No matter how well your small business is doing, as a business owner, you want to be smart with your money. There are a variety of places you might be able to cut costs, but there’s one avenue for potential savings that you might not have considered before. Switching from a traditional business phone plan to a VoIP phone plan is a money saver for many companies.
What is VoIP?
VoIP is a technology that businesses have been using for many years. It allows you to make and receive phone calls over digital internet lines instead of over traditional phone lines. At CTS, one of our favorite VoIP providers is GoToConnect. They guarantee 99.9% uptime reliability and 24/7 proactive support–much like another company we know of!
The Advantages of VoIP
VoIP offers a lot of advantages over traditional business phone plans. For one, the technology is more customizable, which provides a huge range of options for how, where, and when you receive calls. With a VoIP-based phone plan, it’s extremely simple to take phone calls on an office phone during business hours, and then to transfer them to your private cell after-hours. They also offer features like standard video calling, the ability to run your own internal telephone board exchange (PBX), and control over the equipment that handles telephone service in your office.
The biggest benefit of VoIP for small businesses is the cost. VoIP plans are often significantly cheaper than similar plans offered by traditional commercial telecoms. In fact, a causal analysis of the most popular VoIP plans for small businesses puts the average cost at around $20-$40/month. Some offer bare-bones service for even lower prices. Top-of-the-line small business packages rarely go over $50. Compare that to telephone companies, which typically start around $50 and go up quickly. VoIP offers a strong possibility of savings for your small business.
The Disadvantages of VoIP
Of course, VoIP services bring up some disadvantages too. In order to take advantage of the best customization and control options, you need fairly extensive equipment set up (although more and more, these options are made available through cloud services). Unlike traditional telephone lines, VoIP requires both power and internet to be functioning in order to work. If you lose either one, you lose your phone lines. This sounds like a bigger disadvantage than it is–when was the last time you lost either of these for an extended period of time?
Are the savings connected with VoIP worth the few disadvantages it may bring? We can’t answer that question for you, but we’re to answer any questions you may have about VoIP. If you want to know how it could specifically benefit your business, we can talk through that too. Contact us today to start the conversation.