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If you’ve read my comments regarding my existing cloud VOIP service ( Hosted VoIP Services ), you can probably understand why I am in search of a new provider.

I’ve read many threads, dating all the way back to 2013, and have found lots of good information. Thank you.

We’ve got a hosted system right now, 15 numbers, 19 phones. Management wants to put phones on every employee’s desk, 30 right now, probably 35 at year end.

This volume tends to make a hosted system rather expensive. On the other hand, I see two downsides to my own in house PBX: How to keep phone service with power or internet outages (and the last hurricane killed power in our building for 8 days), and the degree of difficulty in support an in house PBX from a guy who can program the basics of Cisco phones but doesn’t have much more experience.

A ShoreTel reseller has suggested an in house PBX system, with a fallback cloud service on his servers, should the PBX go down. Does this seem like a reasonable approach, ShorTel or otherwise?

This supplier has also pitched the idea of handling and setting up the basic installation of the PBX, then providing me with training to handle phone setups. For PBX upgrades, I could either learn to do it or allow the supplier to do it under a maintenance contract.

Sniffing around, I see that while ShoreTel and its resellers do provide good service, it seems they are also premium priced, with only Cisco topping them in terms of expense.

But what are the alternatives? I see that it’s possible to build a generic PBX with a server and open source software but what are the maintenance and setup headaches with doing such a thing?

And if I am looking for a turnkey PBX supplier, this seems much more difficult to sort out of the chaff that is a Google search.

Opinions and recommendations appreciated.

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I just switched out system from a SIP provider across the street (SipVine) to Fonality, and I couldn’t be happier. Good quality sound, reliable, plus the HUD and softphone capabilities, and they’re (at least last month) giving away Polycom 410’s, that I really like.

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Why would it do that? Actually it should make it even better since hosted that doesn’t charge per line would be SO much cheaper because of the size because smaller deployments struggle to overcome the base cost. Hosted woudl be insanely cheap here.

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You should never search for this. You are seeking out sales people, they are the last people you should be talking to right now. You need to talk to telephony consultants that are working for you, not letting the enemy in the gates and asking them what to do.

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Generic PBX? What does that mean here? One of the reason that we recommend FreePBX so often is because it is one of the BEST options, not because it is free. Easier to deploy, easier to manage, easier to maintain by far than Cisco and likely than Shoretel, definitely easier than 3CX. That it is easy is one of the key selling points.

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I must be mis-communicating something. Nextiva quotes me a monthly figure based upon number of phone numbers times $29.95 per line. 15 phones is $450 plus some add-ons for conferencing, etc.

It seems like a reach a point where TCO on a purchased PBX over a given time period is going to be a lot cheaper than monthly opex expense of a hosted syste.

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So a salesman suggested giving him your money. Not surprising. We could have told you that without needing to speak to him. A Cisco sales guy will pitch the same thing, but with Cisco gear, too. Guaranteed. Every time.

THe big question here would be… 1) how does a sales guy know what is a good way to go and 2) what is the benefit of the in house system for you?

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Well sure, you are picking a vendor that specifically focuses on the 2-5 user market and charges per line. Don’t do that. Look at products where you get a PBX for your company, not a line for each user. You are approaching this like you are buying a single phone for your home and then scaling that “one line” system up to 30 people, but that’s not how businesses work. When you are talking about running this in house you are talking about a PBX for the company and all the users talk to that. That’s how phones are supposed to work for business. So when you look at hosted phones, keep that exactly the same. You want a hosted PBX. NExtiva doesn’t offer that AFAIK. So of course the pricing makes no sense, because it’s the wrong kind of service.

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No, it really doesn’t. It might feel that way but it is incorrect. Here is an attempt to explain why:- The cost of the physical hosting of a PBX is trivial and there is cost to running it in house, even if it is also trivial. The in house might come in cheaper in most cases, but the amount for the actual hosting / in house portion is so low as to be background noise in the pricing so we can ignore that piece.

  • The real cost of any telephony system is your support. Hosted systems are easier to standardize and maintain for your support people even if they are the same logical system that you would run in house. So your support costs are equal or lower with hosted.

  • The “lines” that you get are your second tier of cost and they are the same no matter where you go, hosted or on premises.

Now there are certainly benefits to on premises and benefits to hosted beyond these. On premises is easier to manage end points and has fewer hops for calls to make. Hosted has better standardization, trivial site to site failover, more reliable facilities and removes your single point of failure problems from having your site and PBX fail together.

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I’m not sure how you’re calculating the TCO of on a purchased PBX, but I have a hosted service with 60+ phones in multiple locations. It will take roughly 7 years of this service to equal the quote I got from ShorTel including the annual maintenance contracts (granted, it was a cadillac quote for a hybrid design with redundancy).

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Thank you, Scott. yes, I see that I mischaracterized the costs of phone lines… they will be the same or close to the same for any implementation. I’ll check out FreePBX.

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But the hosted probably has those cadillac features, too, I would guess. So more apples to apples than not (guessing.)

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Features, yes… mainly, I just didn’t have to pay for all of the infrastructure up front in order to achieve the reliability and resilience of the service.

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Hi Wayne! Have you considered Toshiba’s IPedge Telephone System ? As you will have fewer than 40 phones by the end of the year, I am recommending IPedge EP. You could also benefit from a hybrid system, so you have cloud support in cases of natural disaster such as a hurricane.

If you would like to request a quote from a reseller, you can use this page here .

Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

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Why not review a cloud hosted PBX solution that does not charge per Phone but per call path. This gives you the benefits of turn key cloud hosted but priced but with a price tag of sip.

With 10 lines and 30 phones you are probably looking at 250 - 350 all in including usage.

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I haven’t seen anyone here address the Hurricane scenario or survivability of the premise phone system.

Asking your phone system in house to stay up and running in the event of a hurricane isn’t really a reasonable expectation. Nobody is going into the office that day anyway. I wouldn’t focus too much on that with a single location business. If you have to have someone answer a phone have your carrier forward all the calls to a number that will be able to answer. Then when the emergency is over and you can confirm everything at the business is up and running turn off the forwarding.

None of the systems mentioned here will make or receive calls if the server (PBX) is down except ShoreTel. Phone registration and call processing are all done through the server with an Asterisk based solution. Don’t let a spinning hard drive take out your voice communications.

A cloud solution with a smart phone app would be the easiest way to ensure continuity in this scenario. Reduces IT knowledge needed to deploy a voice network and maintenance. 8x8, ShoreTel cloud will both do these (as well as any cloud provider I am guessing).

Going down the Free PBX path is good if you want to tinker but you can’t really call support if you need help. You will end up spending a lot of time. Set it up in a lab, buy some cheap sip trunks and see if that works for you and your co-workers.

The ShoreTel premise option won’t be cheap and you will have to pay annual maintenance. You will also have to pay someone for phone services (ATT, Verizon, GTE etcetera). You will also need a good assessment of your network and the networking gear. Don’t trust anyone that just glosses over the network without having you run a few network tests to see if you can support what you want to do. There are a LOT of ShoreTel vendors. You can get quotes from a couple more for the same or a similar set up. Once it is up and running, they tend to stay up and running for a long time. I see systems that haven’t been updated or maintained for 10 years sometimes.

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Thank you for the sweet shoutout, Mike! It’s always great to hear what features help make communication easier for our users :slight_smile: The Polycom phone promotion unfortunately did end with the new year, but we have an amazing offer available for new users who sign up through the end of this month. If you’re interested, you can find all current Fonality offers, promotions, and rebates here: https://www.fonality.com/offers

Wayne, you might find our eBook, “Making the Right Call” (see what we did there?), helpful in your search for the right phone system for your business. It covers the different types of systems, some of the features that are available out there, and how to make the most of your budget when purchasing and managing a new system. You can check that out here: https://www.fonality.com/resources/ebooks/making-the-right-call-on-a-new-business-phone-system-free-ebook

I hope that helps! I’m happy to chat more or set up a demo for you to see the Fonality HUD in action. Feel free to shoot me a PM!