Good 1300 providers

I’ve just gone through the process of setting up a 1300 number for eStyles (1300 477 451!). It took me a very long time to find a good 1300 number provider so I thought I would help out others by putting this information here.

Currently I’ve got a 1300 number forwarding to one of two VoIP phone numbers depending on the callers location, and then those two VoIP phone numbers forward to my mobile phone.

The way 1300 numbers work is that, if you have the call terminate to a landline, most providers will give you x minutes (usually 20 minutes) if the call originated from the same region that the termination landline is in – so if you have a 1300 number that terminates to a Melbourne landline, then a caller from Melbourne will not cost you anything for the first 20 minutes as it is a local call, but a caller from anywhere else is considered a national call.

However, it is possible to skip around this by using VoIP – 1300 numbers provide a number of routing options like area code routing, region routing, time of day routing etc. You can set up a VoIP number in every region that you expect to receive calls from for a very low cost (starting from around $5/year for each VoIP number with some providers), and then use your 1300 number’s region routing feature to route each region to your local VoIP number in that region. You can then forward all of your VoIP calls to your mobile, or buy some hardware and terminate the VoIP account in to your office. If you do forward the VoIP calls to your mobile, you can find some VoIP providers that offer free calls or free minutes to mobiles, which is what we did. So if we receive a call from a region that we have a VoIP number in, we don’t pay anything as it falls under the 1300 free minutes for local calls, and it also falls under the free minutes from the VoIP line to my mobile!

Now, the main reason for posting this was to help you pick a good 1300 provider, which I struggled to do. If you go to Google and search for 1300 providers or similar, you get many results from plenty of businesses that all look similar and have similar names. From my research, all of these businesses are run by one or two 1300 providers – I think Dow Royle (which is also Telcoworx), but I’m not completely sure. It seems as though there are only a few actual 1300 providers. Most ISP’s offer them but they are generally quite expensive.

Apart from the ISP’s, these are the 1300 providers that I came across:

• Dow Royle (also TelcoWorx) – http://www.dowroyle.net.au/1300.html
• Better Telecom - https://www.bettertelecom.com.au/inbound.php
• GoTalk – http://www.gotalk.com.au/Business/Pages/1300Numbers.aspx

I did some searching and did not find positive reviews about Dow Royle, but both Better Telecom and GoTalk had good reviews. Their 1300 services are similar – Better Telecom has no monthly access fee (minimum $5/month spend though) but slightly higher call rates, and they charge $25 if you want to change your routing setup. They also have a minimum 12 month contract. GoTalk have a $15 monthly fee, but slightly lower call rates. They only offer 10 minutes free on local calls, but they include 2 free minutes for national and mobile calls. They also don’t charge to change your routing points and have no minimum contract.

One bonus point for GoTalk is that if you take up one of their business VoIP plans, they waive the $15 monthly fee for the 1300 number, and they also half the call costs on the 1300 number – this makes it an extremely attractive deal. We ended up going with GoTalk for our 1300 number, but we aren’t using their VoIP services at the moment as they could not do call fowarding to a mobile online, the call forwarding had to be done in hardware on my end. Once I am ready to skip the mobile forwarding and start accepting the calls straight from VoIP, I will certainly be switching to GoTalk’s VoIP and taking advantage of their great combination deal. In the mean time, we have signed up with Ace Communications (http://www.acecommunications.com.au/) for VoIP, who let you handle call forwarding through their website without having to terminate the VoIP line in to any hardware – they have good plans and they came recommended.

So in conclusion – GoTalk offer a great 1300 number and VoIP deal which seemed unbeatable by the competition. I’ve only been using them for a few days, but I am satisfied with everything so far. If you are trying to set up a 1300 number, don’t forget to use VoIP to get even cheaper inbound calls!