Selecting a VOIP provider

OK, so i've been reading a huge amount and still haven't got a clue which VOIP provider to select for a purely domestic service.

I'm probably going to use either sipgate or voipfone but wanted to explore the options.

Is there any good comparative reviews of the major players ? Pro/cons of the various options

Any suggestions ?

Thx ... Andy

A&A are another one you might consider, though I prefer the first two that you mentioned.

Sipgate (basic) are cheap for a reason - poor support (email only). But then again you may not need support at all in which case, support becomes almost irrelevant.

Otherwise consider AAISP or yay.com. Both charge a few £’s each month in line rental on their PAYG service but are high quality VOIP CPs.

I have used Sipgate PAYG for several years mainly for daytime calls and never had any problems, I have changed my address a couple of times for emergency contact, and changed my number when I moved to a different exchange area. All contact with support was done online and carried out quickly and efficiently. I would recommend them.

i have used sipgate since 2007 so far with out issue.

Been using SIPGate Basic for nearly a year now. I ported my landline number over to them. The only time I have experienced a problem is when there are have been broadband latency issues.

Another vote for Sipgate

Sipgate works fine for me, no problems at all , damn site cheaper than greedy grabbing BT

We have Sipgate fantastic service

Anybody tried to signup for a sipgate basic account in the last few days?
I have tried daily since the weekend. I enter my basic details and then click the ' sign up for free now!' button and nothing. I am left staring at the page. Thinking it is my firewall I disabled it and even tried on my mobile phone with the same result. Looks like A&A for me.

Must be you ... i signed up earlier today and had no problems.

Do you have anything like an ad blocker or similar installed ?

I'll try another browser. Thanks for letting me know the problem is on my side.

Hi Andy,

It's great to hear you're looking for a new VoIP provider! With such a large choice of providers and different options, it can be difficult to pick the right one.

There are a few questions you'll need to answer to find out, such as does quality outweigh pricing? Would you want to use apps or a physical phone in the property?

I would recommend taking out a trial with a potential provider to get a taste of how it may work, and make the right choice.

Derek

-----------------------
Yay.com Support team

Are yay still giving free £20 credit and a free 30 day trial for new customers?

I’ve been using Sipgate (basic) continuously since 2012, and have a number of SIP trunks (numbers) with them terminating in a little box running asterisk.

My setup is not your usual domestic affair as my wife and I both work from home, so in effect we have our residential number (ported a few years ago) as well as our own individual numbers that we use for things like conference number dial ins. Early on I had a mix of SIP trunks and physical landline (onto ATA’s) which the asterisk box was used for call routing etc. Now days everything is pure SIP. No analog lines. I also run site to site VPN and all voice (and some video call) traffic runs seamlessly over the VPN.

Overall quite happy with the service from Sipgate.

The only small observation I have with Basic is that to discourage people hanging on the one call all day, the max call duration is 2 hours, after which you need to redial to continue. Not normally an issue for domestic, but if your on a long conference call with work, something to be aware of.

Another vote for Sipgate. Never had a problem over the years.

Just to add, unfortunately my experience with sipgate wasn't great.

I setup a basic account and put a £10 credit on as I'm looking to ditch the landline as it doesn't get used often and I have an FTTP connection so why do I want to pay line rental.

Everyone in the house does have a mobile but the signal quality isn't great and we're all on PAYG because of low use so no wi-fi calling.

I selected an MK number since that's where I am am, set up the FritzBox to act as a DECT base and began testing.

When I rang my mobile the number appeared correctly, however, if I rang the landline it came up as International and then the number.

I raised this with sipgate support who said they'd seen it on some occasions because the call was going via a BT partner network and as a German company they couldn't do anything so refeered me to BT to get it fixed (landline is on WLR)

This is important is if I have to ring somewhere I really don't want them thinking the CLI looks iffy.

From what I can see all the traffic goes out to Germany so I'm guessing it gets delivered to BT on one of their IP links?

Frankly their complete unwillingness to try to help has dissuaded me from using them, requested a refund which I have received promptly

Next I tried Andrews and Arnold who were a world of difference, no problem with the CLI as all of their network is in the UK of course and dealing with them is comparable to dealing with Zen, really helpful so will probably go with them when I do something definite in the new year.

Edited by techguy (Sun 30-Aug-20 18:18:36)

Following Zen's recent price hike I am in a similar position. I am evaluating sipgate but feel their prices are too good to be true. Other contenders are port5060 and soho66. I have heard good reports of the latter from personal contacts whose opinion I value. For the moment I shall probably retain my landline and run one dect phone for outgoing cals. After bank holiday may also see if zen have a SIP offering (tech support don't know and sales not responding to email). I assume they have a domestic offering for FTTP cutomers.

I have had a Voipfone account for the past 5 years. Voipfone have good support. There is a monthly charge if you port a landline number to them. Calls don't suffer from the problem with Sipgate mentioned above. The cost of calls is similar to Sipgate.

Similar issues with them.

When calling help lines the call origin has Germany in the data resulting in routing to the German office or a German speaker. Often there is no way round it except to redial on a UK owned service

In reply to a post by DrBob:

Following Zen's recent price hike I am in a similar position. I am evaluating sipgate but feel their prices are too good to be true. Other contenders are port5060 and soho66. I have heard good reports of the latter from personal contacts whose opinion I value. For the moment I shall probably retain my landline and run one dect phone for outgoing cals. After bank holiday may also see if zen have a SIP offering (tech support don't know and sales not responding to email). I assume they have a domestic offering for FTTP cutomers.

Zen has VoIP for domestic users but is only for outgoing calls with the CLID being your landline number. May be OK for some but it is not the real deal. It costs £5.10 a month. I will be ditching this service soon.

Voipfone is OK and can be free if you are prepared to contemplate an 056 number; scale up to a regular 01/02 number and you have a monthly charge £3.60 (New price now in effect). Calls to 01/02 cost 1ppm (no longer charged by the second) but to UK mobile phones it is a staggering 9ppm.

There are call plans available but it would be unusual to actually save money using their offerings. On the plus side support is good and there are options available not found with other hosted providers. It is a steep learning curve to master their dashboard. Calls are free to other Voipfone customers.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I have had a Voipfone account for the past 5 years. Voipfone have good support. There is a monthly charge if you port a landline number to them. Calls don't suffer from the problem with Sipgate mentioned above. The cost of calls is similar to Sipgate.

Calls to their Help Desk are free by dialling 150 within their service.

techguy
"I selected an MK number since that's where I am am, set up the FritzBox to act as a DECT base and began testing.

When I rang my mobile the number appeared correctly, however, if I rang the landline it came up as International and then the number.

I raised this with sipgate support who said they'd seen it on some occasions because the call was going via a BT partner network and as a German company they couldn't do anything so refeered me to BT to get it fixed (landline is on WLR)"

I also have a 'local' exchange number but do not have this issue - the number shows correctly. Is your account with Sipgate UK or Sipgate DE?

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

...but to UK mobile phones it is a staggering 9ppm.

Staggering compared to whom? BT charge 20p/min to mobiles if you're not on a calling plan.

In reply to a post by flilot:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

...but to UK mobile phones it is a staggering 9ppm.

Staggering compared to whom? BT charge 20p/min to mobiles if you're not on a calling plan.

The boundaries of my statement related to VoIP hosted services. We can all find silly prices for POTS from any number of suppliers where the subscriber is not on a call plan.

I came back to this thread as I looked again at the call costs for standalone VOIP vs included calls packages with BB. I can't see how the economics for consumer use make much sense when compared to the big ISPs with unlimited call plans included for free (Sky) or cheaply (Vodafone, Plusnet, etc).

I personally have a limited amount of use (use mobile instead), but the misses does natter to the MIL, she can rack up an hour every few days - sometimes redialling to continue .

So for my scenario, I think I'm best served by the ISP unlimited call packages, which I don't see from any of the VOIP providers?

One option, although may not be practical, is if the MIL also joins Sipgate, then calls between Sipgate numbers are free!

I think Sipgate do an unlimited call package at £10.00 a month for UK calls.

Of course an ISP can bundle something like this for less money, for them it's extra revenue if not a lot of extra profit, and more importantly for them it makes it harder for customers to leave them or compare package prices elsewhere. So you need to factor in the hassle factor if you are going to want to shop around at the end of each contract and keep moving for better deals.

If the MIL is on an unlimited call package your wife just calls her and gets her to call back immediately, and making short calls on say Sipgate requires some credit on the account but you don't pay a call connection charge so that can last a long time with that sort of usage.

Another vote for Sipgate. Very helpful porting a number from BT recently.
But if you want a UK-based provider, take a look at AQL, based in Leeds.

AQL are a major comms provider to the public sector and big corporates, so the network is first class. Much of their VOIP business is own-label, sold through various telcos and ISPs, which is why their name is not all that well known.

I've used them at work for over 15 years and at home for over 10 tears, very few problems and always excellent tech support.

They had a problem yesterday, 07/01/21, i thought maybe something had gone wrong with my linksys, reset and redone the settings, I was going to get in touch with them this morning, but I noticed the connection light was lit on the linksys, picked the phone up and a dial tone I have got.
Saying that I have had sipgate for over 6 and there have only been 2-3 problems like this.

I've had Sipgate for a while and recently have ported my old BT landline number to A&A. I've had no issues with either, call quality is good. I do like the feature from A&A to record all calls and e-mail me an audio file.

I always use Mobiles for outgoing calls, so both the above are good options