A softphone can save you hundreds of dollars
softphone for virion business voip
An application that is installed on your computer and allows you to connect to a telephone service and make outgoing and incoming calls is a softphone. The limitations are that these programs are tied to your computer, but if you are desk-bound, no problem.
I am currently on the search for a good softphone application that enables you to not only make and receive calls, but put calls on hold, transfer them to another extension and generally have the functionality of a typical receptionists switch. Here are the links to the two most highly recommended applications I could find:
3CX VoIP Phone for Windows: http://www.3cx.com/VOIP/voip-phone.html
X-Lite VoIP Softphone: http://www.counterpath.com/x-lite.html
Each of these organisations offers a wider range of products that you can upgrade to if you like their basic product but as always, you need to be watching out for perpetual license fees. I haven’t discovered anything about the fees yet, so stay tuned for future posts on this topic.
So far the winner appears to be the solution from CounterPath because they have a product called Bria 3.0 which has BLF which basically means that it will detect when others in the group are on a telephone call! There’s some basic Outlook integration. Here’s a comparison of the different software products from CounterPath: http://www.counterpath.com/xlite-comparison.html
After downloading and putting them through a couple inward, outward and simultaneous calls I have to admit that the 3CX phone came up as the one that was easiest to use and has the best User Interface (UI), but I am keen to try out the multi-user functionality of the CounterPath Bria 3.0!