The Pros of Business Phone Systems

Let’s start with the first major benefit of hosted; the one that grabs everybody’s attention: cost savings.  The initial capital investment put into a hosted system is far less than a traditional, premise-based PBX.  The PBX and its associated servers and processors are the most expensive part of investing in a new phone system.  And since your PBX is hosted, you can take advantage of the cost savings that resource sharing provides.  A hosted phone system can often be a quarter of the price of an on-premise PBX. 

The second variable in cost savings comes to you each month, when you cut your phone bill IN HALF.  A hosted phone system runs over your data network, often requiring only a T1 connection for your office.  Imagine how great it will feel to call Verizon and cancel all of your voice services.  We save our hosted customers an average of 45 – 55% off their monthly bill.  This cost savings typically pays for the new system by itself.

The second major benefit of implementing hosted is getting rid of your fear of technology obsolescence.  A hosted system resides at a central server whose software is constantly upgraded and monitored.  Gone are the days of worrying if you’re running the up-to-date version.  Your hosted system will be as up to date 10 years from now as it was the day we installed it.

The third benefit that HESS Communications’ unique hosted solution provides is sharing lines over multiple locations.  This is cost savings and efficiency rolled into one.  Instead of having rigid and dedicated lines per office, you now have hosted lines that can be allocated across your entire network, as needed.  Instead of having 10 lines for each of your 3 locations, you can now cut down to 20 lines total, and share them.  What’s more, if all 20 lines are in use, our hosted solution will allow you to “burst” and use another line from the cloud.  Imagine your customers never getting a busy signal or being sent directly to voice mail.

The Cons of Hosted Phone Systems – Watch Out!

Nearly 95% of hosted solutions you find in the marketplace are all the same solution, just branded differently.  Beware of hosted services that price per seat or user.  The charges will typically be $35 – $40 per phone, with an iron-clad contract that leaves you incredibly exposed.  These type of hosted solutions all use the Broadsoft network and provide little to zero quality control, which will leave you dropping calls, and experiencing jitters and latency.  Another huge disadvantage to these systems is that you actually pay for inter-office calls.