If you were a freelancer and used VoIP line as your only home phone, and if you speak to your clients on that line, should your VoIP be considered as residential or business account?
Posted Nov 8, 2018, 9:34 PM UTC · edited
Depends, if you’re just starting out, you just need your phone to ring and voicemail.
However if you’re already trying to streamline, then business for the extra features. Pretty sure Voip.ms offers the works for either.
I'm actually with Voip.ms right now but they are threatening to restrict my account unless I switch over to per minute billing. I only need my phone to ring and don't even require any features at all, not even voicemail.
You must have an old legacy plan because all of their current plans are per minute. Why are you fighting the $0 per user month and $.01 per minute billing. Everywhere else you’re going to pay way more.
Not really, I just checked and Voip.ms is still offering unlimited residential plan as we speak. Other Voip providers also have similar rates and plans. The difference between that and per minute billing could be a saving of $400 per year. As a freelancer, that could go a long way in paying for other essential services.
If $400 a year is prevented you from growing your business, you’re not charging enough. I pay that in Chamber of commerce dues each year. It’s nothing. You’re running a business, not a charity.
It can be either. It usually is just to gauge how much usage a company can expect on the line. Most have a "fair use" amount on their residential line and charge a flat rate. If you don't use a TON of minutes, a residential line is fine.
Are you looking into this for tax purposes?
If so, I found this to be helpful -
"If your phone acts as both your business and personal phone, you are only allowed to deduct the portion used for business from your taxable income. It’s important for you to hang on to your itemized phone bill and receipts to ensure that you’re deducting the right amounts and to keep records of your deduction." - https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-deductions-and-credits-2/can-i-deduct-my-mobile-phone-and-other-electronic-devices-11670/
This is very helpful. Thank you for the info!
Why does this matter?
Because VoIP providers offer different rates and plans depending on the types of account one has. Some residential accounts may have flat rates while business accounts may charge you per minute. Your monthly cost could potentially double or triple depending on the type of your account.
At my company we lump residential and small business into the same category.
Residential and Small Business generally do not need PBX features, multiple endpoints, multiple extensions, conferencing, virtual faxing, multi-location, ring groups, hunt groups, and so on and so forth.
If all you need is a basic line for a couple users then a "Residential VOIP Plan" is generally fine unless your usage is a lot, but most providers have soft and hard limits to weed out abuse.
My biggest residential client uses around 5500 minutes per month. I know it's not abuse, because it also happens to be my mother in law.
I had a chuckle about your mother-in-law being your biggest residential client so thank you for that.
My situation is I am a freelancer from home, and I do speak to people using my VoIP home phone line. I currently have 2 residential flat rate DIDs with Voip.ms and they do have 3500 minutes cap per month on each DID. My normal usage is typically way less than that but occasionally I do go over, maybe only once or twice per year. That's why I registered for the second DID as a backup so it would potentially give me 7000 minutes in total, and I can rotate and share the traffic between the two, only for those one or two rare months that I may go over the limit. I have been paying for both DIDs even though for the majority of time I never had the chance to use the second DID at all since my usage has always been below the limit.
I have had the account with Voip.ms for over a year. Their support recently advised me that my usage for last month was 3704 minutes and has exceeded the residential flat rate limit. They are demanding that I must switch over to per minute billing or they will restrict my account. It turned out I had made an error in the settings so I had been using only one DID as opposed to sharing the traffic to the second DID as initially planned. Per minute billing would potentially quadruple my monthly cost.
I explained to them my situation but they deemed my DID usage was consistent with business use and therefore not qualified for flat rate residential billing. The reason they gave me was because they detected that I received incoming calls from conference service or forwarded line and that's why they considered it as business use. I know VoIP providers can monitor and look at the number of channels being active for a given DID, but personally I have NEVER initiated any conference calls on my end, and I have no way of controlling how the person on the other end calls me. Is there any possibility they are eavesdropping on my calls?
How much are you paying per month for the current plan?