Pros and Cons of VoIP for Small Business

VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol offers many benefits to businesses that switch over to using it as their main form of communication. Because VoIP uses your internet connection as the platform for making telephone calls instead of traditional phone networks, it has the potential to offer more features and options than conventional telephony can currently provide. While the benefits are many and the pricing tiers are fairly simple to understand, there are some potential pitfalls to keep in mind when setting up and using a VoIP Phone service for small business. To help you understand these potential pitfalls, I have outlined the basic pros and cons of VoIP and then compared them to some of the more specific pros and cons of mobile apps that use VoIP technology.

The pros of having a VoIP Phone service for small business include the possibility of reducing costs and getting lower monthly bills, reduced or eliminated long distance charges, and the ability to seamlessly add in contact forwarding to reduce International calling costs. The cons of this type of Phone system include the need to install and maintain expensive hardware, the potential for poor battery life on some devices, and poor sound quality on some devices. One of the advantages of VoIP is the ease with which mobile phones can be used in conjunction with computers. This allows businesses to take their employees on the road and still be able to communicate with their staff using a standard PDA or mobile phone. While this type of functionality does have some drawbacks, the cost savings and convenience factor easily trump them.

Another potential pitfall of VoIP is that many businesses that choose to go down this route may find that they miss out on certain features offered by traditional phone systems such as the use of caller ID and call waiting. A good VoIP service provider will allow customers to use their internet connection as a way to make calls and will feature caller ID options that allow them to select who they want to receive their calls from and to block callers that they do not wish to talk to. Other potential obstacles to using a VoIP service for small businesses include the cost of integrating VoIP with existing business software and hardware. Because businesses are paying a higher fee for VoIP than they would for a traditional phone system, they will need to make sure that they are able to integrate any new hardware into their existing business software.