VoicePulse Connect has always interested me. It’s an incredibly low-cost VoIP service (gegnerally less than $0.01/minute from US to US destinations) that offers no frills. It’s really targeted at Asterisk, FreePBX and the like in that it’s all about IAX but will work with SIP. It’s one of those pay-as-you-go operations where you deposit some money into an account you create with them and they deduct your charges from your account. The thing that’s stopped me is that the minimum investment is $50. Well, that changed over the holidays — they offer a free trial account preloaded with a $2 credit. So I signed up on Sunday. And I still can’t get my ATA to work with it. Don’t get me wrong, the support is great, so much so that I actually got a phone call from a tech yesterday to walk me through some configuration steps. So, I tried it when I had a chance last night and … it still doesn’t work.
That’s the problem with roll-your-own solutions – you’ve got to work at them. So, I’m considering going back to Vonage, especially in light of Vonage Alpha which brings voice activated call-by-name (Vonage ContactBook), FAX by uploading a document (Vonage FAX) and a free softphone (Vonage Talk). $25/month is starting to seem like a good deal even though I’m pretty sure I’d be able to save between $10 and $15 each month. We’ll see how much more work it is to get VoicePulse to work and what their call quality is like.