All You Need to Know About Residential and Home Office VoIP

• What is Residential VoIP?
• Why does Residential VoIP matters?
• What features are important for home-based freelancers or small businesses?
• What should you check for when choosing a residential VoIP provider?
• Residential VoIP Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is Residential VoIP?

What is VoIP? VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol.

What is Residential VoIP? Residential VoIP is simply VoIP used in the home, often used for business or freelance use. For many people across the world, their residential home is no longer simply where they live and sleep.

Ever since Covid, there has been an accelerated shift towards home working. Homes have had to evolve to become home-offices to accommodate remote and hybrid office working. Freelancers and employees nowadays may only be required to attend work spaces or offices on certain days and then can work from home for the remaining days of the week. In addition, freelancers and start up businesses today are often set up, so that they can operate completely remotely. This work from home shift has changed what people expect from a home phone service.

Basic landlines are no longer the norm, although they may still handle incoming and outgoing calls. Residential VoIP is becoming increasingly popular. This leverages an internet connection into a much more flexible business communications system.

VoIP technology allows voice calls to be made over the internet, rather than through a traditional landline or mobile network. It offers a completely different system to traditional phone networks, which has led to VoIP calls becoming increasingly popular for both business and personal calls, from the home. It is often a much cheaper call solution, with better sound quality than traditional lines.

Why does Residential VoIP matters?

Working from home is no longer a unique arrangement. Flexible hybrid working is common in particular in the US, Canada and across EMEA. In the US, 13.8% of workers usually worked from home in 2023, more than twice the 5.7% recorded in 2019.

Research published by the US Census Bureau also found that nearly one-third of businesses had employees who worked from home. There is a similar trend for freelancers and independent professionals. Statistics Canada reported an average of 2.7 million self-employed Canadians in 2023.

The UK has also seen a substantial shift toward homeworking and leveraging residential VoIP. ONS data found that homeworking more than doubled between late 2019 and early 2022, rising from 14.5% of workers to 30.6%.

Telecommunication remains a fundamentally important part of presenting a professional business image, whilst working from home. Clients and customers care whether their inbound call is answered effectively and professionally, not whether the worker is based from a home office or from a physical office.

What features are important for home-based freelancers or small businesses?

Features designed primarily around social calling or entertainment are less important than tools that make it easier to separate personal and professional communications. The following VoIP features are most beneficial to freelancers and small businesses working from home, and using Residential VoIP communication.

1. A dedicated business number

Having VoIP at home, allows for users to have a separate business number. This is highly beneficial for a home-based professional. Instead of publishing a personal mobile number, you can advertise a dedicated business number for your customers and clients to reach you on.

A separate business number provides clarity and a boundary between work and personal life. It can also make a one-person operation appear more established without requiring a physical office or traditional landline phone.

2. A PBX and CRM System

Some VoIP providers not only offer access to their PBX phone system but also allow access to their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Zadarma offers a free cloud PBX phone system which provides a ready-made solution, perfect for home-working small businesses or partnerships.

With a PBX, there is no need to buy expensive equipment and deal with hardware and telephone wires. Users can simply connect to the network via the internet while your phone system is created and maintained on the operator's servers.

Additionally, Zadarma provides free access to all registered users to their Teamsale CRM. This is a Cloud CRM system that supports freelancers and businesses to automate all core business processes at no extra cost. The CRM is fully integrated with Zadarma’s PBX phone system. Teamsale is well suited to small business use, providing a multifunctional customer relationship tool that can allow business owners and sole traders to track and nurture customer relationships, as well as set up daily tasks and critical reports.

3. Call forwarding

VoIP call forwarding is a feature that allows incoming calls to be automatically forwarded to another extension, location or phone number according to a set of rules. These rules may be related to time of day, extension status or when the phone is busy and unanswered. Call forwarding is particularly valuable when you are not sitting at your home office. It is a low-cost solution, useful for freelancers who commute and may spend part of the day visiting clients or away from their desk. Call forwarding ensures no important calls are being missed.

4. Voicemail-to-email

Traditional voicemail requires regularly checking a mailbox. Voicemail-to-email is considerably more convenient for many home businesses. Voice-to-email is a smart, useful feature for small business owners in that when someone leaves a message, the system can send a notification to your email inbox. This means you can review messages alongside your other business communications without repeatedly dialling into voicemail.

What should you check for when choosing a residential VoIP provider?

Price comparison

The price of each VoIP provider does vary considerably depending on the supplier and price plan. It is important to do your research. A VoIP service that looks affordable initially can become expensive if certain features, equipment or additional users are separated from the core cost itemised.

A top tip is to look at how costs are outlined and sure to check exactly what the monthly price includes. It is vital users look for additional charges for numbers, call minutes, international calls, equipment, voicemail transcription and cancellation before selecting the chosen residential VoIP provider and call plan.

Zadarma offers honest, transparent call plans. The Standard plan is well suited to Residential VoIP users, valued for its convenience and affordability, whilst added value features, with no hidden costs within the core Standard price package.

Call quality

It is important to test call quality and reliability from your home-based office. The quality of your call will depend on your internet connection, so a fast connection is useful, but consistency matters too. It is advised to seek out Residential VoIP providers with a reputation for clear calls, low latency and reliable service. If your small business depends heavily on the telephone, consider whether your internet connection has enough resilience for your needs.

Understand dependencies

VoIP is different to traditional telephones. The advantage of traditional lines is that they may continue operating during a power outage. In contrast, VoIP equipment generally needs electricity and an active internet connection.

Sometimes a home-based freelancer or an employee remote working, may invest in a battery backup. This can support internet routers and VoIP equipment and can provide additional resilience and always-on communication, even during power outages or power cuts.

Emergency calling

Some VoIP service providers offer emergency calls. This varies in different countries. For example, Zadarma provides emergency calling services to over 30 countries, including calls to 911 and 999.