Purchasing Guide
Phones
Please see our friends at Telephony Depot for up-to-date pricing. If you choose to purchase phones elsewhere, we do not recommend purchasing phones secondhand as they may be locked down by other providers and be difficult or impossible to unlock.
Software Phones
To use our favorite software phone, visit CounterPath to purchase Bria or eyeBeam or get the free version of X-Lite.
Hardware Phones
Below are phones that we recommend with OnSIP Hosted PBX:
Polycom:
Polycom SoundPoint IP 335 - ~$100
Polycom Soundpoint IP 550 - ~$200
Polycom Soundpoint IP 650 - ~$300
Linksys:
Linksys SPA942 - ~$100
Linksys SPA962 - ~$200
Aastra:
Aastra 6751i IP Phone - ~$100
Aastra 6755i IP Phone - ~$200
Aastra 6757i CT IP Phone - ~$300
Check out our own VoIP Phone reviews where we evaluate the latest phones based on criteria such as voice quality and usability. Curious about a phone? Request a review on our site by leaving a comment.
Routers
Below are routers that we recommend with OnSIP Hosted PBX:
Medium Office (up to 50 users)
Small Office (up to 20 users)
SoHo (up to 5 users)
Individual (1 user)
Example Scenario
A company of forty users in two separate offices wants to use OnSIP Hosted PBX for phone connectivity. What is the best investment for hardware and performance?
Solution
In our experience, Cisco and Polycom both have reliable and well performing equipment. We chose and tested the equipment featured in the scenario below based on our experience with a wide variety of routers and phones.
Chicago
The Chicago office has ten users, who have PCs and Polycom phones. Users connect to OnSIP Hosted PBX for phone service and use my.onsip.com to communicate with their colleagues. The Cisco 871 is designed for an office of about this size. We have configuration instructions .
New York
The New York office has thirty users, who have PCs and Polycom phones. Users connect to OnSIP Hosted PBX for phone service and use my.onsip.com to communicate with their colleagues. The Cisco 1811 is designed for an office of about this size. We have configuration instructions .
Why Polycom Phones?
Polycom phones are a great favorite because of their reliability and ease of use and support. We've also set up a boot server to assist in configuring the phones and keeping their firmware up to date. This facilitates larger deployments, such as in the scenario above.
Why Cisco Routers?
Cisco routers are a great favorite because of their reliability and performance. Furthermore they are one of the few routers on the market that we've found correctly implement a SIP ALG. ALGs are intended to assist various protocols in correctly traversing a NAT. While OnSIP does NAT detection on the server side to assist with this process in the event that a router does not implement a SIP ALG, it is preferable for the remote device to be able to correctly handle ALG functionality when possible. Unfortunately many routers targeted at home office and small business environments have SIP ALGs which are broken.
When two phones are behind two different routers running NAT with functioning SIP ALGs, the media stream will take the shortest path between the two networks. This means that the packets use the most efficient network routes across the Internet and between the phones, rather than having to route through OnSIP proxy servers, which results in a better quality phone calls.
