Help me setup my small business VOIP configuration

January 17, 2016 3:46 PM

Currently we're using Voip.ms for toll-free and auto-attendant, and then Google Voice for call hunting and voicemail/transcription. This works ok, but the Google Voice side of it causes enough frustrations that it might be time to cut that out of the setup entirely. Here's about how I need the setup to work: Calls come in to our company number. We receive about 50 calls a day (not many). Auto-attendant picks up. Forwards to cellphones and/or softphones, depending on day/time. We have about 6 employees total that answer phones, with 0-2 that might have phone duty at any given time. Ideally, if one phone is busy it either tries another 'online' cellphone/softphone, waits in the queue (optional), or goes back to a central voicemail if no one is available.

And here's additional somewhat optional features I'd like:
-voicemail transcription
-call recording
-Caller ID that we can feed entries into using an API I guess from our main client SQL database

I'm not too price sensitive -- I'm ok with paying up to $200/mo or so, though the cheaper the better of course (from what I see I shouldn't have to pay nearly that much for something like this). I am fairly time sensitive -- I don't want to spend too much time on the setup.

We don't have an office, so the solution can't require any local hardware (PBX).

Callcentric + Zoiper is what I'm leaning towards right now. But maybe Ringcentral would be better? Or maybe something else. There's clearly tons of options out there.

Thanks a lot for any guidance.

posted by grammalvsu to Technology (7 answers total)

At my last small office, we used Phone.com. I was responsible for configuring and administering it, and I never stopped being impressed with how well it just... worked. It was especially nice for when we had to close down the physical office and everyone started working from home: call routing to cell phones and softphones was really easy, and I liked that we could set up pretty complex schedules for when calls should go to our mobiles and when they should be routed to voicemail or to someone else. The only feature on your list I'm not sure of is any sort of API integration for caller databases. I also have no clue how much it cost, but I do know we were pretty strapped for cash and could still afford it.
posted by rhiannonstone at 3:54 PM on January 17, 2016

I'd also like to add that I have had nothing but terrible experiences using RingCentral at past jobs. I've never dealt with it on the setup/administrative side, but as a user I found it overly complex and unreliable, and we seemed to always have technical issues with them changing configurations and having outages without warning us.
posted by rhiannonstone at 3:57 PM on January 17, 2016

If you're not scared to dip your toe into a slightly more technical set up that gives you a ton of options, I suggest a hosted pbx from rentpbx.com (easy oneclick installations) using PBX in a Flash (free but a serious donation is heartily encouraged - this system is amazing) and configuring it with VOIP service from Vitelity (or other ITSP but they've proven to be the best in my and many others experience).

This will take a couple of hours to set up and you might want help for some bits but you'll have a top tier system that can do everything you're asking and more for ~$40 - $75 a month (depending on your phone usage), with the option for support from several sources if needed.

I've had this set up for a couple of years now, paying about $15 a month for my small business (I use vultr.com instead of rentpbx but it requires more expertise) and it's never let me down.

Feel free to memail me any questions if you'd like.
posted by dozo at 8:25 PM on January 17, 2016

I agree that some flavor of hosted Asterisk w/a FreePBX (or similar) web interface is the way to go. That's what PIAF is, there's also the official FreePBX install, and another popular alternative is Elastix. (These are all special purpose Linux distributions. FreePBX also comes as software that can be installed over Asterisk, which is what PIAF and Elastix do.)

For hosting, rentpbx is good. Vitelity offers hosting. There's also PowerPBX, which has its own simplified FreePBX based system, as well as Lylix, FluidServers, GigaTux, Linux Cloud (and others) for VPS providers that offer Elastix images.

(If you want to get your hands dirty, you can also get these systems installed over more generic Xen or OpenVZ based VPSes as well. I've got Elastix running on an old Linode, but it required modifying the kernel, which I had some help with at the time.)

Vitelity is good for origination/termination (and you can use the PBX In A Flash discount plan with other Asterisk-based system, Vitelity doesn't care). Another good (slightly more professional) ITSP is Flowroute.

Security is IMPORTANT when you're managing your own VPS-based PBX. And even with good security, you're likely to get hacked eventually. So, don't enable international dialing on your ITSP account if you don't need it. And don't enable auto-refill on metered plans (or use only limited auto-refill). Enable email delivery of voicemail even if you use a secondary email account and never check it, so your voicemail is archived somewhere in case you need to restore the server to a (much) earlier backup, or wipe it completely.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:27 AM on January 18, 2016

Although, it occurs to me that depending on your size you may be able to get a managed, hosted ShoreTel or Cisco system if you're willing to spend that $200/mo. Those are, last I checked, the leaders in the commercial PBX market. You'll want to Google around for options there, I know ShoreTel offers their own cloud-based system but there are probably cheaper third party competitors.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:43 AM on January 18, 2016

I've had a great experience with several numbers flowing into anveo.com for several years now. Don't let the early 'aughts style website scare you off. It's cheaper and more flexible than RingCentral, or any other VOIP provider I've seen. Really sensible usage based pricing and a pretty solid visual call-flow editor.

I know they offer both voicemail transcription and call recording. Based on features I've seen docs for (but never tried myself), you should have no problem with the remote API CallerID lookups, although it may take someone a little technical to get going just right.
posted by QuixoticGambit at 10:18 PM on January 18, 2016

Response by poster: Thanks very much for the responses everyone.

I actually ended going with Anveo. Despite its janky website I really did find its callflow editor more intuitve than other hosted PBX providers I'd tried out, it seems as feature-rich as any of them, and it's really inexpensive.

If it doesn't end up working out with Anveo for whatever reason, I'll probably end up trying out Nextiva, which also looked good, but was just more expensive.

I heard some bad things elsewhere about Phone.com, so I ended up passing.

FreePBX seemed neat and very powerful, but maybe just a bit over my head and more time-consuming than I'd like to climb the learning curve.
posted by grammalvsu at 4:39 PM on January 30, 2016