 Review by espaeth 
UPDATED: 177 days ago
member for 8.5 years, 2026 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Minneapolis,Hennepin,MN
 $1 per month
 about 1 days
 "1.05c/min termination to US, supports dynamic CID via SIP, many servers, 6 sec billing"
 "All calls are proxied through their servers, Tollfree calls are not free, mixed call quality"
 "Good, but not great."
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Update 5/27/09: I've downgraded my rating for voip.ms to reflect my usage of their service now. A few months back I finally gave up on using them for termination -- DTMF issues on the value route pushed me to premium, and some quality issues on the premium route made me finally throw in the towel. While on the surface it looks like a good thing they offer servers all over the place, all those servers are just proxying the calls to PTSN gateways that live in yet another location; even if you have great connectivity to one of their servers, the connectivity to the upstream carrier may be problematic. In an effort to use up my balance, I recently experimented with using them for International termination because of their favorable pricing, but they appear to have dropped support for a UK prefix I call regularly so they're out for that. My last option for burning up my balance was to get a $0.99/mo PAYG DID from them -- that actually seems to work quite well, and should be an acceptable way to burn down the balance.
I should be up front that I'm rather picky when it comes to my VoIP providers. Voip.ms isn't bad, but they're not great either. Right now I get cheaper (1c/min flat) calls through grnVoIP and FlowRoute that hand off the RTP streams directly to the carriers, so they've taken over as my primary US48 termination options. So far with both of those providers I have had no DTMF issues, and call quality has been consistently great.
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Update 11/19/08: Things continue to be good overall with voip.ms, but in the last couple weeks the value route has become problematic. DTMF currently works on the premium US route, but not the value route. Not a huge deal since 1.25c/min is still dirt cheap. They're still my first choice for outbound US termination, and my connectivity to the New York server continues to be stable.
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I've only been a voip.ms customer for about 2 weeks now, so read this review with appropriate skepticism based on that.
I've been shopping for different termination providers since I started leaving ViaTalk in June. I've used CallCentric, VoiceStick, VTWhite, Les.Net, CallWithUs, and VoicePulse over the last several weeks in trying to find a "best fit" mix of services to use with my home Asterisk installation.
I have to admit what drew me in to Voip.ms is their 1.05c/min value termination pricing. What I've found now that I started using the service is a great termination offering that has been reliable for the last couple weeks and has produced consistently high audio quality on all outbound calls. I'm not sure what additional benefits the 1.25c/min premium US route brings -- I've had no issues with CID delivery and I can't imagine the call quality could be any better than my calls through the value route. Previously CallWithUs had been my choice for low cost termination, but with Voip.ms I've been seeing the big advantages that 6 second billing can have with my calling habits on a PAYG plan. Having quite a bit of experience in the US hosting market, I've also noticed that Voip.ms places their servers with respected hosting providers like Voxel, iWeb, and ThePlanet.
Over the last couple weeks I've had the opportunity of making just over 10 hours of calls through the service, and I couldn't be happier with the results. I put Voip.ms into my top position for TollFree outgoing last week when I started getting poor audio quality through VoicePulse, and the audio quality was perfect for several hours of being on a problem resolution conference bridge for work. The downside is tollfree calls are billed out at 0.25c/min -- it's not going to break the bank even on long calls, but it's still not free.
Overall, as a termination provider I would have no hesitation in recommending that you add Voip.ms to your outbound dialplan.
Followup comments:  
Mango2
@shawcable.net | DTMF in Value Mode I was able to make DTMF work in Value Mode by setting the DTMF Mode to Info. Hope this helps someone! | |
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espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN | Re: DTMF in Value Mode This was resolved a few days ago after a ticket was opened with support. | |
| MartinM
join:2008-07-21
Montreal, QC
| Information I would like to add that we're not "Just proxying" otherwise we would have servers all over the place. Each location is has been selected thoroughly in regard to the Tier-1 routes from one data center to another. For example, if you have a DID in UK1 and use the US3 Server, the DID is connected to our provider's pop in Los Angeles and then connected to the US3 Server for delivery to customer. Our uplinks with our carriers/providers is much stable than what can be achieved from a DSL or Cable Connection. That is the advantage of using a server close to your location.
The myth that the Direct Peering with the Carrier of the RTP will improve your quality is not true. While it could, in theory, reduce your latency if the carrier is closer to your location, in most cases it is not. The other reason the majority of VoIP providers will not re-invite their RTP Stream to you, is that it causes a lot of issues with users behind routers/nat. Nowadays, most users are behind nat.
I'm very sorry to hear that you have had issues with out service. I verified our ticket for today, I'm not sure if you are the users in question but our sys admin modified the route to USA for your account in hope perhaps this would resolve your issues. If it doesn't, there's probably some kind of issue in regard to compatibility with our equipment and yours. Let us know via our support system if this fixed your issue.
best regards,
Martin Mercier
VoIP.ms | |
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espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
 ·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
·Callcentric
·VoiceStick
·ViaTalk
 ·Comcast
 ·Embarq
| Re: Information said by MartinM :The myth that the Direct Peering with the Carrier of the RTP will improve your quality is not true. I have a pile of anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise, both on my side and remote parties of the calls I participate in.
said by MartinM :While it could, in theory, reduce your latency if the carrier is closer to your location, in most cases it is not. The real payoff isn't in the latency reduction, it's in getting more crap out of the middle of the voice transport path. Working with companies that broker connections directly to media gateways eliminates a lot of the risk of having servers running multiple processes mangling the call quality. Servers proxying the media stream have the potential to become overwhelmed and have momentary hits on managing the packet-to-packet bridging of individual RTP streams, while a properly designed carrier network will have gateways that cannot be overrun as the SBCs will run out of slots to assign calls before network capacity is saturated. The media gateways being network "appliance" hardware also has the added benefit of not allowing a botched cron job impact call quality; the purpose of the platform is focused and protected.
said by MartinM :The other reason the majority of VoIP providers will not re-invite their RTP Stream to you, is that it causes a lot of issues with users behind routers/nat. Nowadays, most users are behind nat. For providers catering specifically to residential end users, I completely agree this is a necessary evil based on the realities of end-user connectivity through NAT. That said, I asked before signing up if direct RTP would be supported: »Re: [Other] VOIP.MS Then it turned out when I opened a ticket to ask for that to be setup on my account it was not available as an option. Fair enough.
My biggest gripe was that call quality was too inconsistent. The value route started out being absolutely perfect, then it was plagued with DTMF issues so I switched to the premium US route, but eventually call quality became too variable there to be trusted as well. Maybe if I had spent more time bouncing between servers I could have worked out better quality, but since I already had other carriers in my dialplan delivering rock solid consistent calls for (at the time) slightly higher pricing, it just made sense to use them instead. Now that those providers are offering 1c flat-rate the choice for me is even more straight forward.
said by MartinM : I'm not sure if you are the users in question but our sys admin modified the route to USA for your account in hope perhaps this would resolve your issues. That wasn't me. I'm using other providers for US term. I did open a ticket a few days back about not being able to hit UK NTS prefixes (+44 08*), and got a response back that you've disabled them due to fraud. Fair enough, I've lined up other providers to meet those needs.
At this point I've got my PAYG DID with Voip.ms, and I've been happy with the quality on that. | |
| | | MartinM
join:2008-07-21
Montreal, QC
| Re: Information I can ensure you we do not run "proxies" with 'butched up cron jobs'. Seems that your issues were probably due to some sort of incompatibility with your equipment or you had network issues between you and the server you were connecting. Thank you for your feedback. | |
| KnowItAll
join:2009-01-22
Los Angeles, CA
| voip ms I'm satisfied with VoIP.ms--although I don't make international calls--we use for our Business VoIP and our calls are U.S. and Canada. I love that there are countless configuration options that I can mess around with and I also like the diagnostics on their website--you can view your extensions, if they are registered, the IP, etc. what IP they come from, and when the next registration is expected. The price is right and I've had no issues with customer support, either. | |
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