As some on you may know from my conversations on twitter, this weekend my oldest is getting married. And thanks to a lot of great individuals, we are running guest post this week. I have and will contribute as I can, but it is with the help of these guest bloggers that has enabled me to not worry about coming up with content this week.

And today is no exception. Tina Hilton who is a regular on Home Office Virtual Assistant has provided today’s guest post about Onebox.

by Tina Hilton:

When I started my small business, I knew I was going to have to choose how to spend my tiny budget in the most effective way possible. I believe that my choice of Onebox Virtual PBX Phone System to host my business phone/fax service was an ideal example of doing just that.

I needed a system that would route my business calls to either my home phone or my cell, depending on just where I might be working. It needed to also deliver my faxes to my e-mail in a format that made it easy to share with my clients, and also allow me to fax files on my computer to clients when I was away from my home office fax machine. Onebox provided me with that and more.

The computerized auto-assistant answers all phone calls to my business number with a very professional sounding message. It announces itself as my personal assistant and asks the party to wait while ’she’ connects them. You also have a choice of recording your own message and uploading it for free or having Onebox professionally record one for you for a fee. I’m a one woman operation, so I didn’t need the additional extensions, but you can add up to four for no additional cost. Each extension acts independently, and has separate forwarding options, etc. I can set up a schedule, for example, perhaps I’m in my home office in the morning, but heading out to the coffee shop to work remotely during the afternoon. I can go into the call forwarding settings and specify which hours I want calls forwarded to my home phone and which hours I want it forwarded to my cell.

If for some reason I’m not available, the system prompts the caller to leave a voicemail. It then forwards the voicemail in mp3 format attachment to my e-mail, along with the originating phone number.

The system automatically recognizes faxes and forwards them to your e-mail in .pdf format with the originating fax number. It will even send you an e-mail if the fax is incomplete. In order to send a fax through Onebox, you have to log into your account online and send it through the web interface. Since the majority of items that I find myself faxing are saved as files on my computer, it works fine for me. For people who prefer to fax directly from word processing applications, etc., it could be considered a bit cumbersome to save the file and then log into their account, open the interface and send the fax that way.

You are also given an e-mail address @onebox.com, which some might find useful, and conference calling capabilities for up to 32 people. There is also a Calendar, Bookmarks, To Do List, Contact storage and Onebox Wireless for your WAP enabled phone. These are features that I haven’t had the opportunity to try out as of yet, although now that I have my new Blackberry I’m looking to test out the Onebox Wireless soon enough.

And what do all of these nifty features cost? Plans start as low as $16.95 a month for 100 free minutes. I started out on the 400 free minute plan for $19.95 but upgraded to the 2000 free minutes for $29.95 plan in order to compensate for the large amount of faxes I receive in relation to one of my clients. For most, the 400 free minutes plan would be more than sufficient for a small business.

This Virtual PBX worked so well for me, my biggest client decided to forgo having an expensive in office phone system installed and uses it for his business. One of his four lines is forwarded directly to me, allowing me to answer calls in relation to the task I complete for him. I can easily differentiate his calls from my own, because his Onebox business number shows up on my caller ID. This allows me to answer in a professional manner with the name of his business, just like I would in a traditional office. No one that calls is even aware that I’m not actually in his offices.

As I said, I feel that Onebox not only gives me a lot of bang for my buck, it also presents a very professional image and provides a huge amount of flexibility for my business. I give it two thumbs up!!