The financial side of VoIP telephony is one of the major selling points. But if you’re primarily concerned with the cost implications of moving away from old-school calling solutions, you need to know the full story to make the right decision.
To that end, let’s talk about the upsides and issues with VoIP packages and products, focusing on the expense involved in adopting and perpetuating such a system.
Why VoIP is a good investment
There’s no denying that, as the uptake of VoIP increases worldwide, it makes more and more sense to take the leap and do away with traditional phone infrastructures. The positive aspects include:
Significant savings on voice calls
Whether you’re making calls to local, national or international numbers, the cost of your conversation will be significantly lower if you’re using a VoIP service.
Lower hardware costs
Knowing your startup costs is necessary if you want your business to thrive, and the prospect of having to install and maintain a complex on-site telephone system might unbalance your budget and derail your plans altogether.
VoIP is far more frugal, since all you need is an internet connection and a modern computer or mobile device. Software can handle the rest, and the entire infrastructure which would normally make up an in-house exchange can be hosted remotely on the cloud.
Impressive scalability
The thing that makes VoIP the best phone solution for your small business is that it won’t just serve you well today, but will represent good value as your company grows and prospers.
Because everything is hosted remotely and overseen by a provider with far more resources than you could muster for the purpose of keeping your phone system up and running, when you need to add support for more agents and devices, this can be done at the drop of a hat.
And of course with scalability comes financial viability; you won’t need to calculate future needs and over-provision today in the expectation that this will serve you better in the future. Instead your costs will correlate with your needs, and your budget can be kept lean and mean as a result.
Innate flexibility
As with any cloud-powered product, VoIP isn’t affixed to just one location, but can be accessed from anywhere.
If you need to take voice calls on the move, or you want to support a workforce for whom remote working is now the norm, a good VoIP package will have you covered.
Where VoIP isn’t perfect
If you’re creating a budget and you don’t know if VoIP will fit into this, you need to know about the downsides as well, such as:
The potential for outages
Because VoIP services are all based on having always-on internet access, network downtime becomes a single point of failure that you might not be able to tolerate.
Since the costs of downtime quickly spiral upwards, you need to be confident that your particular connection is robust and resilient enough to minimize these risks. You may also benefit from having a backup plan for if the main connection is taken out of action unexpectedly, so that your operations don’t grind to a halt.
The relevance of security
Another concern relates to how secure any calls you make over a VoIP service will be, and this is down to the reputation of individual providers.
The cost of recovering from a breach is steep, so it’s better to only put your trust in brands that have proven themselves in the face of cyber threats.
Wrapping up
On balance, VoIP is definitely a good investment for businesses, and will justify itself through cost savings and scalability, regardless of any perceived flaws it might have.
