ooma VoIP 2 Linx Cloud Business Phone System. Linx Connects Analog Phones or fax wirelessly to Base Station on Small Business Phone Service. Loaded with Features for Small Business, Black

Have had OOMA OFFICE up running for about a week now. Pretty much flawless and works just as described. Setup was easy. Great value for the cost. I called OOMA with one question and the service person was OK, was not very impressed. The next day I called again with a different question and they were great! Porting our old # over was easy and only took a few days. I was a bit confused prior to purchase on what phones can be used. I opted to go with the FANSTEL ST-118B ( that you will see offered in other OOMA packages) it is a analog phone so each phone requires they LINX box. I purchased the phones via amazon. The IP phones are only available via OOMA as they need to be set up with the correct firmware to work with the OOMA system ( told this by OOMA).. It is my understanding that if you buy the IP phones on your own they will not work correctly. The FANSTEL phones are working great for now. All features work with this phone. OOMA is not very clear on how much things cost so this is what I found out.... you only need one telephone line, the rest of your phones work on extensions. we have had several phone calls ( in and out of the office) at one time going on and there are no issues or reason for us to have additional lines. Main line and # costs about $20, each ext. costs $10, virtual fax # ( yes you get a different # for that) costs $10. for any reason you would like an extension to have a direct # then you pay another $10 for that. Of course there are some fees and taxes beyond that. Some great features like you can manage the system from anywhere as it is cloud based not on your actual computer. There are mobile apps, that allow calls to come into an app on your phone. all voicemails besides being seen and available on our normal office phone are emailed to you as an audio file along with caller info in the email. We did discover that the five extensions ( 15 add. virtual ones are different) allowed on the initial base station is limited to 4 linx extensions and the 5th one is hard lined into the base. That did work for us as we needed 5 extensions to all be on linx. so we moved ahead and ordered an additional base extension unit ( directly from ooma as I could not find it on amazon) to allow us to have more linx extension availability, cost $100. Call quality is good, not exactly HD ( probably the advantage of using IP phones) but I would factor in that different phone selections may sound better or worse. Important, locate your OOMA base as close to your internet router / modem as possible , connect directly to it if possible.. we first located the base unit way after the cable model / router and hubs and we experience a lot of crackling.... once we repositioned the OOMA base with internet connection coming right out of the cable modem it sounded much better.... Note on hold music, there is no volume control for this I could find... our first music track sounded so loud that it was almost blowing out my cell phone speaker when I called in to hear it... solution was I found a music editing program that allows one to lower the recording volume of the MP3.. I rerecorded at about 50% of the original volume and that seemed to work well..... So overall there was a little learning curve but a great solution for small businesses.

Our business changed from MagicJack and upgraded to Ooma. I read about many different VOIP options and considered many services. From reviews, I read Ooma customer service was poor but the quality of the product was excellent. If you have ever used MagicJack, you would know that their customer service is almost zero, so this did not frighten me. I have the a small technical background to troubleshoot minor networking issues so I decided to move forward with Ooma.When the device arrived it was fairly easy to set up. Not a big deal.Issue #1, when putting the Ooma in front of the router the Ooma only allows 100mb/s download speed to be carried through. I have 150mb/s download internet speed. Also I found the Ooma to handle the number of data packets going through the device to be unreliable. When doing speed tests my download speed went from 150 mb/sec to ~90 mb/s and the ping went from ~ 5-10ms to ~100-130ms. This is unacceptable. I moved the Ooma to behind the router.Issue #2, calls kept dropping and there was poor quality. From my experience with MagicJack I, figured I needed to open ports on my router. I found the following UDP ports: 53, 123, 514, 1194, 3386, 3480, 10000-30000; TCP: 110, 53, 443. QOS was already turned on. You can look on their website: http://support.ooma.com/home/advanced-connections-and-service-portsWell this helped, but it did not solve call drops or quality issues. We would be in the middle of a conversation and BAMB customer would be gone. I could be 10 minutes or it could be 10 seconds. Against my better judgement, I called Ooma customer service. I will say, they have trained their people to be very nice on the phone; however they have little training in how to help you. They were able to tell me my Ooma was connecting to the internet at 384kbps per second for all lines (I have 4 lines) and they recommend for best quality to connect at 1mbps per line (a total of 4 mbps). Their recommendation was to purchase faster internet... Wait what, 150mbps is BLAZING fast. Even if 15 people were watching YouTube there is plenty of bandwidth for 4mbps. The person on the end of the line was nice, but told me it was my internet providers fault.Mostly this call was a waste of time and if I had stopped there Ooma would have 1 star. I actually went to bed and was thinking "ok, which service should I try next?" The next day I did some research and found out that you can hook Ooma via a networking cable directly into the back of your computer and see settings. The print you WILL miss in your troubleshooting section [...]"Optionally, connect a computer to the LOCAL NETWORK port of the Base Station and browse to [...] You should seethe login screen for Ooma Office Manager. If not, troubleshoot your Internet connection."This will get you to advanced options in Ooma! And guess what I found?! Ooma throttles how much download/upload speed your phones are allowed to use. The default settings were set at 384kbps for download and 0kbps for upload speeds. Why would default settings that Ooma keeps secret from you be so low when Ooma themselves recommend 1mbps per line? (I actually have Ooma in another office now and it's defaults were identical). There is not an option to turn off the throttle, so I set both up and down to 999999 kbps (or the maximum Ooma will allow which is 100mb/s).~6 months later and a second unit in another location and there are zero problems.Pros:• Virtual Assistant is excellent• Call Quality is amazing. Going from MagicJack to Ooma was so much different.• Ability to have multiple lines is great. All lines rings and we even have people working from home where it rings to their homes!• Easy to set up once working on your network. Adding lines and using the online stuff is simple.Cons:• Impossible to set up without some knowledge of networking (this is why they want you to put the Ooma in front of the router, but they should have designed the Ooma to be a better router)• Costs $9.99 per line PLUS taxes and 911 fees are crazy (~$40 for 4 lines and ~$30 in taxes/911)• Customer Service is very nice, but does not know how to help you.• Maybe the worst sin of the Ooma Business is that they don't include everything you get with Ooma Premier (like the blacklist or the ability to block people.) If I only needed 2 lines and I did not want the Virtual Assistant (music on hold is nice too), I would have Ooma Premier instead. [...] VS [...]

I ordered this product with some apprehensions. I've read horror stories about VOIP phone systems. I've used my Ooma Office Phone System for more than a month and I am highly impressed. My system has one number with two extensions. I have recorded my own virtual receptionist messege. I didn't care for the "computerized" voice. I have also uploaded "on hold" music. Set up was very simple. I had my system up and running in about 20 minutes with no problems. I use Panasonic KX-TS880B phones on my system, which work perfectly with the Ooma System. The system has worked flawlessly and the calls are crystal clear.