I have met the CEO, and aside from being a great, reliable U.S. company with 24×7 support, they’re a great bunch of folks, as well.

At Phone.com, you can (in addition to a local number) get a ‘Vanity’ Toll Free number for your business. What this means: For a very small monthly fee, Phone.com provides you with a toll free number (Vanity toll free numbers require a one-time $25 set-up fee, but ‘regular’ toll-free numbers have no set-up fee). Then, when your customers call your new toll free #,  your existing home phone, cell phone, or office phone (or all 3!) can receive the call just as if they called your ‘regular’ number.

You’re a small business owner, consultant, or real estate agent, and your business has grown to the point where your mobile phone is not enough — you need a real phone system — capable of taking multiple incoming calls and forwarding them them to you (and/or any of your employees), taking a message if you’re busy, etc.

(Skip this review and sign up for a FREE 30-Day Trial of RingCentral).

Companies like RingCentral can provide small business owners and entrepreneurs with a Virtual PBX.

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Pros:

• Very inexpensive (a basic membership is FREE)
• Many mobile/telephone plans don’t have Skype’s multitude of features
• Great for: high-volume domestic and/or international callers; very small office/home office professionals, independent consultants, real estate agents, etc
• Excellent if you need multiple “local” numbers around the U.S./World
• With new high-tech phones available, Skype no longer needs a PC to work.

Cons:

• Using some of Skype’s collaborative tools and features with other parties is impossible if they don’t also have Skype
• Skype’s reliability is only as good as your internet connection/PC stability.
• Skype is not a full phone system but can be used with one. But if you just need a main phone number, auto attendant, multiple extensions, etc., we recommend a low-cost, ‘hosted’ phone system solution, like RingCentral.

If you make a lot of business calls and you’re not using Skype yet, drop everything you’re doing and sign up for a free account. See, when Skype was first being widely used, analysts and critics dismissed the service as an unreliable alternative to POTS (plain old telephone lines) and cell phones.

But I’ve been a Skype user for over a year, and I have yet to experience an outage. Very occasionally, I get a middling quality connection. But overall, using Skype saves my business hundreds of dollars a year in telephone charges. And (the best part), Skype lets my business do things I can’t do with any other service. (more…)

Sign up for RingCentral with the 10% discount here.

Read my review of RingCentral here.

Read about RingCentral’s reliability here.

Still deciding which Virtual Small Business Phone System (or ‘Virtual PBX’) to purchase? The ever-trustworthy PC World magazine reviews them here.

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These are either free or really cheap services and software that can help your business tremendously. If you want to see something added/reviewed, email me!

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I am VERY excited about this…

I have been using regular old Skype for a long time now, and have saved literally hundreds of dollars - perhaps thousands - on local and international phone calls made from me, at home, for my home-based business. (You can read my Skype review here). I have found Skype to be reliable and cheap as a standalone phone service.

Now Skype has introduced PrettyMay Call Center for Skype (PMCCS) (goofy name!) . It’s a Virtual PBX that you set-up on your PC in just 10 minutes! (But it will still work with your PC turned off). You and your employees have to have Skype installed to use it (in other words, it’s a PBX that works in conjunction with SkypeIn, SkypeOut, etc You Pay $150 for the PBX - That’s ALL (other than your regular low, low Skype Charges). PMCCS’ Benefits to you:

• With Skype, you employees will be able to receive calls transferred by PMCCS for free at any time, anywhere.
• With SkypeIn service, you customers will be able to dial into the Phone System from any cell phone, landline phone or mobile phone.
• With SkypeOut service, your employees will be able to make cheap international calls through PrettyMay outbound call center.
• With SkypePro service, your employees will pay nothing per minute for calls to landlines within the same country.

Check it out. You’ve got nothing to lose with Skype’s 15-Day Free Trial.

Aside from having a virtually clean record with the Better Business Bureau, RingCentral continues to rack up awards. And it just won another, from Internet Telephony Magazine. These awards are usually testimony to a company’s staying power, product innovation, and reliability.

You can read the press release here.

You can sign up for RingCentral here. They are still offering a free trial, plus they’ll double your minutes.