Pricing
The following will give you an good estimate of what these systems will cost, give or take between 5 and 10 percent. The only way to get an exact cost is for us to come out and look at the jacks and the backboard to find out what is unexpectedly needed. This is still much easier than using those websites that make you fill out your contact information and then send out the sales crews to pressure you into buying now.
When comparing a hosted system versus premise IP servers versus traditional telephone systems, it's easiest to use the seat model. This gives you an idea of price per month at each seat on the system.
Seat Model with a Hosted System:
A "Hosted" service provider will quote a contract length and a cost per seat which will usually cover the equipment. This is more of a rental in that you will pay the quoted amount for as long as you use the service. A common price per seat is $27.00 per month per seat. This would include the equipment, talk path (normally a single talk path per handset), and any other additions to the system such as a VOIP QoS router just for the voice service.
Seat Model for an Premise IP Server and handsets with trunk services:
Using a One-Dollar-Buy-Out (ODBO) lease (available from Network Architects), you would amortize the total cost of the installation in monthly payments and divide by the number of seats. The cost for an 12 seat premise IP system is about $10 per seat per month for a 60 month ODBO lease. You add in the cost of the SIP trunks (IP telephone lines), usually costing $24 per trunk per month (including taxes and fees) and you would need one of these for every 4 seats, the monthly cost per seat works out to $6 per seat per month. The total for this type of system deployment then becomes $16 ($10 plus $6) per seat per month for the first 60 months and then drops to $6 per seat per month from that point on.
Seat Model for a Traditional Telephone System Implementation:
A traditional telephone system usually costs about 30% less than a premise IP system but will have higher line costs. That breaks down to $7 per seat per month equipment costs with line costs usually $52 per telephone company (CO) line (per 4 seats) resulting in a monthly recurring cost of about $20 ($7 plus $13) per seat per month for 60 months then dropping to $13 per month there after. With services provided by a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier or cheap phone company), you should be able to bring your line charges down by 40% making a traditional telephone system's costs about equal to the premise IP server system.
Final Comparison:
After 15 to 20 years of system use, the hosted system will cost about 300% more than owning your own equipment for a single site office. The usability of the hosted system in a multi-office operation outweighs this. If fault tolerance is required, forget the hosted system between the sites and network individual servers together.
