Hosted PBX vs. Virtual PBX

It’s the difference between having a professional phone system and having a call director.

We are often asked by callers what the difference is between Versature’s Hosted PBX service, and a Virtual PBX service.

Versature’s Hosted PBX service is equivalent to having a complete, professional business phone system – complete with multiple lines, area codes of your choice, auto-attendant, employee voice mail, and numerous business call control features. Employees can be in the same location or geographically disbursed across the world, while maintaining the call control features (like "call transfer" and "three-way conference") that they need on a daily basis.

A Virtual PBX service provides an automated answering service. Virtual PBX services answer calls for your business and provide routing options. The calls are forwarded on to employees or locations anywhere in the world. Like a Hosted PBX service, there is no hardware or software to buy or maintain – but there are also no business or call control features to benefit your company’s productivity or image. Your various employees and locations each require separate phone service, they cannot be connected with easy extension dialing, they cannot enjoy the productivity benefits of unified messaging or presence, and calls between locations will not be free. As your business grows, it is inevitable that you will outgrow a Virtual PBX service and will need to replace it.

Versature’s Hosted PBX service actually provides the best of both “traditional” and “virtual” worlds:

The ability to present a single number and one voice to all of your callers, no matter where your employees or satellite offices are located; and,
A full suite of professional business phone features such as individual employee voice mail, extension dialing, auto-attendant, call forwarding, call hold, find-me/follow-me, three-way calling, and many other benefits.

While we strongly recommend going with Hosted as opposed to Virtual, Versature does provide a lower-cost Virtual PBX-type offering as an entry point to our more fully featured "Hosted PBX" service. That way, when you inevitably outgrow the Virtual PBX solution, you will have an easy transition to Hosted PBX. Learn more about Versature's Virtual PBX or contact our sales department for more information.

Learn more by reading about: