Need some recommendations or suggestions on SIP providers for a single office with 5 DIDs and average 25-30 calls per 8 hour day. First time setting up FreePBX and we’re at the stage of ordering SIP service and activating it. I’ve been reading materials from Twilio, Flowroute, Nextiva, and SIPStation. I think for a small shop like ours, the pay as you go model might be the best. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.
Hi!
Considering who is behind SIPStation, they definitely deserve to be mentioned… 
I personally don’t use them however…
My main VoIP provider is VoIP.ms and I do use Flowroute for T.38 (fax).
I do use a few other providers but mainly as fallbacks to the others…
At one point I was using DIDLogic for outbound calling because their outbound rates are usually better than all the others but I barely do anymore because DTMF has always proved very unreliable with them regardless of setting…
While my main provider is still VoIP.ms if I could find something with similar rates and services I would switch…
Why?
There were multiples “incidents” earlier this year were credentials were obviously leaked and an even earlier incident which suggested they might have been aware of it…
In July many people reported having their credentials leaked and calls attempted with them in the preceding month or months, some of them successful, some not…
That was attempted on one of my own sub-accounts which, fortunately, didn’t allow calls to the destination the hacker tried to call…
Now I understand it might be easy to “guess” the main account since it looks like it’s simply a sequence but sub-accounts are the main account “number” + an alphanumeric suffix you choose…
Mine wasn’t easily guessable and you have to pair it with the right account “number” plus password…
For others, it was actually hardly guessable…
By the way, there are multiple threads about this on DSLreports, none of which received an official answer from the VoIP.ms spokeperson(s) AFAIK…
IIRC, the ones whose hacks attempts were successful were not always fully reimbursed according to those threads even though the leak was more than likely on VoIP.ms’ side…
I said there was an earlier “incident”…
Back in January of this year VoIP.ms decided to resets everyone list of allowed international countries…
We were not given a choice whether to have this done on our accounts or not…
We were not given the list of internal countries we allowed and which one we actually called and asked to reconfirm them…
We were not given advance warning…
No…
So they ran their one-shut and later sent us all an email telling us they had done this with the security of our accounts in mind… 
The criteria they had decided on was the international countries we had called in the last 3 months…
Now, I don’t know about you but I allow calls to some destinations I might not call for well over 3 months so this too was unacceptable if done without any confirmation on our part…
There was also a big problem with the script…
VoIP.ms has short feature codes…
They had forgotten to remove feature codes from their “logic” to determine what countries we had called in the last 3 months…
They had also forgotten to make sure the phone number we had called was actually long enough to be an international call…
I don’t believe that specific feature code still exist but in my case one of my calls to one of these feature codes had opened up calling for South Korea if I recall correctly…
They had removed every other international country from my personal list and added South Korea…
I guess it could have been worse and they could have allowed me to call their northern neighbours…
Now, if they had bothered, at least in tests, to compare the new list of allowed countries to the old one they would have immediately spotted the problem but they didn’t…
This all seemed like something they had rushed to take care of a problem…
If there was indeed a “problem” we were never told about it…
Now what is preferable?
That this was simply poorly thought of and poorly realized or that this was rushed to address a “problem” they simply forgot to tell us about?
This too has a thread about it on DSLreports…
Definitely something to think about…
Good luck and have a nice day!
Nick
2 Likes
Have be using freevoipdeal and frynga for some time now. They have a lot of names, with a lot a different prices. Very cheap prices 
Good writeups here.
My 2cents on Flowroute, I have to say their T38 support is awesome and rock solid. Sounds like @Marbled is on to them as well for faxing. Worth considering if fax is essential. I do use them for voice as well with no issues.
I like AlcazarNetworks and VOIP Innovations.
WRT VI: There are a couple of others out there that are cheaper, but I’ve never had a problem. I was even able to get a local number is Brazil through them “once upon a time” (I don’t think they do that any more).
They have all of the standard offerings, including e911, Fax to Email, SMS, Failover, T.38, etc.
Alcazar Networks is my “direct to employee” provider - they’re the ones I use for my outgoing only lines. The only problem I’ve had with them is that they sometimes let their number routing updates to a little too long.