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VoIPVoIP (no this is not a typo) is a division of Kosmaz Technologies LLC. It is head quartered in California and provides low cost phone service in more than 100 countries across our planet. Our focus for this review is on its residential phone service, though it does also offer business service and SIP trunking.
VoIPVoIP provides true pay as you go residential phone service to its customers. Most providers these days offer unlimited phone calls for a flat price and most consumers jump on this bandwagon so they never have any billing surprises should they have a month of heavy usage. However, in reality, most consumers rarely have high usage. For this reason, VoIPVoIP has focused on pay as you go plans where you only pay for your usage in a given month. If you are on vacation for a month and don't use your phone at all, there is no charge, yes you read that correctly, the cost is $0 for that month. No activation fees, service fees, connection fees or taxes. If you do use minutes you are charged by the minute, which is always rounded up. The initial rates are 1.9c per minute to call anywhere in the US, Canada, Europe and 20+ countries. Other destinations are also available and rates are displayed on its Website. For example, China costs 2.2c/min, India 1.9c/min, Australia 1.9c/min, Mexico 1.9c/min, Pakistan 13c/min and Vietnam 3.5c/min.
Calls to other VoIPVoIP users are always free, regardless of the time spent on calls or whether they are inbound or outbound. When you sign up for service you are given a VoIP account number, which is also used to receive calls from other users, for example 555-555-5555. Note, this can only be used for calls from other VoIPVoIP users.
If you need to receive calls from regular landline and cell phones anywhere in the World, you will need a virtual phone number. This can be a number for any area code inside the US/CAN or even an International phone number. There are costs associated with having this virtual phone number. A US phone number costs $6.99 per month and this covers all of your inbound calls. You just pay the cost of any outbound calls you make. You can receive a maximum of two concurrent calls at any given time and you have access to features such as voicemail, voicemail to email, caller ID and call forwarding. If you need an International phone number you pay a $15 setup fee plus $15 per month. Like the US plan, you have access to the same features, all incoming calls are free and you can have a maximum of two concurrent calls.
If you already have a US based phone number you can port this over to VoIPVoIP for free. It takes up to 10 business days to port your number over, providing you have supplied all of the correct details. The cost is then the same as the virtual number plan discussed above.
A simple forwarding type service is also offered, if all you need is a virtual phone number and no outbound calling is required. Calls to your virtual number are simply forwarded to a number of your choosing, such as a cell phone. You will pay $6.99 per month for the phone number plus the cost of forwarding calls since they are essentially outbound calls at that point. Most outbound calls cost 1.9c/minute, as detailed earlier.
A parking plan is also available if all you need is a virtual number and basic voicemail and voicemail to email. For this plan all you pay for is the $6.99 per month for the virtual number.
There are many options available for handling your calls. You can use a free PC soft phone from VoIPVoIP, or off-the-shelf soft phones for your mobile or tablet devices, such as Bria and Zoiper. You can also Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) if you already own an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA), or purchase a pre-configured ATA device from VoIPVoIP. Some of the devices offered include a Linksys PAP2, SPA1001/2102, Grandstream GXP2000 IP phone, Grandstream 286/486 adapters and also some Cisco phones and a few select others.
VoIPVoIP has a good support section with lots of articles, FAQs and configuration guides for the devices listed above. A phone number in California is also available 24/7 for technical support along with an email ticketing system. Average response time is around one hour.
The name of the Company, seriously...
There is no E.911 service. If you need to have emergency calling capabilities, and we highly recommend that you do, you must use an alternative provider for E.911. There are plenty of providers that offer this kind of service but it does make things more inconvenient as now you need to configure a dial plan for a new provider and have separate billing each month.
If you purchase devices from VoIPVoIP they are relatively expensive. For example the Linksys SPA2102 costs $59.95 plus shipping. However, these devices do come pre-configured with the right configuration. If you do a BYOD plan where you puchase the device on Amazon, for example, you will save some money but then need to configure the device yourself. VoIPVoIP does provide configuration files if you go down this path but you are responsible for the programming so keep this in mind if you are more technically challenged, as there are a number of steps to follow.
VoIPVoIP is a horrible name but a pretty neat low cost pay as you go type service. It could be very useful for those that need a second phone number in the US or who needs to talk to a friend or relative in an International country using virtual numbers to keep the cost low.
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