Comparison of VoIP services and Virtual Office

[sutherix]

A number of services are available for network telephony that allow advanced features such as auto attendent answering with multiple voice mailboxes. For example, http://www.getvmail.com and http://www.innoport.com . One would expect the same services provided by these companies to be adopted by the leading VoIP service providers, but unless I am mistaken, they are not.

I want to sign my company up with one service that not only porvides internet telephony, but also can act as a virtual PBX and deliver the other virtual office technologies I need. Where should I turn? Why isn't Vonage or AOL stepping up to the plate here? (Well, in the case of AOL, I can guess why.)

[PhoneBoy]

Packet 8 has a Virtual PBX service.

[yarnia]

Packet8's Virtual Office service is actually pretty slick, I was surprised. Nice enough phones, pretty decent feature set, not too bad of a price.

Google for "hosted ip pbx" (without the quotes), and you'll find quite a few other companies providing a similar service. Make sure to research before you pick one, though. Just like with the "auto attendant 800 number" type of services -- a lot of them are very shady.

Of course, if you have some technical knowledge, your business may end up being happier in the long run with an Asterisk box. There's a learning curve, but once you've gotten beyond that it has a lot more flexibility than these services. Considering you have to buy the phones anyways, it's almost to the point where financially it's worth it to go with Asterisk (as long as you don't have to hire someone to support it). You can get cheaper termination and such.

Though I have to admit the advantage of "plug and play" with Packet8's Virtual Office is nice.