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.)

Setup was a breeze and currently I’m using Google Voice for free VOIP calling.  I’ve gone from $34/month on 8×8 to FREE with Incredible PBX and a Raspberry Pi.  I have the system setup to greet callers immediately giving them the option to leave me a voice mail by pressing 1 or hold on the line and the system rings my office phones and mobile phone.  It then routes the caller to my voice mail if I’m unavailable and sends me an email with the message they left.  I’ll say it again…amazing!  This took about 20 minutes to setup once I had Incredible PBX installed – that wasn’t a hard process either.

More information will be coming shortly about the IP phones that I’m using and additional details.  Stay tuned…

For more info and reviews on the Raspberry Pi: AMAZON
For more info on Incredible PBX: INCREDIBLE PBX

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