Small Business VoIP

Which VoIP solution is the best?

The control on expenses should not mean the lowering of services to the customers. Small businesses have less capital; therefore, they can afford only the hosted VoIP solution for their communications purposes.

The hosted VoIP not only offers them the services at low rates but also with the best possible and state of the art features. The high-end features will be available to the smaller businesses at an affordable cost.

VoIP is not the property of any particular business, Smaller or medium sized, larger or any other sized businesses may take recourse to this sort of telephony system. This VoIP is available to every person who wants to make use of it. It is available from SOHO to the larger sized businesses.

Further, the scalability and flexibility is another feature of the VoIP solution. Any small business adopting this system will become equal, at least in communications technology, to any other large sized business in the world. The VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has made it possible for the small businesses to enjoy the same communication devices that the larger companies are employing.

Hosted vs. On-Premises VoIP     

Three best systems available in the market are: Managed VoIP, Hosted VoIP and On-premises VoIP. The on-premises VoIP requires the services of a fulltime IT team expert in the VoIP business. It also requires a huge capital investment on part of the company.

The smaller businesses can not afford this type of spending when they can easily escape it by turning towards managed or hosted VoIP systems. They have to pay the monthly bills and that’s all. No huge capital investment required and no headache about the management or maintenance of the system.

In SOHO (Small Office / Home Office) sort of operations, the installation may be very simple; only two or three IP phones might be required to be plugged into the broadband router. So easy yet so inexpensive!

When you have selected one of the three VoIP options, i.e., managed, hosted or on-premises; the next step would be to check the services available in your area. Make a list of all the VoIP service providers in the area and get their rates’ list. Now determine which features are your business’ requirements.

Now match the required features with features offered by different companies. Compare the rates of different service providers. Short list two or three companies that best suit your purpose.

Now look for the company, from the short listed companies, which offer better SLAs (Service Level Agreements). SLA is not only for the larger companies; it may be used by the smaller companies as well. If the VoIP service provider is offering you the periodic and ad hoc reporting facilities then you will be able to assign accounting codes to your customers.