Cheap VoIP Service Sacramento

A quick guide to choosing the best cheap VoIP service in Sacramento

If you’re an SMB looking to implement VoIP then there’s a good chance that you’re doing so to cut costs rather than to make the most of VoIP’s advanced functionality. At the same time, however, you do need to ensure that there is a decent quality of service. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to choosing the best cheap VoIP service in Sacramento.

Steps To Getting Cheap VoIP Service

1. Start by working out what VoIP services you need

The easiest way to keep VoIP costs down is to minimize your use of VoIP. The way to do this without compromising on the quality of your working environment is to stick to implementing VoIP services for which there is a clear need (or at least a very strong want). What’s more, even if you do decide to implement a service, you can still place restrictions on its usage.

The classic example of how this works in practice is video calling. It’s a popular service and, technically, it’s fairly straightforward to implement. It is, however, extremely resource-intensive. As a point of comparison, a video call using a low-quality webcam will need about three times as much bandwidth as an audio-only call. If you want better-quality video, then you need more bandwidth. An HD-video call needs, literally, about twelve times as much bandwidth as a regular audio call.

It, therefore, makes sense to think carefully about whether or not you need video-calling at all. If you do, then consider whether you need to implement it on a wide scale or if you can limit its use to times when it adds significant value. Ideally, you’ll keep its usage to times when the network is quiet to avoid having to increase your overall bandwidth requirements.

2. Look at your cell and fax usage as well as your landline usage

The most obvious way to determine what VoIP services you need is to start by looking at your historical and current users to see what patterns you can find. Then think about whether there’s anything upcoming that might change those patterns. In addition to checking your landline bills, take a look at your cell phone usage. Anything you can do to reduce this can result in big savings.

If you’re still using fax machines, then it’s strongly recommended to look at the possibility of implementing Fax over IP (fax). This is now considered reliable and secure enough to use in even regulated industries. It’s now considered to be more secure than regular fax because it is print-on-demand so it avoids all the issues of securely printing and storing paper faxes. It also offers the potential for lower calling costs, and lower printing costs (which is also good news for the environment) and as a bonus, it can free up a lot of space.

3. Work out the most economical way to get the bandwidth you need

For most SMBs, the choice will come down to either a managed hosting arrangement for the IT infrastructure plus a separate VoIP service contract or a VoIP service contract that also includes hosting. If you go for the former, the onus is on you to make sure that your bandwidth availability always keeps pace with your requirements. You may, however, get a more affordable overall deal.

That said, if you’re in the public cloud, you might want to think carefully about implementing directly-managed hosting just for VoIP. Even if it works out a bit more expensive, the convenience of having a VoIP service partner just manage everything for you could be money well spent.

4. Think carefully about what equipment you need

If you’re on a budget, it can be tempting just to go for the free/low-cost softphones offered by VoIP service vendors. These can work perfectly well, but they generally work best when partnered with headsets so you’ll need to budget for this extra cost.

Softphones are not, however, always a suitable solution. You need to be able to see them clearly on screen for them to be practical. This may sound like stating the obvious, but the key point to note is that there can be a substantial difference between testing a softphone client with nothing else running and using a softphone client at the same time as a whole lot of other apps.

This means that sometimes VoIP handsets are the only realistic option. These are more expensive (although they come at various price points), but you will probably have the option of having them bundled with a VoIP service contract. This may work out more expensive than buying them upfront but will allow you to spread the cost.

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