The first service that we are reviewing is the toll-free phone number company "TollFreeLive." They offer simple toll free numbers that can redirect your customers to any phone number...even to a cell phone! We were very impressed with their automated answering system that allows you to provide extensions for different employees or departments in your business. You can even assign a voice message to a number selection and record a message that describes the basic features that your business offers. All of your dialing structures can be set up online, or you can pay a small fee when you create an account to have TollFreeLive set it up for you. This is how it works: Someone calls your toll free number and they get your automated attendant(or you can record your own voice). They are presented with a menu like "For customer service, dial 1...for technical support, press 2, to speak with an attendant, press 0." Once they make a selection, they are asked to speak their name. Then your phone will be called and you will hear the name of the person calling and chose whether or not to accept the call. If you can't get to the phone, they will simply be redirected to your TollFreeLive voicemail box. Their basic service includes 5 extent ions and costs $9.99 a month, which includes 100 minutes of incoming calls a month--additional minutes are 5.9 cents each. Of course they also have larger plans with more included minutes and a lower price per additional minute, if that's what you need. They best part of this company is they have a place where you can search for available toll free numbers via their website so you can get the perfect memorable number for your business.
Send2Fax is a company that allows you to set up a toll free fax number for your business. Not only that, but you don't need a second line in your office, or even a fax machine! All incoming faxes are converted to an image and emailed to you. What about outgoing faxes? Simple. You simply send an email to a persons fax number @fax.send2fax.com with a file attached and that file will be converted to a fax that will print on any regular fax machine. The pricing starts at $1.95 a month. Yes, you read that right. There is a $4.95 setup fee and you have to prepay at least $20.00. You are then charged .15 cents per page that you get or send out. Anytime your account falls below $5.00, your credit card is charged another $20 to fill it back up. Of course there are larger plans available that include free pages for a larger monthly fee and they even have a broadcast fax service for solicitations, although we haven't used that service. We have found this to be a great service if you don't do a ton of outgoing faxing. We never had any problems receiving faxes, but once we did have a problem getting a fax to send to a particular fax machine correctly.
Vonage
You may have heard of these guys. The ones with the obnoxious TV commercials with the tune that you can't get out of your head? They provide phone service through your high speed internet connection. So if you have a cable modem or DSL, you can sign up with Vonage and get a phone line that uses your internet connection, but allows you to send and receive phone calls just like any other phone. In fact, in some ways, it's even better than regular phone service. For one thing, you take your phone number with you. Where ever you plug in the Vonage phone box into a high speed internet connection, your phone number will ring to the phone plugged in there, so you could take your phone along with you if you move offices or even go on vacation! Also, you can choose the area code that you want for your phone. So if you do a lot of business in Yeehaw Junction, FL (Yes, that's a real place) you could get an 863 area code so your customers would have a local call even though your office is in Businessburg, OH (also a real place). Pricing for Vonage starts at $14.99 a month for 500 minutes, which are good anytime, anywhere in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico, or you can bump up to unlimited calling for $24.99 a month. And remember, you don't have to pay for a phone line(unless you are using DSL for your high speed internet). We found the sound quality to be pretty good--better than most cell phones, but not quite as clear as a regular phone line. Vonage does have an online setting to configure your sound quality, but even at the highest quality there was a little bit of lag at times, but it was definitely usable. You also can check voicemail online and get email notifications of voicemail. Also, you can get your current phone number transferred to Vonage, but we experienced problems getting our number transferred in a timely fashion and we have heard that has been a problem for other people as well, but that is probably not entirely Vonage's fault--local phone providers are typically not excited about releasing your phone number to a competing company, so we got the feeling that it wasn't on their top priority list. We also found that we had to pay an $80 cancellation fee later to stop the service--so make sure you read the fine print!
Well, there you have it. Three low cost phone solutions for your home or business. Again, they may not be for everybody, but definitely worth checking out.
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