What an IP phone system replaces
The hardware first: no exchange in a cupboard to host, to keep cool, to have somebody drive out and update. Calls travel over your internet connection rather than a pair of copper wires, and the phones can be desk handsets or a browser tab.
Then, and this is the real gain, the delay between wanting a change and having it. Editing a menu, adding a seat, changing your opening hours before a holiday: on an on-premises system each of those is a service ticket. On an IP system it is a screen. The difference is measured in days, not dollars.
That is also why businesses that switch do not switch back. It is not the invoice: it is no longer having to ask permission for a two-minute change.
What does not go away
Your internet connection becomes your phone line. If it goes down, the phone goes down. That is the real trade, and it is manageable: a cellular backup, or an automatic forward to cell phones when the office stops answering. A provider who will not talk about that is selling you a diagram, not a service.
The rest does not go away either. Somebody still has to decide who answers what, when, and in which language. An IP system carries out your decisions faster; it makes none of them.
Nor does fraud. An old login dialling abroad all night is a surprise phone bill, and the answer to it is a spend ceiling rather than vigilance.
Three questions to ask a provider, in Quebec
Most buying guides for IP telephony are written for somewhere else, and they are missing all of Quebec. These three are not in them, and they are the ones that decide.
Where does the data live?
Law 25 requires a privacy impact assessment before any personal information is communicated outside Quebec, and recordings, voicemail and call logs are personal information. Almost every cloud provider triggers that obligation and almost none of them mention it. A good answer names a region. A bad one says “the cloud”.
Which language does it answer in?
Telephone reception falls under the Charter of the French Language if you serve the public in Quebec. It is an obligation rather than a configuration option, and it covers the greeting, the menu and the announcements around them. A system whose English plays first because the message was recorded six years ago is a system nobody has revisited.
Which area code?
A 418 does not say the same thing as a 514 to a customer in Lévis, and a toll-free number says neither. Ask which area codes are genuinely available before you sign, and whether your current number can be ported, because a number you have published for ten years is worth more than a discount on the first month.
What Ringfully does
One published number, and behind it the people who handle each kind of call. You draw your own phone menu and press publish; anyone already on the line finishes on the menu they started with. Your hours, your holidays and one “we are closed right now” switch decide what a caller hears before any phone rings.
When nobody is free, the caller hears music, roughly how long, or presses 1 to be called back. Once somebody answers: hold, pass the call straight through, or check with a colleague and hand over with an introduction before you step out. There are 28 kinds of step to build that with, and all of them are there at every price.
It costs $29, $49 or $79 per seat per month in US dollars, minutes and texts included, with published rates past the allowance and a spend ceiling on every plan. No minimum number of seats, and no card to hand over to begin: we set your numbers, your hours and your routing up with you.
What it does not do
The phone on your computer is a browser tab and a Windows program. There is nothing for a cell phone, nothing for a Mac, and neither is planned this quarter. There is no self-serve sign-up either: we talk first, and the setup happens with you rather than through a form.
Our data is at AWS in us-east-1, in the United States, not in a Canadian region. For a Quebec business that means a communication outside Quebec, and an assessment that is yours to make before you start. We are not yet incorporated, which is written on every legal page of this site rather than implied.
It is a phone system, not a contact centre. If what you want is a contact centre platform, say so and we will tell you plainly that this is not that product.
Prices in US dollars, per seat per month. Rates past the allowance are published on the pricing page.