The World of Computing and Solutions

Chances are, if you ran a big company you’d have an expensive PBX (private branch exchange) system to juggle extensions, conference calls, and voice mail. For small businesses, a better solution is virtual PBX, which doesn’t require new hardware and is managed via the Web. You get a main number from the hosting company and then route all calls through it to other lines, be it a cell phone, home phone, or a phone abroad. You can also avoid long distance charges by routing calls via VoIP.

VirtualPBX offers conference calling, caller ID, and more advanced features such as departmental queuing starting at $9.99 a month for three users. There’s also a $25 set up fee and per-minute charges.
With features similar to those of VirtualPBX, Onebox’s Receptionist service costs $24.95 a month and four users, plus per-minute and set up fees. And GotVMail starts at $9.95 a month. Its most attractive SMB offering is a $105 monthly service that includes a toll-free and local phone number with 20 mailboxes and 1,000 local call minutes.
Do-it-yourselfers can eliminate the monthly fees entirely by building their own software-based PBX. An increasingly popular example is VoIP-based Asterisk, an open-source program available at no cost that runs on Linux and Mac OS X.