It has been 7+ years since I ditched my old land line, and 2 years that I have been using Ooma as my preferred home phone service.
In 2007, I was using Qwest (now CenturyLink) home phone service, which was costing me $41/month and didn't include long distance phone service (I used calling cards…remember those?). That year (February 2007) I heard about a new VOIP provider, called Sunrocket, offering 2 year unlimited phone service for $199. Without giving it a second thought I made the switch and swung my home phone service over to them. By July 2007, Sunrocket was bankrupt, and my phone service was no longer operational. DOH! Let's just mark that up as a bad choice. :(
That month I quickly switched my home phone service over to Vonage, which was $24.99/month ($29/month with all the taxes and fees). It wasn't a bad deal, because I was still getting unlimited long distance at 30% less than my old land line. However, slowly from July 2007 to February 2012 the additional fees continued to go up to $35 per month. My VOIP phone service was costing me $420/year. When I realized that, then I started to look at some other option…that is when I found Ooma.
A friend at work had recommended Ooma home phone services, so I ordered one on Amazon for $200 (today, Ooma is only $79!). In February 2012 I estimated that my Ooma would pay for itself in about 6.67 months (the Ooma Telo device cost of $200 x $3.49/month for the taxes and fees divided by $35/month = 6.67 months). Every month beyond Aug 2012 would be stacked on monthly savings.
So now that our family is 2+ years (31 months to be exact) into using Ooma we've been able to see first hand what Ooma can do and provide us month over month savings. Here is a breakdown of our savings over the last 31 months vs Vonage.
As you can see the monthly savings are stacking up, and will continue to stack up the longer I use it. If I continued to be lazy and not look at switching my home phone service then in the last 31 months I'd have costed my family an extra $1000 by sticking with Qwest (Century Link) and more than $800 if I had stayed with Vonage (I took that money and applied it directly to my house payment to accelerate my mortgage payoff!). I can honestly say that these savings are real, and are actual numbers. If you haven't switched, then you could be costing your family too.
Check out Ooma home phone service for yourself and see if you have the same great experience and the nice savings!
Learn more about Ooma Telo at Amazon (now only $79)
This post was brought to you by our friends at Ooma. All opinions and views are our own. We only recommend products we use and trust.
Ooma Telo
Pros
- Easy set-up
- Works with faxes
- Low monthly cost
- Multiple callers
- Great customer service
Cons
- Hard to think of any
10 Comments
I’m in the market for a new phone service. And a new phone. Any recommendations for phones that work well with Ooma?
Martha – any analog phone with an RJ phone jack will work. I personally use a Uniden phone, which has a base unit and two remote units. Works good for our family.
Me again. What’s an RJ jack? And I’m assuming that you got your Uniden phone from Amazon, right?
Just found the answer to my question. RJ = registered jack. As in, a good ole fashioned phone jack.
That is correct. Like this…
http://www.iofast.com/images/b240ee28d95288f397f7119fdbeac7d8.jpg
https://amzn.to/2RRjKHt
Does that help?
I don’t know why you didn’t go with Magic Jack Plus for home phone savings? I bought the device for $79.99 and bought into their 5-yr. plan for $99. This includes local, long distance, and Canada… plus a free app for on the go. I think it costs a little more now and they are offering slightly different plans but still much more economical than anything mentioned here. I have been using the Magic Jack Plus for three out of the five years I paid. And, there are no other charges involved, whatsoever! I don’t pay any monthly bills, fees, taxes, etc. I just bought the little device and chose to get the 5-year plan… totaling $179 for five years of home phone usage over the VoIP. I could not be happier or more satisfied. And, I still have two more years of home phone service without any further charges to pay. The Magic Jack Plus, that I have, is better than the original Magic Jack VoIP because you can still use it with the computer off. It runs through your modem and router. So, I just wanted to say that there are other alternatives to cheap home phone usage without any monthly payments… at least when I got mine three years ago. I do not work or am affiliated with Magic Jack. I am just a very satisfied customer that wanted to add to the subject here.
Donna – I did evaluate the MagicJack phone service (a year ago), and I wasn’t pleased. I evaluated the service, and thought that the price was a good value, but I got really poor audio quality and technical support while trying to set it up. Just my 2 cents.
Do you have any suggestions for reducing internet expenses? We have no home phone, no cable and currently have Frontier at $39 a month. We do stream shows from Amazon and the internet. We are in the Minneapolis, MN area.
Barb – great question. I currently have the lowest bandwidth my internet provider sells, which is $35/month DSL with 8Mbps download/856K upload. I get by just fine streaming my amazon prime, general internet usage for a family of 5, and Ooma VOIP home phone service. The only ideas I could probably offer you is to call your service provider and see if they’ll offer you a “promotional” rate for being a valued customer or switch providers that is offering $19.99/month internet new customer deals
However, one idea that does come to mind is Freedom Pop, which is a cellular home internet service provider. They offer a lot of promotions, and are on the Sprint network. They frequently have some pretty good deals, but I don’t haven’t evaluated the service.