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Review by ptrowski  UPDATED: 65 days ago member for 4.7 years, 2463 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
Putnam,Windham,CT
$12 per month
about 5 days
"Good price, has the cloned line feature we really like..."
"Vpanel still basic but expanding...."
"Seems to be very stable now!"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)
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9/24/09 MWI is now almost instant off when a message is deleted and the service overall has been for the most pasrt very stable. No real issues which is ok by me!
8/26/09 It seems that after a tough July Voipo is becoming more stable. They are adding some new features and just yesterday I am able to add people as contacts from the call records, something I have been asking for. I upped the scores to reflect that.
7/27/09 Things had been ok mostly in the Voipo world except for some echo here and there and the pesky MWI light, but it hit the fan hard this morning. »[VOIPo] Is it down Vpanel was down, forums were down, calls went to a fast busy tone and support was closed. I think it is time for them to expand the tech support hours.
5/29/09 Downgraded the quality a notch as calling the house has had more echo than usual. Last night calling from my cell to the house there was a delay, I could hear my conversation and then my wife would respond. It seemed ok on her side, but was unusable after a while.
5/11/09 Overall the service itself has been ok, had an issue over the weekend where the Washington DC data center wnet offline. Outgoing calls were ok but incoming went to my failover number (cell phone). I had the issue again of the voicemails not deleting via the CP, which is a bit annoying as it is A) the third time I had to open a ticket for this B) since the DTMF method is Inband to eliminate the random tones I cannot check VM via the access number or my Voipo line although I was told this is being fixed in the future.
I am not chaning my ratings for now as the service has been good but the other points need some clean up.
4/23/09 Service overall has been good. I downgraded the website (in my case meaning the control panel) as I had issues deleting voicemails via the CP. Support was fast to address the issue, but it seems like it has happened again today.
4/11/09 It seems that the majority of the issues have subsided. The wife seems to be happy. We have been on the phone more and there has not been any problems.
4/7/09 I gave up on the struggle to keep the Grandstream alive. I put the PAP2 back online and so far the lines have stayed registered so I upped the reliability and value for the money as well as the call quality as the DTMF tones so far have not come back after switching the DTMF method.
4/1/09 There was an outage affecting some customers yesterday and my wife tried dialing out 4 times and got dead air, whihc at that point I was worried that she was going to toss the phone at the TV. To quote someone here at DSLR-"when it works, it works well, but when it doesn't.." Now when I call the house after the phone rings there is dead air, no recording, and a female voice says "goodbye".
3/31/09 Within 20 minutes of updating the review the change was made. 
3/31/09 I started using the PAP2T as they were working on a fix for the DTMF tones. Things were ok for a few days but they have come back and are getting to be too much. Support is a bit slower than usual as I put a ticket in two days ago to have my DTMF method chaged but have not had a reply yet.
3/18/09 I put the GS-502 back online as the DTMF tones being generated by the PAP2 were too much to handle. After working with support about some outbound calls sounding bad, I was told that there was a 500 ms latency on my line and that was casuing the issues, although the traceroutes from them to me and vice versa to different servers did not show that. I asked to be moved onto another server and so far so good..
So the options are use the PAP2T and have DTMF tones, change the DTMF settings and risk some IVR's not working, or use the GS-502 which may drop registration. I went with the 502 and won't complain if it does drop registration as it is the lesser of the evils.
3/12/09 Lost registration again this morning.
3/11/09 Things are still a bit rough. I had had some issue with outbound calls sounding bad on the receiving end. »[VoIPo] Bad audio calling out, calling back seems to fix it...
Also I have started to hear DTMF tones while on call.
Online chat support has been unreachable for me the two times I have tried them recently due to the Grandstream adapter recall. I would rather see it being listed offline than having it time out after 10 minutes. »[VoIPo] Support chat busy today?
Tickets have been submitted, and responded to fairly quickly but not like it used to be so I am down grading it a bit.
2/25/09 Got the new PAP2T adapter and the calls sound good but Voipo right now seems to be having a meltdown. Calls go to dead air or the voicemail doesn't pick up.
2/21/09 Still a bit tough. I had lost registration again with the adapter. Voipo sent out an email to people that lost registration and didn't re-register, but I did not receive it. I was supposed to receive a new adapter a few weeks ago but nothing ever arrived. I expected more from Voipo with the long beta and all the glowing reviews from some well respected members here, but for me it has not been smooth sailing at all.
2/6/09 Tough week for Voipo. There has been a few instances of the adapters losing registration, call logs down. They have responded quickly which is nice, but my impression was the 2+ year beta was so they could handle the "explosive growth" and not have issues. Still a good deal in my eyes, but I thing that the statue of Voipo is becoming a nit tarnished.
1/27/09- So far the service has been decent. I keep the adapter behind my router and it seems that it will take longer to get firmware updates this way. Not too bad, but that is how I prefer to have it set up. I have had some fast busy signals after I dial a number and some dead air issues but they are not constant, maybe once or twice a week. The CP still needs some work IMHO, adding contacts or customer CID from the call logs was something that was nice with Viatalk.
Support like others have said is capable and responsive. The only thing I get a bit leary about is they never as for verification that it is actually me asking for help. No security questions, etc. But they respond quickly. They did have an issue consolidating my accounts after the number was ported which shut down my service, but it was resolved rapidly.
Starting review-I started using Voipo to put them against my current service. I put the adapter behind my router right next to the other adapter. So far the service has been good, no issues yet.
As we use it more I will keep updating the review.
Followup comments:  VOIPoTim VOIPo.com Premium,VIP join:2006-06-06 Houston, TX
| Rough Week Indeed This was definitely a rough well for our service due to the massive influx of customers.
While I'm sure we'll have more "bumps" along the way, I'm confident that going forward it should be back to normal, reliable service 99% of the time now that we've smoothed out some issues with the first massive influx.
Update your review in a few weeks. Things should be back to normal. | |
|  |   ptrowski Got Helix? Premium join:2005-03-14 Putnam, CT clubs:
·VOIPo
·Metrocast Communic..
·AT&T DSL Service
·ViaTalk
| Re: Rough Week Indeed said by VOIPoTim :This was definitely a rough well for our service due to the massive influx of customers. While I'm sure we'll have more "bumps" along the way, I'm confident that going forward it should be back to normal, reliable service 99% of the time now that we've smoothed out some issues with the first massive influx. Update your review in a few weeks. Things should be back to normal. Hi Tim, You have a nice strong foundation so I know it will be smooth sailing most of the time. Thanks for your input, I appreciate it. -- "So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage? »www.venganza.org | |
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Review by localt  Posted: 68 days ago member for 4.1 years, 48 visits, last login: 4 days ago
Madison,Morris,NJ
$9 per month (12 month contract)
about 12 days
"Cheap, Nice features, Fast support"
"Reliability"
"Great choice, but expect to have some hike-ups"
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I've had VoIPo for about 9 months now. We had a rough start. When I joined I had problems making calls to Israel. There have been disconnections, dropped calls and just poor quality. The support team was very helpful in coming up with a solution and tried multiple solutions until we found the best case (which was still not perfect, but only minor annoyance from it). At March/April they had some rough times with their ISP I guess and the devices started losing connection. They had replaced all devices in May I think, and the problem went away.
Last month I've asked the support to try to fix the little annoyance on international calls (the normal ring tone was not played, so you would only start hearing after the other side picked up). After few changes on their end it was all fixed... Overall I'm happy with their services. Their support is much superior to Vonage or ViaTalk (3-4 hours waiting for a support every time I called, are you kidding?!), although they have limited support hours.
I would recommend them, but do expect some issues on the beginning... At least their staff really want to help!
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Review by zevin  UPDATED: 75 days ago member for 1 year, 292 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
Kingsville,Kleberg,TX
$16 per month (12 month contract)
about 3 days
"Call Quality and Price - Spot On"
"None everything works great."
"Going to be BIG. Get on now, service is stable and quality is great."
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)
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***UPDATE***
The service just keeps going and going... The service is wonderful, call quality is great, and the features just keep coming.
VOIPo keeps adding new features. New perks include 60 free minutes of international calling to selected locations, feature control by SMS, simultaneous ring, distinctive ring tones, and more.
I would also like to mention I used the service in Roatan, Honduras, and Curacao, NA with great success. I only made calls to numbers back in the US but quality was great. I was even able to send video at the same time using a X-Lite soft-phone installed on my laptop. Call quality was good at the airport in Houston, TX via the wireless internet connection. I have never had a problem when traveling with my laptop and using a soft-phone.
I totally recommend VOIPo for ease of service, quality, and price. With the 30 day money back guarantee you have nothing to loose.
***ORIGINAL POST BELOW***
I found out about VOIPo by chance, and am so happy with the service. I entered service near the end of Beta testing and before signup I was skeptical of the quality or reliability due to the company being so new. However, knowing the associations VOIPo has with a major US internet web hosting company I decided to try VOIPo. I received my adapter (Grandstream 502) in no time, had it plugged into my network, and was up and running instantly. The quality was spot on, price was right, and the calling features were included.
Being a plain old telephone customer switching to VOIP I have found the following:
True plug and play - little to no modifications on my end Voice quality is GREAT with no lag or echo. User supported telemarketer block and the ability to white or black list incoming numbers has been a true blessing. Voice mail will send an email alert with the ability view and listen to messages online in vPanel 911 setup was a breeze Customer support responds within hours of submitting ticket vPanel web interface is smooth and clean one stop shop for all preferences.
I have taken my adapter to friends houses and on vacation and had no problem plugging in. Instant joy.
I have only had two problems that required me to contact support for help.
1. I could not receive or call to a specific cell phone support modified a few settings on the back end in less than an hour, called me to let me know it was fixed. 2. Voice mail light problem I think that was system wide due to VOIPo switching to the new voice mail system. No problems now.
I have been so pleased with my service I added two more lines to my account, and I am going to say goodbye Ma Bell.
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Review by Brian in MD  UPDATED: 80 days ago member for 6.5 years, 3279 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Maryland, US
$16 per month
"Reliable, excellent call quality"
"None!"
"Excellent new VOIP company with a ton of potential"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)
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I've been using the VOIPo beta for well over a year now, and service has been excellent. Call quality is on-par or better than most of the providers I've used, and the guys running things really seem to care about overall quality of their product. Downtime has been almost non-existent (considering it's still in beta, that's pretty good!), and the feature set is full of all the essentials. The control panel is home-grown, and functions perfectly, with changes taking effect immediately, and the interface is simple for anyone to use.
Please note that the total monthly price doesn't include fees, as those aren't known yet, but I'll update this review once they are.
Overall, even though the company hasn't gone large-scale yet, I think VOIPo has a ton of potential to become huge.
Update - 12/22/08 - Service has continued to work flawlessly. There have been no outages or significant disruptions. Everything is still great!
Update - 4/4/08 - All is good. My GrandStream device has been replaced with a PAP2T and things seem very stable. New features (including SimulRing) have been launched.
Update - 9/8/09 - All is still good. A bunch of new features, including 60 mins/mo of international calling. The service has been rock solid for me.
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Review by Warus  Posted: 89 days ago member for 89 days, 4 visits, last login: 32 days ago
Murfreesboro,Rutherford,TN
$8 per month (12 month contract)
about 14 days
"Great Quality, it just works great"
"None so far"
"This service rocks.. I'm now a former Callvantage customer"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: (ratings match consensus)
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When ATT announced they would be discontinuing their Callvantage service, I began my search for a replacement. I had been a customer since Callvantage began. It was a solid service after the first year, and I knew it would be hard to beat.
While lurking in the backgrounds on DSLR I noticed Fisamo & NY Tel Guy talking about VOIPO, then Fisamo announced he had switched over to VOIPO.
Knowing these guys from the past few years of reading their posts, I knew I had to check it out. Boy I'm glad I did.
I signed up and received my TA in just a coupe days. I read the installation instructions and laughed. It actually said, just plug it in and within 3-5 mins you'll be up and running..
A big company like AT&T could never manage this feat, you always had to call customer service when you got a new TA, it never worked the first time behind the router, and then you had to testify that you had not moved and your E-911 was still correct. Usually a 30-1 hrs process depending on how many times you had to re-boot the TA to get all the updates.
I said, what the heck, I know the drill.. and then plugged in the VOIPO TA behind the firewall, just to prove myself right. Imagine my surprise when 3 mins later my TA indicated that I was good to go, I was completely blown away when I actually got a dial tone!
No fuss, no muss.. it just WORKS!
Your guys are awesome, and to Fisamo & NY Tel Guy and BIG THANKS for blazing the trail.
I am a now former Callvantage.Att customer and very happy I'm here at Voipo.
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Review by . Posted: 89 days ago (review was emailed in)
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
"plug-n-play, worked out of the box, excellent quality, customer service responsive"
"none"
"I've been a customer of voip service since 2007. This is the best I've found."
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As a Hostgator customer, I received an offer a few months ago for a toll free number through Voipo. I accepted and canceled the two I had with another provider. It works like a charm.
Last weekend my former voip provider had a bug with their proprietary softphone. The phone would not login and the problem was system wide. It took them 4 days to resolve the issue.
I took the opportunity to do a little research and ended up at Voipo.
I purchased a fax number and it sends my faxes to my email in a pdf.
I also purchased two residential plans. Both devices arrived today and the installation was simple, service locked on within 2 minutes, and incoming and outgoing calls are working perfectly. Great call quality also!
I've forwarded my local numbers with my prior carriers to my two temporary numbers while they are being ported.
I appreciate having a phone number to call, and a chat application as well.
Count me as a very satisfied and happy customer. The pricing, the service, and the quality and functionality of the product have all been first rate.
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Review by JAXx  UPDATED: 93 days ago member for 9.6 years, 2274 visits, last login: a few hours ago
New York,New York,NY
$11 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Great call quality, very reliable, fantastic support, excellent features"
"None."
"Highly recommended"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)
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The short review: it works well, call quality is excellent, tech support is superb, its easy and I am without significant complaint.
About a week after ordering a phone adapter arrived. I plugged it in and had a dialtone. Soon after that i asked them to port my old number which went fine. Once and a while I would make a call and get a fast busy signal, an after hours email to tech support got answered quickly and they made some changes which seem to have solved that issue.
If you come to voipo from a large company like Time Warner you will be amazed at the level of tech support. They answer their phones with someone who knows what they're talking about, no more flow charts and mind numbing automated trouble shooting. And I've discovered that if you email them after hours you're likely to get an email back quickly even though they are technically closed. I would even be happy if i only got tech support on the stated hours with this level of support than have to deal with the type of awful support you get 24/7 from TWC.
I love the cloned line feature - the phone adapter has two ports so you can plug two different sets of phones into it and each has a separate dialtone but share the same number. This offers lots of great opportunities. My setup: cordless phones in one port, a couple corded phones and answering machine in the other port. I'm i'm on one of the cordless phones and a call comes in, if I don't take it it goes to the answering machine. If both "lines" are in use then the cal goes to Voipo voicemail. FYI i use an answering machine because i need multiple mailboxes, something voicemail seems to never offer.
HINT to Voipo: to me it only makes sense that every family member should be able to have their own mailbox in voicemail plus a general delivery box for all to hear (press 1 for Bob, 2 for Betty, or 3 for all of us). If you were to implement multiple mailbox voicemail I would love you forever, and think, you would be pioneering a feature no one seems to offer. There must be a market for this? 
The promotional price, $8.25 + $3/month taxes is obviously fantastic and currently they let you extend that price as far into the future as you wish if you pay up front.
Great value, great service, terrific support, I'm a fan.
As to my particular ratings: Web-site: It's good but didn't get 5 stars because some info is hard to ferret out. Ease of Installation: Effortless - plug in the box and you have a working line in seconds Call Quality: While not perfect its very close and better than 4 stars Reliability: Perfect. Tech Support: Amazing. Value for money: All the above plus low price equals 5 stars.
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Review by GeekJedi  UPDATED: 96 days ago member for 8.4 years, 3276 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
Mukwonago,Waukesha,WI
$11 per month
about 4 days
"Great tech support, easy installation"
"vPanel not real user friendly"
"So far so good. They've impressed me!"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)
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I'll keep this review updated best I can.
**Update 8/23**
I noticed in my vPanel that there was a special price if I chose to renew early for another year. After two months of great service, renewing at this price was a no-brainer. Good to know that I don't need to worry about a phone bill for almost 2 years! I also recently got a virtual number so that my in-laws can call us for free using a local number to them.
VOIPo seems to be launching several new, worthwhile updates as well, such as being able to assign a virtual number to the second port of the ATA, essentially giving you two lines. Also the ability to record calls and more. The service just keeps getting better and better, and I look forward to a continued great relationship with my VoIP provider.
I did hear that they're looking to redesign the vPanel - when that happens, I'll look at updating the Web-site rating.
**Update 7/15**
After a month, I can now comment on reliability. It's great! I've had one glitch, which was more related to my router, but started with a brief outage this morning. I can't say enough about VOIPo's support. They responded within 10 minutes of my request, and even acknowledged my "all-clear" email that I sent after a router reboot fixed my issue.
After dealing with the frustration that is Vonage support, it's refreshing to deal with support staff that are actually technically involved with the product instead of just reading scripts in a call center. Bravo!
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After having Vonage for a while I decided it was time to save some money. I've always felt that while Vonage is very reliable, there's been very little innovation. In fact, it seems like they flat out refuse to improve their offerings.
While doing some research, one name came up over and over: VOIPo.
Just about everyone seems to be happy with their service. Looking at their plans online, I saw a great promotional deal - 1 year for $99 ($135 total with E911 fees and taxes) free activation, and free ATA. Three months of Vonage would cost me $90, so it looked like a good deal.
I ordered online on a Thursday, and received the ATA on the following Monday. Plugged the box into my router and got dial tone. Incoming and outgoing calls work great so far, and the quality has been better than Vonage in my opinion.
Here's the part I really liked. I had a hard time accessing their customer forums last Friday, so I sent an email to customer support. I got a reply within 10 minutes that the problem was solved! Unbelievable!
So I begin a new chapter with VOIPo. To be fair, I am leaving the reliability score blank, since I haven't had them long enough to make that determination. The other scores so far are fair. The account control panel (vPanel) is very powerful, but not very intuitive. It does get the job done, however, so I give it an average mark. Everything else so far has been very good.
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Review by wistlo  UPDATED: 97 days ago member for 6.9 years, 355 visits, last login: 1 days ago
New Orleans,Orleans,LA
$9 per month (24 month contract)
about 5 days
"Reliable, clear voice quality, prompt and intelligent support, value"
"Minor: fewer voicemail and ring forwarding features than CallVantage"
"Recommended"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)
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VoipO replaced CallVantage in this household five months ago.
I have not experienced any downtime with this service. Voice quality is excellent, even on my sometimes marginal Cox cable connection. The service is routed through a Linksys WRTG54L router running Tomato RAF with QOS enabled. QOS is superfluous except at those times when the cable service is balky.
Tech support is responsive and has excellent web ticket system. In my case, a faulty ATA (RJ45 socket would not latch connector) was replaced promptly. In a second case, the customer (me) had included an invalid character in my caller display (an ampersand) that would disable some features on the ATA. Tech support stayed with the problem until they identified it and immediately changed the web management console to eliminate customers' ability to make this particular screw-up. I was impressed.
These minor matters were all resolved in the first month. Since then, zero issues.
The web site is spare with little documentation. Features are managed via a simple tree menu. Customers have access to an active company-sponsored forum with a mother-lode of good technical information, some of which comes directly from the company founder.
CallVantage allowed multiple phones to simul-ring or ring in a cascading sequence. VoipO allows only one phone to be simul-ring and does not have the option to require the user to press a key to pick up the call. CallVantage had more extensive do-not-disturb features. None of these was worth three times the monthly cost.
[UPDATE 22 Aug 2009: Forum URL is »forums.voipo.com/]
Followup comments:  VOIPoTim VOIPo.com Premium,VIP join:2006-06-06 Houston, TX | Sim Ring Thanks for the review.
Just as a heads up, we pushed out an updated beta release of Simul Ring yesterday and it allows 2 destinations now so you might want to check that out if you need that functionality. | |
|  |  wistlo
join:2003-01-04 New Orleans, LA | Re: Sim Ring Great!
Also I noticed the new choice to put virtual number on second ATA port.
I neglected to mention in my review that in my five months, Voipo has continuously added new features. | |
|  |  |  VOIPoTim VOIPo.com Premium,VIP join:2006-06-06 Houston, TX
| Re: Sim Ring said by wistlo :Great! Also I noticed the new choice to put virtual number on second ATA port. I neglected to mention in my review that in my five months, Voipo has continuously added new features. Yeah there are several new additions showing up. There's a lot of discussion in our customer forums.
We'll be announcing them all next week. | |
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Review by scott2020  UPDATED: 99 days ago member for 1.3 years, 311 visits, last login: a few hours ago
El Dorado Springs,Cedar,MO
$15 per month
about 5 days
"Great customer service, great call quality, easy"
"Web control panel a little confusing"
"Recent growing pains and attacks but still great service"
| Web-site: Ease of Installation: Call Quality: Reliability: Tech Support: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)
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UPDATE 8/20/09
A few short term outages here and there, but nothing major that wasn't fixed very quickly. Customer service is extremely fast to respond and have been helpful. The Linksys adapters they have converted to have solved many issues. They are now working on additional features to make the service even better now that some of the growing pains have been resolved. They also switched data center co-location providers which has helped their service reliability. VOIPo should be on the top of your list of providers to evaluate!
============
Recent growing pains, firmware updates, and mishaps have started to give VOIPo a bad rap. I would encourage people to give them a try. There will always be a small percentage of customer base that do nothing but complain, just like with everything else in the world. The simple fact is you must try for yourself and see how it works in your environment. If it doesn't work, they will happily refund your money and you can move on. I had problems with the Grandstream adapter but no problems with the Linksys PAP2. They also now allow some BYOD on a limited basis. They continue to have great support, call quality, and great features. They also changed to another datacenter provider which will help reliability greatly. Don't hesitate to give VOIPo a try.
I have been with VOIPo for 3 months now, and I must say it just works. I am a VOIP hobbyist admittedly, and I like to tinker with BYOD providers like most on this forum, so I was reluctant to try them after I found VOIPo was gearing toward plug and play customers. However, I signed up and received the Grandstream ATA, plugged it in, and it just worked. CNAM works so I can see the name of people calling me, voicemail works, all of my calling features work. There are a few minor bugs to squash as with any beta system, but the staff at VOIPo really are responsive to any problems. Voice quality has been excellent both inbound and outbound. Other providers I have tried almost always have some delay, echo, and other strangeness at some point but I have not had this with VOIPo. The web control panel is excellent, with many options for setting up call controls, voicemail options, custom caller ID for incoming calls, and many others. It really has been great (especially for my wife!) to have a great provider with a service that just works. I ported my main number to VOIPo which took just under 3 weeks. Best of luck to them, and I highly recommend.
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