There is a lot of competition in the VOIP service market today where it seems like almost everyone is offering VOIP service for your home. You see the ads on TV, you get flyers with your Mastercard statements every month, and it is hard to tell which ones are real and which are simply marketing hype. How can you tell which is the real deal?

First of all, you must realize that most VOIP services really do work as advertised, but they use your residential high speed Internet connection to make and receive calls. What this means for you is that if your high speed Internet connection is not reliable, stable, and rock solid, there is not a VOIP service on the planet that will work well with it. And if satellite is your current option for high speed, there is no sense in even thinking about VOIP, as it will NOT work well with satellite, if at all.

So given that you have determined that your high speed Internet is stable and reliable, how do you know which VOIP service is best for you? It is very difficult to make that decision by looking at the list of included features, since that feature list is pretty much the same for all the VOIP providers. You have unlimited calling in the continental US, voice mail, caller ID, calling waiting, and three way calling. For a residential phone, that is buckets more than you get from the phone company, and what else do you really need?

So with the feature set pretty much the same, let’s look at the cost for the service from the major players. Vonage costs $24.99 per month, Comcast and Charter both charge $29.99 per month, and both Packet8 and Earthlink VOIP charge $24.99 per month. It would appear to us that you, the consumer, is being asked to pay more for their services to cover the cost of the advertising that each of these do. Does that make sense?

We have found a very stable company who has been offering VOIP service for a number of years and the cost is only $19.95 per month. And if you are willing to sign up for a year in advance, that cost drops to under $17 per month. Yes, it still includes unlimited long distance calling in the continental US, and they also include unlimited calling to Canada and Puerto Rico. Of course they offer the standard VOIP features of caller ID, voicemail, call waiting, etc.

This company does not advertise at Circuit City, Frys or Best Buy and they do not include flyers in your bank statements and Visa statements every month. But at the same time, they are not charging you more and expecting you to subsidize their advertising costs like the others do.

Nobody wants to spend more than they need to and VOIP is no different in that way. If your high speed Internet is reliable and stable, see what we recommend for residential VOIP service and you will see why they have earned our Best Value recommendation.