Recently I began looking for alternatives to traditional phone service for my home and office.  I reviewed what was available from my cable provider, Cox Communications, but they were expensive.  I had used Google Voice in the past but wanted more flexibility.  I decided to give 8×8 a try for about three months.  They are a true VOIP provider and essentially offer a PBX in the cloud.  They have extremely reliable service and a wide assortment of features but ultimately I wanted more flexibility and thee ability to create additional extensions without a monthly fee and taxes being associated with each one.

I then stumbled onto Incredible PBX.  This offering takes open source tools like Asterisk and FreePBX and packages them so they can run on a $35 Raspberry Pi.  Amazing!  I have been running this now for three weeks and have had no issues.  I can create extensions, voice mail boxes, announcements…even a voice response unit (choose 1 to leave a voice mail, choose 2 to hear the weather, etc.) View full article »