I have to be honest. I’m not as excited about VoIP (Voice Over IP) technology as most others are. Yes, I think there are some really cool advantages to VoIP technology, especially for the traveling business type, but over all, the voice quality and reliability just doesn’t compare to your traditional analog landline (wire connected) phone from AT&T or similar local Bell.
Over the years I’ve tried a few VoIP offerings, including Vonage (hated ‘em!) and more recently ViaTalk (liked them until they sent me a $50 disconnect bill!). What is with all these disconnect charges the phone industry charges, anyway??? But I digress …
Since launching a couple of new side ventures, I needed full fledged PBX capabilities, not just a seperate business phone line. By PBX, I mean I needed the ability to create a press 1 for this, 2 for that type of Auto Attendant. And the ability to forward calls to different numbers accordingly.
In this era of hosted “software as a service/cloud computing” offerings, PBX systems are no exception. Rather than purchasing all the telephone gear outright (which can cost thousands of dollars, not to mention the supporting phone line capacity to support the call volume you expect to receive as you grow) you can literally sign up with a web based service that hosts the PBX phone system and supporting infrastructure for you, and automatically scales as you grow. Then you simply program it via your web browser. At signficantly lower cost as well.
But most of the Hosted PBX (or Virtual PBX Providers) that I have found charge not only a monthly service fee (in the neighborhood or $30 per month and up) but they also charge a per minute rate for phone calls. If I was making a lot of money from my new side ventures, this would not be a problem to pay, but being a startup, and a side venture startup at that, those unknown costs are rather scary. When all other phone charges are moving toward a flat rate system, why can’t a Virtual PBX provider as well?
Well, guess what? I found one that does exactly that! A flat rate whether you choose a local number or a toll free number for your business. And get this — the rate is a mere $15 per month! Now that’s a number I can afford!
The company is called Toktumi (pronounced “Talk to Me”, clever, ain’t it?!) . Toktumi offers powerful office phone features including call waiting, call transfer, caller ID, call forwarding, and an auto attendant that truly forwards calls without the need to “announce” each call. (This is a key differentiator as well for me. When I tried to transfer a call with most of the other Virtual PBX companies, they do so by first announcing the call and expecting the person answering the call to dial 1 to accept the call. This is more commonly termed “virtual assistant”. But in my case I need to transfer calls to various outsourced call centers, which could be answered by their own auto attendent (and not a live human initially) that asks the caller to “press 1 for this, 2 for that, etc”. So I need the call to be transferered directly and not wait for someone to confirm acceptance of the call. )
You get a softphone as well to make and receive calls. (A softphone is software that runs on your computer, desktop or laptop, that turns it into your virtual office phone!) They even allow you to create instant conference calls for up to 20 people — and with the softphone you can even record your conference calls for future reference.
All this with no hidden fees, no contracts, no equipment required. One low monthly price gets you everything. Toktumi customers get it all for just $14.95 per month. Finally, someone is speaking my language! Thanks Toktumi! Now if only they offered private labelling of their service, it would make for yet another great new side venture …. !