Announcement for Discontinued Service
 

Dear Voxalot User,

We are sorry to inform you that due to the rising cost of operations, we
have been forced to discontinue the Voxalot VoIP service. This change
will be effective from December 31st, 2011.

If you have renewed your subscription since September 1st 2011 and would
like a refund, please contact payments@voxalot.com. Unfortunately,
payments for subscriptions older than this are unable to be refunded.
Please be aware that a refund will reverse your payment and cause your
account to be downgraded to a Basic account.

We thank you for your support for Voxalot, and are sorry for any
inconvenience that this announcement will cause, and wish you the best in
the future.

Regards,
Voxalot Support

A sad news this weekend.

Best Wishes and good luck!

I just wake up to get this sad announcement. Thank you for all what you have done in the past.

Brest wishes and so long.

Very sad to hear that. Thank you for providing this wonderful service over the years
 

Voxalot allowed my family to stay in nearly daily touch although we live on 3 different continents. Thanks for all the good work you have done over the years!

I hope the forums will not be taken down since they contain a lot of good information about VOIP in general... any decision on that?

Is that it? After this year there won't be a Voxalot anymore? I am confused by this statement
"Please be aware that a refund will reverse your payment and cause your
account to be downgraded to a Basic account."

Does this mean it will be downgraded to a basic account and that will cease after 31st December? Or that the basic account will continue?

I am flabbergasted from this sad news.

Why have decided to stop the service? And not first asked if users want to pay to continue the use of the service?

There must be a way to continue Voxalot, what if a every user pays $ 15,- or a bit more. Could that save Voxalot, it is such a great service!
It would be a shame if this system and very fine userface, will stop.

Very sad news, but nobody is talking about an alternative.
Don´t you guys worry how you solve this for the future?

What would it take?
 

Very sad news indeed. This will negatively impact many people who've come to rely on and value the service.

What would it take to keep Voxalot going for another year?

Thanks for a fabulous service and all the good work to date!

Okay, will Voxalot cease completely on 31st December or will it remain as a "basic" service?

What's the chance of providing details so that we can set up our own server(s) to replace Voxalot?

Never thought of such a sad news. Very sad indeed!

If it is not due to some bigger business plan, kindly think again! Perhaps a request for donations from basic account holders and others alike may bring in the needed cash. I would love this service to continue.

If it the service discontinue as planned, my only wish that VOXALOT may rise again like a Phoenix. I even have a name for its new incarnation "Voxafiniks".

My account was started even before Voxalot began its paid services. I never needed those paid accounts as I had some hardware support (VIOP enabled router) to manage SIP accounts, dial plans and quick dials.

But I believe Voxalot is loved because of host of other value added services like "virtual toll free" facility, call forwarding, voice mail etc.

No low cost hardware will be able to offer these functions. But customers with smaller requirements (i.e. management of SIP accounts, dial plans and quick dial only) may think of German hardwares i.e. VOIP enabled routers from "AVM" (FRITZ!Box models). FRITZ!Box can work behind existing modems or routers. Even some older models allow call-through functions. (Caution: German models need special firmware upgrade to make it work in other countries if it has to work as a ADSL modem too.)

Thanks to Voxalot team for the service rendered so far and wishing them continued success in their future endeavors.

(Byju)

have you tried to find s.o. to continue this service?
 

Hi,

have you tried to find s.o. (company) to continue the service of voxalot?
I mean the system is very good and I think there must be a company being inzterested in that - no?
Anyway, thanks for Voxalot,
cash

I was wondering if a company like SipSorcery wouldn't be interested in taking over Voxalot. I think the Voxalot interface is much more user-friendly and would serve current SipSorcery users very well. It seems a shame to let such a great service die.

It was sad to here the news and I was shocked. It has worked so well for me - though I have a premium account I don't use it's features but was happy to pay towards a really good service. Like many others I would be willing to pay more and was surprised you offered so much for free. I have seen a lot of goods things go and this will be missed. I will be happy to pay if someone can offer an alternative, as I just can't find one. If this is really it, I would like to thank Voxalot for the excellent service they have given me.

All good things are destined to come to an end

Thank you again for all these years of excellent service

Sad news, any more details ?
any other similar services ?

I have just received some interesting information from the good people at SipSorcery. They are very keen on winning the custom of current Voxalot users looking for an alternative. They are well aware of the fact that the Ruby dial plans Sipsorcery uses are a stumbling block for many people, myself included, used to the relative simplicity of the Voxalot dial plans.
So, they are currently hard at work to try and simplify the dial plan management in SS. This blog post(preview) details the main thrust of the work to make dial plan management simpler.
Sipsorcery are trying to do everything they can to provide a smooth transition path for Voxalot users including incorporating any suggestions they can into providing a more streamlined interface and also a migration tool that will generate a SIPSorcery dialplan based on an exported Voxalot one Looking for a Voxlaot Replacement?(preview). This migration tool is manual at the moment but should become automated sometime next week.
I'm sure that, if they are successful in their endeavours to make SS more user-friendly and easier to manage for the not-so-technically-minded among us, they will gain quite a few customers. Personally, I am particularly interested in seeing if they can duplicate the ease of use the Voxalot speed dials provide, like alphabetical listing, searchability, etc.

SipSorcery
 

I made the switch to SipSorcery a few days ago. I had a fairly complex setup in Voxalot premium with dial plans, call forwarding, multiple registrations, speed dials, etc.

Aaron of SS has been very helpful and I have been able to get 95% of everything working withing a day of switching over. I never used Ruby before, but was able to hack around with it fairly quickly.

I miss the mobile site for WebCallback in Voxalot. SS has a webcallback feature and next I need to make a SmartPhone friendly page to initiate calls.

SS is very powerful and looking forward to tinkering with it more.

Does SipSorcery support CallThru (you call, get a dial tone and dial using the registered providers) ?

@Corbu, see - SIP Sorcery Community Forums • View topic - automatically chose provider for diferent destinations

Thanks. I am using a similar setup, PBXes for CallThru and Voxalot for outgoing calls, I thought I might combine everything under SipSorcery since PBXes charges too much for CallThru.

Just discovered this announcement and apart from my disappointment with the news, I'm even more upset that I haven't had any direct communication. As a premium subscriber I'd expect at least an Email to tell me that things are changing. And I lose nearly six-months subscription payment.

Overall annoyed rather than just disappointed

:mad:

Andrew

Emails were definitely sent. I suggest you check the email address in your account and then if it is right, see if somehow the message went to a spam folder.

Unfortunate news indeed. I was just starting to get my head around some it's cool features.
In particular, using recieving calls to my inum which came along with the Voxalot subscription.

Will our Voxalot Inum disappear along with the service? Or will they remain along with SIPBroker?

Ravi

Good question. With the exception of iNum I've now managed to reproduce nearly everything on SIPSorcery that I had on Voxalot - provider selection by code or by prefix, inbound termination, Google Voice, call forward etc. Voicemail would be good, but I let another provider take care of that.

On the other hand, I get quite a few calls to my Voxalot id via Sipbroker. If that stays (and we keep iNum too) I'll be a happy bunny.


EDIT: on seconds thoughts, how would that work? If Voxalot's not in operation, we couldn't register our accounts, could we?

That's what I was thinking. Even if we were somehow able to keep our iNums, there would be no way to use it as it is connected to our accounts, which will no longer exist.

I guess it's no problem though, I found out there are several providers which give free iNums. I just registered with Callcentric, which lets you forward calls to your iNum to a SIP address.. just what I needed :)

http://forum.voxalot.com/sip-broker-...html#post34558

I suggest you set-up a SipBroker alias which can be re-pointed to any SIP account you are currently using.

Essentially, your SIP Broker alias becomes your SIP address for as long as you want to keep it.

Also see SIP Sorcery Recipes - Tropo Callback

I plan to try the Tropo method on SipSorcery. Some cool possibilities there.

Hi,

I had Sipsorcery migrate my account from Voxalot, they did it within 2 days.

Just had to fill in the passwords and everything worked.

Registration of providers succeeded instantly without the delays I had at Voxalot. Quality of phone calls is also better. Their website is faster and easier to navigate in. Disadvantage is the Ruby language if you want to change the programming e.g. of dial plans.

Only problem was that Sipsorcery does not provide voice mail, but they gave me instructions how to set this up at Callconnect and that works fine.

All in all, I am happy with the change. I also hope that Sipsorcery will not have the problems Voxalot had several times a year with server breakdowns (every time it took them a couple of days to even notice).

The costs are also comparable.

So, good bye Voxalot!

I have also made the jump over to Sipsorcery using their automatic Import tool to migrate all my providers, dial plans and 270-odd speed dials. It all happened instantly and, after entering my passwords, the providers registered and everything just worked as far as I could tell. I have not noticed a difference in call quality but calls seem to take a little longer to connect, not a huge issue for us.

My wife and I are happy that we can continue to use our speed dial list, although it is not presented as attractively as in Voxalot and not searchable alphabetically. As we had two Voxalot accounts, I have also opened a second SIP account, which I believe is covered under the same US$35, and migrated the dial plans and speed dials to that account as well.

I am still in the 7 day evaluation period and will pay the $35, not because I really need SS, but because I'm interested in learning more about what it can do. It seems to offer more than what Voxalot did and I think it's going to be fun learning more about it. Maybe once I'm more familiar with SS, i won't miss Voxalot so much.

I had a bit of a play with the brandnew SipSorcery dial plan wizard, which I believe is still under development. You need to use the Silverlight logon to be able to use it. Click on Dial Plans, then Add and select the Simple Wizard. Things will now look much more familiar to the Voxalot user. I managed to create a few smart call dial plans and speed dials with ease. Aaron is doing his level best to make life as painless as possible for us Voxalot refugees.

How is the sip sorcery web call back menu system? It was a mess to figure out last time I looked. It is a feature I am going to really miss from voxalot.

Switched to SipSorcery
 

So, SipSorcery it is..
I made the switch today, I moved not only my account but also other accounts I've been taken care of.
Ruby dial plans were fun playing with. I'm all settled now.

Anyone managed to get CallThru working with Tropo ? How is it ?

I followed the recipe for setting up voicemail with a third party provider as outined on this page: https://www.sipsorcery.com/mainsite/...ntricVoicemail

This is working well for us now. I recorded a personalised greeting as I think the American accent would put some people off. The voicemail is nice and clear. Rather than maintaining various voicemail boxes with different providers, all voicemail will now be handled by Callcentric. I like their website, by the way. I have read good things about this VSP as well.

Before I start playing with this, what is it used for? I read the information on the Recipes page but still don't understand in which circumstances I could use this.

You dial a number (one DID that you have registered or by dialing a SipBroker number in your area) from any normal phone and you get a dial tone. After that you dial the number and call is made by using your VSPs and according to your dialing plans. It is exactly like a Calling Card, but you set the providers and you make the rules. Basically with CallThru you can use your registered VSPs from any phone, not just from an ATA connected phone.

Thanks for that, Corbu. I managed to get Skype calling working OK, so Tropo is my next project. Have you got Tropo working yet?

I am still with Voxalot, I haven't moved to SipSorcery yet :D. For me CallThru is everything, I don't use any ATA, I access everything from normal phones. Right now I have PBXes for CallThru and I have two options > SipSorcery with Tropo or get a premium account with PBXes and move everything there. Until I get a confirmation that CallTru is working reliably with SipSorcery <> Tropo, I will not do anything.

You can get a test account for 7 days which could be extended on application if you wanted to try it before committing yourself. Anyway, if I do get it working, I'll let you know.

If you like, you can follow the painful process here: SIP Sorcery Community Forums &bull; View topic - Tropo Callback question :)

SipSorcery dial plan management
 

For those of us who are put off by the apparent complexity of SipSorcery's Ruby dial plans, there is now a Simple Wizard available that does all the heavy lifting for us Voxalot users. The wizard interface should look familiar to most of us.

Aaron has just released an easy-to-follow guide on how to use the wizard. Read all about it here: Getting Started with the Simple Wizard «

I have actually surprised myself by taking to SipSorcery like a duck to water. It is a very powerful platform and it's fun learning about what it can do. Just what an old brain like mine needs.