Phone & Internet Bills

J-Peffer

I operate out of my house and probably always will. I can't really justify paying much over head as I don't want to have multiple crews or tons of work. Just enough to keep busy, pay my bills and make a respectable living.

Right now, I'm paying about $90 a month for a business line.

I pay about $70 for internet then.

I just switched the internet over to a residential service and got 5mg service for $30.

I was wondering if anyone has had any luck with Vonage or Majic Jack for a business line?

The biggest concern would be directory in phone books. I have ads in them, and I'm not sure if numbers from these newer services are published in phone books?

Thanks in advance for any experience or advice!!!!

bamawildcat

You can port your number to Vonage, you have to pick a number with MajicJack and can't bring one.

W-Tinc

You may not be able to consistantly send faxes with voip service.

We used vonage for three years and just switched to the company we get our cable/internet thru, was the same price suprisingly enough.

Had alot of trouble sending faxes sometimes, and got alot worse in the last year.

JonM

https://www.ooma.com/

With ooma...you buy the equipment port your number over, and never get another bill...total about 300 dollars

HSConstruction

I have magic jack for my house line.....you get what you pay for.

there have been issues with incoming & outgoing calls. For the house it is fine but I would not want to risk it on the biz line a drooped call COULD mean a missed customer.

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zookies

I got my home office down to $ 55 for phone and internet per month, without any voip hassle ( I agree that faxes would be dicey on magic jack or vonage ) - as far as yellow pages, you can tell them to publish whatever number you want.

31b

for issues with faxing over VoIP, you can also just switch to a fax/email gateway service too. I got rid of my additional separate business phone line dedicated to faxing, and just use a gateway now.

Sending is as simple as sending an email with an attachment (be it a word doc, PDF, image file, etc) Receiving a fax just comes by email with a PDF attachment, you can print it if you want or just keep it electronically. I pay about 30 per quarter I believe it is, so that's 10 bucks a month.

EDIT: besides the cost savings, the other reason I did it is I just don't fax a whole lot either, it's unfortunate that I even have to at all, it's an outdated piece of technology in this day an age of email on the Internet.

samccard

Efax works good.

oldfrt

Hey Jon,

Quick question on ooma.

Does your phone # remain listed in your previous carrier's phone book?

If not,how does anyone find it?

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flashheatingand

I pay something like $20.00 a month to keep my land line number and they forward all calls to that number to my cell phone. That may work for you.

JonM

It wouldn't be listed in the "white pages"...but you are paying for the yellow pages and they will insert any number you pay them to. You can port (use your existing number) for 39 bucks with ooma.

15element

good job

oldfrt

Thanks,
Done a little research on them and still undecided.
It's hard to find unbiased opinions,and I'm seeing blogs about them being deceptive in some of their claims.

Does anyone have a source ofcomparative findings for any of these" Free" phone lines?

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JonM

I am using ooma for the past 2 months and it seems to work just fine. They will tell you that you need a "scout" for every phone in your house, but you don't. Just plug the RJ 11 connector into the output marked "phone" then plug it into your wall jack...don't use the output marked "wall"

brian1780

I use magic jack for my fax line for my business. I use my cell # for all other calls. The faxing has worked great for me without any issues at all. Great cost savings INMHO.

J-Peffer

After looking into it, if you call your current phone provider (ATT/Verizion) and ask for directory assistance. They will publish any number for $2 a month, even your cell phone if you would like.

I was going to get MJ just because it's so cheap. I'll run it in pair with my other land line.

I also understand you can port the same number now with it also.

DetailHandyman

Just curious... what does $90 a month get you? Seems a lot for phone service.

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Leo G

When I went to get my phone hooked up at my shop Ma Bell wanted about $70-$90/mo. I went with an off brand phone company that had solicited the area and got my phone for $20/mo added caller ID for $7, total bill of $27/mo. The phone company started out as Conversent and was bought out and changed over to 'One Communications'. No problems, dial up service was slow with it though.

The upper 16 NE states are covered.

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ManBearPig

I use eFax (at home and work) and love it.

Last two years I've been seriously considering killing my phone lines and replacing them with a single line, and cell phones.

cbfx3

I recently lowered my internet from 45 bucks to 29 (6 meg to 3 meg) and axed my fax line (about 30 bucks ) but kept the fax # and have it set as a signal ring on my regular line (5 bucks!)