IP PBX and VOIP Provider

We are in the process of evaulating new phone systems and we are looking hard at several IP PBX systems. There are roughly 70 users and we currently have 18 POTS lines serving the old system. The ides is to replace the old system with a IP PBX and replace the POTS lines with a PRI and add a VOIP provider for long distance.

We are looking at Switchvox, Fonality, Shoretel, and Cisco for the phone system. Due to price we are really leaning towards Switchvox or Fonality. Any thoughts on these two?

Also, who are some reliable VOIP service providers serving the central Texas area?

Well we're going through the same proses, we tried Packet8 but did not have any luck with them, dropped calls, horrible voice quality. Currently we're testing Aptela, it seems to be good so far, but then again we're a small company with 8 employees spread into 2 locations (4/4). Hope that helped a little.

For a small business I have tried Vonage, Broadvoice and have decided on Callcentric.
Vonage lasted for 7 months fine than dropped calls, that was when we decided to install a virtual PBX and tried Broadvoice and Callcentric to test.
We added 3 Grandstream-1200 phones and one number from each company. After 2 days of working out hte bugs came to these conclusions.
1. Broadvoice has poor customer service- tried to get ip phones to login for hours. Finaly called CS and was told they could not even discuss the setup for my phone because it was not one of theirs. Looked all over their website and forums for config settings. Only found some for GXP-2000 and budgetone. After some hours got the phones to register, but from that point on calls would drop randomly or not pick up. Some did go through well. Further setting changes did not improve this.

3. Broadvoice is not Virtual IP PBX friendly as it does not like a device to register too often, so if the network has a hiccup and tries to register too soon Broadvoice will lock it out for short time.

Callcentric has no phone support, but the email support is quick(baout1-2 hour response) and very complete in answering. Often pointing me to several possibilities I had not thought of. They even asked me what my goals were in my business to help me decide the best route for phone lines.

2. Following the well documented and universal config settings posted on their site I was able to get all 3 phones up in no time and with no problems. I used one line as a direct login account to Callcentric and then disabled it saving the settings, and then used the other line to log directly into the IP PBX. First line is reserve in case IP PBX goes down phones can be set to log directly to Callcentric and still work.

Drawbacks of Callcentric is if you have more than 1 IP device logged into your account then all calls will be routed to last device in login sequence. The best idea is to use a pbx for more than 1 device (we use Axon from NCH((FREE)) and set properties to ring all extensions(phones). They can offer this because with one DID Real line you can add as many "Channels" as you want. Each channel allows an extra phone to access the line simultaneously. By default all of their DID incoming lines have 3 channels and outgoing have 3 as well. This is of course a pay per minute line, but well worth it.

One thing learned in all of this for us was to keep a PSTN line. Vonage is going and we are bringing back the reliability of a land line in case everything goes down we still have communication with customers.

The one thing you have to ask a potential VoIP provider is what is their service guarantee? What happens if the connection goes down? Most of them will describe their service as 'best effort', which is saying, if it goes down, too bad.
Bandwidth.com is a business-only voip company, and they have a service guarantee, something like they will respond to your call within 30 minutes, and fix the problem within four hours, or they start crediting your bill. I like this because it means they are losing money the same as your business until the connection is restored.

Our company has used Shoretel for over 4 years. We've gone through a huge learning curve in regards to IP based voice systems. The biggest piece of advice I can give for Business users is plan ahead with these deployments. Regardless of what system you choose, make sure your IT/Network technicians deploy VLAN'ing and QOS for voice over your current network. Without this, you're voice quality will suffer. Also make sure you understand that VOIP can cost more upfront than a traditional PBX system, but the payoff is in its long term benefits and scalability.

If you are planning any call center, Shoretel has an awesome product called Contact Center that can be easily configured with their system and is pretty rock solid for stability. You can also plan failovers to land lines if needed, though most of this is best planned with your local telco or long distance provider.

Just a suggestion, this post is a little outdated, however I would really consider Cisco, they have a great support group and the technology is really great and easy to use.

If you need help still, you can get in touch with me offline, we offer these services for our customres so I can give you a hand at least to choose the best solution.