Business VoIP – Negotiating for a hosted VoIP service — Money saving tips

Negotiating for a hosted VoIP service — Money saving tips

You've reviewed all the options: managed VoIP, on-premises VoIP, and hosted VoIP service, and you've settled on the hosted VoIP service since it presents the best options and cost structure for your particular organization. Now, the next step is to get the most for your money.

Chances are, you've chosen the hosted VoIP service option because of its excellent dollar value, and because having a service that requires low up-front costs is important to you. You're interested in saving money. After coming to the conclusion that a hosted VoIP service is best for you, the next thing to realize is that not all hosted VoIP services are created equal.

Don't assume that the biggest provider, or the one that is local to you, or the one that has the best television commercials will be the best; and most importantly, don't make the mistake of assuming that the price will be approximately the same between vendors.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Do your research, pick at least three providers to compare, and then go from there.

Real Price of Hosted VoIP

Second, once you have found the least expensive hosted VoIP service provider, realize that price can be deceiving. Don't just go on the "sticker price," instead, compare feature by feature. There are a wide variety of very useful features available, but you may not need all of them. Decide ahead of time which features are the most important to you, and compare the prices for those features. Until now, you may have gotten by quite well with your traditional phone system, and it may be that many of the new features would be irrelevant to your particular operation. Why pay for them if you won't use them? Also realize that when you use a feature-rich hosted VoIP service, there may be a learning curve involved to get all of your staff up to speed on using those features. This may take time and expense. Find out if your provider offers any sort of on-line training on-demand, or even an on-premises seminar.

A factor that often is not taken into consideration is the productivity increase that a VoIP phone system will bring, whether it is a hosted VoIP service or otherwise. Leveraging high-end features like automated call response or IVR can save a tremendous amount of time; calls get answered faster, and it may not be necessary to have a full-time staff person manning the phones all day.

One provider may well offer the lowest price, but that may be for a service that offers far fewer features than you really need. And don’t forget to consider that 24x7 support is also a desirable feature.

Finally, once you have compared prices on a feature-by-feature basis, there is one more thing to consider—and that is the guarantees and service level agreement. All other things being equal, go for the one with all the features you need and the lowest price. But, SLAs may vary. It may be worth your while to pay a few more dollars to engage a hosted VoIP service provider with a better SLA.

Submit a VoIP quote request today for your business and save up to 80% on your monthly phone bills.