Best VoIP Service Placerville

A quick guide to choosing the best VoIP service in Placerville

Making the switch to VoIP generally requires an investment of both money and time, but a bit of strategy can save on both. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to choosing the best VoIP service in Placerville.

Steps to choose the best VoIP service

1. Start by getting a clear overview of where you are now

First of all, take a look at your service contract for your landline phones and fax machines. Check if it is linked with any other distinct but related services you use such as cell phones, internet, or TV. If it is, then you’re going to need to think about what steps need to be taken to unbundle them and what financial and technical impact that will have.

Then look at your usage of your landlines, faxes, and cell phones. See what could potentially be switched over to VoIP. In the case of landlines and faxes that will almost certainly mean everything, unless you want to hold on to a small number of traditional fax machines either as a fallback or in case you have security concerns about faxes. These days, however, fax over IP is so reliable and secure there is little to no need for traditional fax machines.

You’re probably going to need to hold onto your cell phones, however, it is definitely worth at least taking a look to see if you can transfer some of your usages to VoIP as the potential savings here could be even larger than the potential savings from converting your landlines.

2. Define your present needs and priority wants

VoIP is massively more flexible than the traditional telephone network. This means that it is much easier to scale your VoIP service up and down in line with your business cycles. That being so, for most businesses, especially SMBs, the most sensible route to VoIP adoption is to start with a fairly “bare-bones” implementation and then scale up incrementally as your needs, wants and budget allow.

Because of this, your approach should generally be to create a copy of your existing telephone system and possibly to make some “quick wins” in the form of basic, affordable (possibly even free) enhanced functionality. Let this bed in for a while and enjoy the cost savings. Then see if you want to move forward with further developments.

3. Think about your future needs and wants

Although VoIP offers companies more room to maneuver than the traditional telcos ever did, there are still costs and effort in any chance so it makes sense to be organized and plan ahead. The better you can predict what you are going to want from VoIP in the future, the easier it will be for you to check whether or not any given VoIP service vendor can support your plans, and the less likely it will be for you to need to go to the effort of finding a new VoIP service vendor, especially if, in general, you’re still perfectly happy with your old one.

4. Shortlist vendors who meet the necessary standards

One of the golden rules of business purchasing (for both goods and services) is to look at the quality first and the price second. This certainly holds true for VoIP service vendors because a lack of quality will generally make itself very noticeable very quickly. Remember that the reason VoIP took so long to become a part of the business world was because of call-quality issues. If you implement VoIP correctly, these needn’t be an issue but if you try to cut corners with your infrastructure and/or your VoIP service vendor, you’ll almost certainly regret it.

Likewise, if you compromise on security, you are asking for trouble, almost literally. In fact, you might even say that you could count yourself lucky if the security issues became apparent quickly and openly. If you implement VoIP without the necessary security in place, you could find yourself falling victim to a camouflaged attack, which could cause you a whole lot more damage (and expense and embarrassment).

Last but not least, check out what support a VoIP service vendor can offer. It’s great if they have a range of self-service options. That often makes life quicker and easier for everyone, but these need to be backed by a helpful customer service team, knowledgeable technicians, and ideally an account manager as well.

5. Look closely at calling plans (and any other relevant costs)

You’ll certainly want to see who offers you the opportunity to save the most money. Remember to look at the overall price of the service, rather than just the calling costs and don’t let yourself be seduced by services you don’t need and wouldn’t even have thought to want if they hadn’t been bundled in with a plan.

If you’d like to speak to one of the best VoIP service partners in Placerville, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.