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What's most cost effective small business pbx systems: hosted or on-premise
My company is looking for a cost effective pbx phone system. We have roughly 20 employees. What is the most cost effective system: hosted or on-premise?
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6 Answers
Hi Tony,
I believe that for up to 20 employees a hosted service is a more cost-effective option. It could also be more flexible if you have telecommuting employees or in cases or growth or downsizing. Many hosted services today do not match premises-based systems on features, but as long as they provide the basic feature set that meets your key communication needs, you need look no further. Make sure you research the following before selecting a provider:
- Current feature set and upgrade/enhancement roadmap. Look for E911, hunt groups, shared call appearances, auto attendant, voicemail/unified messaging, IVR and basic ACD, etc. Also, many service providers are in the process of developing new capabilities that may help you make a final decision (mobility, unified communications, etc.)
- Service provider viability. A lot of next-generation service providers are not profitable and you may be caught off guard if they suddenly go out of business.
- Service provider trustworthiness and customer service. Ask for customer references and talk to others using the same services to find out how they have been treated.
- Redundancy and fail-over capabilities. You may wish to either keep a line to the PSTN or get a second SIP trunk to make sure you do not have major downtime in case of a service failure.
- Opportunities for integrating your communcations services with your business applications or on-premises communications infrastructure. Some hosted telephony services can be integrated with premises-based IM, etc.
I have only scratched the surface. If you are based in North America, I can recommend a few service providers you can look into. Alternatively, if you are leaning towards a small PBX, I can recommend some good options for the size of your business. I am not sure if this website will alert me when you post a response, so you can email me at epopova@frost.com, if you need any further information.
Tony,
Its really not that simple...but there are a couple of easy steps you can do to figure out if it even makes sense to be looking at a Hosted VoIP vs Premise based system.
I wrote an article I will send you to review.
Cris
www.focus.com/briefs/information-technology/does-hosted-voip-solution-make-se...
That depends on a lot of things. With hosted, you avoid the sometimes substantial initial cost, maintenance costs, hiring an IT guy (if you need one). On premise PBXes do have a lifespan, so that's something else you need to take into consideration.
Some providers like OnSIP (http://www.onsip.com) can be right for you if you're not a call center as they have a pay as you go kind of plan. They're probably one of the more affordable hosted options. If you have say, 10 people in your business who don't make a lot of outbound calls, then they essentially have phone service for free. Almost.
Hi - hosted all the way. With up to 20 users, to manage costs and CAPEX, go for hosted services.
Through a flexible agreement, you can add or take away users without incurring costs, you are not reliant on high maintenance charges for your phone system and you have a supplier monitoring your system 24/7. This far outweighs logging an engineering call, waiting for a response, on-site costs etc and perhaps with downtime as well. Imagine if you went on-site and you couldn’t get in your office or some of your staff needed to be home based for a while. New lines, new hand-sets, lots of configuration against 1 call to your VoIP supplier who will divert or adjust your call flows to how you need them to work.
I hope this helps.
Kind Regards,
ellesys
www.ellesys.com
Hosted PBX can be very inexpensive, depending on who the provider is. We sell Hosted PBX, and one of the biggest misleading costs are the fees and taxes that some providers tack onto their solution to make up for their low prices shown on their websites. Also, you must have some type of VoIP Router that provides QoS (Quality of Service) so that all calls are crystal clear and to manage your bandwidth so that voice takes priority over data traffic. Any IP PBX adds the cost of the box-in-the-closet that you must maintain whereas with a Hosted PBX everything is virtual due to the box being Hosted somewhere else and thus lower maintenance cost if not virtually eliminated. Want to know more, then please send an email for additional information. Jonathan Price
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