Small Business Phone Systems

RingCentral, one of our #1 picks for a Small Business Phone system, is (for a limited time) offering 10% Off in addition to its Free Trial, AND if you want a TOLL FREE number, they’re still WAIVING the $15 set-up fee. If you have been considering getting a toll free number AND a very low-cost phone system and fax solution for your business, RingCentral does it all and is extremely reliable (read my review).

Sign up for RingCentral with the 10% discount here.

Read my review of RingCentral here.

Read about RingCentral’s reliability here.

EzineArticles.com made the author of this blog an ‘Expert Author’ on Small Business Phone/Communications topics. Check out our list of articles (it’s just beginning!) published on EzineArticles.com here.

Still deciding which Virtual Small Business Phone System (or ‘Virtual PBX’) to purchase? The ever-trustworthy PC World magazine reviews them here.

  I recently published “How To Get a BIG COMPANY Phone System for under $1 a Day” , and you can get it for free right now for a limited time! If you have been thinking about getting a very easy-to-use phone system for your business for cheap, this instantly downloadable guide is for you. What’s in the Guide?

Read the rest of this entry »

Many business owners ask for my recommendations of the best phone service, marketing ideas, data backup services, etc. I’ve listed all my recommendations on this web page, so please click on it, and then bookmark it for future use!

These are either free or really cheap services and software that can help your business tremendously. If you want to see something added/reviewed, email me!

Read the rest of this entry »

I am VERY excited about this…

I have been using regular old Skype for a long time now, and have saved literally hundreds of dollars - perhaps thousands - on local and international phone calls made from me, at home, for my home-based business. (You can read my Skype review here). I have found Skype to be reliable and cheap as a standalone phone service.

Now Skype has introduced PrettyMay Call Center for Skype (PMCCS) (goofy name!) . It’s a Virtual PBX that you set-up on your PC in just 10 minutes! (But it will still work with your PC turned off). You and your employees have to have Skype installed to use it (in other words, it’s a PBX that works in conjunction with SkypeIn, SkypeOut, etc You Pay $150 for the PBX - That’s ALL (other than your regular low, low Skype Charges). PMCCS’ Benefits to you:

• With Skype, you employees will be able to receive calls transferred by PMCCS for free at any time, anywhere.
• With SkypeIn service, you customers will be able to dial into the Phone System from any cell phone, landline phone or mobile phone.
• With SkypeOut service, your employees will be able to make cheap international calls through PrettyMay outbound call center.
• With SkypePro service, your employees will pay nothing per minute for calls to landlines within the same country.

Check it out. You’ve got nothing to lose with Skype’s 15-Day Free Trial.

One question I consistently hear from folks who are considering trying a phone system solution like ‘RingCentral’ is: ‘is it reliable?’.

Aside from having a virtually clean record with the Better Business Bureau, RingCentral continues to rack up awards. And it just won another, from Internet Telephony Magazine. These awards are usually testimony to a company’s staying power, product innovation, and reliability.

You can read the press release here.

You can sign up for RingCentral here. They are still offering a free trial, plus they’ll double your minutes.

Business owners like me have a love-hate relationship with Internet faxing. We hate it because it’s still quite not “plug and play” (but it’s close), like a traditional fax machine is. But we love it because it is much more efficient and flexible than a traditional fax machine. To wit:

• No dedicated phone line or machine is required
• True paperless communications
• Ability to simultaneously send and receive faxes

Faxing on the Rise Read the rest of this entry »

RATING:

Pros:

• Very inexpensive (a basic membership is FREE)
• Many mobile/telephone plans don’t have Skype’s multitude of features
• Great for: high-volume domestic and/or international callers; very small office/home office professionals, independent consultants, real estate agents, etc
• Excellent if you need multiple “local” numbers around the U.S./World
• With new high-tech phones available, Skype no longer needs a PC to work.

Cons:

• Using some of Skype’s collaborative tools and features with other parties is impossible if they don’t also have Skype
• Skype’s reliability is only as good as your internet connection/PC stability.
• Skype is not a full phone system but can be used with one. But if you just need a main phone number, auto attendant, multiple extensions, etc., we recommend a low-cost, ‘hosted’ phone system solution, like RingCentral.

If you make a lot of business calls and you’re not using Skype yet, drop everything you’re doing and sign up for a free account. See, when Skype was first being widely used, analysts and critics dismissed the service as an unreliable alternative to POTS (plain old telephone lines) and cell phones.

But I’ve been a Skype user for over a year, and I have yet to experience an outage. Very occasionally, I get a middling quality connection. But overall, using Skype saves my business hundreds of dollars a year in telephone charges. And (the best part), Skype lets my business do things I can’t do with any other service. Read the rest of this entry »

Inc.com (the website for Inc. Magazine) features this Blog in its “Breaking Entrepreneurial News” section. Check it out here. The New York Times carried the same story on its site here.