Small Business Phone Systems

Business owners like me have a love-hate relationship with Internet faxing. We hate it because it’s still quite not “plug and play” (but it’s close), like a traditional fax machine is. But we love it because it is much more efficient and flexible than a traditional fax machine. To wit:

• No dedicated phone line or machine is required
• True paperless communications
• Ability to simultaneously send and receive faxes

Faxing on the Rise Read the rest of this entry »

RATING:

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Inc.com (the website for Inc. Magazine) features this Blog in its “Breaking Entrepreneurial News” section. Check it out here. The New York Times carried the same story on its site here.

By J.B. Malik, Editor-In-Chief

(If you haven’t yet, first read my full review of RingCentral here.)

Internet companies and online retailers are steadily adopting small business phone systems (Virtual PBXs in geek-speak) like RingCentral.  You can read these companies’ impression of RingCentral’s service (and of other Virtual PBX vendors) here.

Their fast adherence is no surprise, as Virtual PBXs’ cost/benefit ratio (from $9.95/mo for virtually everything you need in a phone system) mirrors that of other services those Internet companies likely also purchase. Think: Read the rest of this entry »

By J.B. Malik, Editor-In-Chief

Maybe you’re not ready for a small business phone system. Here’s something else for you, if you:

• Have a mobile phone; and
• Receive personal AND business calls directly to your mobile phone number.

It’s a free service from CallWave called “VTXT”, or “Visual Voicemail”. Forget the fancy acronyms, I call it “awesome.” (It has a few quirks, but they don’t outweigh the usefulness of the service). Here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »

By J.B. Malik, Editor-In-Chief

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.

Expensive? It used to be… Read the rest of this entry »

By J.B. Malik, Editor-in-Chief

How Does Virtual PBX Work for Your Business?
Long before there was Virtual PBX, a business employed a telephone operator to physically connect internal and external calls with cords. PBX came next, and it was a vast improvement. PBX meant that mechanical devices routed the huge telecommunications traffic flow of large businesses.

One problem with PBX was that businesses had to buy, maintain, and repair expensive telecommunications equipment. Not only that, but businesses had to allot precious office space for this equipment. NO MORE! Enter the Virtual PBX… Read the rest of this entry »

I have been a RingCentral customer for 1 year, and I have not experienced a single service problem (though my RingCentral number gets a few calls a day). Plus, I have connected instantly with a rep the few times I have chatted online w/ RingCentral. NOTE: I also use other similar services for other lines of business/personal use - GrandCentral (recently acquired by Google) and Callwave - and they’re free. I’ll get to reviews of them in the coming days.

To sign up for RingCentral’s FREE trial, click here.

By J.B. Malik, Editor-In-Chief

Thank you for visiting my site. As a small business owner, your choice of business phone systems, call forwarding, and other voice and data services are critical to your company’s growth. But too many vendors are bombarding you with too much technical jargon and a slew of features you’ll never use (and some are at prices none of us can afford). That’s why I created this blog to provide startup/small business owners with reviews of these services in “plain talk”. Enjoy my blog, and feel free to email me anytime with suggestions, ideas, etc.

By J.B. Malik, Editor-in-Chief

If you are just a basic user of voice solutions and phone systems, you don’t need this glossary. But if you’re interested in the workings of a Virtual PBX, and what the potential of Virtual PBXs is for larger organizations, our glossary will help you… Read the rest of this entry »