Business phones

Business VoIP for Small Business

Business VoIP means your calls travel over your internet connection instead of a copper line from the phone company. That one change is why the phone can be an app, a desk handset or a browser tab, and why a small business can finally stop handing out somebody's mobile number.

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Disclosure: AldoMedia is a paid affiliate of Unitel Voice. If you sign up through a link on this page we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend what we would set up for our own clients, and we say plainly below who should not buy this.

What business VoIP actually is

An old business phone line is a physical pair of copper wires running to your building. The phone company owns them, the number belongs to that address, and the phone on the desk works because it is wired to that pair.

VoIP replaces the copper with your internet connection. Your voice is turned into data, sent the same way a web page or an email is sent, and turned back into sound at the other end. The person calling you hears a phone call. Nothing about the conversation is different, and they have no way of knowing which kind of line they reached.

Because it is data, the thing that rings no longer has to be wired to anything in particular. The same business number can ring an app on a phone in somebody's pocket, a handset on the front counter, and a tab open on a laptop. One number, several places it can be answered, chosen by you rather than by where the wire was run in 1996. You will see this sold as hosted phone, cloud phone system or business phone service. It is the same arrangement.

The problem it actually solves

Most small businesses do not have a phone problem in the technical sense. They have one of these, and they have had it for years:

The number on the van, the invoices and the website is the owner's personal mobile, so every customer has it forever.
Calls come in while somebody is on a roof, under a sink or with a client, and there is nobody else the call can go to.
The office line rings out to a voicemail greeting recorded once, in a kitchen, with a dog in the background.
There is a landline being paid for that everybody in the business has stopped using, because the work happens away from the desk it sits on.

A phone system is what fixes those. VoIP is the most flexible way for a small business to get one, because the intelligence sits with the provider instead of in a box on your wall.

What a small business gains

Three things, and they are worth naming plainly because the marketing tends to bury them under feature lists.

A business number that is not your mobile. It belongs to the business, so it survives a staff change, a new phone and a falling-out. You can also stop answering it at six in the evening.
Calls that follow the work. A call can ring one person, then another, then a mobile, then take a message. Nobody has to sit next to a particular desk for the business to be reachable.
A greeting that does not sound like a kitchen. A short recorded message with your business name, and a way to reach the right person, changes how a first-time caller reads you before anybody has spoken.

How the three ways a small business takes calls actually differ
What matters	Personal mobile	Traditional landline	Business VoIP number
Who owns the number	The person whose name is on the contract	The business, tied to the address	The business, tied to the account
When somebody leaves	The customers leave with them	Nothing changes	Point the extension at whoever took over
Working away from the office	Fine, that is all it does	Calls sit unanswered in an empty room	The call rings wherever you told it to
Moving premises	Nothing to do	Often a new number, and new print	Nothing to do, the number is not the building
Adding a second person	A second number nobody has	A second line, and an engineer	Another extension on the same number
If the internet is down	Still works	Still works	Needs a forwarding rule you set up beforehand

The last row is the honest trade. Everything else on that table moves in one direction, and that one moves the other way.

What it needs, and the part nobody wants to say

VoIP needs a decent internet connection. Not a fast one particularly, a steady one. A voice call is a small trickle of data that has to keep arriving in order, without gaps, so a connection that is quick when it works but stutters for a few seconds at a time will hand you calls that do the same.

Bad internet sounds like this on a call: words clipped off at the start, a voice that goes briefly robotic, or a delay long enough that both people keep talking over each other. Customers do not think any of that is your internet. They think it is you.

What to check before you order

Do video calls already work from this building? If a video call at two in the afternoon is a slideshow, phone calls will suffer as well, and no phone provider can fix it from their end.
Test at your busiest hour, not first thing in the morning when nobody else is on the connection.
Look at the wifi before you blame anything else. An old router in a metal building, or a handset at the far end of a workshop, is behind most complaints. A desk phone on a network cable avoids that whole category.
Find out what happens in a power cut. No power means no router, and no router means no phones. That is a genuine difference from a copper line, which keeps working in a power cut because the line carries its own power, though only for a corded handset and not a cordless one.

The power cut point has a straightforward answer, and it is worth doing on the day you install rather than the morning you need it: set a rule that sends calls to a mobile whenever the system cannot answer. Then an outage costs you a slightly awkward call, not a day of lost enquiries.

If your connection genuinely is the weak link, that is a broadband conversation before it is a phone conversation. We will tell you that rather than sell you a system that will disappoint you.

The pieces

What a business phone system is made of

Three parts do most of the work. Knowing what they are called is enough to buy sensibly.

The number

The number customers call. You can usually bring the one you already have, which is called porting, or take a new one. Bringing an existing number is the normal choice for an established business, because it is printed on vehicles, signs and every invoice you have ever sent.

Business phone numbers

Extensions and a greeting

An auto attendant is the recorded message that answers and offers choices. Extensions are the destinations behind those choices: a person, a group of people, or a mailbox. Two people can have a phone system. It is not something you grow into at twenty staff.

Auto attendant and extensions

Answering away from a desk

The same number reaching a mobile app, a laptop or a handset, plus voicemail that arrives as an email so it is read rather than collected. This is the part that suits trades, field work and anybody who is rarely in the room the phone used to be in.

Answering from anywhere

Which of these a particular plan includes varies by provider and by tier, so read the plan you are looking at rather than the category name. If you would rather not, that is what the second button is for.

What it replaces

Worth adding up before you decide, because the comparison is rarely a phone system against nothing. It is a phone system against several things you already pay for:

The landline and its line rental, if the only reason it is still there is that the number is on your signage. Porting the number removes that reason.
The second mobile somebody bought so the business number would not be their own. That is a handset and a contract, solving a problem an extension solves better.
The answering service, or the voicemail box that nobody has emptied since spring.
The runaround, where a customer calls the office, is told to call the cell, and gives up somewhere in between.

What it does not replace is somebody answering. A phone system routes a call. It cannot staff one. If calls are being missed because there is genuinely nobody available, the honest fix is a person or an answering service, and a better system will only route the call to the same empty chair faster.

Who should not switch

This product has a real no attached, and it is a common one.

Stay where you are if

Your work depends on a fax machine. Fax tones were built for an analog line and they do not survive being turned into data. Medical referrals, legal filings and some insurance paperwork still arrive that way. If one of those is your daily traffic, keep a line for it or move the paperwork elsewhere first.
Your internet drops. A rural or overloaded connection that cuts out for a few seconds a day is barely noticeable while browsing and ruinous on a call. Fix the connection first, or do not switch.
Your landline contract has real time left. Paying an early termination charge to start a second monthly bill is a worse deal than waiting. Note the end date and revisit it then.
Emergency calls need an address you keep current. A copper line is tied to the building, so help arrives where the line is. A VoIP number travels, which means the address on the account is the address dispatch gets. If phones move between sites, or staff take the number home, that record has to be kept right. Treat it as a safety task, not a setup step.
Something else is riding on that copper. Alarm panels, elevator phones and older card terminals are often wired to the same line, and cancelling it can take them out. Check what is attached before anybody cancels anything.

Worth doing if

The number on your van, your invoices and your website is somebody's personal mobile.
Calls are answered from more than one place, or by more than one person.
You are hiring, opening a second location, or splitting one number between sales and service.
The phone bill is mostly line rental for a line that mostly sits in an empty room.
Your internet is stable enough that video calls from the building are unremarkable.

How a switch usually goes

Write down how calls actually flow today

Who answers first, what happens when they cannot, where a call goes in the evening, and which numbers customers really use. Most businesses discover here that two numbers are in circulation and only one of them is watched.
Check the connection before you order anything

Video calls at the busiest hour, from where the phones will actually be. This is the step that decides whether you will be happy, and it is the one people skip.
Set the new system up alongside the old line

Build the greeting, the extensions and the after-hours rule on a temporary number first, then call it yourself from outside. Nothing customers use has moved yet, deliberately.
Port the number last

Only once the new system answers the way you want. Moving a number takes time to arrange, so ask the provider what to expect and do not cancel the old service yourself. Cancelling releases the number, and a released number can be lost.
Tell people, then listen for a week

Staff need to know where calls now land and how to transfer one. Listen to a few of your own calls in the first week and adjust the routing. Every system gets one round of tuning.

How AldoMedia helps

AldoMedia has been looking after websites, domains and email for Western New York businesses since 1999, and phones sit right next to that work: the number on the website, the address on the quote, the inbox the enquiry lands in.

Our position here is different from the rest of this site, and we would rather be blunt about it. On hosting, domains and email we are an authorised reseller. On phones we are a paid affiliate of Unitel Voice, so if you sign up through the button on this page we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We do not operate the service and we do not set its prices, and if your connection or your fax workflow makes it a bad idea, we will say so. Tell us how calls reach you now, or start with the support pages.

Common questions

Business VoIP questions

Will business VoIP work on my internet connection?

Probably, if video calls already hold up from the same connection at your busiest hour. Voice needs a steady connection more than a fast one, so a line that drops out for ten seconds is a worse problem than one that is merely slow. Test before you order rather than after, and test on a wired connection if the building has one, because tired wifi causes most of the bad calls people blame on the provider.

Do I have to give up my number to switch to VoIP?

Usually. Moving a number to a new provider is called porting and it is a routine request. Two rules keep it uneventful: ask the new provider to confirm the number can be ported before you commit to anything, and never cancel the old line first. Cancelling releases the number, and a released number can be gone for good.

Do I have to buy desk phones?

No. The same number can ring an app on a phone somebody already carries, a browser tab on a laptop, or a handset that plugs into a network socket. Handsets suit a counter or a front desk where people expect to see a phone. Start with what you own, then buy hardware once you know who actually needs it.

What happens to my calls if the internet or the power goes out?

The phones in the building stop, the same way the rest of your network does. What stops that from becoming a lost day is a forwarding rule set up in advance, so calls go to a mobile whenever the system cannot answer. Arrange it on the day you install, not on the morning of the outage.

Does VoIP handle faxing?

Not reliably with a fax machine plugged into it. Fax tones were designed for an analog line and they do not survive being turned into data and reassembled. If a fax is a nice to have, you will probably be fine. If a referral, an order or a signed form arrives by fax every day, keep a line for it or move that paperwork somewhere else before you switch the phones.

Related guides

The phone is one channel. These cover the others, and what they cost to keep running.

Business Email

The other half of looking like a business: mail on your own domain instead of a free consumer address.

Read the email guide

VoIP vs Landline

The honest comparison, including the cases where a copper line still wins and you should stay put.

Compare the two

Toll-Free Numbers

What a toll-free number signals now that almost nobody pays per minute, and when a local number beats one.

Read about toll-free

Looking for your area? Business VoIP by state names the codes that read as local where your customers are.

Also useful: why your business email goes to spam if enquiries are being missed for a reason that has nothing to do with the phone, or all of the guides.

Get the business number off your mobile

Look at the plans yourself, or tell us how calls reach you today and we will tell you whether a phone system is the fix. If your connection is the real problem, we will say that instead.