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RoadWarriorPro.com
Ooma
So, what is Ooma? Ooma is a VOIP product but it is unlike other VOIP services. For those of you who are familiar with Vonage, you might have an idea of what Ooma is all about. You'd be close but not quite there. In theory, Ooma is like Vonage but it has one big difference - IT WORKS.
I used Vonage for a number of years but I was never completely happy with it. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I would frequently make calls where I could here the person on the other end but they couldn't hear me. This happened frequently. And, it cost my around $30 per month including taxes. My up-front cost was around $30 if I remember correctly. Another thing I found out about Vonage is that, even though I had fulfilled my agreed contract time when I cancelled my service, they still charged me a hefty cancellation fee. If this was mentioned in any of my original documentation I didn't see it. It must have been buried very deep!
Ooma, on the other hand, cost me about $200 up front. But, I pay nothing after that to get the basic Ooma services. It is a completely free service. This even includes voice mail.
I chose to sign up for the optional Premium service which cost me $99 per year. This gets me two phone numbers as well as some other features which I didn't think I could do without. Altogether, this is a very inexpensive service. More importantly - it always works. As long as my internet service is up (another story for another time) my Ooma service has been up. No dropped calls. No poor quality. I could not be happier.
I would recommend this service to anyone.
Update - 1/5/2011
While browsing the Ooma web site I realized there have been some significant changes to the Ooma product. Fortunately, I am grandfathered in so many of these changes do not affect me.
First, the pricing on the premium service has increased to $119 a year from $99 a year. This is a fairly significant increase. In addition, voice mail has been taken out of the basic package. You must now subscribe to the premium service to get voice mail.
Possibly the biggest change of all is that Ooma is now passing the cost of federal regulatory fees on to their customers. While this is perfectly reasonable, it does come as a surprise as I did not realize that VOIP systems required the payment of these fees. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
I must add to all of this that Ooma is doing what few other companies do; they are standing by their original agreement with us early adopters. They initally said that once we purchased the Ooma Hub, we would not have to pay for phone service ever again. While they could easily justify passing the cost of regulatory fees on to us, they have not done so (so far). This is refreshing in this day and age. I greatly respect them for this.
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