Sunrocket VoIP Phone Service Review

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I replaced my landline telephone service and switched to SunRocket VoIP service back in February. I got a whole year of unlimited local and long distance, with tons of features, for $199 a year or $16.58 a month. Now that I’ve had it for 10 months, I’d though I’d give it a review. The short version is, it’s definitely not perfect, but for the price and my current needs it rocks.

Pros:
Simple, no-hassle pricing – The $199 includes everything, ALL features, ALL taxes, I haven’t been charged a penny since my first $199 bill. There are no rebates to mess with. There is no cancellation charge. If you cancel within 31-days, you get a full refund. If you cancel after, you still get a prorated amount back of your unused time. Even the shipping for your free equipment is free.

Unlimited calling to U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico – I love calling whomever, whenever, without even having to dial extra numbers with Onesuite or worrying about long distance charges or cell phone radiation.

Keep your current number – I ported my old landline number, it took a couple weeks, but it was simple. They didn’t start charging me until it was switched either, which was nice.

Cheap International Rates – They have cheap international rates and give you $3 in free international calls every month. I’ve never used this feature.

Free Equipment – You get a free Gizmo, which is what turns your high-speed internet into a phone jack. Right now you can also get a nice 5.8 GHz cordless phone with two handset (see below).

All the Extra Calling Features – Usually to cheap to get Caller ID, Call Forwarding, etc? Me too. Now I have it all. Voicemail, Call Waiting, 3-way Calling, Call Forwarding, Caller ID, Recent Caller Logs, Call Waiting ID, Call Return, Speed Dial, you name it.

My Favorite Feature – Enhanced Voicemail – Now, when someone calls my house and leaves a message, I get a text message to my cell phone with who called immediately and I get a .wav file of the message sent to my e-mail. I can then either check the message from my cell phone, or just play it from the internet. Very cool.

My 2nd Favorite Feature – 2nd Virtual Number – This isn’t a full blown 2nd number with 2nd phone jack – if someone calls this 2nd number, then your original phone rings. But, you can have a number anywhere they have service. Got parents in L.A.? Give them a local (714)XXX-XXXX number and they don’t have to pay long distance to call you anymore. You can even set the number to have a distinctive ring.

Cons:
Not 100% Uptime – In the 10 months that I’ve had this service, I’ve gotten about 3 outtages for about 24 hours, and 5 blips where I had to reset the Gizmo to get it to work again. This can be really annoying, but the voicemail still works so you’ll get your messages. For the long outtages I went online and forwarded calls to my cell phone. Supposedly things are better now, since I was among the first users of this service. I haven’t had an outage for months now.

Fax Capability Erratic – One of the main reasons I chose SunRocket over Vonage initially for VoIP service is that not only was SunRocket much cheaper than Vonage in the first place, but it also included fax capability for free. Vonage charges another $9.99 a month for a fax line on Residential accounts.

I needed fax for work, and it worked fine up until I quit, which was quite lucky for me, because starting in August it started to futz out and only worked about 20% of the time. (After moving, it works about 80% of the time.) So if you need a reliable fax, watch out. I think it has to do with sending fax signals over the internet.

Imperfect 911 Service – Sunrocket does offer Enhanced 911 Service such that if you call 911 using this service, your number and address on file will be automatically sent to the proper authorities. But, if there is a power outage or internet outage, your phone won’t work. This is true for all VoIP companies in general. Given that many people only have cell phones now, this isn’t huge, but is worthy of consideration. Maybe a UPS power backup would be a good idea.

Conclusions
For my needs, it was definitely worth it. I used to pay about $35-40 a month for my landline service. At a savings of about $20 a month, this is saving me $240 a year. And I’m getting more features like voicemail and call forwarding than I was paying for before.

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Comments

  1. I am curious, are you using DSL and Comcast? If DSL, does your DSL provider require that you have a phone line installed prior to getting the DSL service?

    I recently moved into an apartment and since I plan to use my cell phone for all my calls, I wasn’t planning to get any phone service. But when speaking with SBC concerning the DSL service, I had to sign-up for their cheapest ($5.70/mo) phone service.

    Neo

  2. I’m using Comcast. Yeah, that is the annoying thing about DSL.

  3. Great review of Sunrocket. I’ve had their service for about 8 months and I would have written almost the same exact review.

    Before I got Sunrocket, I had Verizon phone service and a dial-up internet service. The cost of the two together was about $62/month ($55 phone + $7 dial-up). I realized that a change to cable internet and Sunrocket VOIP would cost about the same or even less per month. So I got Comcast internet, dumped my dial-up, dumped Verizon, and then signed up for Sunrocket. With the Comcast promotions, I’m actually saving money with this move. And if I eventually get stuck paying full price for Comcast internet, I’ll only be paying what I was paying before for phone/internet.

  4. Unfortunately, Comcast does something similar since they require you to have their TV service before allowing you to get their internet service. Oh well.

    Neo

  5. Neo- Comcast does not require you to have TV service to get High Speed Internet. They will however charge you more, I think it is around $10 per month as you will automatically get the cable analog signal once they turn on your internet. This will probably change once they shut analog down in the upcoming years.

  6. Steve – Well now I find out. I had been told that I needed it. So I decided to go with the lowest service availble which was about $16/mo.

    I just put up a comparison of service requirements on my blog. link

    Neo

  7. Nice review. Sunrocket was not available in my area, so I opted for Broadvoice. The service doesn’t give the fax service, but lets me call for free to 19 countries worldwide, which I use often.

  8. Nice. I wish they were availble in my area. We would save ~$25/mth.

  9. That sounds like a good deal. I was thinking of getting service for my Mother but it isn’t available in her area. I’ll probably try Vonage instead. I don’t need the service myself since I use my cell phone for my only phone and it only costs $10 a month.

  10. I have Vonage and faxing was a concern, but I have not had any problems using the standard single line to send and receive faxes (no special $9.99 fax line) and I can even use a Dial-Up network using a standard modem and connect at 46k.

  11. So this was my impetus for the following:

    Ditch the following services:

    Local Phone w/CID: $23/month
    Long Distance: $10+/month
    News Paper Subscription: $15/month
    Dialup: $5/month

    Add the following services:

    Cable modem: $25/month
    SunRocket: $17/month

    I haven’t ditched my local phone just yet, but so long as SunRocket works out okay for the next month, I will port my number over. So far, SunRocket seems to be good. My Dish receiver seems to function properly. I did have mixed results with Call Forwarding.

    In total, I will be saving $132+/year for what I perceive as a better service package. With that savings, I can keep a cell phone around for any possible outages. Plus, I can save some other people that call me long distance charges with the additional number. I have been waiting for the VoIP services to become more stable and now seemed to be a good time to try. Thanks for the review.

  12. Awesome review. I’ve been kicking this around for some time now. I am going for it but will wait until I see what the new promo will be starting Jan 1, because I already have decent phones…..Thanks again!!

  13. I just signed up for the 15 months for $199 plan (three free months introductory plan).

    Hopefully it will work well enough that my wife will let me dump our land line.

  14. I HAVE TROUBLE RECEIVING FAXES, SENDING IS SLOW. HAS ANYONE ELSE HAD THIS PROBLEM AND OVERCOME IT? I HAVE CHANGED THE FAX SPEED TO 9600KB, BUT SAYS CONNECTING, BUT DOESN’T SEEM TO RECEIVE.

  15. Steve Perry says

    I have Sunrocket VOIP. When I was thinking about ordering the service & discussing it with the Sunrocket reps the were eagerly telling me about how I get a second (free) line for faxing & how with Sunrocket, there are “No” “Gotchas” Well after wasting 3 days trying to send faxes & another whole day on the phone with tech support trying to get faxing to work, that is the biggest “Gotcha” FAXING DOES NOT WORK with Sunrocket. After speaking to half a dozen different techs (most of which were in India) one of them finally told me flat out that Sunrocket does not support faxing.

  16. They used to say faxing works, but now they do not make any such claims (after people like me calling in all the time). Faxing works for me fine now after my move. Before it was intermittent.

    They do not provide technical support for faxing, but it does work for many (but not all) people. It supposedly depends on if your fax machine is fully compatible with their protocol. However, if it is business critical I would not rely upon it.

  17. Currently I’m using Verizon local phone service, DSL and directv. I’m thinking switching to sunrocket voip phone service and keep the vz dsl and directv. Does anyone know have this combination? Can anyone giving me any recommendation?

    Thanks in advance and thanks for the review!

  18. Sounds pretty good if you really require a landline. Any word on what a lack of net neutrality will do to a business like this? Since Sunrocket, Vonage and others rely on other companies to deliver their services.

  19. Net Neutrality should not have any affect regardless of what Congress decides.

    It’s not as if SunRocket gets a free ride on the Internet. SR very likely pays BIG money for their datacenter floorspace, power and bandwidth.

    Some of those who want net neutrality to be gone also want us to believe that Internet companies are getting data connectivity for FREE. It simply is not true.

    Ok, so… Congress drops net neutrality…. All of a sudden SunRocket’s datacenter is going to no longer want SR as a customer? I doubt it… The free marketsystem will sort it all out regardless of what happens in Washington…

  20. I’m travelling to India for business, is sunrocket gizmo will work over there? or any other VOIP other than Skype?

  21. Hey guys, I’m new to SunRocket. Anyone out there can tell me how to hook my phone line for Dish network and my phone together? The folks at SunRocket said it could be done. I tried a 2 in to 1 phone line splitter and my phone calls would register on my phones, but they would not ring. Any suggestions out there?

  22. You can also get two years for $199 from ViaTalk VoIP.

  23. anonymous says

    For the longest time I am using tringote pap2 VoIP service because they are so much cheaper than any other service, and the shipping charges are absolutely free and I guess tringotel have merged with Sunrocket.

  24. I’d like to know how to fax using my home sunrocket VoIP. It is just for one page, and it won’t be a regular thing. Do I need special software? I have the 56K modem inside my desktop. Any help and/or suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Bob

  25. I don’t do anything special for fax. Just connect it to your fax machine and go! If it works, it works.

  26. Also note that Skype VoIP is only $29.95 a year for outgoing calls to any number in the US and Canada, with *no* monthly charges. In fact, they had a special back in January for $14.95 a year. I’ve been using it since last year and find it to be very reliable. I lowered my landline service to the cheapest metered plan available and now use it only for incoming calls as well as a backup for outgoing calls.

  27. Clarence says

    You cannot do a 2 for 1 connector for the phone line. It will not work. What you have to do is have your dish satellite connected to a jack by itself in the house if you want your voice id to work on the t.v. Also to have the receiver call the dish network at nite.
    But you can have your sunrocket work throughout the entire house. You don’t have to have one jack for sunrocket. Go outside and unplug your outside phone line. Then just run a line from the gizmo to a jack inside of your house. Your whole house is now wired to sunrocket. But make sure you don’t ever plug in the outside line or else you’ll fry your gizmo. But you can use any phone by plugging it into a wall jack.

  28. Do not buy this service uncless customer service is of no value. I signed up for sunrocket 5-18-07. After reading reviews I decided to cancel the next day. They said they could not cancel because their system was down. And they said I would have to call them back. I did. I but got the same excuse “the system was down”. On my third try they said I could not cancel yet because the account was not posted. They said to call back again Monday. So far I have waded through their phone tree four times, waited 5 minutes per call and always reach the wrong person. And to cancel I always have to call them back. They can not just make a note and do it once their system is back up!? The customer services reps sound young untrained people. One told me, and I quote, “I can not canel this now becasue the billing system is down and I am going home in 20 minutes anyway”. Cheap rates yes, cut rate service yes. If you run a small buisness, like I do, who needs the pain?

  29. M. Maggs says

    If you run your own business and do not take chances..than you will always be in this situation.. left there holding yourself being afraid. Yeesh. I have had this service, and yes..at sometimes in the far past it has not been for the technically savvy( its a new technology!!), however over all it has been excellent. I have not had one blip in over a year…and yes blip is a professional term. $16.58 a month with all the bells and whistles.

  30. Hi,

    I have Verizon DSL & their basic landline plan (since they say that you need to have their basic service to get DSL) and Vonage VOIP.

    If I have to switch to SR, do I just get rid of Vonage.

    Also, does anybody know of DSL service without having to get a landline ? What is the price for that ?

    Thanks

  31. Troy@7SEO says

    I have been using SunRocket for 5-6 months for my business. No problem so far.. Their website’s members section was down for 4-5 hours that is all.
    I am planing to get my second service from them … trying t get $99 a year deal..

    Thanks

  32. I have had Sunrocket for 16 months now. They were ok for the first year so I renewed another year but now they are trash. Phone service show strange problems. only smal persentage of calls coming through. Their customer service stoped accepting call wothout any notice. and they do not returne e-mil . I have been trying to get them to fix this latest problem I, but no one responds. I am thinking that they got or yearly payments in advance and probebly ran away.
    So, be aware new VOIP prospects

  33. Wong Seoul says

    Call your credit card company ASAP to dispute their charge…

  34. Let people know to beware of Vonage. They lie to you, and charge you even when you are not connected to their service. Hang up on you if you try to disconnect the service that you never had, and people are not talking very good English. Beware, and investigate any phone company before taking the leap to change. Take it from a sorry customer.

  35. Voip has saved me a ton of money – I use Phone Power. I’m saving around $50 a month, which makes a big difference in the long haul.

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