When I decided to offer phone support as a premium support option from King Design I had to set up phone service that would work the way I needed it to.
I’ve been using a OneBox account for this, and I’ve been quite pleased at the way it’s worked out.
My requirements:
- A toll-free number.
- Can set it to go directly to voice mail during non-business hours.
- Hunting (I think it’s called) – have it ring one phone number, then another, then another, etc.
- E-mail delivery of voice mail.
Pretty much all the services I looked at offered these things – they are standard VPBX functions. The reason I decided to go with OneBox is because they offer an Executive plan for a single user.
Most of the services I looked at started at around 3-5 mailboxes/phone numbers and pricing at about $50/month. Since I don’t need any of that (yet) $20/month is a lot better than $50/month. 
The OneBox account doesn’t have fancy web 2.0 screens or nice Ajax interactivity, but (as far as I know) it’s been reliable and done exactly what I expected. There’s a lot of value in that.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Adam Jacob Muller adds this Comment:
Just setup your own asterisk server
That is what I use for my personal #s, the possibilities with your own * server are rather limitless.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Alex adds this Comment:
The cost of the box, set-up and config, maintenence time, etc. of my own * install is costly, especially in time. I can’t see being able to do it myself for even 10x what I’m paying OneBox.
May 7th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Rob G adds this Comment:
personally after doing all the research on:
[1] onebox
[2] gotvmail
[3] virtualpbx
[4] ring central
I found that ringcentral is really the best.. the truth is that all these services have the same features for around the same price..
the one MAJOR differentiation is voicemail.. all these service try to add extra $$$ for pro vo work and the require you to send them files to make custom greetings.. only ringcentral lets you directly upload you files and play them back in real time.. this way you can record your ogm using a “pro” mic and get a much higher quality greeting that just speaking into a handset..
just my two cents..
May 7th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
motherduce adds this Comment:
I’m in the market for this type of service. It’s either one of these with a (800) number or going with something like GrandCentral.
Have you looked into GC?
May 8th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
I have: http://alexking.org/[...]grandcentral
May 8th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Motherduce: The Blog » links for 2007-05-08 adds this Pingback:
[...] OneBox | alexking.org Alex on call service provider – I need a (800) number for 3Rules. (tags: phone services) [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Bryden Dintson adds this Comment:
I went to sign up for ringcentral because of their “rollover minutes”
What a surprise – they are not what I understand rollover minutes to be.
Rollover minutes are typically defined as any minutes in your monthly plan that are not used can rollover to the next month.
Not in RingCentrals eyes.
They say rollover minutes, but what they really offfer is just a one time block of 100 minutes that can be used anytime within your first year.
It confused me and nearly got me to sign up for something that is contrary to what i expected.
Shame on RingCentral
June 18th, 2008 at 10:19 am