VoIP vs. SIP Trunking? Which one is best for your business?

With increasing accessibility to the customers, telephony services have become the primary need of any business owner. The telephony service provides them with cost-efficient service and ensures that they take advantage of the smooth communication network. Bridging the communication gap with the customers has always been the primary concern for businesses.

Two technologies that provide the best solution for this concern are SIP and VoIP. These technologies offer varied benefits and animated features that help companies enjoy cost-effective service.

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Knowing SIP and VoIP

Before we go ahead and decide which technology is most suitable for your business, we must have thorough knowledge about each one of them. Most people often confuse both the terms but are eager to know about them. Only making the comparison between the two is not enough to determine which one is better.

VoIP stands for voice over internet protocol and is a technology that allows the transmission of voice signals over the internet. People generally know of VoIP as broadband telephony that provides business communication at lesser costs.

SIP, which stands for Session initiated protocol, is an innovative technology that can be deployed by any business which aims at sending media files to various parties over the internet. SIP helps companies located over the globe to have smooth communication.

Although some services are similar to SIP, such as the PBX trunk system, the SIP trunk can transfer media such as voice, video, document files, etc.

After the brief introduction to VoIP and SIP concepts, it is essential that you now know how these technologies differ and which one suits your business type.

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How are SIP and VoIP Related?

Explaining in simple words, VoIP enables transferring phone calls over the internet. SIP is a layered protocol service that can have complete control over the media transfer, even VoIP.

The critical difference between the two lies in that VoIP supports only voice transfer, whereas SIP allows the transfer of various media types and not just voice messages. SIP sends data packets over some secured channels.

You can couple VoIP with the SIP trunk to provide your customers with an integrated media transfer system via a single system. By combining both, one can enjoy a unified system that is pretty flexible and eases failover situations in the future.

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Which One Suits You Best?

Most organizations often get confused about which one to choose; VoIP or SIP? It is good to have complete knowledge of both technologies in such cases. Most of the time, the decision depends on longevity, availability of local expertise, business needs, and the company’s budget. Let us discuss these factors and know how they can lead to deploying the best protocol for the business.

1. Long-Term Commitment

Before deploying a suitable communication system for your enterprise, you must ask a few questions, such as what the growth trend in the coming years suggests? How much company expansion do you expect? How much scalable are VoIP and SIP services? But if you are looking for a gradual or dramatic increase and your current IT provider is not capable enough to do so, you must give these telephony services a thought.

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2. Local Expertise

Once you deploy such hosted telephony services, there is no longer a need for a team of agents or employees to manage it. The hosted phone provider is responsible for handling everything related to the hosted service. An efficient and competent service provider would troubleshoot all the issues associated with the telecommunication service.  So, if you already have an in-house team of IT experts available, you must not give these telephony services a second thought.

3. Business Requirement

What separates SIP trunk service from usual hosted services is the control over technology. Hosted services provide lesser control over the features, enhancing security measures or customization.

But if you have a SIP trunking service, you are free from the worry of appointing extra help from any third party. You can take charge of everything, make necessary changes, customize features, or enables layered security.

You can easily find a provider for the VoIP service since they are available locally. If a hosted service cannot meet the business requirements, you should choose SIP trunking.

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4. Budget and Pricing

If you go on a searching spree looking all over the internet comparing the prices, know that SIP trunk is way cheaper for long-term management of the service. Every telecommunication service requires you to invest in the expense of hardware IP phone systems. For many small businesses, cost-effectiveness is a primary concern.

A website was reported stating, “Small businesses that switch to VoIP reduce the cost of their local calls by up to 40%, and save up to 90% on international calls.”

Therefore, if you go by the statistics and analysis of our company’s financial state, you might find the SIP trunk service beneficial, or else a VoIP phone system is always a good option. So, if you start with a hosted phone service such as VoIP, you can avail of it at a nominal price of a minimum of $25 per month.

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Choose the Best

When you have a detailed description of VoIP and SIP, it is pretty clear what factors you should consider while deploying a phone service. VoIP and SIP services can positively impact your business budget. However, differentiating both technologies is not a sound practice to determine which one suits best.

Sometimes opting for a VoIP coupled with SIP is less efficient than the VoIP combined with UCaaS. After going through all the factors that affect your decision to opt for the exemplary service, you can easily find the right match for your business operation.