A business VOIP phone system moves your office phone system off a physical PBX box in a cupboard and onto the internet. Calls still work exactly the way your team expects – transfer, hold, voicemail, ring groups, call queues – but every extension, greeting, and call route is managed from a web dashboard instead of a proprietary handset menu.
Because it’s hosted, adding a new staff member’s extension or changing an after-hours message is a five-minute change, not a call-out fee. It also means the system keeps working if your office internet has a brief outage, since calls can fail over to mobiles automatically, and your team can take an extension home or to a second site with the same handset settings.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need to buy new phones?
Not necessarily. Most existing SIP-compatible desk phones can be reconfigured to work with a hosted system. If your current handsets are very old or proprietary to another provider, we'll tell you plainly before you commit to anything.
What happens to calls if our internet goes down?
Call routing can be configured to automatically divert to a mobile number or another site during an outage, so incoming calls don't just ring out.
Can staff take their extension home or to another office?
Yes - a hosted extension isn't tied to a physical location, so the same number and settings work anywhere there's an internet connection, via a desk phone or a softphone app.
How long does a switch-over take?
It depends on how many extensions and locations are involved and whether numbers are being ported from another provider, but a straightforward single-site setup is typically measured in days, not months.