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Review summary

Full review

We looked at Phone.com to see what this VOIP service offers to the regular user as well as the small business. How does the Phone.com service add up?

Setup

As with the other VOIP providers featured in our top three, Phone.com is very simple to set up by plugging the free adapter into your Internet system and then plugging the phone into your adapter.

The system enables you to take your adapter with you wherever you go, and you can use the service wherever you are so long as you have a high-speed Internet connection.

You can port your old number over on this service. The process takes a few days to complete.

Calling plans

Phone.com provides two types of calling plans, one for the small business and another for the home user. The home user plan is more limited – it seems that Phone.com is marketing more heavily towards the small business or the home office customer.

The home user plan starts at a low price where you get 250 minutes of calls included, and you add to your package as you wish. You can upgrade to an unlimited plan with any number of calls included. Unlimited calls are valid for numbers within the United States or to selected international destinations.

Another Phone.com plan is called the Virtual Number. With this you get call screening, call routing, voicemail services and greetings in a package that allows you to bring one phone number with you to the service, to cover multiple phones.

According to Phone.com you can accumulate credits so that, in theory, you end up paying very little for your phone service. In order to accumulate credit you need to refer friends to the service so it’s not guaranteed that you’ll be able to save any money.

Calling features

There’s a huge number of calling features with the Phone.com system, but these are mostly on the small business plan. They range from the useful to the purely entertaining. You’ll probably not use a lot of the features on a regular basis.

The home phone plan offers the regular collection of text voicemail transcripts, although these are charged per voicemail, and free call forwarding and a Follow Me feature. You can use music on hold and record professional greetings (for an extra fee).

The virtual office plan gives you more features. You can record professional greetings for callers based on the time the phone rings – for instance, record an out of office greeting to play automatically outside of office hours. You can record your calls (useful for sales businesses and other companies, but make sure you comply with data collection laws) and set up call queues to designate in which order your incoming calls are directed to which office numbers. Other features include call blocking, call logs, caller ID, calling cards and the chatcall system of personal greetings (more for fun than any business purpose). With the small business plan you can pick up a toll free number or choose any local area code to work from.

There isn’t an option for using the service from your laptop or PC, which is a shame because this would add to the service’s usefulness.

We found the sound quality to be good, in general calls were of good quality in our experience.

Ease of use

The Phone.com system is no easier or more complicated to operate than the other top-rated VOIP services – once you’ve set it up you’ll be able to make and take calls easily. Adding extra features and configuring your settings takes a little time but it’s worth it to get the service you need.

Phone.com sets out your account and preferences online and you can easily manage your call feature set and handle your account. When on a call, the in-call features are easy to operate. You probably won’t miss your old method of making calls over your landline phone.

Help & support

If you need help with your Phone.com service, the company offers telephone support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also email the Phone.com support team.

If you don’t want to get in touch personally, the Phone.com website has a number of FAQs that answer common questions regarding the calling plans and the features. You can also access User Guides and chat in the Phone.com forums. If you need to, there’s a link to test your VOIP network performance.

Overall

Phone.com is a little basic but better as a business phone service. If you’re looking for features for the regular user, you may be better off looking elsewhere. If you are willing to pay more for the business service, the extra features are worth it.

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Looking for more voip services reviews?
See our side-by-side comparisons and in-depth reviews

1. Vonage
2. phone.com
3. Skype
4. Ring central
5. Lingo
6. Phone Power
7. 8x8
8. Via Talk
9. BroadVoice
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