VoIP.ms: A year later

A year ago my wife and I cut the cord, we gave up having live TV in exchange for Plex, Netflix, and faster internet. The one thing we, for good or bad, missed was the ability to have a home phone. The home phone we had was used by our family in other countries to call us (free), and we occasionally could call them for very cheap.

After many VoIP providers we tried, we finally hit the jackpot – VoIP.ms was perfect, the plans were cheap, we could hook up an IP phone, and use it on our mobile devices at any time. We recently opted for the $4.25/mo unlimited incoming calls as we started to blow past this for receiving minutes and it was cost-effective.

The call quality was initially very poor as I had selected a server across the border by mistake, after switching to one in Toronto I was able to get about 12-14ms latency, making it virtually unnoticeable latency. The quality of calls was crystal clear, we were able to pick an easy to remember phone number, and we’re right now paying $7.50/mo total — before we cut the cord, we paid $75/mo for the exact same features and very similar long-distance pricing.

Features we’re enjoying

I’m greatly enjoying the call blocking, as previously with our old system it was incredibly difficult to truly block a number. Adding an additional number is also great, for example when I started my business, I added a new number under the same account, and simply have that one redirect just to my personal phone and my office phone line.

The portability as well, I don’t need to worry about missing a call on my home phone if I’m running the Zoiper app on my phone and have an internet connection, it’ll still ring there. Additionally, I’ve got a rule set up if the line is unreachable, it’ll attempt to forward to my cell phone number if successful it’s a bit slower than direct but I can still answer the phone call.

I’ve been pushing my colleagues and friends to use VoIP.ms, but the issue they’re having is the learning curve — it’s definitely a shift from the traditional “just plug it into the DSL line and it’s got a dial tone” – but, the cost savings, in my opinion, are worth learning how to set up and configure it properly.

I’m pretty happy with VoIP.ms, and I don’t see myself changing anytime soon! Cheers to the team behind VoIP.ms!