Voip Comparisons

When the most advanced smart phones were introduced, they provided a great deal of mobility to small business owners and entrepreneurs. With these advanced devices, e-mail can get forwarded to just about anywhere in the world, allowing folks to respond to such communications on the beach or golf course as if they were sitting in the office back at home.

But what about true freedom? True mobility. What happens with the direct calls that the receptionist or assistant answers, or the faxes, or the direct calls that go to voicemail?

Now that virtually any application can be handled digitally and the technology is quite inexpensive, small businesses and entrepreneurs stand to gain tremendously. By using technology to their advantage, savvy business owners can project a Fortune 500 image without increasing overhead. In fact, many can even reduce some of their overall expenses!

The solution works rather cleverly. Your clients call or fax a computer, which translates the data into a digital format and essentially redirects the call or data to any mobile phone, hard-line phone, voicemail, or e-mail inbox (you pick which one). This simplistic description truly affords you the opportunity to work from any corner of the globe using your existing web-enabled smart phone or computer!

The market leader in this segment and the company we recommend is RingCentral. This single company alone can propel a small business’s image to the big time. And since image is so important these days with company failures and consumer apprehension about dealing with new “players,” image must take precedent when setting up your back-end. At any rate, through RingCentral you can project a better image through the following:

Toll-free business number. As small businesses expand their reach across area codes, having a toll-free number has greater importance now than ever before. A toll-free number not only projects a large image to the new client, but it allows your clients to reach you wherever they might be at a specific time… and with this service, their calls can be redirected to your cell phone so you can assist them from where you are!

Virtual Receptions, on-hold “music”, and voicemail. When you call a large corporation, you will hear some fancy music while you wait for your call to get redirected to your intended party. This fancy feature is a standard with RingCentral, just as is the virtual receptionist who will ask your callers to say a name or enter an extension. As an added bonus, you can also set up voicemail boxes where messages will get forwarded to you via e-mail.

Call Queues. If you are on the phone and don’t want to lose your next client, they can go into a call queue rather than find your voicemail. Since you sell your product or service best, you want to make sure you don’t miss another prospect call. Again, this is a Free feature.

Internet Fax. This all-important feature allows you to send and receive faxes by e-mail or online. Yes, this means you can manage faxes with most web-enabled smart phones. What a great way to win back your freedom, and it’s free!

The list continues almost indefinitely. The largest disappointment with RingCentral is that some of its features (not mentioned here, such as DigitalLine which provides Voice Over Internet or VOIP) cost extra. Now, for many small businesses and entrepreneurs, most of these extras are unnecessary, and for the more established entrepreneur these costs are likely irrelevant given their tangible benefits.

Whether you choose RingCentral or another provider, the key motivators for using such a service include mobility for you and your employees, true cost-effectivness, and instant image enhancement (your customers won’t know whether you work out of your basement or out of the 40th floor of a Wall Street Tower. Most plans cost roughly $30/month with RingCentral’s most popular plan (which includes a lot more standard features than their competitors) starts at $24.99 per month with a Free Trial period.