When choosing a new telephone system, it can be daunting and expensive. But with VoIP, it doesn’t have to be.
We know how complicated and stressful it can be for a business to choose a new telephone system. But it doesn’t need to be.
Traditionally, a business would need to invest thousands of pounds in a brand-spanking new telephone system, even if they only wanted two phones to make and receive calls. But the rollout of VoIP and cloud-based business telephone systems means that your business no longer needs to shell out lots of hard-earned money.
In this feature, we deep-dive into the costs of VoIP in 2020, helping your business to understand more about what it costs to upgrade to a VoIP telephone system. We’ll break down all the costs of VoIP, including:
- How does VoIP pricing work
- The costs of VoIP packages
- VoIP hardware costs
- The cost of upgrading
- VoIP maintenance costs
- Call charges
- VoIP vs PBX costing
- Overall VoIP phone system cost
But before we talk about the price of VoIP, it is important to understand the basics. Such as what a VoIP phone system actually is and how it works.
What is a VoIP Phone System?
Whilst it sounds complicated, VoIP phone systems are actually incredibly simple. As we all know, the premise of a business telephone system is to control your businesses incoming and outgoing calls. Traditionally, these calls are routed from your desk phone, to an on-premise telephone system, down your telephone lines and then out to the wider world.
This method of call control requires a ‘box-on-the-wall’ style telephone system. Which is a chunky bit of hardware in your office, that all of your telephones are hardwired into. With a VoIP telephone system, you remove the requirement for this piece of hardware—instead replacing it with a cloud-based platform.
Using the cloud helps your business reduce the costs of telephony. It also means that your business doesn’t need chunky, expensive hardware. This hardware is often leased, meaning that your business can be tied into a long 5 or 7 year contract with your provider.
Another difference, as you can see from the diagram, is that a VoIP telephone system uses your broadband line, rather than having individual telephone lines. This further reduces your running costs by completely removing this costly requirement.
So, now we know the ins and outs of a VoIP phone system, we can explore their costs.
How does VoIP pricing work?
Unlike a ‘traditional’ PBX, the cost of a VoIP telephone system is simple, honest and fair. It is broken down into two main parts:
- Upfront costs
- Monthly costs
Upfront costs
One of the best things about a VoIP telephone system is the lack of upfront costs. Typically, a business would need to buy the costly PBX hardware, and spend hundreds on installation costs and line set ups and number porting. But not with VoIP.
A VoIP phone system requires minimal (and sometimes no) upfront capital outlay for your business. This is due to its cloud setup. We don’t charge for standard number porting, or costly upfront hardware. In fact, you don’t even need to buy a new handset, because our VoIP solution comes with free VoIP handsets included.
Monthly costs
Our VoIP telephone systems come with one, simple, easy monthly bill. The ongoing costs of VoIP differ depending on your solution. But the beauty of it is that you’ll only pay for the licences you need. Rather than buying a 50-extension telephone system (only to use 10 of them), you can just have 10 individual licences, for 10 individual users.
This monthly cost bundles everything in together, to make it as simple as possible for your business to see your expenditure. Think of it more as a subscription to a phone system.
What are the different VoIP packages?
You may be thinking ‘sounds great, but what are these licences’? Well, our VoIP platform is broken down into 3 different packages (or licences, whichever you’d prefer to call them). So, if you needed three users, you would select one package for each user. Simple, isn’t it.
Another great thing about these these packages is that each of your users can pick an individual package themselves. So if you wanted an emergency phone, which required no big feature set, you could have one of the basic packages, then your staff may want mobile features, so they could have the professional package, and if you wanted more features, you could opt for the premium package. It’s like pick-and-mix.
So, what are the costs of these packages?
You may think that VoIP sounds expensive, with all its features and modern technologies, but our VoIP packages start from just £10/mo. Seriously. A brand-new telephone system from £10/mo. I told you a VoIP telephone system could save your business money.
Do I need to buy hardware for my VoIP system?
Another cost to consider with any new telephone system is hardware. If you’re looking to upgrade to VoIP, then you may be concerned about the cost of giving all your staff brand new handsets. But you don’t need to be.
The truth is that your existing handsets may already be VoIP-ready. That means that we can just transfer them onto our cloud platform and away we go.
But, we know it’s nice to have shiny new handsets on your desk, so that’s why we provide your business with free handsets with our professional and premium licences. Just something to help you keep your costs low.
However, we know that every business is different, and that you may not require an on-desk handset. If so, you could use our mobile app, (available for iOS and Android), tablet app or our softphone app. These apps connect directly to your VoIP phone system and provide you with the ability to make VoIP calls from any device—essentially eliminating the cost of hardware all together.
How much does a VoIP upgrade cost?
Upgrading to VoIP could save your business a whole lot of money. But setting up a new system is expensive, right? Nope. Because a VoIP telephone system uses the cloud, there is no set up cost for your new system. We’ll configure it just as you like it, and we can make changes whenever you require, without the need to send an engineer to site.
Another great thing about upgrading is that a VoIP telephone system doesn’t require days and days of installation and wiring and all the headache that comes with that. All our systems require is a phone on your desk, and a plug socket. But we know that some business prefer to have an engineer on site to do it all for them—so we can arrange this for you too.
How much does VoIP maintenance cost?
You’ve guessed it, our VoIP phone systems don’t have any maintenance costs. None whatsoever. It’s all maintained by us, for you, for free. Are you seeing a pattern here?
Because you don’t have any expensive on-site PBX that requires an engineer to visit your site every two months to fix faults, VoIP doesn’t need have any maintenance costs. It can all be done from our office for you. Just call up our uk-based, in-house support and leave it with us.
How much do VoIP call charges cost?
With a traditional telephone system, you had call charges. It was these charges that often made for sore reading every month, and cost business a fortune. With a Bytes Digital VoIP telephone system, you’ll get 5,000 minutes absolutely free, even with our basic package.
These minutes are to local, national and mobile numbers. They’re also pooled between users, so if you have one employee making constant calls, and another who only makes a few, you don’t need to worry about going over the limit.
Because call charges were unavoidable in the past, businesses have had to ‘stick it out’ and pay whatever their provider asked. But with VoIP, you can wave goodbye to these call costs.
Why is VoIP cheaper than a PBX?
When you directly compare the cost of a VoIP telephone system and an on-premise PBX, you can see there is one obvious choice.
A VoIP phone system can help cut your businesses costs and save your money over a PBX. It is this kind of savings that has lead to 70% of business owners looking to make the move to VoIP by 2025.
So, how much does a VoIP Phone system cost?
The true cost of VoIP in 2020 depends on your businesses size and requirements. But with each user being able to pick their own VoIP package, you can customise your system to fit within your exact budget.
Each telephone system is different. And your business is different from every other. That’s why we make sure that we listen to your requirements, and talk through your telephony with a no-jargon, no-faff approach. We’ll ensure your VoIP system is the right system for you, at the right price.
