The Dilemma
Many companies today are faced with a dilemma of sorts in trying to decide what direction to take their business communications in. Do they go with a premise based IP-PBX solution, or do they take their company in the offsite hosted direction? Hosted marketing material boasts a low monthly cost and a low maintenance model, while the premise based solution boasts more control and the advantage of not being tied to a monthly cost for the life of the business’s communications needs. In order to make a good choice based on the facts, we must closely examine the real cost, features, and benefits of each.
Are You In Control?
As soon as you make the decision to hand off your communications needs to a hosted company, you are no longer in control. Although your hosted company may boast of having essentially no “downtime” you are still at the mercy of the hosted provider’s connections, data center issues and your local internet company. Also, you are not able to troubleshoot issues as easily as you can with a premise based system. Having a hosted solution adds another layer of support to your model; just like calling the phone company. That means you have to rely on someone who may be located halfway across the globe to help you troubleshoot your problems. Your local IT group or local communications vendor can be available in person to troubleshoot your premise based solution. Finally you can customize and make changes to a premise based system much easier than a hosted. You control the system, its upgrades and growth. The key question is, do you want control?
Is Hosted Really A Better Value?
The short answer is no, it is more expensive. To start with, in order to compare apples to apples we are going to break both solutions into a monthly cost. The one misleading marketing tactic that the hosted providers do is compare a large upfront cost of a premise based solution vs. an apparent low monthly cost of the hosted. They also fail to tell you that you are going to be paying their monthly cost forever, as long as you use their service. The truth is, once you break the IPitomy premise based solution down to a monthly payment, the hosted solution begins to lose its shine. Additionally, when you begin to compare them feature for feature, the IPitomy premise based system really leaves the hosted competition lacking.
IPitomy Premise Based Solution
IPitomy IP1100 SIP ready with 20 phones
Features included:
IPitomy IP320
phones with 12 programmable buttons
Busy lamp fields
1000 hours of voicemail
with no port limitations
32 party
conference bridge
20 park
zones
Unlimited
Music on hold options per phone, groups, menus
Unlimited
auto attendant
Unlimited
call groups and queuing
Voicemail/Email
integration
Find me
follow me
Click to
call
Unlimited
Paging
16 Q-Manager
desktop call management software licenses
Remote
phones
Branch
offices
Ad-hoc call
record for all users
Cost for IPitomy premise based system
|
20 Phone
IPitomy System
|
$7000.00 $117 (60) month
|
|
6 SIP
Trunks unlimited
|
$131.00 month
constant
|
|
Total
monthly 60 month
|
$248.00
|
|
After
system payoff
|
$131.00
month
|
Business Savings per month $328.00
Average Hosted Solution
Hosted with 20 phones
Features included:
Non-proprietary
phone (Panasonic/Polycom)
Voicemail/Email
integration
Voicemail in
the Cloud
1 Auto
Attendant
Find me
follow me
Click to
call
Park zones
Typical Add on Features:
Busy lamp
fields
More auto attendants
5.95 month, 49.95 setup per.
Queuing-
49.95 setup
Conferencing
$1.50 month and 10 cents per minute
Call record
if it is available from your hosted provider
What they
don’t typically have.
No desktop
call management software
Cost for Hosted Solution without add on
features
|
20 Hosted
Phones
|
$3780.00 $57
(60)month
|
|
22.95 per
seat unlimited
|
$459.00
month constant
|
|
Total
monthly 60 month
|
$516.00
|
|
After
phone payoff
|
$459.00 month
|
Business
Deficit per month $-328.00
Both solutions need adequate internet bandwidth, hosted typically uses more due to cloud routing for all calls.
Reliability
The number one point of failure for any IP network is the Internet pipe, which is needed for both a premise and a hosted solution. Both are equally susceptible to this failure point in regard to outside calling. The premise based system however would still be able to call extension to extension without the Internet.
Premise Based Dial Tone Redundancy
One option that the premise based solution will offer if your internet goes down is that your premise based system can host another type of dial tone, such as backup analogue lines or a PRI which would give you redundancy that your hosted solution cannot provide if the Internet goes down.
Traditional Dial Tone as Primary
Some customers prefer the traditional phone service over Internet phone Service. This is possible with IPitomy and IMPOSSIBLE with hosted. Traditional Digital phone service such as PRI is now available at very affordable prices due to strong completion between carriers. Using a traditional source of dial tone can also be combined with SIP trunks to reduce costs while having a built in redundancy as the SIP trunks will use the Internet and the traditional dial tone use the phone network. Having two providers reduces the chances of catastrophic failure and greatly increases reliability at a minimal cost.
Redundancy
IPitomy systems have the advantage of redundant drives and redundant power to reduce downtime. All of the phones can be programmed to use a secondary server during an outage which can be automatically deployed in the unlikely event of a serious equipment failure. IPitomy has several plans for redundancy that can be quickly deployed when required at a reasonable cost.
New Features and Upgrades
IPitomy offers free software updates for its IP-PBX, which contain new user features that integrates with our proprietary phones. Hosted features are not typically as extensive or robust as our premise based solution, IPitomy can easily integrate new user features into your system.
Contracts
The average hosted provider has the business locked into a three year contract for their entire service. If you have your own PBX the only contract you are locked into is with your Telco provider. If the hosted provider goes out of business you could have problems getting your phone numbers back. With your premise based system you could have a SIP provider along with some analogue lines or even a PRI all with different carriers, which offers you more options for porting, etc.
The IPitomy IP-PBX Makes Sense
