Ooma Telo
According to its website, here’s what Ooma offers:
Ooma is a revolutionary device that allows you to call anywhere in the U.S. with no monthly fees. You can also make international calls for next to nothing. Ooma is easy to set up and even easier to use. You don’t need a PC. You don’t need a headset. You simply connect the device to your high-speed Internet and your existing phone, and that’s it. You’re ready to start calling and experience Ooma’s great voice quality.
So how much does Ooma cost? To use Ooma you must purchase an Ooma device that connects your phones to high speed internet. There are basically two choices, the Ooma Telo and Ooma Hub. Either one will connect your phones to the Internet, but the Telo appears to be the latest model of the device. According to Amazon the list price for the Telo is $249.99, although Amazon has the Telo on sale for $234.00. The list price for the Hub is also $249.99, but is on sale for $214.95.
The big question for me was whether there were any more costs. If not, a one-time fee of just over $200 would be far better than even the low monthly cost of Vonage I currently pay. From my research, calls are indeed free, but there are a couple of add-ons that cost some money. First, if you want to port your existing number over to Ooma, there is a one-time fee of $39.99. Since we definitely want to keep our existing number, we’d have to pay this fee. Second, Ooma offers Premier services that add extra features to the service. Ooma Premier costs $9.99/month or $119.99/year. Whiile you don’t need Premier to use the phone service, it does provide a long list of additional features, including a second line, 3-way calling, enhanced voice mail features, call screening, and call forwarding. When you activate your Ooma line, you get Premier for free for 60 days. If you purchase the Premier service for a year, Ooma will port your existing telephone number for free or give you a free Ooma handset.
So how much money can you save with Ooma? The answer to that question of course depends on how much you spend today on phone service. For us, we pay about $32 a month for Vonage service. With Ooma, we’d recoup the cost of the Telo or Hub in about 8 months, and the rest would be savings. According to Ooma, savings over 2 years range from $450 to $930, depending on how much you pay today for your phone service.
One question all this raises is what’s the future of traditional telephone service. With the introduction of internet phone service several years ago, I assumed landlines would eventually be a thing of the past. Now that the cost of VoiP has come down so much, it seems like the day is coming when the cost of telephone service will approach free.
Still, if you’ve used Ooma, please leave a comment to let us know what you think of the service.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you are better by getting a magicjack. For way less money upfront you get essentially the same service. I have used magicjack for several years and love it. When I traveled to Italy this past November, I was able to make calls to the U.S. for free. Its hard to beat magicjack for the price.
Jason, I’ve heard good things about MagicJack, too. I need to look into it, and perhaps publish a review of what it has to offer as compared to Ooma.
I had the magicjack device. It sucks and the quality is horrible. Also unlike with ooma you have to keep your computer on to receive incoming phone calls. There are a ton of people who keep their computers on all the time even though it’s pointlessly wasting electricity and contributing to increasing the electric bill so it doesn’t matter to them. The only good thing I can say about magic is that for $20 a year you really get what you pay for.
Ooma has beautiful hardware that offers more than does Magic Jack or Vonage. So far, I have had better call quality on Ooma than Vonage.
Question – if I buy Ooma, have my home number ported to them and they go belly up, can I recover my home number to use with another provider?
Don’t count on being able to port your number if the company goes out of business. Both companies (the one giving up the number and the one accepting the number) have to cooperate to port a number; if Ooma is out of business, they probably will not do their part.
In fact, even companies that are still in business can make it difficult to port a number away from them. I don’t have experience with Ooma, I’m just saying they don’t have to make it easy.
Dont even think it! I was a Sunrocket customer when they threw the switch and shut down. I lost service without notice and had to find another carrier. I was told not worth the effort. Maybe after a month of effort I could save my phone number but most likely not. All those customers that paid 199.00 upfront for a years service were also out of luck. They never saw a refund.
All that said, I am also looking at OOma and here is my take. I took the cost of equipment and compared it to my current bill. I figure its gonna cost 300 for unit and a phone. I currently pay 30 a mo for my voip. Hence 10mos x 30 bucks. Now do I think this company will go out of business in 10 mos that is the question. Anything after 10mos is money saved.
I have had Ooma for about a year and a half and have been very happy. In fact I am about to set my parents up with Ooma tonight. I am very happy to no longer have a home phone bill…
Switch from Comcast digital phone during the summer. Call quality is great. $199 for the core and $32 to port my number. I have had no bills since then. Long distance is prepaid, but at 1 cent to Canada is not bad. Didn’t need any extra frills. Already paid for itself and it’s free phone service from now on.
I’ve had Ooma for almost a year. I regularly use >3000 minutes per month.
I use the basic Ooma (no Premier service), so there are no monthly/annual charges.
The quality is near-perfect, and can hardly ever tell the difference between a landline. NOTE: If you do heavy downloading/uploading and your internet speed is max of ~256 kbps you might get some disruption. I have >1 Mbps and have no problems whatsoever any time of day.
My number ported with no problems within a couple weeks. I’ve already made my money back from saving on landline costs (which were $35/month).
In my opinion, if you have decent internet speed and need a landline, EVERYONE should get Ooma. The hardware is simple/beautiful. The packaging is very professional.
Nothing is perfect… but from what I’ve read, the % of people are much happier with Ooma than Magicjack. I recommend Ooma to everyone who still uses a landline.
Tried Magic Jack and found it to be junk. Their support had me trying things that have nothing to do with their service to make it work right. I took it back and purchased an Ooma Telo. It works perfectly and, after reviewing their business model, I believe they can be around for a long time
I am a new user of Ooma and so far, I am happy. I ordered my Ooma unit directly from the company, paid $229 and no shipping charge, and had it up and running in less than 10 minutes, using my regular Panasonic answering machine with its 4 wireless handsets. I do have a slow internet speed and Ooma clearly says that speed can be an issue. I do have trouble reaching a friend who lives way upstate NY int e country, and so far I have not been able to get a fax to send successfully. But their instructions say if you have a slow internet speed you may have trouble sending a fax. Anyway, considering it’s FREE – I’m not complaining. I also have a MagicJack phone which I love and I keep it as a backyup just in case.
HeyMa,
Since you have MJ and Ooma, try to make a call from MJ to Ooma or Ooma to MJ to see if they work on not? I have MJ and made call to Ooma numbers (two numbers) after 5 rings, it disconnected with busy signal. It seems that it has an issue with MJ and Ooma phone combination.
I am a new user of Ooma and so far, I am happy. I ordered my Ooma unit directly from the company, paid $229 and no shipping charge, and had it up and running in less than 10 minutes, using my regular Panasonic answering machine with its 4 wireless handsets. I do have a slow internet speed and Ooma clearly says that speed can be an issue. I do have trouble reaching a friend who lives way upstate NY int e country, and so far I have not been able to get a fax to send successfully. But their instructions say if you have a slow internet speed you may have trouble sending a fax. Anyway, considering it’s FREE – I’m not complaining. I also have a MagicJack phone which I love and I keep it as a backup just in case. All in all, I am very glad I bought my Ooma and even if they do go out of business I still will have saved a ton of money. Also the quality is WAY netter than Vonage.
I had trouble sending a fax too until I finally read in the manual where it says that you need to precede the fax number with *99 to turn off ooma’s data compression mode. It now works like a charm.
I have been using ooma since November 2008. At first I was frustrated because I tried to get the setup to work using the current phone wiring in my house, with mixed results. Finally I settled on hooking up a wireless phone base station to the ooma hub and all my troubles vanished. I would heartily recommend ooma as a quality and low-cost alternative to traditional phone service. The call quality is excellent and you get a lot of features built-in that would cost extra with a telco. After a year I was brave enough to ditch my telco completely and ported my home phone number over to ooma.
I think it’s only for US, not Canada. But, it’s really good phone. I love the 60 days free trial of Ooma Premier after activating your Ooma system. If you want to save money you should consider Ooma system but of couse find more information where Ooma Phone can be used. I have all ooma information from this website http://www.oomaphonesystem.net
I hope my comments helps you all guys
I had a Magic Jack and retired it for the OOMA TELO system. It was on sale at Best Buy for 199. Installation was a snap. The OOMA audio is OUTSTANDING better than a traditional landline. The basic package comes with caller id, voicemail, etc…so the Premier package isn;t a necessity. OOMA has yet to fail me. I downgraded my landline to minimum package, so I could guarantee access to 911 if the internet or power was knocked out. The key to great sound with OOMA is fast internet speed. I have Comcast Boost, capable of upwards of 100 mbps (download) and 4 Mbps (upload) The Magic Jack was simply undependable and relied on your PC being up and running 24/7. My MJ experience was that it was a cheap way to experiene VOIP, but audio dropouts, no dialtone, etc made it too undependable. Spend the money, buy OOMA, pick up a good cordless handset system with multiple handset that are DECT 6.0 (super quiet, great audio) and you will forget your on a a funny black box named OOMA. By the way, Verizon gets real nasty when you cancel or downgrade your services :^)
We have used Ooma for about a year and have been very pleased with the product. Before that we used a few voips including sunrocket, and have been really frustrated with the quality and services, so we were a little skeptical at first. Ooma has been great. The online interface works well, but the real reason to go with Ooma is the hardware. We have had some minor sound quality issues, but nothing compared to the competitors. The other issue to realize is that Ooma is not traditional voice over IP, so there is less of a reason to be concerned with the company going under. The product is actually a peer to peer network, supported by voip backup (if you opt for premier.) What that means is the infrastructure needs less support and may be able to keep running after a company meltdown. Overall, it’s an appliance supported by a pretty brilliant business structure. Don’t think twice.
yeah well dont get the magic either i just went through that the calls are only free if you call someone else who has magic jack too. if you call any one else one of you is getting a bill your better off gettin a ph card from the dollar store .99 cents for 99 minutes any where all these new deals are just a rip off dont fall for it..
I switched from AT&T CallVantage to Ooma last September after CallVantage service was eliminated from the AT&T product line. The call quality is excellent and while I have the Premier service right now, since I ported our telephone number to Ooma, I probably will not renew it. Hopefully the service will not be discontinued as the equipment cost was high on startup and a year of the premier service added to that cost. I love the freedom of taking our home telephone number with us where ever we are as long as there is a high speed Internet connection available. VOIP is not for everyone but we love it after more than 3 years of enjoying it’s many benefits.
Hi There,
I first bought magic jack b/c it was cheaper, but you had to keep the computer on all the time and sometimes it would not work well. After a year the USB plug fell off the magic jack. Sometimes it would drop calls, call clarity was o.k., sometimes it had problems loading, and it called numbers that I had on my contact list my itself. However, it did help me save a lot of money for the year that I used it.
About six months ago I invested in Ooma.
I have been using Ooma for 6 months now and I just love the product… It works extremely well, the call clarity is better than my old land line and the product has superior engineering. I would highly recommend it to others… However, it does slow down the internet a tiny bit… I have DSL, But I highly recommend it… Its Fantastic!
Does the use of Ooma require a gigabit router? That’s what a guy at Best Buy told me.
I had Magic Jack a couple years ago, and was very dissatisfied with it. I got Ooma as soon as it was available and still use it, so I’m i the group that doesn’t have to pay the fees now like new users will, so “free” is no longer “free”. But the hardware is questionable, and the support has been lousy for me. My unit will just stop working for no apparent reason. Their support states if you are using it as a router and can get to their ooma website it should work, but I spend about 15% of the time with a unit that works fine as a router, no internet issues, but phone just does not work. And getting with their support, even when I was still in warranty and just wanted a replacement, I never got it, they refused to do anything since I couldn’t call them when it failed. I don’t get a cell signal at my house (the reason I have an Ooma home phone in the first place) so when it fails, I *can’t* call. And now it’s been down for two days, internet is fine but phone just doesn’t work. Sometimes powering it off and on for an hour or two eventually gets it working again, but who wants to go through that?
If the newer units are more reliable, the fee would still make it worthwhile then… When it works it works well, great quality, but when it doesn’t work, even support doesn’t help. And since they won’t even honor the 1 year hardware warranty, it makes me wonder why they even bother to pretend there is one…
And no, gigabit is NOT required. Any more than a gigabit router is required for the computers over the last few years that have gigabit ports needed a gigabit router. They will autosense line speed and work at that speed.
I used to have Vonage and then switched to Ooma. Let me give you my experience. I was a Vonage customer for about 6 years, during that time I saw the prices raised but not drastically. I would have issues periodically with the adapter just losing it’s connection and if you were on a conference call it may remain in memory that you were still on the call. If you called back in, it would make it very difficult to hear those on the other end and you would have to reset all devices (router, adapter, and sometimes your cable modem). It got to be too much so I looked into MagicJack, Skype In/Out, and Ooma.
I was leary of MagicJack as I didn’t want to have to leave my computer on all the time and I heard it was very difficult to remove the software and that it had ads that would show up so I decided that way, though maybe a cheap solution, was not the route for me.
Next I checked into Skype In/Out and on the surface it looked promising as you could by phones that you would hook up to your computer and it appeared to only by around $66 dollars a year which was great! However, I still didn’t want all calls to be coming through my computer so I decided not to go that route.
Ooma was the final one I looked at. I, too, was a little skeptical but thought I would learn more about it. I found out if you bought the new telo adapter ($249) then you would not only get service for free (except state tax of like $3) but you would also get the ability for more perks then even Vonage. I decided to fork out the money and try it. I couldn’t be more happy with it. I added the Premier service of $10 per month (after the free 60 days) so that I would have more features rivaling Vonage and a second phone line! You can choose to get a free telo handset (for second phone line), free transfer of current #, or free bluetooth adapter allowing you to connect your existing cell phone (bluetooth enabled of course) to your home phones. I already had bluetooth handsets and I didn’t care for the transfer so the free telo handset would be great for me. It was backordered so I will let you know about it when I get it.
Also, with the Premier account you can get 250 min free/mo for the prepaid meaning you can call outside the US or in my case, buy the iPhone app for $10 and use Ooma on WiFi or 3G network for those minutes. I was able to use my iPod Touch as a phone and lower my iPhone bill because of the extra minutes. If you have unlimited data on your AT&T account then this won’t matter, however, if you don’t…according to Ooma, their ClearVoice technology equates to lower data usage compared with other places including Skype.
With Ooma (free and Premier) you can also export out your call logs to Excel if you need the list like I do for invoicing. Best of all I don’t have any issues with the adapter resetting itself during a call. I have had a few dropped calls where it goes back to dialtone but nothing I couldn’t live with.
So the breakdown from what I remember is something like this:
Vonage: ~$29-34/mo no extra line etc.
MagicJack: I believe ~$35-40 for the device and then $20 per year.
Skype In/Out: ~$66/year
Ooma: $249 for adapter, ~$3 for taxes/mo, $10/mo if you want Premier, $10 for the iPhone app.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. Sorry, if the MagicJack price isn’t exact. Just trying to remember it off the top of my head.
I’ve been using an OOMA hub for almost 3 years and the quality has been pretty good, or even excellent most of the time. A couple times I’ve had to speak with tech support to tweak things, however, for a dropped call problem. But overall I think OOMA has the best package for VOIP offered, in spite of not always being “perfect”. I would not change VOIP services.
I love OOMA. It is the best VOIP service. I have had vonage, Magicjack, Joiphone, Sunrocket, Skype……OOMA far exceeds my expectations which are very high!!
Kevin Castle
8/13/2010
Magic Jack is an unacceptable device unless you stay in front of your pc all day long or leave your pc on all the time your home and like to make a bad impression to those who call you. It’s voice quality is also unacceptable unless your a teenager. I mean seriously people … does this even need to be explained. There is no free lunch – most of the time you get what you pay for and Magic Jack is no exception.
We recently went with Ooma ‘Telo’ base station, handset (pretty good), and bluetooth adapter + Premier service for second ported #er. Most won’t need Premier service but were glad to pay an and extra $9 + $3.47 a month in taxes. Setup is truly plug & play – I read everything I could on the net before purchase and now conclude in hindsight that those with slow connections or old devices were the ones who suffered. Again as of August 2010, using the Ooma ‘Telo’ with only a 1.5mbs stand alone DSL line everything is be-you-tee-full.
The features (most bugs you’ve read about in the past are now fixed) work perfectly, the voice quality is excellent and the warm fuzzy confident feeling you get when picking up your phone to call anywhere, knowing the preset minor cost, is awesome.
Ooma has now matured into a strong ‘BUY’ recommendation.
Also this month (August 2010) they are rolling out business service and this will only make the company stronger.
Remember you have to use the product that you buy daily … so the way it works, the reliability, the interface, etc. are very important and worth the extra money up front since your going to have to live with this thing for a while. Just like a guest in your home, would you rather have a smart, elegant, sexy, discrete, reliable, well spoken guest named Ooma or an cheap Assh*le named Jack ? Which is really the better value ?
I have been wanting to cut down my home phone bill after Cox raised their prices again. Did some research between Ooma and Vonage. Decided to go with Ooma and so far, I like this Ooma product. I went with their Premier service and still save money over Cox’s baisc phone service. I was and still am surprised by the voice quality. My family and friends didn’t notice any difference. I think as long as you have high speed internet, you always will have good voice quality. My Cox internet has like 15+mb down and between 2-3mb up. So I was all set.
Setup was a breeze, extremely easy. From taking the Ooma device out of the box to making the first call, it was literally 15 minutes. I like their blacklist feature, also the 2nd line option from their premier service. I was also able to distribute dial tone to all the wall jacks in my house. So nothing has really changed. Ooma has done a pretty good job on this product. I say if you are paying high home phone bill, research on Ooma and decided for yourself.