Six years ago I switched from Vonage to Ooma home phone service in an attempt to save money on our monthly phone bills. In February 2012, I determined that I'd had enough of the $35.75/month (after all the taxes and fees) I was paying with Vonage. At the time I'd had a couple of friends that had changed VOIP providers to Ooma and all had raving reviews of their services. Especially when it comes to how much they were saving per month!
After hearing their comments I took the plunge and bought the $199 Ooma Telo phone adapter from Amazon. Pretty hefty upfront cost for a phone device, but I knew it would take me just 6.69 months to break even compared to my existing home service.
So now that it's one year later I've watched the savings build up month over month. Here are a few interesting financial stats on how the Ooma phone service has helped our family save money.
Six years of Ooma costs – $487.00
Six years of Vonage costs – $2574.00
Amount Ooma has saved me over the past six years – $2,087
Average monthly savings vs Vonage – $28.98
Over the past few years, our family's been able to evaluate not only the savings but the pros and cons. Here are a few:
Pros
- Ultra Cheap – biggest pro would have to be how much we are saving per month compared to our previous provider.
- Sound Quality – doesn't even sound like you are talking on a VOIP line and we even have DSL (with speeds of 8 Mbps down/756 Kbps up). We have one central docking station which we connect up to the Ooma device, and services our whole house. Advice – try and place your router, ooma device, and phone dock on the main floor of your home. This will help improve sound quality too.
- Ease of Use – it took a total of 15 minutes to connect the Ooma phone device up to our home network. Simple instructions and automatic connectivity to your ISP.
- Easy Process in Porting Over My Old Number – it took only about 5 days for my phone number to be ported over from Vonage to Ooma. In between I just forwarded my vonage to my ooma phone number. Important tip – once you are notified that your number has been ported over then make sure you reboot your Ooma device to pick up your ported number.
Cons
- No E-mail Delivery of Voice Messages – one of the nice features we had with Vonage (by default) was the .MP3 delivery of our voicemails. In addition, they provided a textual e-mail of your voicemail, which was nice. With Ooma you need to buy the premium service in order to get this feature, which is only $10/month extra.
- Phone Will Disconnect After 60 Minutes – my wife mentioned that it's frequently been disconnecting after talking on the phone with one of her friends for an hour. I've never had this problem, because I never talk to anyone that long! :)
Here's a great video on how to setup and install your Ooma Telo device.
Overall, since it's been one year since we bought our Ooma phone service I would say I'm extremely satisfied. I'd recommend it to anyone! What type of home phone service do you use? How much are you paying per month? Have you looked at using Ooma?
Ditch that landline and save with Ooma
Ooma Telo
$71 Pros
- Affordable
- Can port old number over
- Good sound quality
Cons
- Phone can sometimes disconnect after 60 min
14 Comments
Am still on my 2nd gen (non-Wi-Fi) NetTalkDuo purchased in 2010, where I have a yearly bill that’s usually less than ONE MONTH of AT&T’s service. It also came with 1 year’s service. Rarely have there been outages, yet the one time it was down for only 3 hours, those who called in received an apology PLUS an extra week of service on the house.
The success of NetTalk, as well as some of the other VoIP devices, are using the recommended routers and/or settings required for best experience. Being mine is wired to the router with CAT 7 cable (this was before most had adopted to CAT 6), even when I had 15Mbps download/1Mbps download. It’s been upgraded over the years to 70 down/7upload.
When my current device dies (at $49.88 wish I’d purchased two), will choose between a Ooma or the latest Obi with Google Voice. Because for several years, NetTalk has been pushing Wi-Fi type devices with more features & a quarterly, rather than yearly bill. The price chart shows I’d be paying more, the convivence of spread out Wi-Fi, plus an extra Ethernet port, isn’t worth the price (unless the others are not that good). I suspect given as many who’s had positive experiences, these both are quality devices. Just don’t want an outdated Obi device, not long back Amazon was carrying the Obi 200 model & some reports that new GV setups may not work, unsupported.
The year is 2021 and Ooma no longer supports the wireless adaptor all though they are still being sold on Amazon and Ebay. support.ooma.com is no longer available. So is there any way to install this device on the standard Ooma? I know I should have bought the Air version of the Ooma but I was not aware it existed.
Don’t trying calling there customer service it sucks can’t understand them background noise from there call center is unbelievably loud, I think the call center is in India very hard to understand cal center personnel
4/23/2019 : I too gave up my landline for VoiP but I went with “Google Voice” (phone service) which is completely FREE! No bills ever. I bought the Obi 202 device on Amazon for around $70 (a one-time purchase), which is the only way to make Google Voice work. I love it! I am not technical but I can follow instructions, if they are clear. I hooked it up all by myself, I was shocked. Crystal clear calls, incoming and outgoing. You can have incoming calls also ring on your cell phone, your dog’s phone, or your brother’s phone. The voicemail works perfectly and on my dashboard I can either listen to messages or read the transcript of the voicemail message. You get a free Google Voice telephone number or you can port your number to Google Voice. The Obi Hai 202 allows two phone lines (I was going to use the other line for FAX). The only downside is if the electricity goes out, so does your router/modem. I use my cell phone as my primary phone but the Google Voice uses my old house phone (a base phone with 3 cordless phones) and is fantastic. By-the-way, I have my cell phone on a Tello service plan for $14.50 / month for unlimited talk and text plus 1 GB data. Saving a lot of $ now. I highly recommend Google Voice for saving money. My ISP is Frontier (Los Angeles area) and charges me almost $40 / month for internet only.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Julie! We need to do a review / take a look at Google Voice.
Without the Premiere service and the spam blocking we receive literally hundreds of robo/spam/sales calls. N0T worth it
One can buy whichever device desired & pair with an AT&T phone which comes with call blocking/screening options. Don’t have to buy extra software for blocking calls, including “private/unknown” numbers. Those callers will be given instructions on how to leave a voice message, you won’t hear the phone ring.
The only “pro” I can see with Ooma is the cost, otherwise there has been no improvement or addition of features in the 4 years I’ve had the service. Simple things like outgoing voice mail greetings are horrible. The audio quality is substandard. Then there’s the “blocking” features. On a regular basis callers that I’m expecting are blocked. The strange thing is that it changes over time. Numbers that weren’t blocked last week are now blocked. And who knows what other numbers are blocked? No one, it would be helpful to know what numbers were blocked and why. So when you start adding up all of the deficiencies of Ooma it starts to make sense to look elsewhere even if the cost is higher.
Thanks for sharing your experience with Ooma, J.
Have ooma voip for over a year now what’s not to love 4.15 a monthly had Vonage it was great but cost 28 dollars a month ooma is as good and cost a lot less .
Agreed Fredrick! Vonage costed to much compared to ooma and the quality is the same if not better!
yes! I have used Ooma for YEARS. Dumped my phone company….ported my number over….and pay only $4.35 monthly! As long as you have internet service it works great! VERY RARELY does it disconnect, but it has gotten better. GO OOMA!!!!
Ya, Danielle, I totally agree! It is great to dump your traditional phone provider and only pay $4 for unlimited US calling! Woohoo!!!
My mom and I were evaluating her phone options at Thanksgiving. We got the OOMa at best buy for around $125. The call quality is awesome! She loves it and I would HIGHLY reccomend it. (Neither she nor I talk for longer than 60 min usually so we’ve never experienced the CON listed above).