The True Cost of Hosted VoIP: The Hidden Fees Behind a Low Price

As more and more businesses are upgrading their legacy phone systems to Cloud-based Hosted VoIP solutions, cost savings is being cited as a major motivator behind the shift.For those considering migrating to a Hosted VoIP solution in the future, it is important to look past the surface of this statement to avoid sacrificing value for price.

When selecting a Hosted VoIP provider, it is important to look at cost savings in a different way. The moment a decision is made based on a number with a dollar sign next to it, you are guaranteeing that you will receive an invoice with a that number on a monthly basis. What you are not considering is how much that number will cost your business.

Placing a value on a future event that may or may not happen is difficult. However, it is important to learn from the past, so you do not repeat it. So ask yourself which of the below top 5 reasons business communications fail have affected you in the past.

The Top 5 Reasons Business Phone Systems Fail: 

1. Phone System Hardware Failure

2. Onsite Conditions: Fire, Flood

3. Inclement Weather

4. Service Provider Issues: Phone Lines Down

5. Onsite Human Error

The Cloud removes these environmental points of failure, thus allowing your business to remain available and accessible even under the most extreme onsite circumstances. Remember the Cloud should not take advantage of your business, your business should to take advantage of the Cloud.

The best thing to do before you jump at price is ask a few questions....

2 Important Questions to Ask Before Making a Decision 

How does your company and your network handle the following onsite outages?

What are your SLA’s to respond to a critical support case, in this instance onsite failure and is that part of my monthly fee for the VoIP service?

The answers to these questions may make you think twice before going with the lowest price. 

Price vs Value: The Hidden Costs of Hosted VoIP 

Price will always be a major component of any decision making process, but what is rarely considered are the blind costs. Blind costs are not the taxes, surcharges or fees that end of on every bill. Blind charges are costs that you cannot see and that many turn a blind eye to, for example infrastructure, support and network redundancy. A low quoted price really exists on the surface, a provider’s inability to dedicate enough resources and money to what drives the solution will lead to major soft and hard dollar costs.

Business Continuity & Disaster Recover

The idea behind the Cloud and Hosted VoIP is the removal of environmental points of failure. What does that exactly mean? Move your phone system from the phone closet in your office to a managed environment or Data Center thus removing many of the environmental points of failure from your business continuity plan.

Do You Really Know Your Hosted PBX Provider?

Hosted VoIP and Cloud-based technology will deliver on premise Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Capabilities that will simply blow away any legacy phone system functionality. However, if the Hosted PBX Solution Provider lacks a geographically diverse platform and a redundant network, then you are using a rain cloud not the Cloud to drive your business.

A good Solution Provider will have network administrators who will build redundancies into the system which will carry the load in the event of failure. After all, the Cloud by nature should make all aspects of our tech lives easier which would include the need to pivot quickly when necessary to avoid a loss of business. You can’t pivot in a box and that is exactly where your business will reside if your provider lacks the appropriate redundancies on their network

Calculating Your New True Monthly Price

Price is just a number on a proposal, the real consideration should be how much will that low price cost my business?  

A Hosted VoIP phone system can be a powerful business communications tool. However without a customer-centric support team managing the solution backed by a platform and network that is both sophisticated and redundant, that low cost Hosted VoIP solution will cost you.

Business Continuity is one of the biggest concerns on the minds of C-level Executives, IT Managers and business owners alike becasue If you cannot communicate you cannot do business. 

For more on how Hosted VoIP and the Cloud can keep your business communicating under any circumstance, take a peak at our White Paper on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Andy DeAngelis

Chief Operating Officer, Votacall

www.votacall.com