Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?
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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.
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@jaredbusch said in Choosing a SIP Provider - What Should I Look For?:
@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.
Looks like 250 get you somewhere between 3 to 9 hours of email response time, no phone calls.
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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.I've never had a problem with their free, E-mail support. I usually got responses within 24 hours.
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@eddiejennings 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.I've never had a problem with their free, E-mail support. I usually got responses within 24 hours.
Same experience as you, just thought it needed to be mentioned.
