VOIP Providers for home

Does anyone have any recommended VOIP providers for residential use? So far I have only found Vonageforhome which looks OK but I havent anything to compare it to as many are geared for business use. I would be looking to port my existing number over to them.
Any recommendations would be welcome and if anyone has any experience of Vonageforhome, I would welcome their feedback also.

Have you looked at other threads in this part of the forum, there are a lot of similar queries to yours.

Also this thread from nearly a year ago in the Fibre Broadband forum should give you some ideas. VOIP Providers

Edit Vonage are not recommended as they do not provide the full Voip registration information so you have to use their ( expensive ?) hardware.

Edited by Realalemadrid (Fri 20-May-22 10:05:03)

Have a look at the likes of AAISP, Sipgate etc.

My personal preference is https://www.voipify.net/

Yes there is a monthly fee, but they are UK located, small, personal service, good support and for te hnumbers I use very good value.

In reply to a post by TMart66:

Does anyone have any recommended VOIP providers for residential use? So far I have only found Vonageforhome which looks OK but I havent anything to compare it to as many are geared for business use. I would be looking to port my existing number over to them.
Any recommendations would be welcome and if anyone has any experience of Vonageforhome, I would welcome their feedback also.

If you're looking for 'casual' VoIP provision (like for instance to carry on with a landline number after FTTP conversion, to catch the three or four (genuine) calls a year you might still get, there's Sipgate Basic, (PAYG, no monthly sub)

https://www.sipgatebasic.co.uk/

...or you could have two landline numbers on the one account/sub, perhaps a calling bundle/package and spend 23 out of 24 hours on the phone with several simultaneous calls.

Not just for light duty use (although fine for that too) but its a perfectly robust service, won't crumble or break.

Thanks everyone for your responses. It seems Sipgate are highly regarded so will go with them. I've begun the process of ditching Virgin in favour for Toob (that sounds wrong in so many ways!) TV subscription gone just broadband and phone line left. Toob being connected next week so will port the number over to Sipgate and get rid of the broadband once the number has been ported. Feels great having independent services and more moderately priced alternatives available at long last.

In reply to a post by TMart66:

I've begun the process of ditching Virgin in favour for Toob

Toob are digging up my town, but I'm at the wrong end of town so far. Hopefully I can also ditch VM for Toob in the next 2 years.

In reply to a post by TMart66:

…I've begun the process of ditching Virgin in favour for Toob (that sounds wrong in so many ways!)…

Don't worry, society is increasingly accepting of such matters.

At the bottom end of the market are localphone.com and if your search for

Delmont voip comparison

you will get a comparison of the dozen or so brands who resell their services

I can recommend AAISP at £2.40 per month plus call charges.

Silly question, why go with AAISP when Sipgate has no monthly fee?

In reply to a post by lexden16:

I can recommend AAISP at £2.40 per month plus call charges.

I'm only paying £1.20 a month. Price depends on the number you choose or migrate of course.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 20-May-22 16:46:57)

sipgate was a good choice, I've been using them for years

A few months ago I went with Voipfone, partly based on my son's suggestion (though he's with Sipgate now), but mostly because they would supply a pre-configured ATA box. I had no previous experience of VoIP, and when I looked at all the SIP parameters I got cold feet about setting them all up on my own (my son doesn't live locally). With hindsight I realise that almost all of them are defaults, and I'd be a bit more gung ho now.

I've had a couple of issues, but Voipfone support has been excellent. If you don't have any of the optional extras, there's no monthly charge.

Edited by Thaumaturge (Fri 20-May-22 21:27:43)

Like others I can recommend sipgate basic. I pay nothing for it unless I decide to make a call. I run it on my mobile using zoiper Pro (£1.09 per month) so my landline goes everywhere with me. The bonus with this setup is push notifications work, so zoiper goes to sleep until I receive a call and goes back to sleep after, so it's not a battery killer. I can also connect a few different handsets at the same time though there's no 'intercom' facility between them. This is the way it should be with voip(sip) numbers.

Edited by Ripshod (Sat 21-May-22 08:19:11)

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

I've had a couple of issues, but Voipfone support has been excellent. If you don't have any of the optional extras, there's no monthly charge.

I worry when everything is free, does the provider have the ability to handle the "big bad" when it occurs?? This happened recently to Voipfone and others.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/10/voip-p...

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/ddos-a...

Edited by jchamier (Sat 21-May-22 09:59:18)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

I've had a couple of issues, but Voipfone support has been excellent. If you don't have any of the optional extras, there's no monthly charge.

I worry when everything is free, does the provider have the ability to handle the "big bad" when it occurs?? This happened recently to Voipfone and others.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/10/voip-p...

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/ddos-a...

As far as I am concerned Voipfone handled the incidents with professionalism and swiftly but their PR updates were poor. The failover provision meant that no inbound calls were lost. The same level of service was provided whether you were a customer who paid no fees or took some of the many options that are available for a monthly fee.

Every hosted VoIP provider will have an unexpected outage at some time or other.

So what are you trying to say here by drawing readers attention to an event that took place some time ago?

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

So what are you trying to say here by drawing readers attention to an event that took place some time ago?

I am surprised you are still extremely touchy about this event, I recall you lashing out at another well meaning contributor at the time.

Less we forget

Does your dog bite? 🙃

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

So what are you trying to say here by drawing readers attention to an event that took place some time ago?

That people should be fully informed before making a decision to purchase a product. It is less than a year, I make Sept 2021 only 8 months ago.

Do you work for them by any chance?

Edited by jchamier (Sun 22-May-22 11:00:46)

AAISP or Flextel.

AAISP is cheap. Flextel on the other hand has the advantage of showing you most of a withheld/hidden/private caller ID (except the last three digits), also allowing you to block the caller ID via their control panel or email notification (if enabled). Useful for blocking spam callers.

I use Flextel with an IVR setup so that the caller has to press a specific number in order to get through to me (e.g. if you are not an automated caller or telemarketer then please press 9).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

So what are you trying to say here by drawing readers attention to an event that took place some time ago?

That people should be fully informed before making a decision to purchase a product. It is less than a year, I make Sept 2021 only 8 months ago.

Do you work for them by any chance?

Rather than David lashing out maybe he could have posted information on what they have done in the last 8 months to prevent these events ever happening again. For me that would have been a better approach.

In reply to a post by dect:

Rather than David lashing out maybe he could have posted information on what they have done in the last 8 months to prevent these events ever happening again. For me that would have been a better approach.

Exactly. As many internet service providers have written in the past 10 years, DDoS is a fact of life on the internet. How you handle it with your upstream and Tier 1 providers is how you tell a competant organisation. I think even AAISP's MD (RevK) has blogged about DDoS in years gone past.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Does your dog bite? 🙃

Pink Panther - Does your dog bite?

🤣🤣🤣

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

So what are you trying to say here by drawing readers attention to an event that took place some time ago?

That people should be fully informed before making a decision to purchase a product. It is less than a year, I make Sept 2021 only 8 months ago.

Do you work for them by any chance?

No I do not work for them.

There is no supplier that has not got a history of misfortune with the service they provide. Some of it minor, right up to catastrophic and that includes the giants in the computer world.

Your original posting was akin to "I wouldn't touch this company with a barge pole because of this event"; it was not balanced in any way to inform the reader that equally any company they choose to run with could have a future negative aspect to the service provided..

What really matters is the speed and efficiency the company deals with the problem and where the individual suffers a financial loss to be adequately compensated.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Your original posting was akin to "I wouldn't touch this company with a barge pole because of this event"; it was not balanced in any way to inform the reader that equally any company they choose to run with could have a future negative aspect to the service provided..

This is a forum of personal opinions. I gave my opinion, you gave yours, others gave theirs. I believe that "free" services have problems. You are free to disagree. I don't agree that I implied not to touch company with a barge pole, I wanted the other readers to be aware of the recent history. You disagreed. That is what forums are for.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Your original posting was akin to "I wouldn't touch this company with a barge pole because of this event"; it was not balanced in any way to inform the reader that equally any company they choose to run with could have a future negative aspect to the service provided..

This is a forum of personal opinions. I gave my opinion, you gave yours, others gave theirs. I believe that "free" services have problems. You are free to disagree. I don't agree that I implied not to touch company with a barge pole, I wanted the other readers to be aware of the recent history. You disagreed. That is what forums are for.

A fair summary which I accept.

Recommendations are given on personal experiences which may differ from my own.

Sipgate is a good choice. Been with them for years. No point paying other companies a monthly fee, when you can just pay for what you use.

I appreciate you have put all your eggs in the Voipfone basket and your setup is more complexed than the average joe but I honestly don't understand why you threw your toys out of the pram over the below post, it was a vaild concern by a knowledgeable member of the forum. These issue can't be swept under the carpet as if they never happened.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I worry when everything is free, does the provider have the ability to handle the "big bad" when it occurs?? This happened recently to Voipfone and others.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/10/voip-p...

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/09/ddos-a...

And why pay extrotionate rates when for a small monthly fee you can save considerably.

Sipgate - 9.9p/minute for UK mobiles. VOIPify - 1.2p/minutes

US mobiles: 1.9 cpompared to 1.0

UK landlines: 1.18 compared to 0.5

In reply to a post by MHC:

And why pay extrotionate rates when for a small monthly fee you can save considerably.

Sipgate - 9.9p/minute for UK mobiles. VOIPify - 1.2p/minutes

US mobiles: 1.9 cpompared to 1.0

UK landlines: 1.18 compared to 0.5

I suppose it depends on your expected usage. I never make any outbound calls via the landline and so Sipgate is the best deal for me.

Totally different if you expect to be making calls to UK mobiles as you say

In reply to a post by MHC:

And why pay extrotionate rates when for a small monthly fee you can save considerably.

Sipgate - 9.9p/minute for UK mobiles. VOIPify - 1.2p/minutes

US mobiles: 1.9 cpompared to 1.0

UK landlines: 1.18 compared to 0.5

Depends who you call I guess. If you’re a heavy user, calling lots of mobiles then it may be worth it.

Although most people would never dream of calling mobiles using their landline/VOIP.

In which case, if someone were a *very* heavy mobile and landline caller it would make sense to add their UK Call Package for £9.95 then you could have unlimited calls to UK mobile and landlines.

If people want cheap (pay as you go) outgoing calls then I don't think you can beat Discountvoip.co.uk for their pricing, used in conjunction with something like a Gigaset N300 IP for routing specific outgoing calls.

Or just make outgoing calls on your mobile, where unlimited calling packages are cheap (e.g. Lebara: £4.90 per month). If your mobile supports wifi calling then coverage isn't an issue.

In fact, you may as well receive incoming "landline" VoIP calls on your mobile too, with an app like Acrobits Softphone or Groundwire. Then you don't need an ATA and can throw away all your analogue handsets.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Or just make outgoing calls on your mobile

Not everybody has or wants a mobile.

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Or just make outgoing calls on your mobile

Not everybody has or wants a mobile.

And with the removal of copper PSTN connections there will be a lot more moving to VoIP who do not have a mobile - I know of several older people, in their 80s & 90s who do not and will not have a mobile and when te time comes I will need to get them onto te right VoIP package.

And with the removal of copper PSTN connections there will be a lot more moving to VoIP who do not have a mobile - I know of several older people, in their 80s & 90s who do not and will not have a mobile and when te time comes I will need to get them onto te right VoIP package.

That's the sort of consumer I think may be best served by an "all in one" package from an ISP, e.g. BT / Virgin / etc, whom can understand elderly people and have history in supporting. I wouldn't give my grandparents an AAISP VoIP account for example.

In reply to a post by MHC:

I know of several older people, in their 80s & 90s who do not and will not have a mobile and when the time comes I will need to get them onto the right VoIP package.

I have the reverse issue, I'm having to help the younger folk 🤣🤣🤣

Something like this would seem to make sense for people who just want a fixed phone but want to take advantage of a cheaper sim deal, with the added benefit of being able to put it wherever they wanted.

https://www.seniorsphone.com.au/product/fixed-wirele...

Great in Australia