What do you small business folks prefer to use? We've used Intermedia and RingCentral and looking for something else now. Thanks.

I've had AT&t and comcast pushing the hard sell on me to use their fiber internet and phone systems

I've been too busy to make a move

We used 8x8 for awhile, and switched maybe a year ago to new device/MS Teams phones. The handset is junk, it's unplugged under my desk ha. I take calls via Teams on headset only, don't even even know my direct dial# anymore.

We are on 8x8 presently and have been for about 10 years but since covid our voice traffic has almost gone to zero company wide. Most folks only use their cell phones or teams. We plan to move our voice lines over to MS Teams within the year.

Main question is do you need lines for external calling? And call routing?

Just two lines for people to call into, and ability to call out from those lines as well. Additionally, we have a main line that people can call and they hit 1 or 2 to get to who they want to talk to.

Not sure if MS Teams has call routing capability. 8x8 with a UCaaS provider could be your best bet especially if you outsource your IT. Sounds like it's a small operation overall (# of numbers needed). Ring central may be your best bet.

OP, check out Voip.ms

You can set up ring groups to ringall phones, transfer calls between extensions, setup cell phones as extensions, setup up failover routes if your internet is down, or no answer. You can also set up backup routes in other data centers, like say houston voip was down cause a hurricane, it will route to secondary route, etc. A bunch of good features.

You pay per minute inbound and outbound, but just a penny or so per minute.

Callcentric is another, but we moved fully over to voip.ms a few years back.

I used to have service with 2 or 3 voip providers for redundancy, but now with the vendors co-locating themselves, it hasn't been a problem.

Not sure if still relevant, but check out VoIPstudio. It's a full-featured cloud PBX with a super simple and easy-to-navigate app where you can set everything up yourself. Plus, the CRM integration is really handy!

Never saw this thread, but i've been in the telecom industry since 2013. As a company who needs to support hundreds of other businesses and their IT/Telecom needs, I stick with the solutions that offer extremely high reliability and support.

These days, our primary solutions are RingCentral and Zoom. They are both constantly working to outdo the other, when it comes to features and functionality. Our company is a Certified Delivery Partner for RingCentral and excels at implementations from a few phones to thousands. We even get contracted by local Houston companies to implement their AT&T Office@Hand solutions (white labeled RingCentral).

Zoom Phone seats start at $15 (plus telecom taxes), as of today, and don't have any additional costs like CRF or e911. That is extremely good pricing for a fully featured UCaaS solution that is not janky.

It may sound self-serving, but you should ALWAYS go through a local partner instead of direct with someone like RingCentral, Zoom, 8x8, or any others. Your price should be the exact same (sometimes better) and you have an extra layer of support for escalating issues.

As for MS Teams, I am definitely biased against that as a solution, but it all comes down to your needs and ability to manage the solution yourself.

My company (Fortune 500 company) went to Zoom. It has not been ideal and takes up a lot of bandwidth for the internet. It has been particularly difficult for those working from home who don't have a fast internet speed. I know there has been a lot of complaints.

Luckily I'm independent and can choose my service. I use RingCentral and have been happy with them for the past 3 years.

Are they predominately doing video calls? The bandwidth for Zoom and RingCentral for a standard voice call is basically the same. I generally recommend using a number like 96kbps per call when calculating bandwidth (being conservative), and that would be for both Zoom and RingCentral.

Granted, I like both, so I don't really care which option my customers feel is best for them.

If anyone needs help in this arena, my buddy works for a company that has a great offering. Happy to make an introduction if needed.