MyNetFone’s Virtual PBX offers a good VoIP solution for small offices that don’t want to maintain their own PBX onsite.  This review is based on my real-world experience with it to date.

Extensions, Trunks, and In-Dial Numbers

Each physical phone in your office represents an extension, and each active conversation represents a trunk.  Multiple external callers can call a singular in-dial number at once.  Each incoming or outgoing call will consume one trunk. Internal office calls are free but still consume a trunk.

The number of extensions, trunks, and in-dial numbers can vary independently.  For example, your office could have one in-dial number, two trunks, and four extensions.  In this case, two callers could call your single phone number at the same time and be forwarded through to two of your extensions.  A third caller would not be able to call, however, because that would require an extra trunk.

Pay Per Trunk

The beauty of the MyNetFone Virtual PBX is that you only pay a monthly fee based on the number of trunks you require, rather than on the number of extensions.  You must buy the actual phones from MyNetFone, and they are locked.

Trunk Consumption

With MyNetFone Virtual PBX you subscribe to two or more trunks on a monthly basis.  You might think that with two trunks you would be able to have two conversations going at once, but this is not always the case.  When an incoming call causes one of your phones to ring, that consumes a trunk – even before the phone is picked up.  This means that if one conversation is taking place, and one phone is ringing, no one else will be able to make a phone call – incoming or outgoing.

This is fair enough, but the trouble I have encountered is that the MyNetFone Virtual PBX does not support Group Pickup.  Group Pickup is a feature whereby if your colleagues’ phone is ringing and he is away from his desk, you can answer the call from your own phone just by pressing the group pick-up button.  Since this feature is currently not available, you may workaround it by using Call Groups.  With Call Groups, any number of phones can be assigned to one incoming number.  When the incoming number rings, all the phones in the group ring.

But each ringing phone costs a trunk.

Therefore, the pay by trunk scheme works best if Group Pickup is not essential for you, or if you still find it good value to pay for enough trunks to emulate it with Call Groups.  Or perhaps, MyNetFone might agree to a compromise solution if you ask them.

Some Problems

I have experienced, on a few occasions, a problem where an an external caller is informed that the in-dial number is not connected.  If the caller tries again, the call then succeeds.  In addition, the voicemail to email feature has stopped working, although the voicemails can still be collected by phone.  This latter feature is not of great concern, but the former is.  If the problems can be ironed out, the MyNetFone Virtual PBX will prove to be a worthy choice for small business.