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I have previous experience with SunRocket (2+years), Teleblend (only until I found an alternative), Future-Niee (short term try out) and Net2Phone (since Sunrocker crashed)...VOIPo was first that was truely plug and play. Unpacked the RT31P2, added a DHCP reservation for it, plugged it in behind my home router...two minutes later was able to make a call! So far, I have to rate overall call quality better then my N2P lines. I'll update this review after my secondary number is ported from N2P (scheduled to happen on 9/22) and I've had some time to use the service more extensively. The Future-Nine PAYG (especially if you have an ATA) is a great value but VOIPo is a better value for my needs. Update 09/23/2009: My number was successfully ported from N2P to VOIPo as scheduled. Update 11/18/2009: No problems! Adding a second line to my VOIPo service and porting my main number. Update: 11/21/2009: Unpacked the RT31P2 for the second line...connected behind my home router...again "plug & play"...can make calls and recieve calls on the out of state virtual number. Have notyet received the porting date for my primary number. Followup comments:
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I am a low volume user since I usually use my cell phone and when I am not at home I forward I forward my number go the cell. Call forwarding works great! I decided to switch from my pots line to voip. I signed up with VOIPo ad Future-nine. I was going to cancel the one I liked least. Both had good audio quality but VOIPo had 911 service so that decided me on them. I signed up for a year prepaid and since I liked the service I asked if I could extend it for another year. I am now set for the next two years. I kept my Future-nine line as a backup since it is only $7 per month. So far I have not needed it and I will most likely drop it when the money runs out. Followup comments:
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I've officially been a paying customer for over a year, so I'm comfortable posting a review update with a reliability rating. While I have given them a 5, the rating does come with the caveat that I did find CallVantage to be more reliable. The difference isn't enough to justify downgrading Voipo to a 4, but CallVantage was a tough act to beat (until they decided to beat themselves into oblivion). Since CallVantage decided to shut down, I ported our primary line to Voipo, so it obviously gets a LOT more use. Updated rating categories: Website - 3 (no change), because the user portal is not intuitive enough for my liking. While I have no trouble getting what I need out of it, the user portal still lacks built-in user cues and help screens to make it more user-friendly. Ease of installation - unranked, because I'm a "grandfathered BYOD user". Call quality - 5 (no change) I've heard occasional echos, but not sufficiently bad to lower the rating. Reliability - 5 (first rating) We have had a few RARE instances of calls not ringing through properly, but IIRC, those only occurred while we had their SimulRing feature active (still beta, but that particular problem's been resolved). The other oddball problem was that a few of my calls were sent with the incorrect CallerID number. It seems that the issue has been resolved on a case-by-case solution applied to my account, because a few other customers have experienced a similar problem. These problems are not severe enough to merit lowering the reliability rating in my book. Tech Support - 5 (no change) top notch, polite, happy to help. Can't ask for better. Value for money - 5 (increase) given the reliability over the past year, tech support, etc., there's no reason to not give top marks. Fair notice - as a customer who was in from the beginning, I have an extreme discount on my pricing for as long as I have my account. 6 April 2009: Initial review. OK, so I've been a Beta user/customer since the "second" beta period opened. Overall, reliability _for me_ has been excellent--it rarely went down during the beta period, and I have only had sporadic troubles since, but I still use CallVantage as my primary line, and I don't use the Voipo line enough to give a reliability rating much weight at this time. Right now, pricing is excellent for everyone willing to pay for 1 year up front ($99/yr), and as a "Founder" I will get that price as long as I maintain the account. Since I also have been promised the ability to connect via my Asterisk system, it satisfies my 'hobbyist' interest in having an inexpensive (even though, for my use, a PAYGO provider might be even less expensive) line. In any case, below are the details of the numeric ratings I gave. ============================================= Website: 3 - vPanel is plain, I'd like more checkboxes, checkboxes/radio buttons instead of dropdowns for binary features, more prominent voicemail, better contact input system. The principal reason for the relatively low mark is the lack of documentation of "how-tos". Lists of star codes, voicemail code, setup configuration, etc., should exist in very-easily-found "For New Customers" web pages, etc. In addition, clear descriptions of how features work, what they are, etc., (ideally, quick-text help links near each feature) are lacking. The feature that causes the most confusion is the 'telemarketer block.' Ease of Installation: [unranked] I participated in the beta and continue BYOD. I know what I'm doing for configuring my account, and if there's a glitch, it's usually on my end. Therefore, it's not appropriate for me to rate this aspect of their service. Call Quality: 5 - All calls have been clear. Not much more to say there. Reliability: [Unranked] - OK, admittedly a cop out, but I don't use the line enough to give a fair assessment. If a gun were to my head and I HAD to choose a number, I'd probably give a 3/5 due to the complaints of issues (and acknowledgement of Voipo staff/owner) with the hope (and expectation) of raising it over the next month or two. Tech Support: 9 - Unfortunately, I can't really give them a 9, I'm limited to 5. They've always been extremely responsive and the responses are substantive, not vacant script-reading in nature. When I wanted outgoing CID Name (LIDB population for my line), I unfortunately had to change numbers, but tech support handled it quickly, professionally, and the right way the first time. Overall Value: 4 - Sorry, I can't give a 5 rating with reliability at a 3 (even though I haven't "officially" ranked it). If the 'wrinkles' have been ironed out, this score will definitely rise. Followup comments:
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I bring this up as part of my update, because I am seeing less and less posts concerning voipo. There will always be some di-hard techno-geeks that are always on the forums. But the general poster normally only posts when there are problems and they have questions. The lowering of voipo posts doesn't mean less customers. It means lest customers with issues. Which reflects what I have seen. Excellent quality. Excellent service. Excellent price. Excellent dependability and reliability. You couln't ask for anything more from a providers. Excellent job voipo. Update April 4, 2009: Having been with VoipO for over 2 1/2 years, I've seen a lot of evolving. The only problem I've experienced with voipo was the re-registration issue. This was an adapter problem with the firmware. I really liked the GS502 adapter. I really wished that I could have gotten it to work. I held out as long as I could before swapping it with the PAP2 voipo provided. So you can't dog VoipO. They offered me the PAP2 a while ago. But because of certain features in the Grandstream, I tried to hold out. Anyway; since getting the PAP2, service has been back to the 100% perfect that was for me in the beginning. As always, no 1 voip provider is perfect for everyone. That's not possible because of individual ISP's, Home Networks, Hardware compatibilities, backhaul, and local gateways. But for those who give it a try and it works, they will love VoipO. They have by far some of the best customer service of any provider available. Active employees and excellent tech support. It's been about a month or so since getting the PAP2 and I haven't had 1 minute of down time. Online account in the vpanel is excellent. Voicemail is excellent. Everything is as I remember it. Excellent. I've been with VoipO and the alpha/beta program for almost 2 years now. I know that my, and other opinions, may seem a little biased. That happens when you feel part of it's growth and development. But honestly speaking, I couldn't ask for a better voip provider. The service has all the features you could just about ever think of. Management and staff have always been there to help us with making sure it worked right. The call quality is so far better than the other 3 voip services I have/had. Downtime is practically non-existent. VoipO has always communicated with us any scheduled downtime they were going to go with. Even then, I don't think there's been but a couple of hours total in the 2 years I've used them. I expect VoipO to continue with great service, reliability, dependability, and quality even after launch. They've put too much time, money, and effort into this to slip up. They have been 100% dedicated since day one. They are definitely the best I've used to date. Followup comments:
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After giving them a try, I am not disappointed. No calls for me to support this device (you know relatives). It just works like the expensive POTS line did, but now she pays 15% of what AT&T billed. I have also set up their BYOD option on my iPhone, and it works great too. Followup comments:
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Using 1 residential line. Founder's plan of $99 - no other fees. This included a virtual number that is now my Line-2. Awesome Call Filtering Cloned line CID/CNAM Call routing Remote access/dialing from my cell. (Great for calling Canada from the road.) Prices are changing soon for new sign-ups. The same time, a beta Reseller package is being launched. Check out VOIPo.com, you won't regret it! Jim, AKA usa2k Time for an update 11/24/08 VOIPo is still great. Has not yet gone full throttle ... they have been testing their live chat support. I would not be surprised if some time soon the site gets switched on. ( I know that has bee heard before. ) Still no complaints. I have two VOIPo lines, but do not place any large usage demands. I canceled an independent Toll-free service I pointed at VOIPo, and have a Windsor Ontario Canada number (voip.ms) pointed at my VOIPo URL. That along with my 734-437-XXXX MI number, and my 352-399-XXXX FL number, cover all my needs. I am happily using the GS HT286 devices. New customers will get the two-phone port Grand Stream HT502 with built-in router. (If you would rather have the tiny HT286, contact support@voipo.com directly and you can likely get it.) Some people had better results with the HT502. That's about it for now. As a beta participant, I did get a good look at the behind the scenes preparation involved in bringing the VOIPo product to the public. Their final design/engineering team is top notch. There was nothing in their process that has rushed their offering to the public. Everything was tested, and they even had their system audited so that they will provide a secure reliable VoIP experience. The price above is a guess at their 6 month offering. I think you will learn that the discounted price will not lock of the service used, and any remaining will be refunded after deducting the no-discounted portion used - but not exceeding what you prepaid.. (Keep in mind to read the TOS and verify what I say here. Once VOIPo is fully launched, these details will be in black and white and available to read for yourself.) The features are easily accessed using the VOIPo vPanel web page. Inbound Routing: A favorite of mine! I can block everything that is not in my Phone Book. Whitelist/Blacklist can be applied to numbers or groups of numbers. You can create as many groups as you need. Block all then let Whitelist numbers through. My local area code is 734xxxxxxx so I also allowed 734******** to ring through without being in my Phone Book. Calls from people in Ontario Canada are not complete in my Phone Book while the Mother-In-Law stays here so I also allow 519******* to ring the phone. The possibilities are amazing. (Whitelist/Blacklist/Voicemail/Forward/Busy Tone/Disconnected) Outbound Routing: I forward the dialed number 613 to 613@fwd.pulver.com so I can try the FreeWorldDialup Echo Test. I send 411 to GOOG411 information directory (411 to 8004664411) I send 611 to 8005558355 which is an excellent information service. 550 goes to the wife's cell phone. 551 goes to my youngest daughter's cell phone 552 goes to my cell phone. 554 goes to the Mother-In-Law's home. 555 goes to my work. You can see all the possibilities. E911 is a painless entry on vPanel. They will let you choose from more than one possible location. I think that flexibility is referred to as Nomadic E911. I think a soft phone offering is in the works. Beta testers have used soft phones and the GrandStream Telephone adapter. Your adapter does not need to be feature rich because the VOIPo back-end does the fancy part. The GrandStream will need a port on your router - * - so you need a router to use the TA. I don't use the user Telemarketer Block, but it is available. Voicemail on vPanel, from the VOIPo phone dialing 123, and SMS messages ... Virtual numbers can be added. Toll-free numbers should be available at Launch. I used a Florida Virtual number for a while. So far no indication of more than one Primary number for each account. There has been a PSTN number during beta to access your Voice Mail remotely by phone. The beta has never inconvenienced me with any long outage. I really don't recall not having dial tone during the beta. 2/7/2007 is when I received info and setup a Sipura SPA2000 in the early stage. We tested ZOOM TAs for a while. As fancy as they were, the VOIPo service did not need their complexity, and potential to have service issues. Using the GrandStream VOIPo took a lesson from KISS, and likely reduced their start-up investment also. NOTE: The soft phone should have all the same abilities, because VOIPo does all the work on the back-end, not the device or your soft phone. If FAX capability is not offered at launch, expect it to come. VOIPo has recognized that FAX has merit. They are also realistic in concluding that reliable FAX is not a VoIP product. It is a number-to-email product for incoming, and a file-upload-to -FAX for outgoing. There has been ongoing testing, and as is the VOIPo way ... you will see it when it is worth every penny, Call history is a searchable functional feature on vPanel. I could use some way of summarizing total hours for a time period. But VOIPo does listen to suggestions. they may respond to key changes slowly, but when offered, you will see their value. VOIPo like others these days are getting on the scene with a big list of extras compared to traditional phones and the good old early days. CID+CNAM works. The Phone Book makes you phone even smarter. I am never sure if outgoing CNAM works as advertised for VOIPo, Vonage, BroadvoxDirect, or Packet8. So many people can map CID to a name, or they don't have a service that does a dip in a LIDB so I'm not sure what I display. I wish there was a free service to call that spells you outgoing CNAM when you call. Most services pass the right name within the provider numbers, so that would be a false test. BTW there is no Bandwidth Saver and I never thought to ask them what compression they use? I also would not be surprised if there are things VOIPo may have in the works that us beta testers don't know about. As a beta tester, I have always felt they tell us all we need and tell us much more beyond that. Some may also point out that VOIPoTim was involved in ViaTalk. Personally, I have never tried that service and have no strong opinion about it. I am glad that VOIPo came to be, no matter the path taken. I feel you will find VOIPo to be forthright, responsive, reliable, reliable, and reliable. As a beta tester I had a long run of free service. I was paying Packet8 for unlimited service throughout the beta test until July 5th 2008 when I canceled Packet8. I only have great things to say about Packet8 except that their prices were creeping higher over time. When I had Vonage, and BroadvoxDirect, the prices dipped lower, and never went upward, even though new customer's pricing did rise. As an early beta tester, we will be paying for our service, but our residential price will be better than an average customer can get. VOIPoTim is kind for doing this because the Residential pricing should prove to be competitive when it debuts! For those biding your time, I hope it has been worth the wait!  9/29/08 More on biding time ... Those contacting VOIPoTim I believe have been able to get new service. I expect all the VIP contacts have had opportunity to sign up. I personally have two lines (beta user discounted), at one year terms each. If you get multiple lines, like me, you will wish they could be combined in one vPanel interface so the Contact directory and such could be unified and less redundant. Still, all good things come to those that wait. VOIPo is active at the wheel and I see no slowing of their deliberate forward pace. Only a crystal ball might say when the gates are wide open for business, but they will surely be ready to scale for anything, even over-night. Followup comments:
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I got a web site (vpanel) ID and password almost instantly when I subscribed. The adapter took about 10 days to arrive with the Labor Day holiday weekend thrown in there. I suspect that if it weren't for the obscene USPS delivery times in my area the device would have arrived sooner. Install went smoothly. I plugged into the wrong phone jack initially (bizarrely, the active jack was Line 2, not Line 1 as one would expect--but see the issue I mention later). Phone worked right away once I got the right jack, and I had VOIP service with free long distance throughout the house. Since then there has been a series of annoying little issues. First, the VOIP adapter was either not provisioned correctly or had some other problem--it would cycle its active port between port 1 and port 2 at a seemingly random interval. I let this happen about 4 times thinking that it would settle down once it'd been active for awhile, but it didn't. Contacted support via Viopo's "vpanel" and got a reponse (and a fix) within minutes. I restarted the device as the requested, and the fix seems to have worked the first time as I've gone a couple of weeks without a port change now. Very impressed with support responsiveness. The next problem was a billing problem, which has happened twice now. Voipo notifies me that my bill is ready and I can pay by logging onto vpanel. I do so, click the Billing tab and click the Click to Pay button next to my bill entry, followed by OK. I get a message indicating "Payment attempt successful," but the "UNPAID" flag next to my bill doesn't change, and PayPal has no indication that a payment has been made. The first time this happened I assumed it would take time for the payment to register but in a few days I got another payment reminder from Voipo and ended up contacting their support. It took a couple of messages back and forth, but they eventually got my payment to credit. It happened again today, and I filed another trouble ticked at 11 pm on Sunday. Hopefully they will contact me early tomorrow, but I'd be more impressed if billing would just happen as it's supposed to without this intervention. If this happens and I'm out of town I worry that I'll be disconnected. The last problem is one of call quality. In general, voice quality is acceptable. Although I sometimes get dropouts or garbled sound, it doesn't happen often enough to interfere significantly with the conversation. I did have a call dropped once, but it might have been the other party's cell phone that did it. Sometimes Voipo's connection speed after dialing is really slow, and sometimes they don't connect me at all--on a bad day it might take 2-3 dialing attempts to make the connection. Once connected, the call is reliable. I do seem to have varying amounts of latency on the call, which can make calls with certain people very difficult, just because it interposes gaps in the conversation which encourages the other person to speak and I end up unintentionally speaking over them, which they then don't discover for an additional second or so which makes us both stop talking and then it starts all over. Makes for a very choppy conversation. This is by far the worst quality issue of those I've mentioned, but I've seen this issue with ALL Voip providers I've tried so I'm not sure whether to blame Voipo specifically or the technology in general. I do know that corporations I've worked for who had VOIP didn't have this annoying latency, but they also had SLA-level service on their WAN networks. Some judicious QOS setting manipulation on my router/firewall might improve the latency issue somewhat. Bottom line: I think Voipo is promising, if they can fix these niggling issues. Certainly the price is right. I have a number transfer request in process right now, and will update this review as time goes on. Followup comments:
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Well- I spoke to soon- I have been using the temp # and have been disconnected 3x's in the last 1/2 hour, Time will tell- I switch back to Vonage for the night - I changed my call quality and reliability to a rating of 3 10/4- Overnight I switched back to the VOIPo router and this morning had no dialtone- had to reset the device- Has any one had issues with the router that it possibly is defective? 10/12- I called Tech Support with the issue of calls cutting off- ticket was opened and looks to be cleared up from there side, I just faxed over my port # request, TS is willing to help, friendly, and are easy to reach, The website is hurting and needs a real overhaul- was told by TS that it's the process of being updated. Really like that you can edit the ph#'s that call you with the Caller ID info, also where you can block a specific annoying #'s and default to a busy signal so you never have to answer or have it go to VM. There seems to be an intermittent issue with my callers hearing an echo sometime when I speak- I just submitted a ticket to TS to get it cleared up. Update- 10/31/09- I had my # transfered and finally completed yesterday- Now I try to use the service and the router is dead!- The internet display flashes, The LED lights up for a brief second on the phone display and then immediately goes out. I went to the website and called and there is no indication of any outages- I think the website or the recording needs to mention this other wise the customer has no way on knowing if there is an outage or not- I have now changed the rating to a 2 for reliability and TS. I have submitted a ticket for this, also submitted another ticket prior to this issue for something else. Update 10/31/09- 11/1/09- I have been getting feedback via the ticket system from Voipo from over the weekend to get me back up and running- It's listed as medium level issue- I would think it would be considered high as the service is not working Followup comments:
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Everything is just about ready and calls have been working perfectly. It will be nice to have a new choice in VoIP that actually cares about it's customer base. The Control Panel is user friendly, and the custom calling options are plentiful. I know Voipo is going to be a big hit among VoIP users. UPDATE: All my other providers have been laid to rest. Voipo has worked so well for me that I put away my second and third ATA. I very rarely even visit these forums anymore because I am completely satisfied with the service I have, Followup comments:
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--- update 4/15/09 --- my number will be ported on the 28th. Wish me luck! --- update 4/29/09 --- my number got ported yesterday. I got it fixed today (required tier 2 call) Followup comments:
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VOIPo
(45)
(19)
Denver,Adams,CO
$11 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
"Plug & Play, Very Good Quality, Great Great Price"
"Need to add Help/info screens to VPanel"
"Too soon for to tell for sure but the experience so far is 100% Thumbs Up!"
Good luck with VOIPo though!
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Business customer
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