Author Topic: Recommendations for new portable office  (Read 2934 times)

Offline ushdadude

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Recommendations for new portable office
« on: September 04, 2018, 10:15:35 PM »
A friend of mine is starting a new law office and wants to be able to expand in the future. He will not have physical space initially.
Any recommendations for:
1) phone system. was thinking google voice but he wants to be able to have extensions in the future. Can a GV number be ported to a more robust system?

2) conferencing service (where you distribute a number and everyone calls in)

3) email host


TIA

Offline etech0

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2018, 10:25:23 PM »
2) conferencing service (where you distribute a number and everyone calls in)
zoom.us is great for this, people can use a link to join meetings via video, or call in for just audio
3) email host
Google Apps (now it's called GSuite)
Workflowy. You won't know what you're missing until you try it.

Offline ushdadude

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2018, 10:38:59 PM »
zoom.us is great for this, people can use a link to join meetings via video, or call in for just audio

Google Apps (now it's called GSuite)
thanks!

Offline Yammer

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2018, 12:28:35 AM »


A friend of mine is starting a new law office and wants to be able to expand in the future. He will not have physical space initially.
Any recommendations for:
1) phone system. was thinking google voice but he wants to be able to have extensions in the future. Can a GV number be ported to a more robust system?

You can have a VoIP phone line for $20 a month that will provide you those features, and just buy a VoIP phone. Someone recently told me that Verizon has such a service that cen be used on your smartphone as well.

zoom.us is great for this, people can use a link to join meetings via video, or call in for just audioGoogle Apps (now it's called GSuite)

+1 G-suit is the easiest way to go

Offline ushdadude

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2018, 08:28:40 AM »

You can have a VoIP phone line for $20 a month that will provide you those features, and just buy a VoIP phone. Someone recently told me that Verizon has such a service that cen be used on your smartphone as well.

+1 G-suit is the easiest way to go
Thanks. Looks like something like Vonage can work. It has a lot of good VoIP features plus integrated conference calling with a dial in option

Offline etech0

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2018, 08:52:39 AM »
Thanks. Looks like something like Vonage can work. It has a lot of good VoIP features plus integrated conference calling with a dial in option
We use it and it (usually) works fine but don't expect much from their customer service
Workflowy. You won't know what you're missing until you try it.

Offline jes

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2018, 09:37:39 AM »
Ring central is a good option, you can expand from a virtual line transferred to your # to a full VoIP system

Offline how

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2018, 09:44:21 AM »

You can have a VoIP phone line for $20 a month that will provide you those features, and just buy a VoIP phone.
What is the reason to buy a voip phone? Can't a regular phone connect to the Vonage box?

Offline etech0

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #8 on: September 05, 2018, 11:52:56 AM »
What is the reason to buy a voip phone? Can't a regular phone connect to the Vonage box?
There's no box for vonage AFAIK, just VOIP phones that you plug into ethernet and an outlet, and configure online so it's set up for your phone system.
Workflowy. You won't know what you're missing until you try it.

Offline Yammer

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #9 on: September 05, 2018, 03:02:49 PM »
There's no box for vonage AFAIK, just VOIP phones that you plug into ethernet and an outlet, and configure online so it's set up for your phone system.
Verizon has such a service that can be used with a smartphone app

Offline etech0

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #10 on: September 05, 2018, 03:07:09 PM »
Verizon has such a service that can be used with a smartphone app
You can do that with vonage too (as of the last few months). There's something called Ooma that we looked into switching to that may be worth checking out.

There's also Grasshopper, which doesn't work with physical phones but only with smartphones.
Workflowy. You won't know what you're missing until you try it.

Offline ushdadude

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2018, 03:17:55 PM »
Thanks for all the responses.
Right now he doesn't really need anything more than what GV offers and it has the nice bonus of being free. The question is if it can be expanded in the future or at least have the number ported


Offline cozmohoot

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #12 on: September 05, 2018, 09:08:25 PM »
The number can definitely be ported out later

Offline yelped

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #13 on: September 05, 2018, 11:23:52 PM »
There's also Grasshopper, which doesn't work with physical phones but only with smartphones.
I had issues with Grasshopper on a number of smartphones. I was not able to call out using the Grasshopper number, the call would always fail, so I would have to use my number to call out.

Offline Yammer

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #14 on: September 06, 2018, 01:07:10 AM »
Thanks for all the responses.
Right now he doesn't really need anything more than what GV offers and it has the nice bonus of being free. The question is if it can be expanded in the future or at least have the number ported
The number can definitely be ported out later
+1

Just did it now (although it took close to 2 months... because the first provider didn't want me to go..)

Online moko

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #15 on: September 06, 2018, 08:57:29 AM »
My office has an HP Windows Small Business Server (2011) with 10 TB of storage. It's connected to the office network and we have remote online access. Most employees now is laptops which sync with the server whenever they're in the office. We are looking to at least have a cloud back up but possibly move the whole operation to the cloud and use the physical server as a backup. Any suggestions of what to use? Amazon? Rackspace (we already use rackspace for our client data management)? iCloud? Other....
Ideally all computers would sync with the cloud and employees could access data on the cloud from anywhere and the cloud will backup to the physical server daily. Currently we have the ability to restrict employee access on the server to their divisions and would like that option to remain.

Offline metsguy

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #16 on: July 22, 2019, 05:18:16 PM »
Any updates here? Looking at ringcentral vs vonage and 8x8 etc.

Offline monkey

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #17 on: July 01, 2022, 12:10:35 AM »
Looking to convert my office lines to VOIP. I would need a service with auto attendant and ability to have desk phones. Tried GV (workspace) didn't work out. I've read about Nextiva, Ringcentral 8X8 etc... Any recommendations? TIA

Offline Alexsei

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Re: Recommendations for new portable office
« Reply #18 on: July 01, 2022, 07:54:35 AM »
Looking to convert my office lines to VOIP. I would need a service with auto attendant and ability to have desk phones. Tried GV (workspace) didn't work out. I've read about Nextiva, Ringcentral 8X8 etc... Any recommendations? TIA
Voip.ms if you have a little DIY blood
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