We ended up moving to SIP trunks here (3 people). Our setup was: 1 FairPoint business line @ $130-150/mo incl long distance 1 Vongage (yuck) @ $32/mo unmetered 1 Contact Voicemail/ Answering service @ $85/mo Total: $267/mo
We moved our phone service to SIP trunks, and got 4 @ $30/mo for a $120/mo phone bill (unmetered) meaning that we can have up to 4 simultaneous phone calls going at ones, plus our fax rings in on a different number. We can also put Dial in Direct (DiD) on the trunks for some minimal charge like $2/DiD number. We took the extra $140 and used it to buy a Digium system and SIP phones for ~$3,000 - in about 20 months it's paid off and we start seeing savings. We opted for the non-free phone PBX appliance and higher end Aastra phones, so our hardware cost was higher than it could have been - Trixbox is free and runs on cheap PC hardware. The upshot is that we've been using the system for a year and it's been fantastic - once you can easily transfer calls between extensions, have real menus for callers to navigate when you can't answer the phone, and all of the other features of a proper PBX, you'll wonder how you lived without them for so long :) Rubin On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 19:47 -0500, Stanley Brinkerhoff wrote: > All, > > What do small companies (5 people, 8 people max within 3 years) use > these days for single site PBX systems? Something that uses POTS > lines instead of special IP phones would be highly preferable from > both a cost perspective as well as a pure simplicity perspective. > Something off the shelf and solid state ideally. > > Stan -- Rubin Bennett rbTechnologies, LLC 80 Carleton Boulevard East Montpelier, VT 05651 (802)223-4448 http://thatitguy.com "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Voltaire, Essay on Tolerance French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)
