GrandstreamUCM6204 Innovative IP PBX with 4 FXO and 2 FXS Ports

When we first started shopping for a system to replace our business landlines and DSL, our first thought was our local cable company; But after speaking with a local sales person, we discovered that their telephony product would end up costing us nearly the same as our monthly phone bill with the big V. So we started shopping and reading, doing our homework. We soon discovered the Grandstream switch and, after some time, decided that since the cost of the switch and phones would be less than two months of our current phone bill, it was worth a try. The next step was to choose a carrier service. That, again, took a lot of looking and discovery of the right search terms. Did we want a voice carrier, a VOIP carrier, a trunk carrier, or what? (We can now recommend searching for a "SIP Trunking Provider", where SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol..) Most of the more advertised carriers offer packages priced per phone number (read per-staff-member), but that would end up costing us far more per month than we are paying now. In the end we found a SIP carrier that charges less than one cent per minute, allowing us to have as many in-office phones as we want, and all calls come in over a single phone number (actually, two numbers counting our 800 #); yet allows us to route calls based on the dialed number, allowing us to have personal numbers where appropriate. Telephony is a complex subject and this switch has many-many features; We started with the manual, and then watched many of the on-line videos (you tube is your friend) that explain various setups. With that training under our belt, the Grandstream switch was easy to configure, although we did end up purchasing a couple of hours from a tech company, just to get it up and going faster. ( As mentioned, the switch has more features than I can count on all of our fingers and toes combined, thus causing us some head-scratching on how to set it up right for us.)The bottom line is that we have now been using the switch for 3-4 months and, combined with our carrier, Telnyx, are exceptionally pleased with it. Our monthly communications bill (5 lines, 800# and 7 Mb DLS), after switching to 75Mb cable, has dropped from over $800 to less than $150 (cable + calls). (By now, we have fully recovered the cost of the switch and phones.) Of course, we don't spend a huge number of minutes every month on the phone; so for some offices, a package that gives unlimited calling for a fixed price may be a more cost effective option. Never-the-less, the Grandstream switch has behaved flawlessly and has exceeded our expectations. It's a keeper!Our only cautionary recommendation is that you plug the switch and cable router into a dedicated battery backup. We have seen that, in the event of a power event, it often takes several minutes to re-connect. Placing it on a dedicated UPS eliminates the disconnect when power drops out even momentarily.

We are using it for a three person office. Works wonders. I had never set up a phone system like this before. I previously used RingCentral or 8x8. I have our office phone bill down from >$70 per month for two lines to around $4 per month for three extensions. I only pay for minutes, and get to set up extensions myself.It did take a while to figure out how to configure this. Someone said 30 minutes. I think I took more like 5 hours. But now that I invested the time, I have a dedicated fax line, voicemail, custom ringtones, forwarding calls to each other.We bought inexpensive GXP1625 phones, and so we lost the presence feature from our old Polycom phones. I miss that. It allowed me to pick up a line from another office when that line was on hold. So it's not a perfect solution. And every once in a while we have to re-boot a phone that isn't transferring calls properly. But it's really a small inconvenience for the monthly savings. Seriously, it's saving our company around $800 per year and we have an extra extension. For that, it gets 5 stars in my book!

very goodBut not support Taiwan FSK prior callerSO using DTMF is OK

My internet provider made it impossible to not a get a business line through them as part of my internet service. It would cost more to leave the phone service off the list. I had a VoIP service already and had gotten use to having my Bria phone on my Mac and on mu iPhone. By adding this device to the Spectrum service I have everything I had before and am saving several hundred per year. I am able to use Bria on my iPhone to answer my business number from anywhere that has LTE service. No call forwarding. I have set up extensions, voicemail, etc. just as one would expect to be able to do. Great product.

I cannot recommend this product enough. The interface is excelent and my hat's off their technical support which helped me get going and resolve some questions I had. Their customer service is excelent. This is a highly configurable product with an extensive list of options and possibilities. And on the few things you can't do (yet) with this PBX, they are likely working on it. However if you are not technically inclined I do recommend you get a professional to help you configure it since this technology is not really plug and play.

You need to have some basic understanding of sip trunking (but not much, you can learn what’s needed from online guidance) but it’s a good economical solution if you have analog / POTS lines.Be wary of VoIP services though. We tried for months to get this to work with VoIP.ms and it just won’t. You may have better results with other ITSPs.

This is the best phone system I've ever used and for the best price I've been through all the name brands and this is by far one of the most feature field items are are because of course it seems to be built on asterix which is one of the best phone systems there are this is compatible with multiple brands of phones not just its own although you really need to have some background in phones and computers to set this up.I have not used the tech support so I cannot comment on that portion of it but I have used their online forms and that's usually user-to-user and it helps.