For fully hosted, works out of the box solutions I've heard good things about both RingCentral (http://www.ringcentral.com/) and GrassHopper (http://grasshopper.com/how-it-works-and-features). You are giving up some control with these options vs. running your own asterisk server but given that it is their core business, they will be able to offer a much more stable/reliable service at a much lower cost than you could on your own.
If you want a bit more control, but don't want to deal with all of the phone system bits you might want to look at building something with Twilio (http://www.twilio.com/). Twilio offers some very easy to use and relatively inexpensive APIs that allow you to work with the phone system via web technologies. You can reasonably create a simple IVR that forwards to cell phones in an hour or two of work. Depending on how complex of a setup you are looking to do, you can very reasonably host everything you need on S3 or a free level heroku (http://www.heroku.com/) or phpfog (https://phpfog.com/) account (just push your code, no servers to manage). Finally if you really want to run an asterisk server, the key things to decide are how much availability do you need/can you afford. Any setup where you have just one server running (especially on EC2 or any cloud provider) will have unexpected downtime. If you can afford the few hours of downtime, then a single small instance on EC2 or Linode probably can be ok. If not, you'll want to look at running a cluster of multiple instances for redundancy, but that's obviously going to cost more. This is where the hosted services have a big advantage. They have to have lots of redundant servers available just to handle the load of their customer base. Accordingly they can offer you a highly available service for less than you can do on your own. To sum up, unless you have particularly complex needs or very stringent privacy concerns (e.g. regulatory issues) you're probably best off with a hosted solution like RingCentral or GrassHopper. -- Sean O'Connor http://www.seanoc.com On Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Alan Snyder wrote: > I'm looking to get an 800/888 number for a small business with no brick and > mortar presence. We want voicemail, conference calling, extensions (which > forward to individual cell phones or land lines), a menu with options when > people call, and an admin interface that I can interact with to make changes. > Heres what I'm not able to piece together just yet... > 1) how do I get an 800 number thats not tied to a phone company or physical > phone line. > 2) how and where can I host the server (asterisk?) To handle calls, store > voice mail, etc. I currently have some amazon ec2 instances and would love to > use one of them if possible. I've heard good and bad things about doing this. > 3) if cloud hosting isn't possible, should we just go with some hosting > service specializing in business phone services and hosting? Id rather not > get into the business of housing business critical hardware in my house. > I'm more than willing to rtfm's if pointed to some :) > Thanks > Alan > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College > Mar 7 - Desktop Shootout - 9th Anniversary of MHVLUG > Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef > May 2 - May 2012 Meeting > >
_______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Mar 7 - Desktop Shootout - 9th Anniversary of MHVLUG Apr 4 - An Intro to Chef May 2 - May 2012 Meeting
