Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...
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Another factor, and I'm not making any recommendations here, is that desk phones are great but not ubiquitous. For some users, you might just want a soft phone (software on the desktop.) This can be totally free and saves desk space. I do this myself and lots of people do. I'm not recommending this for everyone. But it is a new option you lacked before and a few rare phone users might want to go this way.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
Your cost is all in the phones (and the bridge.) A cheap bridge is like $100 maybe? Mabye Jared has bought one recently that he would recommend. It's not a large item. How many POTS lines does it need to handle?
All of the real cost is the desk phones. These range from super cheap (under $40) to around $150 at the top end that you would ever consider. Most people buy somewhere in the middle. Obviously these add up quickly, but they are a one time cost and visibly replace ancient phones on desks.
This doesn't count the cost of building the PBX either though.. that would be another expense.
He can do that himself or pay for it. But it's a "pop in the ISO and step through it" process. Certainly something he can do himself. Especially with no WAN component.
For a noob, it's easy to see this take someone 20+ hours to setup when you consider building the extensions, v-mail boxes, IVRs, etc, etc, etc.
This post is more for the OP. Not to scare you off, just something to be aware of.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Another factor, and I'm not making any recommendations here, is that desk phones are great but not ubiquitous. For some users, you might just want a soft phone (software on the desktop.) This can be totally free and saves desk space. I do this myself and lots of people do. I'm not recommending this for everyone. But it is a new option you lacked before and a few rare phone users might want to go this way.
But you should consider an headset for this situation.
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Setup and learning curve are important but not the main issue.
The main issue is just that it runs reliably. We do have a good server running Zen already.
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@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Another factor, and I'm not making any recommendations here, is that desk phones are great but not ubiquitous. For some users, you might just want a soft phone (software on the desktop.) This can be totally free and saves desk space. I do this myself and lots of people do. I'm not recommending this for everyone. But it is a new option you lacked before and a few rare phone users might want to go this way.
But you should consider an headset for this situation.
Yes, definitely get a headset.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Setup and learning curve are important but not the main issue.
The main issue is just that it runs reliably. We do have a good server running Zen already.
Yup, there you go. Far better than some hardware appliance where you can't take a backup or do anything should something fail. Way more reliability and stability with an enterprise VM than a cheap appliance.
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@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@dashrender said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
If we can get new phones, better service, better controller, and keep our current phone service (for time being only with option of upgrading), for less than around $3000, that's doable, at least worth pitching to boss and landlord.
Your cost is all in the phones (and the bridge.) A cheap bridge is like $100 maybe? Mabye Jared has bought one recently that he would recommend. It's not a large item. How many POTS lines does it need to handle?
All of the real cost is the desk phones. These range from super cheap (under $40) to around $150 at the top end that you would ever consider. Most people buy somewhere in the middle. Obviously these add up quickly, but they are a one time cost and visibly replace ancient phones on desks.
This doesn't count the cost of building the PBX either though.. that would be another expense.
He can do that himself or pay for it. But it's a "pop in the ISO and step through it" process. Certainly something he can do himself. Especially with no WAN component.
For a noob, it's easy to see this take someone 20+ hours to setup when you consider building the extensions, v-mail boxes, IVRs, etc, etc, etc.
This post is more for the OP. Not to scare you off, just something to be aware of.
All things that exist on the Avaya too and would need to be done on the new one.
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Ok, so 11 phones. you already have a server to host the PBX, you're nowhere near $3000 including a new switch with POE if that's what you really wanted to do
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@bnrstnr said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Ok, so 11 phones. Do you have an onsite server with hypervisor installed?
Ya we have an R430 with a ton of unused RAM and HDD. My only beef with it is that I can't put it downstairs in the dusty pathetic little wiring closet/hole where the rest of the stuff is. It's upstairs in an office, plugged in through a little 6 port switch with all the rest of the stuff in that office.
It's been reliable enough, but not the LAN connection I would like it to have. -
Say 12 phones to be safe, go gang busters at $150. That's $1,800 tops. Go low end with $38 and 11 of them and ti is only $418.
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Here is a high end Sangoma gateway that handles four PSTN POTS connections. At $400, it might be perfect.
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Or $250 for a Grandstream
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@bnrstnr said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Ok, so 11 phones. Do you have an onsite server with hypervisor installed?
Ya we have an R430 with a ton of unused RAM and HDD. My only beef with it is that I can't put it downstairs in the dusty pathetic little wiring closet/hole where the rest of the stuff is. It's upstairs in an office, plugged in through a little 6 port switch with all the rest of the stuff in that office.
It's been reliable enough, but not the LAN connection I would like it to have.Take some of that budget to hire someone to run a new home run connection from that room to the switch downstairs if you can.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
@bnrstnr said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Ok, so 11 phones. Do you have an onsite server with hypervisor installed?
Ya we have an R430 with a ton of unused RAM and HDD. My only beef with it is that I can't put it downstairs in the dusty pathetic little wiring closet/hole where the rest of the stuff is. It's upstairs in an office, plugged in through a little 6 port switch with all the rest of the stuff in that office.
It's been reliable enough, but not the LAN connection I would like it to have.FreePBX needs less than 1GB of RAM and 20GB of disks is plenty and almost no CPU.
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@scottalanmiller said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Or $250 for a Grandstream
He needs the GXW4108 not 4104.
But yeah I have the GXW4108 in production at a similar client with crap internet.
FreePBX 14
10 phones of your choice, I recommend the T42S by default or T46S for more visible buttons. Then one W52P wireless DECT phone. This gives you gigabit "pass though" to the desktop. You will need to buy power supplies for the phones. At $7 each. Or buy a POE switch.You can buy the T42G or T46G used to save money.
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Oh I have a used Sangoma Vega 50 I can sell you. It was something bought when a Grandstream GXW4108 did not work at another client. Turned out to be a problem with Hyper-V and I ate the cost when we put the Grandstram in after finding the problem..
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I admit the more I dig in to this, the more confused I am.
I'm learning a bunch of the acronyms and trying to reason about what is a new tech and what is old tech, ITSP, PSTN, POTS, SBC, TDM, DIDs, trunks, SIP trunks, bridges. Software tools versus appliances, and what providers like voip.ms or 1-voip do.
Things easily get confusing. On one website they are comparing FreePBX to Voip.ms. But on another website a person is asking how to configure FreePBX with voip.ms as the provider. What? Are they competitors or does one provide a service and the other uses it? If I had a voip.ms account would I need FreePBX or not?
I get it that if we keep our POTS lines, then we need essentially a bridge device to convert our internal phone network to VOIP. But of course this isn't "true" VOIP since it's only internal and converts to POTS on the way out, so what good is that? Are the benefits of VOIP in this case based entirely on the features of the phones then?
My original goal is basically to allow for multiple switchable voicemail greetings. So with the VOIP internal, plus bridge appliance and POTS service, who would be controlling voicemail and inboxes? Is that what FreePBX does? Would I need the appliance AND FreePBX AND the phones and this would get the voicemail (and other) features of VOIP even if the signal still goes out over POTS? I assume FreePBX alone doesn't actually do anything, it must connect somehow to some kind of phone service.
I'm reading as much as I can and there are a few sparse diagrams here and there but I think I need some more visual tools to understand how all this fits together. Which device controls what, which is a provider and which is a bridge and what are the requirements of a basic VOIP setup? Some network diagrams of a bunch of different kinds of arrangements or topologies would be nice.
You're all saying don't bother talking to Avaya, they'll just try to sell me appliances. But then you're linking me to buying appliances anyway from Sangoma or Grandstream. Is Avaya not in this market? I really don't know who the players are, not that it matters, the prices of Sangoma and Grandstream are just fine by me.
I just need to keep studying a little, it's hard for me to work out an issue without understanding it and what each piece is responsible for. Visual learning would be good at this point cause everything else turns to acronym soup and hypotheticals.
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@guyinpv said in Small office phone setup, looking for improvements...:
Things easily get confusing. On one website they are comparing FreePBX to Voip.ms. But on another website a person is asking how to configure FreePBX with voip.ms as the provider. What? Are they competitors or does one provide a service and the other uses it? If I had a voip.ms account would I need FreePBX or not?
voip.ms is both. They sell SIP trunks that you can connect to FreePBX, they also can act as a PBX for very small setups (possibly larger ones also, but the features will be lacking).
