New Business Telephone & Fax

Traditional Business Telephones, Fax Lines and Fax Machines are a thing of the past.

When you are starting your small business or home based business in Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, or any other city for that matter, you should consider the following cost saving tips. Using VOIP, internet faxing and a eKzact’s “Quick Start Internet Presence” might be just the right fit for your budget. Read more and if you take this advice you will likely save yourself a bundle!

Telephone Service

Cellular Phone, Analog Phone or Using Voice Over IP (VOIP)

Many new business owners use their cellular phone as their primary “published” business phone number. This can be a good way to provide your clients a quick means of contacting you if you are on the road. You may find that the cost can become quite substantial as the number of clients that you need to contact grows.

A traditional analog phone line from Telus or Bell will set you back $25 - $35 per month not including toll charges. Combine that monthly bill with your cellular phone charges and you could soon be up to $100 or more for your business telephone.

Here is a suggestion to help you save some money and remain available to your clients;

1. Subscribe to a “pay-as-you go” or per minute Voice Over IP (VOIP) telephony service. Use this VOIP service primarily for outgoing local and long distance phone calls. Using BabyTel, on their pay-as-you-go plan you will pay approximately four cents per minute to phone out. Babytel is at http://babytel.ca. We checked with BabyTel and they will release the phone number making it portable to other services as you business grows.
2. Be cautious of the big phone company and cable companies that are offering VOIP services as their monthly fees are quite a bit higher than the like of Babtel. The big cable companies do not have a range of flexible plans to suit your needs either. Their approach is “one size fits all” budgets, but when it comes to starting your new small business that just simply may not be true.
3. Use your cellular phone bill for incoming phone calls only. Refrain from using it for outgoing or returning phone calls. When you check your voice mail, use your VOIP phone to call you cell phone mail account. This point will work great only if you ensure that your cellular phone plan has an unlimited incoming call allowance. At the time of writing this article Rogers Canada offers unlimited incoming calls on a $30 per month plan. The business hours allowance for outgoing calls is quite low – so make certain to return calls from your VOIP phone line.
4. Some of the advantages of VOIP is that you can actually have your IP phone ring in multiple locations, on a “software phone” or you can even take it with you as you travel! All you need is a network connection to make it work.

Fax Machine, Extra Phone Line to Send Faxes or Virtual Faxing?

There was a time when sending and receiving faxes required a fax machine or expensive fax software and a phone modem connected to your PC. The cost for a fax machine will run you at least $100 and then the additional phone line as noted above. Here is a great solution for a small or home based business for sending and receiving faxes with no initial investment.

1. Open an internet fax account with Telus™ at this location. If you are in another area of the world, search online, there are a lot of internet service providers who support this technology.
2. You can send faxes directly by addressing the fax via email to a special email to fax gateway. No long distance charges apply in most cases. You can also choose a toll-free number for incoming faxes as a convenience to your distant clients.
3. You get your very own incoming fax number when you sign up. You choose the area code that you would like. Incoming faxes get delivered directly to your email account in the form of a PDF document.
4. The cost is $12.95 per month plus $0.12 per incoming fax page. The first 200 outgoing fax pages that you send are included. After the first 200 sent pages you pay the same per page rate.
5. Internet faxing allows your webmaster to send an email to a fax number. Using this service we can easily have forms on your web site delivered to a fax machine of your choice. This is of particular use to a pharmacy for Rx renewals, a restaurant receiving lunch time orders or other time-sensitive messages that can not sit on a computer.

eKzact Solutions Inc. specializes in assisting small business owners get online with professional websites. Based in Calgary, Alberta, we have a growing list of clients from Coast to Coast in Canada and the United States of America.