Anyone using Ooma for VoIP?

[stuman74]

I have had Vonage for a few years over my Comcast cable internet connection, and I saw this Ooma device/service on Amazon. Anyone here in the forums try it or currently using it?

www.ooma.com

 

[stuman74]

Anyone?

 

[aphex]

I'm curious about this as well, Ooma would pay for itself in 1 year for me.

 

[QueBert]

I'll bump this thread even though it's old. I have Ooma and here is what I think about it.

The box it came in was nice and heavy, the hub is a lot smaller than it looks in pictures, but it's very solid, which is great. Setup wasn't hard at all, but for whatever reason it wouldn't let me finish the final step of the activation with Firefox. I kept getting an error, I tried 5 or 6 times over 30 minutes or so. I figured maybe their server was down, I tried to call their support and my dyslectic ass dialed 888-771-xxxx when the numbers actually 888-711-xxxx. I was mildly upset when I got a psychic hot line that asked for my credit card lol. I re-checked the # & the 2nd call got me a "we're closed" so on a whim I tried it in IE, and sure enough it went threw. I had to wait 20 minutes since the number I had chosen in Firefox was still reserved. Luckily I was able to get back it without calling them. They let you pick a number, I typed in my area code and it listed every number that was available. Aside from that I just plugged my router into the Ooma hub and the Ooma Hub into my Ethernet on my PC. Unless you plan to use the scout for a 2nd phone in the house you don't even need to hook the Hub into a phone jack. It took a minute or so to boot up, which it seems to do every time you turn it off and back on. I got a dial tone the first time I picked up my phone. Neither of the first 2 people I called could tell it was VOIP, and they sounded clear too. It might not be quite as clear as the digital service I get from Charter, but it's close (if not as good) I have no complaints about the call quality, and nobody I've called has asked me to repeat anything or complained either. The speaker is pretty loud and very clear, it only works for voice mail not as a speakerphone. The Hub's buttons are well laid out and labeled, nothing fancy here. You can open a line, do a conference call (for Ooma Premier) and listen to/delete voice mails. It blinks when you have messages. And you can turn the brightness down, or even off. So if you're sleeping you won't be bother by a blinking light. There are other features but I honestly haven't gotten into them yet.

I paid $230 shipped on Newegg, it's a bit more now but still on sale. Since I'm going to be using it for my home business I think I'll spring for the Ooma Premier, but you don't have to. It's $99 a year and you get 60 free days automatically when you activate your hub. They'll port your number for $40, or if you sign up for Ooma Premier it's free. A new number is always free, and even if Ooma goes south in a year (knock on wood) I'd still save over $100 compared to Vontage. If they stick around - which I really hope they do, I'll save tons over any VOIP service. Even if I pay for the premier service. Another plus, if you go to their forums they post when there's an outage, and there have been 2 in the past 12 months, both looked like they were resolved quickly. So it's reliable, I haven't had any downtime yet, but I've only had it a few days. From the looks of it, I would say definitely reliable enough to use as your main phone without any worries.

My initial impression - I love it! I can't find anyone on their forums who has anything bad to say about it. It might be that they're quick to delete messages that say anything bad about them, I don't know lol. Unless there's a drastic drop in quality, I'll be sticking with Ooma as long as they remain around. And they're releasing a new Hub with a bundled DECT handset, so I would imagine they're doing alright.