Until recently I was paying over $100.00 a month for a single line business phone and POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

Then I found Ring Central. It was recommended in one of the Business Success Tips podcasts that I listen to. This service is amazing!

 
For less than half of what I was paying, I now have:

• An 800 number
• A local number
• A dedicated fax number
• Voicemail that I can access anywhere
• Outbound fax software that works just like a printer
• Conferencing
• 10 extensions

Plus, I can set up rules for each of the lines/extensions. These rules tell Ring Central how to direct the call. I can set rules based on time of day, day of week, or caller id. I can tell Ring Central to call one number, say my office phone, for 4 rings and then start ringing my cell phone for 3 rings. And then, if I still don’t answer, to transfer to voicemail. Or I can have it ring both numbers at the same time! While all of this is going on, I can have the caller hear ringing, music, or even custom messages.

I can set up a “dial by name directory” that a caller can access to find the extension for a particular person or service.

Each extension can have its own set of rules. Perfect for my virtual office! Each employee can have an extension that calls them whereever they are.

To replace the POTS service in my office, I bought a VoIP analog adapter. This is a little box that connects a regular telephone to the internet. I bought the box from Ring Central for around $20 and it came fully configured and ready to plug in. The digital line from Ring Central costs around $9 a month. To use this, you need a high speed internet connection (broadband, cable, DSL, Fios, etc.) So now I’m using the same telephone I was using before.

There are even more features that haven’t tried yet, like call screening, etc. Ring Central has more features than the PBX we paid thousands for at a previous company.

Getting all of this for less than half of what I was paying just blows me away!

I highly recommend Ring Central! You can even try it out for FREE!

But have you heard about GMail for Domains? Now you can use GMail with your own domain name (like support@TheCompanyWeb.com) ! And you can have up to FIFTY (50) email accounts. Each Email account can have over 6 GIGabytes of storage. You can have distribution lists, forwarding, catchall address, spam filter, vacation responders…the whole shabang! And the price? FREE!

Why would you host your own mail server when you can have over 300 GIGabyes (50 x 6) of storage for FREE? Some Hosting companies want to charge you $16 or more per year per mailbox! And their max size is only 500 MegaBytes! ( I’m Not Saying who…  )

GMail has one of the best SPAM filters I’ve seen. Almost none of the SPAM gets through, but it very rarely calls my good email SPAM. Also included is virus and phishing protection. 

And, of course, you can search through your email with the Google search engine.

Unlike, MSN, Yahoo, or AOL, Gmail does not add advertising to the end of your emails, either. That looks very unprofessional for a business.

And, even with all of this, Gmail is only part of what you get FREE. Google Apps for Domains also includes integrated contact lists, calendars, documents, web pages if you want to take advantage of those also.

Is it reliable? Google only promises 99.99% uptime for it’s enterprise (over 50 users) version, but I’ve used Gmail for Domains for about 2 years, and it’s never been down when I needed it.

It’s hard to go wrong with this one. Check it out.