Recommendation for light user

I am changing over to Community Fibre at the end of next week, so think it is time I got rid of my land line and changed to VOIP

What are people recommendations for a light user that makes the occaisional call to Belgium but neeed to keep their number for the various businesses that call me, have looked at Vonage and Yay so far.

Would prefer to keep my existing DECT setup rather than getting a softphone

Edited by The_Voyager (Wed 07-Aug-19 08:37:40)

I use Sipgate and Voipfone. You could use a Cisco SPA112 to connect to your existing DECT phones. I find a Gigaset N300 base with C430 phones works well enough and you can then easily route calls to mobiles via Discountvoip.

You can port your existing landline number to both the above.

Been using Yay.com for the last few years and a very happy customer. I also tried Sipgate Basic but wasn't that impressed with their support - they're German based. I experienced some minor outages on Sipgate which I haven't so far on Yay.

I transferred my BT number over to yay without any issues. They charged £20 and it took 3-4 days for the transfer. Their phone support team is brilliant, they will talk you through over the phone for any hardware settings. They also do a very nifty native iOS & Android app which allows you to receive landline calls on your smartphone, as well as make calls, record calls & listen to any voice mails left on your VOIP service.

I'm another happy yay.com user, I bought a number from them and use a Grandstream HT802 adapter to allow me to use my existing DECT phones, customer support is exceptional and very fast, within a minute of sending an email my phone rung offering me over the phone assistance from someone that I could understand and they could understand me lol

There also appears to be something called a Grandstream HT802 that appears to be quite popular to link a standard phone.

I use Port5060 https://www.port5060.net/

Easy to port numbers across to them, good/cheap rates, monthly charges low, reactive support ...

I use a Gigaset DECT setup with them and they provide all the details needed.

Thanks for the reply, charges to Belgium look a bit high, especially when you compare with Yay, so think I'll give them a miss

You are right about the charges ... although for me, with France, Germany, Norway and USA they are much, much cheaper.


You realise you can have two or three VOIP services on some DECT systems and chose the most appropriate for calling out. So, you could have all incoming on Port5060 for example and outgoing on them or Yay - both can be set to present the same UK number on outgoing.

Thanks for the reply, I have order the Gigaset hardware from Yay, and once that arrives will use their trial option to give it a go on my Plusnet Broadband first to see how it goes before committing to a monthly plan and porting my number over

Thanks for the further info, Belgium is my main overseas call, but I do have a friend in New Zealand as well, looking at various options the basic Yay package would probably suit me very well with 100 minutes free to UK numbers more than what I use, and using my mobile to compensate for anything not covered.

Thanks for backing up the other member on Yay, decided to go for a Gigaset setup, the N300IP + C430 which actually works out cheaper than getting the HG802 and a new DECT phone, the ones I have at the moment are fairly old and I was thinking of replacing them anyway.

No worries. If you've ordered VOIP hardware from Yay, you might be lucky enough to get a free £20 voucher included (like I did when buying a Grandstream HT801) which you can use towards their VOIP service (call costs or monthly service charges).

Yay run a twice weekly live 'webinar' which is very useful for first time users of their service. If you can spare 30 mins or so, I would highly recommend it.

https://www.yay.com/webinar/

No problems - I have always found Port5060 friendly and responsive, a very small company that does what I need. And add in Australia at 1.2/3.4 compared to 2.0/7.5 and Malaysia at 1.5/1.5 to 1.5/5.0 occasionally and you can see whay I prefer them.

Good choice with te N300IP.

You can have 6 IP connections plus (not neccessarily appropriate for you) 1 PSTN and 1 Gigaset.net. Three answer machines and a lot of built in flexibility. I use mine with an S850 and thre S620s ...

Very easy to set up and good range indoor and outdoor too.

I'll give the webinar a go later tonight or tomorrow, when I have more time

Thanks for the further info, sounds like a good choice

Useful if you make a lot of calls, I'm retired now and only call my friends now and again, just need to get away from having a BTOR controlled landline, they have made a mess of my connection a few times in the past and never a word of apology from them never mind any compensation for loss of service

Hi
I have used voiptalk for many years now and have never had any issues. I have the £5.99 package which includes free geographic number with choice.
hope this helps
R

Thanks for the info but I'm already trialling the yay.com service and it looks like it is sufficient for my needs, now just waiting for the FTTH to be installed tomorrow and then I should be able to port my number over and get rid of the dreaded landline and FTTC service

Edited by The_Voyager (Fri 16-Aug-19 00:49:00)

Maybe I'm just a cheapskate, but I can't see the point in paying line rental on a VOIP number.
Why not just get Sipgate basic for incoming calls (no monthly fee) and import your landline number to that?
Then make all your outgoing calls through one of the cheap suppliers, such as justvoip.com