Small Business Phone System Suggestions?

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JoseCuervo

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JoseCuervo
I am switching one of our office locations from an old DSL/Phone Company solution to a, hopefully, faster solution from the Cable company.

I need suggestions on the hardware that I should buy and install prior to the phCable company running the line and leaving their cable modem. We currently have some ancient AT&T hardware that is decades old and is kind of unsupportable. I have no desire to keep it on life support one day longer than required.

Phone Users: We have 6 offices/desks that need phones on the desk. We also need to keep a fax line, as, fax still gets used a bit to justify a standalone fax machine, for various business reasons.

Phone Lines: We seem to get along just fine with 2 voice lines and 1 fax line. 3 phone numbers, in total.

Lan Users: Just like phone, we need 6 locations with LAN jacks for wired connection. I am not in the office often enough to support/troubleshoot wireless connections with non-tech savvy users.​

MY main question is what type of new phone system/platform should I buy and start installing? I supppose I could go to BestBuy and ask the 20 year old kid in the blue Polo shirt, but thought I might start here, first.

I am assuming I will buy from Staples, Amazon, or Costco, if possible.
 
JoseCuervo said:
I am switching one of our office locations from an old DSL/Phone Company solution to a, hopefully, faster solution from the Cable company.

I need suggestions on the hardware that I should buy and install prior to the phCable company running the line and leaving their cable modem. We currently have some ancient AT&T hardware that is decades old and is kind of unsupportable. I have no desire to keep it on life support one day longer than required.
Phone Users: We have 6 offices/desks that need phones on the desk. We also need to keep a fax line, as, fax still gets used a bit to justify a standalone fax machine, for various business reasons.

Phone Lines: We seem to get along just fine with 2 voice lines and 1 fax line. 3 phone numbers, in total.

Lan Users: Just like phone, we need 6 locations with LAN jacks for wired connection. I am not in the office often enough to support/troubleshoot wireless connections with non-tech savvy users.​
MY main question is what type of new phone system/platform should I buy and start installing? I supppose I could go to BestBuy and ask the 20 year old kid in the blue Polo shirt, but thought I might start here, first.

I am assuming I will buy from Staples, Amazon, or Costco, if possible.
Click to expand...

Cisco UC320. Great little system.
 
Can't help much as it relates to the phone system but do wonder why you think you need a dedicated fax machine. We eliminated our fax system years ago and went with a system that dumps inbound faxes directly into Outlook. Our outbound faxes are created by scanning the document and faxing via the computer. No more paper files :)
 
Www.3CX.com - it looks cheesy, but we use it in a 8- location international company and run everything off an MS windows virtual machine.
 
We use Switchvox. About 100 employees in our main corporate office and then several other remote locations that have phones that connect to it over a secure VPN link. Also some remote workers. We're pretty happy with it.

That said, it's probably overkill for your needs and IDK that they have a pricing option that would make sense for so few users.
 
We use www.onjive.com

Very flexible and affordable. Best part is it's a completely virtual PBX and you can configure it however you please. Cisco SPA514G for most of the devices...

virtual fax is, IIRC, $2.99 a month and way better than a analog fax.
 
I use RingCentral for a lot of the services and they support a number of VOIP phones you can buy from them or elsewhere on the market.
 
We just tossed out Charter's cable-based solution in favor of running our own PBX software. Charter was running appx $65/mo per line, with only one channel per -- basically a crummy POTS imitation, a waste of the technology potential.

I wouldn't homebrew the PBX again if I had it to do-over (and in this case, I had an ulterior motive for wanting to learn Asterisk). I'd go hosted with one of the many cloud providers. Spending my time fighting off call-mooching Liberian hackers doesn't even make very good storytelling amongst my geek friends. :D

We got our phones from eBay, though -- Polycom 650s, and they're excellent, rugged little things. Paid about $50 apiece, and got 3 sidecars in the bargain. Trivial to configure, they sound great, and everyone was able to use them with no training. Plus, since they have an integrated Eth switch in them, they just piggyback onto the existing LAN, no added wiring needed.

We're using flowroute for our upstream provider. They've been decent. No real complaints or kudos.

$0.02

- Mike
 
Two lines? Don't make it complicated, unless there are more advanced features that you need. Go get a bunch of two line phones at OfficeMax (or the like) or even 4 line phones if you want to grow. If you need voicemail, park and such, look at a centrex/hosted VoIP solution.
 
I am running trixbox here at our office and I am happy with it. Its not really open source anymore since fonality got ahold of it, so I have been using PBX in a flash on newer installs. Very feature rich. Easy to configure.

I would also steer away from analog lines. Lots a good sip trunk providers out there.
 
I'm using an Ooma box on two lines, and a cloud-based solution for fax. Sufficient for my business needs.
 
Check out my company.. cytracom.com fully hosted solution. No hardware onsite except for the phones which we provide for free.

Site
 
Some of these solutions seem a bit complicated.

I was hoping for a box that plugged into the cable modem, and had some sort of router to 6 phone wires, just like our LAN router sends out the 6 Ethernet wires.

I want to be able to be gone for a week and not worry about the system being down, hacked, deleted....
 
My office uses BIZFON - easy setup - voicemail, call transfers, etc. relatively inexpensive, no maint. Or issues in the 10 yrs we've had it.
 
If you...or anyone...goes with a "hosted" type service get your own phone number through your local provider and set it up as a Remote Forwarding Number first then point it to the phone number the host gives you. That way YOU own the #, not them. I did that back in '98 and have been able to keep my same business # through multiple moves all over the West Coast.
 
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