Voipfone’s Virtual PBX is a digital telephone exchange housed in our data centre in London’s Docklands. You have your own personal space on this switch which you manage and configure remotely over the internet using your control panel. Each PBX account can have up to 800 telephone extensions which have many powerful features and services on each. The extensions can be anywhere and everywhere and calls between them are free no matter where they are.

Voipfone’s Self Service Virtual PBX gives businesses (and even private homes) the features and functionality of telephone systems that were previously only affordable by large corporations such as almost unlimited telephone extensions and call queuing systems. our IP Telephony services are suitable for an ordinary office, a virtual office or several offices in several locations and even your home. We think it’s the most fully featured and best value UK VoIP service you’ll find.

With Voipfone you can record any call you make or receive at the press of a button - or you can record all calls all the time. You can play, pause and rewind your recordings anytime from our website or download and store them forever on your PC or server. Call recording used to be very expensive and difficult but with Voipfone we’ve made it extremely simple and very affordable – in fact, just a few pence per recording.

Call Queuing is a sophisticated queuing system that allows you to accept more calls into your telephone system than you have extensions or employees capable of answering them. It allows you to deal efficiently with calling peaks without losing valued customer’s calls and projects a professional image of your business.

You can set the hours that your business is open and closed so that when you are closed your calls go directly to your voicemail. You can set different times for each day so that if you have an early day closing or close over the weekend your phones can match your working day. You can change your hours any time you like and as often as you like from your Control Panel on our web site from anywhere.

This free PBX feature enables you to see which of your telephone numbers is being called instead of the number of the person calling you. ie it displays Called Line ID instead of Calling Line ID (CLI) on your phone. This can be a very useful feature because with Voipfone you can have as many numbers on your account as you want but sometimes you need to know which one of them your caller dialled. For example, if you run more than one business but only have one telephone, you will want to answer the phone with the correct business name.

The group feature allows you to combine some of your extensions so that they ring together when called. This is useful if your business is organised into departments with more than one person in each department or if some of your people wish to work from home as well as the office (no need to set diverts or call different numbers.)

Each extension has its own voicemail account and works just like the voicemail on the master account. You can record your own personal message directly, whenever you like, use the pre-programmed message that we provide or use your own professionally recorded MP3 and upload it. You can even use Voipfone’s Voice Artists to do it for you. Voicemail is your digital answering machine, but unlike a normal answering machine you can get your messages from almost anywhere and any phone; from the web and even by email.

This is the UK’s first VoIP self service Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system –  It’s the ‘Press 1 for Sales, 2 for accounts’ etc.’ system that we are all familiar with and it bolts right onto your Virtual PBX. So now you can direct your customers to exactly the right person, extension or group of extensions that they need or even into your call queue – automatically. With this Virtual Switchboard you buy only the departments you need - choose from a selection of over 60 which we are adding to all the time or upload your own unique messages and change them as often as you like.

At the heart of our PBX is the switch. This switch allows you to send an incoming call exactly where you want it to go, when you want it to go there. So you can direct a call to any other number on your PBX or even outside it – to any other number or group of numbers that you select. You can send it to your voicemail or your mobile or you can send it to all the telephone extensions you have and make them all ring at once or you can send it to your Call Queue, Call Group or IVR. Call Routing is a very powerful tool; we make it very simple to use.

All Voipfone customers can call emergency services immediately on sign-up. When you dial either 999 or 112, your call is sent to national emergency operators. You may also register your phone number and address with the Emergency Services data base so that when you dial 999 or 112 they have your location details on screen in front of them - you can update their records if you move home or office.

If you lose your connection, perhaps because you have a power failure, or your ISP has a problem, our network detects this within 2 minutes and will divert all your incoming calls to any landline or mobile telephone of your choice - anywhere.  If you use our PBX, you can have a separate failover for each extension too. So, should the worst happen, you have a simple and automatic way of coping. And, should the worst happen and you need a full disaster recovery solution, you just plug any SIP telephone into any internet connection, pop in your ID and you’re up and running again immediately.

Voipfone Call Me Back is a clever way of getting your customers to call you, perhaps as a way of driving sales from your web site or as part of a your customer support service. The calls are free to your customers and very low cost to you (a fraction of the cost of an 0800 number for example). The button is free of charge, just help yourself to the code. You only pay for the calls that are made when the button is used.

You can hold a conference with any number of people to last as long as you like, any time you like. You can think of it as a room that we build for you when you register - it’s always open for you and your guests to walk into, anytime. Any Voipfone customer can use this service for free when calling from the Voipfone network. Your colleagues and friends can also join from any ordinary telephone anywhere in the world, even if they are not a Voipfone customer.

Extensions can have their own DDI (Direct Dial In). These are ordinary telephone numbers -01, 02, 03. 08, etc – that anyone on any telephone network can call. So as well as having one main number for your business which your receptionist (or our IVR or call queue) answers, you can also give individual numbers to people in your company who need to receive direct calls. We can issue blocks of consecutive numbers too if you wish – just ask!

Extensions that are part of a Groups work just like the voicemail on the master account but means that all the telephones in that group – such as all calls to Sales – have the same message for all extensions. You can record your own personal message, use the pre-programmed message that we provide or use your own professionally recorded MP3 and upload it. You can even use Voipfone’s Voice Artists to do it for you. You access Group Voicemail by dialling 1572 from an extension that is part of the group.

Our Virtual PBX can have up to 800 extensions on each account and each extension can be rung ‘internally’ by dialling its three digit short code or externally by adding DDIs. Extensions can be in the same office or scattered all over the world – it doesn’t matter where they are physically located; they always work in the same way wherever - calls between extensions are always free no matter where they are. Extensions have all the features and functions of main accounts plus a few more.

Voicemail is your digital answering machine, but unlike a normal answering machine you can get your messages from almost anywhere using Voipfone, a BT landline or your mobile phone; from the Internet and even by email. You can record your own personal message directly, whenever you like, use the pre-programmed message that we provide or even use your own professionally recorded MP3 and upload it. You can even use Voipfone’s Voice Artists to do it for you!

If your telephone or adapter supports it, you can be notified that you have a voicemail message waiting. This will either be a flashing light (telephones) or stuttered dial tone (adapters and telephones) or sometimes an occasional ring (adapters); you need to check your manual to see how to switch this function off and on and how to receive the message.

When people leave a message on your voicemail (which is free with every
account) they are also automatically converted into a sound file (MP3), attached to an email and mailed to you. You can then listen to your message from your PC from anywhere. Because it is a digital recording you can also save it on your PC or even email it to someone else.

If you’re travelling, but need to know when people have left messages for you on your office voicemail, you can have Voipfone send you as an SMS (text) message to your mobile phone. You can then access your voicemail from any telephone anywhere and listen to your message. Don’t forget that all voicemail messages are also sent to your email too as sound files too, so you’re always in touch!

It’s often useful to bring someone else into your phone call - to help out with a problem or make arranging a meeting easier. Quite often too, another call comes in whilst you’re already talking to someone else - with the click of a button you can join all the calls together. This works for any telephone call - landline or mobile - but if all the calls are from Voipfone customers the calls are free too

TAPI stands for Telephone Applications Programming Interface and is a small piece of software (a driver) that links the Voipfone service to other software that you may have on your PC such as Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express and some CRM packages like Sage and Act!  When installed, it means that you can make calls to people in the contacts sections of those applications simply by clicking on the name of the contact in your directory. No more dialling.

With Busy Lamps you can see which of your PBX extensions are busy, which are ringing and which are free. This is obviously a very useful function for receptionists – they can see who’s available before transferring a call. But it is also useful for everyone, especially in a distributed business with extensions in different physical locations; at home or even in different countries; it works wherever the telephones are located.

We provide you with free software that turns your PC into a fully featured telephone. Our install wizard does all the installation work for you and all you need is a headset – or a microphone and loudspeaker at a push - to start making calls. You can even load the softphone onto your laptop and use a wireless link (WiFi) to make FREE ‘mobile’ phone calls wherever you can find an internet connection.

If you’re having a busy day, you’ll probably make and receive a lot of calls. Once upon a time people calling you would get a frustrating engaged tone. Now, with Voipfone, you know when someone is calling, even if you’re using the phone at the time. So you can put your first caller on hold and answer the second then toggle between them as much as you like. Because you can view incoming caller identity, you can even see who’s calling before you decide to answer.

Voipfone gives you online, real time access to records of all the calls you have made, received or missed. You can see details of all the calls you have ever made showing; the date and time, the destination, the duration and the cost for each call and the total cost of all the calls in the period. This is a permanent record so that you can have total budgetary control of your Voipfone usage. You may also download your call records to a spreadsheet for analysis.

With Voipfone’s On Line Control Panel you can manage your account in real time, from your own PC or any other PC, securely, from anywhere in the world. From the Panel you can view an itemised record of all the calls you’ve made and received, see your account balance and top it up, upgrade to other services or cancel one you no longer need. You can edit your details and update registered phone numbers at any time.

We do not restrict the number of simultaneous calls you can make or receive on your telephone - you are limited only by your own telephone equipment and your internet bandwidth. For example, our free softphone can handle 3 telephone calls at once whilst the snom 360 has 12 lines. You can also have an unlimited telephone numbers on your account that can each ring your telephone. You no longer need a physical telephone line per telephone number!

If you have access to the internet, you can use any telephone anywhere to make a call and have the call charged to your own account, not the account of the phone owner. This means that any phone, anywhere, becomes your own and you can use it without feeling guilty! Voipfone calls the phone you’re making the call from, then makes another call to the person you want to call; then connects both together. So you will be charged for two calls.

Sometimes when you’re dealing with a call you need to do something else, maybe get information from a colleague, make or take another call, look something up or just answer the door bell. With Voipfone, you can put the caller on hold while you do whatever you need to do and while you’re away the caller will hear music until you’re ready to pick the call up again. There’s nothing to set up or configure – just press the hold or line button on your telephone.

Calls can be transferred to any telephone anywhere. You can even talk to the person you wish to transfer the call to before doing it – so you know that they are there and are able to accept it. Your callers hear music on hold during the transfer and if the call is transferred to another Voipfone user or PBX telephone extension, the call is free, no matter where it is transferred to - even internationally.

When you call 1471 we read back to you the number of the last customer to call you; whether you answered it or not. So if you miss a call you can you can call them back straightaway. Calls to 1471 are free. (You can find all your missed calls in ‘Your Account’ online on our website too and even call them there and then by just clicking on the call record

Your telephone sends a signal through our network to the telephone you are calling. If the called telephone has a display (like a mobile phone) it will show your telephone number. This is a useful feature – for instance if the person called has your name in his address list it will display the name not just the number and if you send your number he can call you back.