Review by gbh2o 
UPDATED: 45 days ago
member for 7.9 years, 2128 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Greenville,Pitt,NC
 $30 per month
 "Quality residential services, great features, and high quality support."
 "Addictive!"
 "Built to provide _service_ to the customer, and make lots of money. ;-)"
| Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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The companies name is correctly VOIPo.
My disclosures:
This is a review of a service currently in pre-launch status.
I am biased, I participated in the alpha and beta cycles of development with this company for well over a year. Please see my periodic updates I post at the end of my evaluation.
The evaluation.
VOIPo has been built as a company according to the vision of owner Timothy Dick. The company has been committed to developing a high quality, stable and reliable service for customers. At one point, he discovered that his development team had failed to follow his vision of quality; I watched as he replaced the whole team with other professionals in the field, and basically started development over. With this new team, he has produced what I find to be an extremely secure and reliable VoIP service, coupled with features easily controlled from within the users 'vPanel.' BEWARE, controlling available features from this simple and straight-forward interface can become almost addictive! Call quality has been exceptional throughout development, partially attributable to concentrating on US service. Downtime I've noticed to date has amounted to perhaps two hours, primarily during announced hardware/software upgrades and modifications. At this time, VOIPo services will appeal primarily to the residential customer who just wants to plug it in, have the phone work, and have all the bells and whistles too.
The primary offering is a Residential plan, designed for customers in the U.S.A. It is intended to use a simple and reliable standard GrandStream analogue phone adapter, that was chosen for the ease of VOIPo remote diagnostics and maintenance. There is also an allowance for a softphone to be used when traveling. Customers use the “vPanel” to setup and control their account in real time. Failover, Call Waiting, 3 Way Calling, Caller ID with Name, Call Waiting ID, Anonymous Call Rejection, Caller ID Block, Call Return, Call Forwarding, and Voice mail are standard included features. The voice mail feature is on of the slickest I've seen. There is an ability to notify one or more email accounts of receipt of a voice mail including the Caller ID (CID), size and date and time of the message. You may elect to include a .WAV file of the message on an account basis. You may also elect to send an SMS with just the CID, size and date/time information (i.e. To your cell phone). An elaborate contacts management system is fully integrated into the other features like Custom Caller ID, Call Routing, Click to Call, Do Not Disturb and much more. You may associate unlimited phone numbers with the contact and also assign n your contacts to groups like family, friends, enemies, work ,etc. Once a contact is added, you may assign a nickname or 'custom CID name' that will be used to override the default network provided Caller ID name. Having your CID display “Dad” instead of a generic “PA Cell Phone” makes life a lot easier. You may also like the neat click-to-call feature within the contacts system. User selectable Custom call routing criteria (including wildcards!) allows unlimited manipulation of inbound calls to reach your phones, get a busy signal or a disconnected message, or be forward to another number or straight to voice mail. You can setup unlimited routing options and manage them all in real-time from the user console. Similarly, you may route outbound calls! You can create your own 'speed dial' features for example, by routing outbound '111' to your tennis partner's phone if you like. If you disapprove of your minor son calling the local escort service, just send that number to a busy signal, or better yet to your cell phone for confession time. Only your imagination can limit how outgoing calls from your phone are handled!. VOIPo supports dialing 7, 10, or 11 digits for ease of use. The entire system is designed support using SIP addresses for both inbound calls and as destinations. A user may also elect participation in a 'Community Powered Telemarketing Block' program, or to block all international calls. Users can easily add residential virtual local numbers from rate centers throughout the country, or even virtual toll free numbers.
July 15, 2008
I'm now a _paying_ customer... because of the confidence I have in VOIPo's products. So, I put my $ where I've talked about! 
October 20, 2008
I must now admit to being a VOIPo addict. I now have two dedicated residential accounts as well as 7 DIDs pointed to pbx servers (1 toll-free number, 1 toll-free fax number and 5 low-volume 'local' DIDs for family members.) When I need something for lower 'residential' volume inbound traffic set up fast, I find myself at the VOIPo login. A few seconds later the new service is live.
VOIPo does limit itself at present to providing standard residential volume products, primarily intended for single household use. So, I also must confess to happily using several other providers for my higher volume out-bound termination from the asterisk-based systems where I need greater flexibility and control. Nothing bad against VOIPo, it's just their choice for a sound and stable business model (darn it).
Followup comments:  internetphon
join:2008-07-29
Arlington, MA | Reseller Programs I'd be interested in hearing more about VOIPO's reseller programs. Any idea who I might contact?
Internet.Home.Phone | |
|  | gbh2o
join:2000-12-18
Greenville, NC | Re: Reseller Programs sales@voipo.com would be a good start... they're pretty responsive | |
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