Virtual Phone Service Reviews

[Michael Rogers]

Overview
I am contemplating getting a virtual phone service for my rental property business. I wanted to see if anyone had any experience with Grasshopper, eVoice, or other virtual phone services. It looks like these services cost about $20 per month.

What Features I Need
I need a single phone number that allows potential tenants to call and get information on my properties that I am currently renting. I would like to have the ability to leave individual messages for each property that is for rent. The potential tenant could press #1 for info on property A, press #2 for property B, etc. This would allow me not to take every single phone call. I have a full time job and can't take 20 calls per day when I have a property for rent. I would also give my website address so that potential tenants could refer to it and see photos and additional info on the property. If the potential tenant would like to leave a message then I could call them back.

Question
Does anyone use a virtual phone service to do what I just described? I appreciate any advice.

[Jerry Kaidor]

I use Ringcentral. It's not cheap - costs me about a grand a year, but it has every feature a child could want. And in the big picture, the grand is a nit. It gives me a 888 number which I use for all my properties. It enforces hours of operation, so we can sleep at night. It has a queue of phones it calls - first it calls my cell phone, then my wife's cell phone, then our home phone. "We can run, but we can't hide". One of the things I stress with prospective tenants is that they can pick up the phone and get the owner at the other end of the line.

It also has incoming and outgoing fax. I have incoming fax set up so they are emailed to me as TIFF files. An incoming filter on my Linux server sees that there is a tiff attachment, and unpacks them into the directory I use for my fax in basket.

It does support multiple extensions, but I am not using them yet.

- Jerry Kaidor