Grasshopper

I’ve been using Google Voice (free) for 3 years but because it only allows one line per cell phone and I needed a new line for my new company, I searched for a new service and found Grasshopper. What a waste of my money and time. I signed up in May and have had nothing but issues. I called their customer service in June because a few people had told me there was no option to leave a vm when they called. The customer service rep said she fixed it. In July I was told the same thing by another potential client. After making a scene on their FB page, someone from Grasshopper called me that day and fixed the issue and refunded the $ 24/​month I’d paid since May. It’s now September and I’m realizing that I don’t get notified when I miss a call nor when someone leaves me a voicemail! I have to check the app to see I missed a call and have a vm waiting for me. Oh, and I don’t receive text messages either. Google Voice does all of this for me for FREE. I’m cancelling Grasshopper service and changing my number to Google Voice.

They made up for their mistake by issuing us a credit for the down time. Not at all what we lost in business but a nice gesture.

is an elegant, feature rich, inexpensive web 2.0 business phone solution cruelly hobbled by reliability issues.
Despite a fair amount searching I couldn’t find an objective, detailed review of GVM and it sure needs one. So here you go, based on nearly a year of use and some focused testing (see below).
The promise: Virtualized PBX. You pay GVM a small monthly fee (as little as $ 9.99 for 5 extensions) and all your business phone problems are over. No need to blow $ 5K on a PBX and programming, Callers reach a dial-​by-​name menu and think they are talking to a big-​budget phone system. With a click of the mouse the system can be set to forward calls to wherever you are, or to any of a variety of mailboxes and/​or interactive virtual extensions. Whether its five people in one office who love the flexibility of changing routing anytime; seven guys in different spare bedrooms (or states, or countries, for that matter) who want to sound like they are all in a single glass-​and-​chrome corporate headquarters; or one person who wants to sound big and established, GVM has you covered. At least theoretically.
The good:
The system is entirely web based and flexible. Want calls to your extension and also calls to the general Sales extension routed to your cell phone today? Want the calls to go to your cell every weekday between 8:00 and 10:00 AM, and to the office after that? No problem. Want the system to email your messages as MP3s and also page you so you can call in and get them over the phone? OK. Want your callers to hear jazz, rock, or a pitch for your services while they wait. GVM does that pretty easily, too. GVM offers 1 – 800 numbers and sophisticated options like Fax On Demand («Dial 56 for marketing… No one is available now, but enter your fax number and we’ll send you a catalog») and can randomly switch callers to a range of extensions (useful for example if you have a handful of salesmen and you want them to all get a crack at potential customers who entered the general Sales extension). See
for a full description.
User support is knowledgeable, very available and friendly.
The bad:
Reliability is an issue. GVM promises «No Busy Signals/​Unlimited Capacity.» Unfortunately, they don’t deliver. After complaints about trouble getting through, and GVM support telling me (very nicely) that everything worked great we reached into our software developer bag of tracks and did some rigorous testing.
We found the system had kinda-​sorta acceptable reliability when we subjected it to one or two simultaneous incoming phone calls, but didn’t do so hot when we tested it under load, slamming it with six or more simultaneous calls. We placed a total of 230 test calls (its nice having a software testing lab handy).
Calls under load: 140, failed 25, 18% failure
Calls not under load: 90, failed 3, 3% failure
Phone numbers are not transportable. If you have your own number and you forward that to GVM you can quit GVM anytime. But if you make the
number your published business phone, your biz and GVM are pretty well married.
The user interface is well done but can be a bit confusing. This can be an issue since you might miss a call routed wrongly. It’s not a huge deal (the menus are well done considering the wealth of options they present), but if you don’t think you could program a VCR this might not be the system for you.
My advice:
I think for most people the reliability issue forces a pass. If you are small, financially squeezed, don’t think you’ll get a huge amount of phone traffic and really want to look big, maybe. Otherwise I’d suggest either sucking it up and buying a PBX or just staying with an old fashioned phone and voicemail system. Its too bad, this system could have been much more.