Benefits of Hosted Phone Systems
The benefits of hosted phone systems have surpassed legacy phone systems by a mile. With a hosted phone system, you can avoid the installation and maintenance costs of a traditional phone system. Hosted phones systems are a great solution for most businesses these days.
What is a Hosted Phone System?
A Hosted Phone System in Florida is a term used to describe a voice over IP telephone system that resides in the cloud. There is no equipment on site that facilitates the VoIP service other than the telephone instrument itself. In most cases the hosted telephone service is provided by a multi-tenant server stack that is in a data center. These servers consist of a primary and secondary server for backup and in some cases georedundant locations that replicate so even if there is a natural disaster or prolonged power outage your service will be up. More on this later.
How Does a Hosted VoIP Solution Work?
As mentioned above, the hosted service begins with Phone System in Florida in the cloud. These servers are running special software to provide the PBX features to the customers. There are many manufacturers of this software so hosted providers have to decide who they wish to partner with to provide services. The provider then needs to decide which carriers they wish to connect to their hosted server stack to provide telephone numbers (DID's) and Dial Tone and SMS Text services. The sky is the limit on carriers. turnkeyvoip.com, and Sangoma are just a couple of the companies that provide carrier services to the VoIP Providers. Through the magic of the Internet the telephone service is transported to your telephone using SIP and UDP protocol.
The Benefits of a Hosted Phone System
The benefits of Hosted Phone system in Florida service are too many to mention. There used to be some debate on Legacy PBX vs Hosted Phone Service, but not anymore. Since Covid hit and remote workers are the norm, legacy PBX cannot compete. You would be hard pressed to even find a Legacy PBX. Most of the manufactures such as NEC, Avaya and Mitel all have cloud-based versions of their PBX's. Many of the popular PBX manufactures no longer exist such as Nortel. Let's get in to why this is.
Easy Installation
Easy to install. In the old days it required a small army to install a legacy PBX and it required a wall of equipment to support it. In some cases, it required a dedicated climate controlled room to facilitate a medium size business. For hosted phone service you simply plug the phone into the same cable that brings the internet to your PC or workstation. Most of the national hosted providers send the phone to you and you plug it in. No installation army on site. Another benefit is you can run the old phone system while plugging in the new. Once the numbers are ported over to the new service you simply unplug the old phones and throw them in the dumpster as your new Yealink phone is quite possibly the last phone you will ever have to purchase.
Cost Savings
In many cases you could save up to 60% on your phone services. Most hosted phone providers bundle their services. Your monthly bill to the local telephone company for your T1 or analog trunks goes away. Most businesses pay around $50.00 per line per month. With hosted service you get unlimited lines and free long distance. This alone is a huge saving.
You do not need to purchase a PBX to hang on the wall. Along with that box on the wall comes software upgrades, periodic proprietary hardware replacement and paying for the technician to perform these tasks.
In addition to this you will pay for every move add or change that is made to the PBX. If you hire a new employee or wish to change your ringing groups or auto attendant or relocate your office it will cost a small fortune. With Hosted Phone system in Florida you simply unplug the phone and move it. All changes are included in the monthly fee with hosting so you only pay one monthly recurring charge. I have found that most companies really focus on perfecting their phone service now. Before it would cost them every time, they called their telephone provider so they would just live with a situation to save money.
It’s a Unified Communications Platform
UCaaS or Unified Communications (UCaaS)as a Service used to be a buzz word. Now it is included in Hosted Phone system in Florida service. I personally believe that UCaaS is the most amazing feature of hosted phone service. So what is UCaaS? Basically, it is an application that runs on your desktop or cell phone. The app shows you real time status of all your coworkers so you can tell if they are on the phone, out of the office, at lunch, watching a webinar or on vacation. The app will have a built in Chat client so you can send a message if they are on the phone as well SMS Texting from your desktop. In addition to this UCaaS apps integrate to your CRM (Customer Relationship Software) so you can dial by just clicking on your contact in Outlook, Salesforce or any other popular CRM. Many other features are included in the app such as Call Forwarding, Do Not Disturb, Visual Voicemail, Call Records, Drag and Drop Conference Calls and the list goes on. If you are not using UCaaS your business is backing up.
Flexibility for Remote Teams
With the reality of infectious diseases working remotely is now the norm. Hosted phone service really lends itself to remote workers. Not to get too technical but when you have a legacy PBX or a VoIP PBX on site, when you wish to install a remote phone, you have to set up port forwarding in your firewall and white list the IP address of the remote phone. This is problematic as most remote workers are continually operating from different IP addresses, even if they are operating from home they have a dynamic IP which changes unlike a business that has a static IP which never changes.
With hosted phone service, remote workers are a snap. You have several choices as to how you wish to operate. You can connect via the UCaaS app on your cell phone, you can use the UCaaS App on your desktop or laptop as a softphone, or you can take your desk phone home and plug it in or connect it to your WIFI. There is really not much more to say. If you want or have remote workers, hosted phone service is the solution.
Better Scalability
Have your business ever outgrown your Hosted Phone system in Florida? Have you ever been told by your sales rep, "you cannot add anymore lines or telephones to your system?" It does not matter whether you have 2 phones or 2000 phones with hosted. Another advantage is if your business contracts you can always make telephones inactive and remove them from your monthly bill until they are needed when you win that next contract.
Ready to Switch to a Hosted Phone System?
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