century old technology" is irrelevant.

I don't know what the best phone system might be, but what works well for my business and my customers is OneBox automatic call directing service (www.onebox.com)...For approximatley $49.95 a month a subscriber get 5 phone lines and fax lines, an automated company introduction that you can customize and modify, voicemail boxes and vmails are delivered via e-Mail or text to your mobile phone. Additionally, the phone line(s) can be setup to find you and follow you to whatever location you might be (cell phone, client site, meeting, home phone etc...). Additional phone lines are available at an increased rate ($79.95/mo for 25 lines).

The phone I use can be purchased at Frontgate (www.frontgate.com) it is a beautifully designed phone that offers multiple lines, VoIP, Bluetooth and the clearest sound quality, I've ever heard. The phone model is Gigaset Home Office Phone System and costs approximately $150 - $200. I hope this helps.

Skype. It is clear and cost effective.

There are very few "best" answers to "best" questions. :)

Depending upon your needs, there are lots of answers to this question. While the implication of a home-based business is a small number of phone numbers, this is not a given. Skype is certainly a product that should be considered here, as it offers quite a bit of flexibility and options in its configuration, and is supported on many devices.

Google Voice should also be considered here for the same reason, PLUS it can be used to augment Skype by providing more flexible "follow-me" configurations.

All of the options mentioned thus far are viable, but the consideration needs to be given to what will serve the needs of the particular home-based business. Starting with Skype will rarely be the wrong answer here.

-ASB: http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker