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There haven’t been many all-you-can-eat VoIP bargains lately. So we’re delighted to finally have something to talk about besides Google Voice which is once again in flames on the Asterisk® 1.8 platform. As those of you using Google Voice have discovered, one real limitation of the service is the lack of support for 911 emergency dialing. We’ve always recommended that users have a backup alternative, not only for 911 calls, but also as another layer of redundancy particularly if you’re relying upon Google Voice as your primary VoIP provider.
Today’s $40 VoIP My Way offering could fit the bill perfectly. You not only get a DID in your choice of area codes in the U.S., but you also get E911 service PLUS unlimited inbound calling and free outbound calling within the U.S. and Canada. The fine print makes clear that this is a residential offering and typical usage should not exceed 1500 minutes a month. But for $40 for a year of service, you really don’t have a lot to lose… other than your $40. And the call quality is impeccable.
One reason the call quality is excellent is because VoIP My Way is reselling VoipO’s service. Whether you can make the offering work as a business model is certainly a question. VoipO charges a $199/year reseller fee plus $1 a month per DID and another $1 a month for E911 service. That leaves $16 profit for the year assuming no one ever made a call, assuming you never fielded a call for support, and assuming there weren’t any expenses due to fraud. The odds of any of those assumptions panning out are about zero.
VoipO charges resellers a penny a minute for inbound and outbound calls. This is about double the typical VoIP wholesale rate. In its literature, VoipO also suggests that the average usage is 470 minutes a month per VoIP customer. That would cost VoIP My Way over $56.40 for calls each year which would leave VoIP My Way about $40 in the hole per Wedding Special customer. Suffice it to say that all-you-can-eat customers typically aren’t worried about per minute charges so there are likely to be many customers with monthly usage at or above 1,500 minutes. So here’s the math on a 1,500 minute a month customer: $15.00 for calls + $1 for DID + $1 for E911 service which adds up to a $204 annual cost for each $40 customer. Hopefully, the other plan offerings including the business plans will make up for the almost certain loss of money on the Wedding Special.
We mention all of this so that you can judge the risk of service interruption at some point down the road. Also keep in mind that VoIP My Way offers a 30-day, 300 minute evaluation with a money-back guarantee. And PayPal gives you 45 days from the date of the order to open a claim in the Dispute Resolution Center. Finally, we should note that VoIP My Way posted a comment on VoipO’s reseller forum indicating at least some interest in "selling off the voip company." When we questioned the posting as others have as well, the following response was provided. None of the claims have been verified by us incidentally.
It was thought a few days ago I was getting hit hard by orders and a lot of fraudulent ones at that. The soon to be misses started to get a annoyed so I put a feeler out. Thats about as far as it went i had a few people contact me but no one was able to handle the amount of clients [100] I had at the time.
Since then I have taken on one temp employee to help field emails and calls to help stream line things a little more.
We still have in our business model the ability to have our wholesale provider take over our clients if we ever decide to get out of the industry or our investors to buy us out. Either way the current clients will keep their current rates and numbers.
Setting Up VoIP My Way. If you’re still with us, appreciating the risks, the rest is all good news. VoIP My Way’s documentation for setting up the service with either FreePBX and Asterisk or an OBi device is excellent. After receiving our credentials, it took less than 5 minutes to configure a trunk, inbound route, and outbound route. And, as mentioned, call quality is excellent. Here is the Trunk setup that worked for us with PBX in a Flash:
You’ll note that the Dial Rules support both 7-digit dialing through the default outbound route as well as prefix dialing to direct calls prefixed with a 6 to the VoIPMyWay trunk.
Finally, we want to close by wishing VoIP My Way the very best of luck in their business venture. We’ve contributed our $40, and our call volume on this trunk will help VoIP My Way’s bottom line. We promise. Hopefully, there will be at least a few more like us.
Originally published: Tuesday, March 22, 2011
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Hello,
I love the information you post on this blog.
I learned alot and you gave me a business idea that I intent to pursue.
One thing that I am having hard time figuring out is the service provider(DID and Outbound service). I want to provide the best quality to my clients, but there are so many out there. I am currently testing the system using Vitelity and very satisfied with their service. I am also looking for a backup service. Any recommendation?
The honeymoon is officially over. As predicted, VoIP My Way is under new management after less than 5 months. Still suffers from the same business plan issues unfortunately, but we wish the new owner, David, well. His contact number is (239) 280-4294.
Right, the honeymoon is over and the service went down hill. I transferred my landline number to voipmyway.com and it became almost useless due to whatever technical problem they’ve been facing. All the in-bound call went directly to voice mail and constant drop call in the middle of conversation. I’ll have to ditch this service and give up my landline number for good this time after the service term is up.