AldoMedia
Business phones

VoIP vs Landline for Business

One of these keeps working when the power is out. The other costs less, does more, and is not tied to a building. Here is the honest version of the comparison, including the cases where the right answer is to leave your phones alone.

Compare Unitel Voice Plans Get help choosing

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 the two things actually are

A landline is a pair of copper wires running from the phone company to your building. The number belongs to that address. The line carries a little of its own power from the phone company's equipment, which is why a plain corded phone still rings during an outage.

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. The call is turned into data and carried over the same internet connection your computers use. The number is a record on a provider's system rather than a wire to your door, so it is not attached to a place at all.

Before you compare anything, find out what is actually coming into your building. Plenty of services people call a landline are not copper any more. If your dial tone arrives through a fiber box on the wall or through the cable modem, you are already on a digital line with a battery somewhere, and several of the advantages people credit to a landline went away quietly when that box was installed. That one question settles more of these conversations than any feature list.

Where a landline still wins

This is not nostalgia. Four things a copper line does that a VoIP service cannot, and if any of them describe your business they outrank every feature on the other side.

  • It works when the power and the internet are out. In Western New York that is not a hypothetical. A corded analog phone on real copper keeps working when the lights are off and the router is dark. Note the word corded: a cordless handset has a base station that needs an outlet, so it dies with everything else.
  • It sounds the same on a bad day. A copper call has its own path. It does not share the road with a backup upload, a security camera or somebody streaming in the break room, so it cannot develop the choppy sound a busy connection produces.
  • Some equipment is still wired to it. Alarm panels, fire lines, elevator phones, gate intercoms, fax machines and older card terminals were designed for an analog line. Some work on a digital line and some fail in ways nobody notices until the day it counts.
  • The address is the line. Call for help from a copper line and the location attached to it is the building. With VoIP the address is a record somebody has to keep current when a phone moves to another office or goes home with an employee.

A landline also has nothing to configure and nothing to blame. When it breaks it is the carrier's problem, and for one line and a low call volume that simplicity is worth something.

Where VoIP wins

The pitch is usually cost. Cost is real, but it is rarely the thing that changes how the business runs.

Cost, described honestly

We are not going to quote a figure for either side, because line charges vary by carrier, by contract and by how many lines somebody ordered years ago and nobody cancelled. Do this instead. Pull your last phone bill, count the lines you pay for, and mark the ones anybody uses. Most small businesses find at least one they cannot account for. That number, not a comparison chart, tells you what a switch is worth.

Features that used to be a box on the wall

An auto attendant, ring groups, voicemail delivered as email, different routing after hours, a second number for a second location: on a traditional system those meant equipment in a closet, an engineer to change them, and a manual nobody could find. On a VoIP service they are settings in a browser, changed by whoever runs the office.

It is not tied to a building

This is the one that matters most and gets the least attention. The phones are an account, not an address. A snow day stops being a day when nobody can answer the main number. Somebody working from home is on the same system as the front desk. A second location is added rather than built, and when you move premises the phones come with you instead of becoming a service order with a date that does not match your lease. In trades and one person firms it does something else as well: the business number stops being the owner's cell phone.

The tradeoffs, side by side

Nothing in this table is a win for one column across the board, which is the point of it.

A traditional copper landline compared with a VoIP phone system
What matters Landline on copper VoIP
Power cut at your building A corded phone keeps working Desk phones go down, so calls have to forward somewhere
Internet outage Unaffected Calls stop at the building unless forwarding was set up first
Call quality on a busy day The same as every other day Depends on your connection, which is fixable and is now your job
Adding a line An order, a wait, sometimes a visit A setting
Moving premises A new order at the new address The account moves with you
Alarm, elevator and fax lines What they were designed for Sometimes fine, sometimes fails quietly. Test, never assume
Routing, auto attendant, voicemail to email On-site equipment, if at all Configured in a browser, subject to the plan you pick
Calling for emergency help The address is the building The address is a record you have to keep current
When it breaks The carrier's problem Partly yours: router, wiring, connection
Availability in ten years Shrinking in many areas Where the industry is heading

The copper question, said carefully

You will read that copper is being switched off. The direction of travel is real. Carriers have spent years reducing what they will install and maintain on old copper, and in a lot of places the practical situation is that you can keep a line you already have but cannot order a new one. Prices on what is left have drifted in a way that reads like a hint.

What we will not do is give you a date. Timelines differ by carrier, by state and sometimes by which exchange serves your street, and they move. Find out for yourself instead. Call your carrier and ask two questions: will you still install a new analog line at this address, and what is planned for the copper that serves it. Write down who told you and when.

If the answer is that nothing is changing soon and your phones work, there is no emergency here. Copper going away eventually is a reason to have a plan, not a reason to switch this week.

Who should not switch yet

Every product on this site has a real no attached, and this one has a bigger no than most. Some of these are safety matters, not preferences.

Stay where you are if

  • You have an alarm, fire or elevator line on copper. Those lines are often required to work when the power is out, and your monitoring company, your insurer or an inspector may have a view about what they sit on. Ask them in writing first. Do not move one because a salesperson said an adapter handles it.
  • Your internet is genuinely unreliable. If the connection drops most weeks, or people already complain that video calls freeze, VoIP will inherit every one of those problems and the phones will get the blame. Fix the connection first or stay put.
  • You have one line, few calls and a small bill. The savings are smallest here and the disruption is the same size as everybody else's.
  • You are mid contract with an early termination fee. Add it up. Sometimes the honest answer is to wait for the renewal date.
  • Nobody will own it. Somebody has to set the routing, update the emergency address when a phone moves and field questions in week one. Without that person the new system is worse than the old phone.

Switching makes sense if

  • You pay per line for lines nobody uses.
  • Calls need to follow people rather than desks, because staff are in vehicles, at home or across two locations.
  • Your main business number is currently somebody's cell phone.
  • You want an auto attendant or after hours routing and were quoted a hardware price for it.
  • You are moving premises within the year.
  • Your carrier has already told you the copper serving you is on its way out.

How to tell whether your internet can carry calls

Speed is rarely the problem. Steadiness is. A call needs a small amount of the connection, constantly, in both directions. What ruins it is delay that varies and data arriving out of order, which happens when the connection is busy rather than when it is slow.

  • Test at the worst hour, not the quiet one. Mid morning with everybody working tells you more than seven in the evening.
  • Watch the upload side. Many business connections have far less upload than download. A call uses both equally, so upload runs out first.
  • Count what else is on the line. Cameras uploading, cloud backups, a guest network and a busy point of sale all compete with the calls.
  • Ask whether your router can put calls first. Most business routers can, and it is usually the difference between calls that are fine and calls that are fine except at lunchtime.
  • Already had bad video calls? That is your answer. The problem is the connection and it will not behave differently for the phones.

If you do switch, in what order

  • Start the port before you cancel anything. Moving your number to the new provider is called porting, and a number you have released is very hard to recover.
  • Match the paperwork. Give the new provider a recent bill, with the account name and service address exactly as the old carrier holds them. Mismatched details cause most rejected ports.
  • Overlap the two services until the new one has handled real calls for a week or two.
  • Set up the outage plan on day one, so calls forward to cell phones when the internet goes down. Decide that while it is working.
  • Register the emergency address, and check it after any move.
  • Leave the alarm, fire, elevator and fax lines out of it until their own owners have signed off in writing.

How AldoMedia helps

AldoMedia has looked after small business websites, email and hosting in Western New York since 1999, so we have spent plenty of time in closets full of wiring nobody documented. We are a paid affiliate of Unitel Voice, not the operator of the service. If the right answer is to keep the copper for now, we will say so, and it costs us the commission. Call 716-771-2536 or tell us what is on your phone bill.

Common questions

VoIP and landline questions

Will my phones still work in a power cut if I switch to VoIP?

Not at the desk. VoIP phones need power and internet at the building, and both are usually gone together. The answer is to decide in advance where calls go instead, normally forwarding to cell phones, and to set that up while everything is working rather than in the dark. A basic corded phone on real copper does keep working, which is the one advantage of a landline that no feature list replaces.

Can I keep my current business phone number?

Usually yes. Moving a number between providers is called porting, and it is routine. Two rules matter. Start the port before you cancel anything, because a number that has been released is very hard to get back. And give the new provider a recent bill with the account details exactly as the old carrier holds them, since most rejected ports are a name or address that does not match.

Is it safe to move an alarm or elevator line to VoIP?

Treat that as a separate decision, and not one to make from a sales call. Alarm panels, fire lines and elevator phones were built for an analog line and are often required to work when the power is out. Some of them fail on a digital line in a way that passes a casual test and still misses a real event. Ask your monitoring company and your inspector in writing before anything moves.

How fast does my internet have to be for VoIP?

Speed is rarely the problem. Steadiness is. A call uses a small, constant amount of the connection in both directions and cares far more about consistency than about the headline speed. What ruins calls is delay that varies and data arriving out of order, usually when the connection is busy. Test at your busiest hour, and pay attention to upload, because that is the side that runs out first.

Do I have to throw away my existing phones?

Not necessarily. Many desk phones sold in the last several years speak the same standard that VoIP services use and can be pointed at a new provider. Older analog handsets need a small adapter. Ask whether your exact model is supported before you buy anything, and price handsets into the comparison rather than treating them as free.

Related guides

Why Business Email Goes to Spam

What to check when the messages you send are not arriving.

Fix your deliverability

Support

How to reach a person here, and what to have ready when you do.

Get support

Also useful: tell us what is on your phone bill before you change anything, or read all of the guides.

Work out which side you are on

If your alarm line is on copper or your internet drops most weeks, keep your landline for now and we will say so. If none of that applies, look at what a hosted system costs against the lines you are paying for today.

Compare Unitel Voice Plans Get help choosing