Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?
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Circling back to this. I saw a thread from @JaredBusch regarding comparisons between legacy and SIP providers that I am going to have to study. Is everyone still recommending voip.ms and Twillio (also Flowroute, Vodex and Inteleeper).
We are also looking at moving our call center of about 12-15 reps to a hosted solution, as our new CS manager is not happy with the workgroup functionality in Mitel (ShoreTel) Connect and doesn't seem to liek the upgraded (more expensive) call center package features either.
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@wrx7m Yes, those are good SIP providers but can you describe a little about your call/usage patterns? It will help with which providers I'd recommend.
Did you want the call center to be connected to your regular phone system? What workgroup functionality (ideally) is you CS manager looking for?
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@mikesmithsbrain said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
@wrx7m Yes, those are good SIP providers but can you describe a little about your call/usage patterns? It will help with which providers I'd recommend.
Did you want the call center to be connected to your regular phone system? What workgroup functionality (ideally) is you CS manager looking for?
We will probably have two solutions. At least, for now; keeping Shoretel on-prem (but migrate to a SIP trunk) for everyone but the call center and have an unknown hosted solution for the call center.
The call center is inbound for tech support and customer service. We don't do any outbound campaigns or transfer many calls from the call center to other internal extensions.
I will be meeting with the CS manager to discuss what she is looking for. She has told me that she has been looking at Nice-InContact, Mitel’s MiCC Flex, and then zentalk.
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I've been playing around hard with my home lab Asterisk build the past few months and have been testing various SIP trunk providers. My preferred provider is Flowroute with VoIP.ms coming in as a close second.
What I like about Flowroute is that they pass you the media stream from the media gateway that is terminating the call. So, in theory, you have the most direct audio path possible. In my testing, this seems to be true. When comparing latency with Flowroute vs VoIP.ms. In most cases Flowroute's latency is lower. In cases where it's not lower, it's unnoticeable equal to VoIP.ms (to my ear at any rate).
Pricing wise they are pretty similar. Flowroute is slightly cheaper outbound, but their inbound rate and monthly DID rates are higher (not by much, but depending on your usage could be exponential). Also, VoIP.ms has a lot more rate centers to choose from when buying DIDs via the web portal. Flowroute's can be limited depending on the NPA you desire, but I haven't reached out to their support (which is really good, as is VoIP.ms') to see if you can request rate centers in NPAs not listed on the portal.
I ported my home number to Flowroute and the process went without a hiccup. Was completed on the date and within the time window they provided.
A decent provider to play around with if you want something cheap and/or as backup is DID Logic. Their inbound/outbound rates are around $0.005/min and the cal quality/latency is good. However establishing an account is tough as they have this "anti fraud" process you have to hoop through.
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@anthonyh I appreciate the detailed information.
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How many people are using Twilio? They are getting a lot more attention recently.
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@strongbad said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
How many people are using Twilio? They are getting a lot more attention recently.
I'm going to use them for a new DID I need. Probably not until next week.
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I'm helping @krisleslie put one in today!
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@strongbad said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
How many people are using Twilio? They are getting a lot more attention recently.
My former company is using Twilio. I had good success with it and a PBX in Vultr.
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@eddiejennings said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
@strongbad said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
How many people are using Twilio? They are getting a lot more attention recently.
My former company is using Twilio. I had good success with it and a PBX in Vultr.
Yup, it works great there
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Whoever had Windstream, RUN! That's all I can say. I almost had to write the FCC on them due to shady practices for porting numbers!
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Kinda getting the hang of Twilio it's different than what we use right now which is Vitelity but I think it's only because I came from telco's years ago and was expecting something different
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@krisleslie Yeah Ive got family in Kentucky that has to use windstream and they are very shady.
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@jmoore said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
@krisleslie Yeah Ive got family in Kentucky that has to use windstream and they are very shady.
They are the absolute worst.
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@strongbad said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
How many people are using Twilio? They are getting a lot more attention recently.
Moved all my trunks to Twilio.
Love the whole console & UI layout.Also, use Authy (another one of their products)
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The one downside with Twilio is support.
Free support is via email, unless you want to pay (per month) & it ain't cheap. -
@fateknollogee said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
Also, use Authy (another one of their products)
Didn't realize that that was one of theirs.
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@fateknollogee said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
The one downside with Twilio is support.
Free support is via email, unless you want to pay (per month) & it ain't cheap.How not cheap is it?
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@wrx7m said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
@fateknollogee said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
The one downside with Twilio is support.
Free support is via email, unless you want to pay (per month) & it ain't cheap.How not cheap is it?
Looks like they have some new tiers available:
https://www.twilio.com/support-plans
Min. is $250/mo. -
@fateknollogee said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
@wrx7m said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
@fateknollogee said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
The one downside with Twilio is support.
Free support is via email, unless you want to pay (per month) & it ain't cheap.How not cheap is it?
Looks like they have some new tiers available:
https://www.twilio.com/support-plans
Min. is $250/mo.$250/month is less than two hours of my time in a month. so think about it that way.
Will depend on what qualifies in that $250 as support.
