Ask HN: Using Google Voice Number for your startup?
20 comments
I've tried lots of different phone systems and still haven't found a good solution yet, but hopefully my experience is instructive:
RING CENTRAL: RingCentral provided a toll-free number for me. Their interface is awful and they're just generally not that innovative, but they accomplished the task for $15 / mo or so. I wouldn't use them again, but only because there was no "wow."
GOOGLE VOICE: Google Voice is hit or miss. The connection is spotty, the dial out sometimes just doesn't work, there's a slight delay in the connection when answering etc. It is promising as a personal product, but nowhere near business quality. I've tried on two occasions...and both times got frustrated and needed to switch. Contrary to what others have said, you can have a phone assigned to two Google Voice accounts, but one must be marked "home/office" and it won't be able to send or receive SMS messages. It's confusing because I'm sure they're trying to avoid this use case.
GRASSHOPPER: I have been using Grasshopper for 3 months after hearing recommendations from Jason Fried and Mixergy. I find their interface to be really unintuitive and difficult to use.
They have great support, but I had to rely on it too often. I called 5-6 times to set up basic Google Voice functionality (route calls to my cell phone, have voice mail). The Java program for recording your voicemail greeting was wonky and broke often. The recording was poor as well. They encourage you to hire voice actors to do the work, but I want my voicemail to sound like a human, not a radio robot. They should simply allow you to upload an MP3.
There's no good way to dial out. With Google Voice you can log-in to the web app or use their mobile app. With Grasshopper, the only way to dial out is to call a number first, then dial the number you want to call. With this approach, sometimes connections were refused that were later successful from my cell phone. Nice people and I love what they're doing with Chargify, but I plan to move to something else...
TWILIO: I considered Twilio and will most likely use it for other aspects of the business (click to call, sms follow-up). But I ultimately decided it was better to use a solution designed for this purpose rather than spend developer resources making Twilio work for us. It will be cool to see applications built upon Twilio that solve problems like this.
LINE2: Line2 looked interesting, but recently had crippling DDOS problems and is iPhone only. It also seems best suited for a single person consultancy rather than a company.
ONSIP: I recently decided to make the move to OnSip. They were also recommended by Jason Fried. Since they are essentially just providing virtual PBX via SIP, you can choose from a wide selection of phones, apps from third party developers etc. So I plan to purchase an office phone (with a cord!) and use that during work hours. When I'm not in the office, or for off-hours, calls will be routed to my cell phone and I'll use an iPhone app to dial out.
RING CENTRAL: RingCentral provided a toll-free number for me. Their interface is awful and they're just generally not that innovative, but they accomplished the task for $15 / mo or so. I wouldn't use them again, but only because there was no "wow."
GOOGLE VOICE: Google Voice is hit or miss. The connection is spotty, the dial out sometimes just doesn't work, there's a slight delay in the connection when answering etc. It is promising as a personal product, but nowhere near business quality. I've tried on two occasions...and both times got frustrated and needed to switch. Contrary to what others have said, you can have a phone assigned to two Google Voice accounts, but one must be marked "home/office" and it won't be able to send or receive SMS messages. It's confusing because I'm sure they're trying to avoid this use case.
GRASSHOPPER: I have been using Grasshopper for 3 months after hearing recommendations from Jason Fried and Mixergy. I find their interface to be really unintuitive and difficult to use.
They have great support, but I had to rely on it too often. I called 5-6 times to set up basic Google Voice functionality (route calls to my cell phone, have voice mail). The Java program for recording your voicemail greeting was wonky and broke often. The recording was poor as well. They encourage you to hire voice actors to do the work, but I want my voicemail to sound like a human, not a radio robot. They should simply allow you to upload an MP3.
There's no good way to dial out. With Google Voice you can log-in to the web app or use their mobile app. With Grasshopper, the only way to dial out is to call a number first, then dial the number you want to call. With this approach, sometimes connections were refused that were later successful from my cell phone. Nice people and I love what they're doing with Chargify, but I plan to move to something else...
TWILIO: I considered Twilio and will most likely use it for other aspects of the business (click to call, sms follow-up). But I ultimately decided it was better to use a solution designed for this purpose rather than spend developer resources making Twilio work for us. It will be cool to see applications built upon Twilio that solve problems like this.
LINE2: Line2 looked interesting, but recently had crippling DDOS problems and is iPhone only. It also seems best suited for a single person consultancy rather than a company.
ONSIP: I recently decided to make the move to OnSip. They were also recommended by Jason Fried. Since they are essentially just providing virtual PBX via SIP, you can choose from a wide selection of phones, apps from third party developers etc. So I plan to purchase an office phone (with a cord!) and use that during work hours. When I'm not in the office, or for off-hours, calls will be routed to my cell phone and I'll use an iPhone app to dial out.
Thanks for trying Grasshopper.com on my recommendation. I'm curious about what UX issues you had.
If you want to tell me, please email me mail at awarner dot com
I worked hard to get them as a sponsor because I thought they were very easy to use.
If you want to tell me, please email me mail at awarner dot com
I worked hard to get them as a sponsor because I thought they were very easy to use.
One issue with Google Voice is that if you already have a personal GV number pointing to a phone number, you can't create another GV number (ex. for business) that points to that same number.
A GV-like service that was built for businesses is Phonebooth (http://www.phonebooth.com/). Give it a try, it's freemium!
A GV-like service that was built for businesses is Phonebooth (http://www.phonebooth.com/). Give it a try, it's freemium!
Thanks for the tip about Phonebooth, just signed up. My favorite feature about GV is that I can see that the call is being fwd (I know its not a personal call to my cell) and then I can answer accordingly.
This feature is a must-have for me, as I would prefer not to answer every call with my business tag line :)
This feature is a must-have for me, as I would prefer not to answer every call with my business tag line :)
GV is a fantastic program. I have hit problems because of the limitations on the number of times you're allowed to connect your cell phone number to GV. That being said, I think it's against their terms to use it for commercial use.
Check Grasshopper.com. I am not a customer of theirs.
Check Grasshopper.com. I am not a customer of theirs.
I've been using GV for almost a year now and for the most part it's been great. I have had issues with certain people trying to call me as well and getting busy signals or operator error messages. From what I've read I think this has to do with routing tables not being updated in certain states for certain GV number blocks, and that it's really hard to get resolved.
I'm using one as a business line, but would not recommend it. There's a brief period of silence before connecting, which results in constant 'do you hear me' questions, and generally poor voice quality overall.
I like the attempts at transcription for voice mail, but find the voice mail difficult to configure otherwise. Sometimes I get messages on the ring-to phone, sometimes on GV. There's no way to set the number of rings before pick up.
I'm having a much better experience with standard VOIP numbers through Callcentric, to the point that I'm looking at trying to port out the Google Voice number. Has anyone had any success in porting a number out?
I like the attempts at transcription for voice mail, but find the voice mail difficult to configure otherwise. Sometimes I get messages on the ring-to phone, sometimes on GV. There's no way to set the number of rings before pick up.
I'm having a much better experience with standard VOIP numbers through Callcentric, to the point that I'm looking at trying to port out the Google Voice number. Has anyone had any success in porting a number out?
I successfully ported a number to Callcentric before GrandCentral became GV. After GC -> GV, the number magically returned to GV, which is fine by me with the improved feature set.
I've used Google Voice for one of my companies since 2007, and it's been great.
However, I replaced it with Grasshopper (http://www.grasshopper.com) a few months ago and haven't looked back. It is much better for inbound calls and is well worth the $10/mo for the entry-level plan. You can setup an 800 number (or a vanity 800-number for $30), and record an entire phone tree for various "departments" like support, sales, etc.
Starting out as a 1-man team, all of these extensions routed to my own cell phone of course. But then as I grew, it was easy to login and change the destination of each extension to various team members. Both of my companies are primarily B2B, so being able to give the user experience of having a stable central hub, when we in fact work mostly remotely, is comforting to existing and potential clients. Without this, we'd have to try forwarding calls to each other's cell phone numbers, or telling the client to try dialing the other person's number directly, both of which are simply unacceptable.
The one downside of Grasshopper is that, as of now, you are still unable to make outgoing calls through the number, since it doesn't have a GV app for Android or iPhone.
However, I replaced it with Grasshopper (http://www.grasshopper.com) a few months ago and haven't looked back. It is much better for inbound calls and is well worth the $10/mo for the entry-level plan. You can setup an 800 number (or a vanity 800-number for $30), and record an entire phone tree for various "departments" like support, sales, etc.
Starting out as a 1-man team, all of these extensions routed to my own cell phone of course. But then as I grew, it was easy to login and change the destination of each extension to various team members. Both of my companies are primarily B2B, so being able to give the user experience of having a stable central hub, when we in fact work mostly remotely, is comforting to existing and potential clients. Without this, we'd have to try forwarding calls to each other's cell phone numbers, or telling the client to try dialing the other person's number directly, both of which are simply unacceptable.
The one downside of Grasshopper is that, as of now, you are still unable to make outgoing calls through the number, since it doesn't have a GV app for Android or iPhone.
I work for Ringio (http://www.ringio.com) so my advice is potentially subjective. Biggest differentiators:
* You get a screen pop on your computer (or your Android) when a call comes in, with the whole interaction history between the caller and anybody in your business, so your chances of sounding like you know what you're talking about are higher.
* It syncs in real-time, 2 way, with your Google Contacts and makes it a snap to share contacts between colleagues.
* It gives you fine-grained control over your Caller ID when making phone calls, so people who call you back are reaching you where they should (e.g. a support call shows your main company number, but a personal call shows your personal business number)
* Unlike most of the other services, Making an outgoing call is not an afterthought, it's well built into the system as a full feature. And most startups trying to get customers do a lot of outbound calls, and rarely get called. (10:1 ratio)
* You get a screen pop on your computer (or your Android) when a call comes in, with the whole interaction history between the caller and anybody in your business, so your chances of sounding like you know what you're talking about are higher.
* It syncs in real-time, 2 way, with your Google Contacts and makes it a snap to share contacts between colleagues.
* It gives you fine-grained control over your Caller ID when making phone calls, so people who call you back are reaching you where they should (e.g. a support call shows your main company number, but a personal call shows your personal business number)
* Unlike most of the other services, Making an outgoing call is not an afterthought, it's well built into the system as a full feature. And most startups trying to get customers do a lot of outbound calls, and rarely get called. (10:1 ratio)
I have had a good experience using Twilio to handle and route incoming sales and support calls.
It's fine as a forwarding number, but it's a little odd dialing out.
Twilo and Tropo (which runs on voxel) are both alternatives you may want to look at.
Twilo and Tropo (which runs on voxel) are both alternatives you may want to look at.
#1 questions: How prevelant is Android at your startup?
Most Android: Do it. Not Android: Use Grasshopper/Phonebooth
Most Android: Do it. Not Android: Use Grasshopper/Phonebooth
Google Voice was great for me until I started my business and needed a toll free number as well as an extension for each of my 2 employees. I looked at RingCentral and Grasshopper and ended up going with a similar company called my1voice.
I believe this is a violation of the TOS for Google Voice. I've heard great things about phonebooth.com, which is especially for commercial use and starts as a free service.
You might want to look into a cheap plan from a paid provider like Vocalocity. We're using them at the moment and it's pretty solid.
Skype?
Apparently they now route a decent % of all calls.
Apparently they now route a decent % of all calls.
I use it and love it for personal use. I would not trust it for business use yet. Text syncing goes out once every two weeks, sometimes for an entire weekend. It requires manual refreshing in the GV app. Froyo's new push notifications should reduce this problem.
I've been told that people have tried to call me and got busy signals multiple times.
I've been told that people have tried to call me and got busy signals multiple times.
I agree with you
We'd like to start contacting some rather large companies to sell our product and we want a convenient way to relay around our business number to cell phones or other connections as needed.
Any advice on setting up a business number for a small startup is appreciated..