Review by Bogtrotter 
UPDATED: 75 days ago
member for 164 days, 68 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 East York,ON
 Contract price not specified.
 "Good sounding, cheap, easy to use."
 "Needs more information about terms."
 "A bargain if you use less than 1000 minutes per month"
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Ease of Installation:
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Update later today:
dtmf tones did not work when calling international sipbroker numbers, and I notice they are flaky even when calling a solid connection in the US.
They have the usual free incoming to a sip url. The url is in the form: @versafon.com:5080
The '5080' is unusual, but not a problem.
I'm not too surprised by these given that the service seems to be a simple to use, cheap service. And who knows where they will be in six months?
But I like the control I have with a service like voip.ms, and imagine I will use up my first month and then cancel.
/End of Update
This is a first-impression review of versafon. I'll update it after a bit. I did some comparisons to get an idea of versafon's value for money, and hope I am not comparing apples with oranges, or getting lost in the arithmetic.
Easy setup
Pay by monthly credit card deduction or do a one-time add to your account and have payments deducted from that.
Dial tone available immediately after payment and setup in the ATA. I got the 7.95 'silver unlimited', which is actually 1000 minutes/month and includes 12 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. If you need more than 1000 minutes, then you may want to look elsewhere. If you are like me, and rarely if ever reach 1000 minutes, then this is a bargain.
A DID of your choice comes with it. You tell them where you want it local to, and they do their best to get it.
Activating the DID means you have to have E911, which is $1.00 (I think), plus a regulatory recovery fee of $1.50.
So the total monthly is 10.45.
If I compare this with what I would get for 10.45 with North American calling via voip.ms, it would be:
1.50/month gets you the DID + 716 minutes ($8.95 at 1.25 cents/minute)
(voip.ms does not require the E911 or any additional fee).
BUT
if you decide not to activate the DID with versafon, you save $2.50 on the E911 and regulatory fees, meaning you pay $7.95 total.
Comparing with voip.ms, with no voip.ms DID:
North America calls 7.95 / .0125 = ~630 minutes
UK calls 7.95 / .015 = ~530 minutes
Versafon is looking better with its 1000 minutes for the same money, especially if calls to the UK make up a large percentage of your minutes.
If you want a DID, you will pay somebody for it, but with voip.ms, it is $1.50 and no fees, so that seems a better way to spend the money. You pay for incoming with voip.ms and I assume that versafon subtracts incoming minutes out of the 1000. They need to spell that out.
They have some kinks to work out, including reporting correctly what numbers in the UK are free. All the UK numbers I tried, mostly sipbroker numbers, are free, not just the few they list. The free Australia numbers are limited to Melbourne, as they listed.
I don't know what the accuracy of the rate list is for the remaining 8 non-North-American countries. I am only likely to call the UK outside of North America, so it make no difference to me, but you need to keep it in mind if you are calling elsewhere.
I had problems with dtmf tones when calling sipbroker numbers outside of North America.
Having used it for several days, it is reliable and sounds good, for what that is worth after such a short time.
The silver service comes with two lines, so that the second line could be set up with an ATA at some other location.
It allows call forwarding, but only to a pstn number it looks like. They need to add forwarding to a sip url.
There is a calling card feature and a web call feature.
Emails to them have been answered quickly, even on a long weekend.
The other thing about versafon is that it is so new, that when they finish ironing out the kinks, I don't know what they will end up having: they may allow more minutes; they may abate the regulatory fee; they may decide to start charging for some UK destinations; they may allow more free Australian destinations. So far, so good though.
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Versafon
