Hosted PBX Guide

What’s the best choice, you ask?

Most companies should use Virtual PBX, and fall back to Onebox or VoiceNation. It would be nice if I could recommend different companies for different users – you could pick the answer that works best for your needs, because each company takes a different approach. I can’t. Here’s why:

Months ago when I put this website together, I did a value-based recommendation. Judging by cost and comparing that against quality and features, I put together a list of what providers suit what size of business. Different providers ranked in different places, with some choices being the cheapest, some providing the most features, some being best general value, and so on. Since then, about half the providers slashed prices following the economic downturn. The simple fact is that when business was still booming and recession was a distant cloud on the horizon, VirtualPBX was shining through the slightly more pricey and much more sophisticated options. When the industry restructured over the last weeks, they’re now almost the same price as everyone else – but their superior quality hasn’t changed at all. They’re also probably the most financially secure (from what I can tell, at least) – which means your phone service won’t break down in the middle of a month if you sign up with them.  That said, you can still sometimes get a few more minutes to the dollar from Onebox, and VoiceNation has a decent service at a decent price.

A short glance? We can see that Onebox doesn’t actually have a service for small businesses, and Voicenation is a hundred minutes and five dollars behind. GotVMail’s unlimited extensions are meaningless at these numbers of minutes, and Ringcentral is a bit pricier unless you sign a year-long contract. FreedomVoice has a few more minutes base, but cost much more, and minutes past  their allotment are very expensive. The right choice here? Virtual PBX or GotVMail.  Virtual PBX is the best value choice, since their service has more features and higher quality, but GotVMail has cheaper minutes.

Again, Onebox is pushing a higher cost, more minutes, fewer extensions option. This might work out well for the right kinds of businesses, and this is the only market where they're seriously competitive. GotVMail offers more minutes at a lower cost, but extra minutes are more expensive.  Either way, though, the limited feature sets of these two competitors starts to become more noticeable at this stage. Most users can save five bucks and some tenths of a cent per minute with Virtual PBX, with the added perk of getting the highest quality of service.  This puts Ringcentral and Voicenation as the last to pick, aside from the laughably expensive FreedomVoice.

Here’s where you need to watch out - value is not as it appears. GotVMail's10,000 minute block looks tasty, but that’s because they have to offer some sort of special deal to make up for the fact that they don’t have the features to handle businesses of this size. Ringcentral and VoiceNation are good economy choices here, but have a few technical flaws to lower their total value - you get what you pay for and all that. VirtualPBX has a slightly lower base price, and is easily the best choice here - once your business gets to this size, you really start needing to have the more advanced features they offer.