Excited to see a softapp being made available from VOIP.MS to more seamlessly integrate with their system. I’m anxiously awaiting the iOS version since I don’t have an Android phone. But, a few questions that come to mind:
I see that it is available in an open trial for a limited time, giving you the opportunity to try it out firsthand and for free. But, I don’t see any mention of what the cost will be once this trial period is over. Will it be a one time purchase of the app in the Google Play and Apple app store, or will it be a free download but then a fee imposed from within the Voip.ms account in order to enable or use it? If there is to be a fee for using it (whether one time license or subscription based) it would be nice if the download / install from the Google Play and Apple app store is free. The reason for this request is when setting up a a company with a VOIP.MS phone system that is going to also have certain employees use a soft app, often the softphone app is being installed on the employees own personal phone and they may not be set up to purchase apps at which point they need to get set up with a form of payment requiring them to add credit card details, etc. Some of them are very hesitant to do this on their phone. Even if their company says that they will reimburse them for the cost of the app, the whole process can become a big hassle. This is what I currently have to deal with when installing soft phone apps like Groundwire that have about a $10 price tag.
With what is being promised as a more seamless integration with the softphone app and Voip.ms, I am wondering if the same voip.ms subaccount that is used with the hardphone can also be used with the softphone app, or if it is still necessary to creat an additional subaccount specifically for the softphone and then make that new subaccount part of the same ring group as the desktop phone.
I see in the Voip.ms Wiki that this new softphone app only supports one voip.ms account? I currently have workers that not only have their own personal voicemailbox but are also responsible for checking and responding to a general voicemailbox. So, when I configure their softphone app (most of the time using Groundwire’s softphone app), I set it up with a subaccount that is tied to their own voice mailbox and then add an another subaccount that is tied to the general voicemail box. This way, they can notified and retrieve messages left in both voicemail boxes right from the softphone app, and even make outgoing calls from either their own account extension (such as if they have their own DID versus the company’s main phone number DID) so that the Caller ID shows up accordingly.
Any estimate on how soon the Apple version of the softapp will become available?
Hello -
I downloaded the Android app and when I go to set up in addition to user name & password it asks also for domain. I am at a loss what domain? Thanks! Murray
In this instance, “domain” refers to the voip.ms server (DID Point of Presence) that you had elected to use in your voip.ms account, e.g. “toronto2.voip.ms”.
Has anyone gotten this to work? i tried it, it registers, it will send and receive SMS, but all voice calls inbound or outbound just show “error” on the handset (Pixel 7) and show nothing at all on the CDR data. I opened a ticket but so far no response.
Gesh, support has sure gone downhill – I got an answer asking to verify some settings, after which they marked the ticket solved and closed it and sent me a survey (i suspect they will not appreciate the answer).
I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the details with me via private message. Based on your description, it appears that it may not have been handled appropriately on our end. Thank you
I got mine working, and the issue is that while it is their branded softphone, it is completely unaware of your underlying settings. In my case I had to enable SIP/TLS and outbound encryption to parallel how my actual VoIP system is set up.
Basically there appears to be zero advantage to the branded version in terms of adopting your settings, you need to set them up just like it was linphone or some other app.
What it SHOULD be, since you give it credentials, is smart enough to pull down the provisioning from their service so you really do just put in credentials and magic happens. It’s not.
This is a great point, especially about employees installing apps on their own phones. That’s something we see too. Some VoIP services are moving toward making their apps free to install with account-level activation to avoid this hassle. As for subaccounts and voicemail handling having support for multiple mailboxes and outbound caller ID profiles is key. Hopefully VoIP.ms builds that in soon.
Yes, I agree. When I set up Voip.ms at a business and then want to configure some employees with an app on their phone (such as Groundwire) so they can have a softphone, it is a real pain to require the individual to have to purchase the app for their own phone. Even if the company is prepared to cover the cost and reimburse them, often people may not even be set up to purchase apps (i.e. no credit card / payment method configured) and then they have to go through that whole process and some don’t want to do that because they don’t like the idea of giving their credit card info to Apple or Google Play store for fear of recurring charges, etc. So, making the App available for free, but then recognizing that it is licensed because it connects to a service like VOIP.MS is a preferred solution. And yes, the need to check multiple mailboxes (i.e. general mailbox and personal mailbox) without having to go through a lot of hurdles (like connecting to multiple SIP accounts) would be very helpful. Also, as I originally mentioned, the ability for the softphone to share the same subaccount as the customer’s desk phone would be nice and save trouble of creating a separate subaccount just for use with the softphone.
I use the voip.ms softphone for SMS and calls. Behind the scenes there is an Acrobits server keeping the registration alive and sending push notifications for calls, but you don’t need to do anything to register separately with it. Note that it supports SMS, but not MMS.
I have the app working on my Pixel 7 phone after a couple of initial problems. At first it wasn’t registering successfully, and the app isn’t very clear about that - but I finally sorted out that my SIP password wasn’t the same as my account password. I found that the app does have to be registered to the same voip.ms server as your DID setting in order to receive calls. In my initial testing I did not receive calls when the app was not active on my phone, but subsequently that changed and I did start receiving calls after a leading push notification. But that comes with an unexpected problem: the app hijacks the call from my home ATA, which is also registered to the same voip.ms server. The server doesn’t ring both, like for example the way that Google Voice rings all connected devices simultaneously, So if I’m at home, and my cell phone is somewhere out of earshot recharging, I don’t get incoming calls on my home phone, There’s no apparent way to temporarily turn off the app, so I have to alter the login information to force a disconnect to let calls come through to my home ATA. I think I need to create a sub-account and a ring group? Yes, that works: create a sub-account for the app, create a ring group with the main account, and then assign the DID incoming call destination setting to the ring group.
It’s using SIP Simple so you don’t need 10DLC registration for that. BUT… In my opinion, the texting over SIP is minimal and terrible. Some messages never show up but show up in my email, some are cut off, no ability to support images (MMS) etc. I have gone through what I consider a horribly confusing process to get my main direct business line number submitted for 10DLC so I can try out the Textable offering. Just sucks that I have to pay the cost for the campaign monthly plus the cost of Textable service. For my business line it’s worth it but, if customers want something like this, I don’t think it’s a win personally. Plus the 10DLC process is just awful, confusing etc… Not VoIP.ms’ fault really, they don’t make the 10DLC rules. The fact that texting over SIP sucks also isn’t VoIP.ms’ fault, it’s just the limitations of the technology. Crazy that at this stage of the game, texting on VoIP numbers is still a mess and commercial texting in general is so expensive and restrictive for legit businesses.