hey everyone! welcome to the telonium thursdayswhiteboard web series. i'm your host for this week, alice. last week, we discussed the reliabilityof voip, and this week we'll be discussing whether or not voip is a good option for startups,so let's get started. startups, especially unfunded ones, are carefulwith their money and know that they don't need big bulky phone systems that won't givethem much benefit in their early stages. if you have a young business and are wonderingwhat your best options are, we have some advice for you. remember, your goal isn't just to be cheap;it's to be effective at an affordable price. so you have to consider what you can get outof a phone and if it's worth how much it costs.
let's go over some of your options. alright, let's begin with your first option:cell phones. cell phones can be great for the earliest stages of a startup due to thefact that you probably already own one. if you're looking for the simplest of features,so being able to make inbound and outbound calls, and don't expect to have any real customersor revenue for a while, cell phones are certainly satisfactory. the next three options are all voice overip, starting with #2, which is google voice. if you've started thinking about brandingyour company or are expecting to have customers soon, you should think about getting a numberfor your business. a google voice account
is probably the least expensive way to dothis. you can get a number for free and use it on your computer and even your cell phone.if you're doing the latter, you'll be paying with your regular cell phone minutes. as you start gaining customers and revenue,and need to start hiring sales people or customer support, it's time to start thinking aboutgetting an actual phone system for your business. voip phone systems give you unlimited lines,allowing you to be more effective at managing your inbound and outbound calls as you grow.if you already have a google voice number, you can also port that number to a voip provider,allowing your business to have a consistent brand. you probably still want to save asmuch money as possiblethough , right? let's
look at some of your options and see whatcan affect the cost. now onto voip soft phones: voip uses ip phonesand there is a distinction between software aka soft phones and hardware also known ashard phones, which is option #4. soft phones are downloadable applications on your computerwith all the features of a desk phone that connects to your phone system. a relatableexample of a soft phone would be skype, although that's an example for consumer use and lacksbusiness features. business soft phones typically are less expensive than hardware phones, andare sometimes even free. so, in this situation you pay little to nothing for the actual phones. alright, onto option #4: voip hard phones.hard phones refer to regular phones you would
have at your desk in your office, except inthe case of ip phones, they have an ethernet jack instead of an analog one. hard phonesare more expensive (usually starting around $100.00) but offer quality comparable to andsometimes better than analog business phones. within a voip phone system, we want to discussanother distinction that's relevant if you're looking to save some money. there are twotypes of extensions with telonium, virtual and regular. alright, let's start with regular extensions:regular extensions give you all the functionality of a business phone system, including unlimitedlocal and long distance, unlimited concurrent calls, and a fully-featured phone system,all at an affordable price.
next, we have virtual extensions: virtualextensions rely on an external phone, a non-ip phone such as a cell phone or a home phone,and are usually less expensive than regular extensions. this is because virtual extensionsallow you to receive unlimited inbound calls, but not make outbound calls. so, why wouldyou want a virtual extension? think of someone that is always on the go, like a real estateagent or an outside sales rep. they're often out of the office but don't want to miss anyimportant calls, so with virtual extensions, calls that are coming in to their work numbercan be easily transferred to a cell phone and they won't miss a beat alright, let's quickly go over land lines.recently we spent an entire video comparing
analog to voip, so we'll stay pretty simplehere. if you want a more detailed analysis, check out this video. in order to use an analog system, you'll haveto have an analog network coming into your building along with an analog pbx in youroffice. because hosted voip systems allow you to use an already existing internet connectionto use your phone system, voip tends to be cheaper and just as effective, if not more.if you're a large business, it's possible some of the advantages of analog outweighthose of voip, but if you're a small to medium sized business, you'll want to stick withvoip. let's return to the question we asked in thebeginning. should startups use voip? absolutely.
at the earliest of stages, you can use a cellphone, but there are a wide variety of options in voip, from the cheapest at a simple googlevoice number to a more expensive, but still affordable, regular extension with a hardwareip phone. if you are a small or medium sized business that's growing, hosted voip is cheaperand more effective than analog phone systems. thanks for watching and make sure to tunein to next week's video. until then, you can stop by our website at www.telonium.com, ortweet us @telonium. you can also check out our pinterest and instagram or stop by ourfacebook page. thanks for watching.
