Six months after getting our Ooma phone [1], we’re still loving it!
A reader, ElleX asked:
Madison, how do you like Ooma? Did you keep your landline number? I want to rid myself of a landline phone so I am very interested in your results.
To answer ElleX’s questions, here’s our Ooma review!
Ooma Review
Our Ooma phone setup was easy. You can connect an unlimited number of phones to your Ooma phone service; we connected four phones to our Ooma hub.
The calls have a better voice quality than Vonage for us. And compared to our previous Vonage fees, it will pay for itself in less than a year.
Based on price and quality, I’m really happy with our purchase. We also ported our original phone number so we wouldn’t have to deal with that.
Ooma Hub Vs Telo
We have the Ooma Hub, which we bought on Amazon. There is also a new Ooma Telo [1] device.
Ooma Pros
- One time fee, no monthly charges
- Free unlimited U.S. calls
- No computer required, just a broadband internet connection
- Works with standard handsets, no special equipment required
- Standard features: caller-id, call-waiting and voicemail
- Voicemail alerts to email and text message
- You can listen to voicemail on the hub or call in to check your messages. (Vonage had no box, which we found annoying)
Ooma Cons
- Premier features have an extra charge for enhanced voicemail (attachments to email, translation to text, etc), 3-way, second line, and bluetooth
- There is a $39.99 one time charge to port your existing number (free with Premier subscription)
- Relies on internet connection
Price of Ooma
Standard Service: A one time ooma phone system [2] equipment purchase. We found the best price on Ooma to be at Amazon.
Premier Service: $9.99/month or $119.99/year (free first 60 days). We don’t use the premier feature but it would be good if you had a home business or needed the second line feature.
Reader Comments
When I mentioned that we got an Ooma phone, readers also chimed in with their user reviews on Ooma:
“We have had Ooma for over a year. Getting rid of the landline bill is fantastic. The nice thing about Ooma over MagicJack and/or Vonage is that your computer does not have to be on for Ooma to work – not to mention NO monthly charges at all!” – Maureen
“We’ve had ooma for some time now. We paid about $250 for the ooma hub and ooma scout. Our phone bill for local and long distance was almost $73/month, so the ooma paid for itself in three months. My wife recently got an Iphone so we took $30 of the monthly savings back and diverted that to wireless, but we’re very happy with the ooma running over our AT&T dsl line.” – Ooma User
“I have had Ooma for about a year now and it works as well as Vonage did. Hookup was a breeze and porting my Vonage number was easy. I have had no real problems, although there are times when call quality is not great – usually hanging up and calling again will fix that.” – Hughman