VoipStunt Review
Friday, October 06, 2006This blog's first review is for VoipStunt, a client that's compatible with the SIP protocol AND has free calls to landlines in 32 countries!
It's not a pure softphone either, as it features a service called "directcall" (pictured) that calls your home phone first, waits for you to pick up, then dials the second number. This means that you don't even really need a microphone, just an Internet connection.As you can see, the user interface is standard, simple, and easy to use. It looks like a pretty blatant copy of Skype, which isn't a bad thing.
When I signed up, there was no need to buy credits before calling. My first call went through immediately. The delay made it hard to have a great conversation, but the voice quality was good enough. I'd say it's comparable to SkypeOut, but slightly less clear.
Unfortunately, there is a 30 minute cap on free calls. It hangs up and displays a message saying that you must purchase credits in order to remove this cap. You can call right back though.
VoipStunt belongs to a family of cheap VoIP clients, including InternetCalls, SIPdiscount, VoipBuster, VoipCheap, VoipDiscount, and FreeCall. According to voip-info.org, they're operated by Finarea, a Swiss company, and/or Betamax, a German company.
After extensive testing, here are the pros and cons:
Pros: Free to many countries, direct calls, SIP compatible, nice user interface.
Cons: Delay, unstable voice quality, 30 minute limit.
Overall: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Have you had an experience with VoipStunt that you'd like to share? Leave a comment or e-mail me at voip_telephony [at] yahoo [dot] com and I'll publish your review or directly link to the review on your website.
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38 Comments:
I've been using SIPDiscount and VOIPcheap, two other services by Betamax, for about a year - absolutely happy with it, no problem. There's a need to change between the various services of Betamax from time to time as the list of free countries gets modified. Only disadvantage - they don't offer VOIP-in numbers anymore (they did in the past).
Well, if you have a voip phone adaptor, it is easier.
I flashed my unlocked PAP2 to sipura 1001 and I have voipstunt on line 1 and I have another voip service online 2. Only one phone is needed on line 1. Line 2 has a number you can call in.
Aleš wrote me:
I found out about voipstunt yesterday. I got interested, cos it offers cheap SMSs. I loaded 10 €, sent an SMS, but nothing happened. Except my credit was getting lower and lower. I mean voipstunt said that the sms has been delivered, but it hasn't in real :( Of course I tried many times, to different numbers (only starting with 1, 3 or 4, but nothing happened); from web, from the client... Nothing. So this is my experience :(
They used to be ok, and cheap (although they raised their prices). but now it's impossible to make an overseas call, other party can't hear anything, yet I get charged.
Support is non-existant, they never respond or fix the problem.
to be honest, I dont like voipstunt much. the voice clarity sucks.
You might want to look at or cover this article on your blog. I have written TOP 5 FREE VOIP providers for international calls.
check here:
http://voipguides.blogspot.com/2006/12/top-5-free-voip-providers-for.html
I purchased 10 euros and am trying to use it for directcall landlines and mobiles. Absolutely useless. No one can hear me, the delays run well into several seconds (if they hear anything at all). Waste of money. Maybe its a geographical thing as I'm in
Australia, but I'm not the only one with these complaints.
AM, from Malta, wrote me:
Before you pay your next 10 euro to voipbuster (a supposedly free calls company which uses voice over ip) have a look at voipstunt. It's exactly the same website, offering the same service, only one has double the amount of free destinations. And it's owned by the same company, based in Koln.
Why two identical "companies"? Simple. Voipstunt exists to lure in new customers, while the oldies are tricked into paying higher rates. That's good money making, but certainly bad business.
In addition, after a number of calls to "free" destinations, you are suddenly charged for excess usage, and different rates apply. Still, no representative of the company has been able to state what the limit is.
Never again.
VoipStunt is offering new Voip-In numbers...Try to get one.
I use voipbuster for calling very cheap, it works very well in my country (Holland) unless you are severely downloading, to other european countries you get very often delays and it is not usable.
sending SMS is another story, i can SMS to my own and other dutch mobiles but not to mobiles in other countries, the softphone says they are delivered and takes 5 eurocent but they aren't delivered at all. I tried contacting voipbuster via the support at the website twice but got NO response, bad support and money lost, I only use it locally untill my credit runs out.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Too many phone calls? Voipbuster's server on fire
(Friday, February 16, 2007)
I just wanted to make a free phone call in Germany, using my prefered voip provider Voipstunt which I like very much for it's free or 1 cent calls to all countries that are important to me. But Voipstunt doesn't work. Their website shows only the test page for the Apache server.
Voipstunt is a company of Betamax. So I went to the websites of their other company Voipbuster. It says:
Due to a fire at our server site we are currently experiencing severe technical problems.
Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused; we are working hard to try and solve the problem as soon as possible.
Due to the severity of the disruption it may however take at least one day before we can offer full service again.
Please try again later.
The same text appears on the websites of the other Betamax voip companies: Sparvoip, Voipcheap, NetAppel, Sipdiscount, Internetcalls.com, Voipdiscount, Voipcheap, Webcalldirect, Freecall, Lowratevoip and Voipbuster Pro.
It seems to be that all their servers are on fire. Or better said: The server which is hosting all those companies.
How does it come? Too many phone calls?
Well maybe it's not the time for jokes. Since "due to the severity of the disruption it may however take at least one day before we can offer full service again".
What an interesting discovery that the servers for each of their services are all co-located! Of course, it just makes sense from an administration point of view.
I just checked some of the websites and they seem to all be back after today's outage. Thanks Markus, for the news update.
I have had disatrous experiences with Voipstunt. Trying to put these right, I found that there is no way to contact the company. I sent three faxes to the parent company - no response whatsoever.
The problem was that I couldn't get my payment to be recognised on the yellow box that comes up when you click on the VS icon. All I could do was use their "direct" call system, which was supposed to cost 5 Eurocents - it cost much more than this, probably ten times as much. I have just tried to make a payment to another account (my wife, on her computer) the payment has been taken, but I can't use the service as I used to be able to - just the direct service, which, as I said before, id dearer than I pay without this company. A total disaster, and once my money is gone - which will be much quicker than it should be - I'll never use them again. Did I make it clear that even with many 'Free days' to go, I have not been able to make a free call?
Rickysil.
I used my paypal to add fund on VoipStunt, it cleared already but still wait for VoipStunt for money to be add. it s been 5 days already. I ve been looking for their contact email and they don't have one on their website. Very disappointing. If they fail to provide good customer service, they won't last in business. They should know this by now.
I thought you can top up your credit for €10 and the freedays is a year, not the standard 120days offered by VOIP STUNT.
Does anyone know which service provided that?
Extremely frustrated with their business practices.
At first, they accepted credit cards and paypal among others. Then they stopped accepting credit cards. I continued to pay with PayPal. Then they stopped accepting PayPal. I opened a moneybookers account (which is pain compared to paypal). Today I see they no longer accept moneybookers?! The only options left are western union, buying credit from re-sellers, etc. Hello, morons?! You're killing your own business.
I'm back on Skype now, which is at least double as expensive as voipstunt, but at least I can pay in whatever way I want.
BETAMAX poeple does really seems to be morons!! It is really funny that they are exhausting the payments options one by one!!!!!!!
Anonymous
[25-Apr-2007]
I never had problems with VOIPBUSTER. I hit many times the "FUP exceeded" limit; I have spent just 12 EURO in the passed 3 month for using 4000 minutes.
My problem now, I want to continue VOIPBUSTER but that they don't offer any common way to pay for the service. Just doesn't make sense.
Eric writes:
Hi,
Regarding Voipstunt - for me, it has been an absolute disaster (and still is).
I've lost deposits, been unable to make the free calls, been triply overcharged for calls which were supposed just to have a connection charge - and so on.
I can't get in touch with them - they have no contact information!
The parent company doesn't respond to the many faxes I've sent.
I think anybody who solicits payments or deposits on the Web should be forced to publish contact information - for the moment I can only swear that once I have finished my deposit (which shouldn't be long at the rates they charge me) I will never send one cent to them again. I would like to think that nobody else will, either.
EXS - one extremely dissatisfied customer
its a very very bad 6 month experience with voipstunt for the following:
1- I paid 10 GBP before 2 weeks until now no credit.
2- the voice quality some times it is good but most of the time is very very bad.
3-there is absolutely no customer service.
4- the system log of while speaking.
5- there is a delay and echo in the voice
6- many of times fail to connect and still take from your credits.
so there is no pos at all are cons.........
People get real. Anything that good or free we like to abuse to the max. I to have experienced bad service from Betamax BUT ALSO from Skype when they first started out along with others over the years.
Heres the real deal! First of all if any of you use any VOIP system on 56K forget it, majority of all households have including my Dads home. You will have and encounter delays and problems hearing and talking.
I moved to Europe again a fews years ago, for a new consulting contract service. This time prepared and not having any high phone bills as I had previously. Using DSL, I call home for free even though I've loaded my credits so I can call friends in South Africa as well.
I currently have 3 VOIP systems Betamax products, Skype and Messenger. I run them exclusvely on DSL without any problems. WHY? Because I have been using DSL since 2000 and I've tested numerous VOIPs and came to the conclusion 3 years ago that DSL works the best for VOIP. My family and I call the US and my friends in Europe daily from them.
I purchase all of a my vouchers from the reseller oagworld.
JR
It sucks. I bought 10 euro dollars and tried to call from canada to China. it did not work at all, but swallowed a lot of my money. checked to see if it had customer service. nowhere to find. I paid 10 euro dollars and learned a lesson.
definitely VoipStunt does not work!! Now I use Raketu: The call quality is very clear. The rates are phenomenal and customer support very fast and helpful. Plus, it is Jajah and Skype embedded in the service. Therefore, Raketu is much better than any other application.
I've used VOIPDiscount (it seems also by Betamax but offers 49 free countries) for 8 monthes very successfully. I've spent 40 eur or so on it.
Smses get delivered just fine to russian and ukrainian mobiles.
Of course sometimes voice quality sucks, but due to presence of directcall service I don't pay for traffic at all (it's expensive here in my Russian town) (though I pay 5 eurocents per directcall).
Too bad they don't accept credit cards and paypal now. But I'll purchase vouchers (with high 20% comission) because it's anyway cheaper than skype.
I guess they stopped accepting paypal and credit cards since it's possible to refund these payments so probably people started abusing this.
VOIPStunt and the parent company Betamax are a complete nightmare. They have now stopped all the common methods of payment. I have paid via Bank Transfer, but the payment is not reflected on my VOIPStunt account. No way of getting in touch with Customer Service whatsoever. There should be a law that all companies that sell on the Internet should have proper contact information including Customer Service phone numbers. The Betamax website clearly shows that this company has something to hide !!
Can anyone suggest any other good service to call serbia. I use voipstunt right now. But its a pain. Even though the rate is cheaper but the clarity is an issue. Infact you cant use the service from Serbia. sms works fine for me. But charging account is again a pain.
You can find a comparison rates table for all the Betamax products here
we're using voipbuster since 1.5 year (from NL). Paying no problem at all, first through bank account now via Ideal & bank. Freedays now appear within a few minits on the screen. Costs 11.70 euro per 120 days.....
We use an ATA and a normal phone: the qualtity is very good, even to Canada. It is much better then using the PC (echo).
I do not recogize the problems here, I hope VB and others do something about it, as they seem to pay for it.
Ok, it is cheap, so the service may bel ess than other companies, but still.....
InternetCalls charge me 50 euros when i did not make the payment. It is not fair. I wrote to them and they said it maybe my mistake that i did the payment without knowing it.. I am using it for a year already. And on the date of payment i have not even been on their site to make this payment. I am using their software and we can not make a payment through their software. They charged me without my will.
i have used voipstunt and have had only some call quality problems, and issues with SMS's not being delivered.
Yes, they have no customer service, however, outtages seem to be eventually fixed and I do what I can on my end to work on call quality (bandwidth, QoS, STUN).
I see all common payment types available, including Visa, Paypal and Moneybookers, when I log into my account and choose to add credits.
I have an account with voipstunt and made payments few times, I have Freedays left 283 but I can't use it and every time I try to make a free call it says "You have reached the maximum number of free trial calls. To make unlimited calls please buy credit." Did any of experience such problems? I tried to contact voipstunt's customer service or email address, to may avail no details of it could be found on their website... Got any solution for my problem?
I have an account with voip stunt and made a 10 euro payment day before.My bank account shows that the money has been debited from my account but it has not been credited to my voip stunt account.I tried to contact voip stunt's customer service or email address,but no details of it could be found on their website... Can someone please help me solve my problem?
Hi dear all...
then perhaps I am the lucky man here... but I really love voipstunt and I really did not had any problem with them!
In August and September 2007 I had to work remotely from Italy, Verona for a customer of mine in Sweden, Kista. This made necessary to have a conference call every wednesday of one hour!!
Well, I was using voipstunt every time calling one of the (landline) numbers that you can use to connect to a conference call and I was ALWAYS able to speak and hear with acceptable quality (not perfect but absolutely understandable!) and I paid 0 Eur (repeat : 0 euros, really!!)
Now I am back in Munich (where my business is legally registered) and I call regularly quite every evening with my family (my wife and my 2 childreens) for
--> either 0 euros (if I call from the pc`s headphone)
--> 5 cent connection fee (no matter how long the call is) if I use phone to phone dialling (landline number in my Munich flat, landline number in my Verona flat)...
Alessandro Ogheri
which countries are suported for pay with moneybookers
I am using Voipdiscount, in the beginning it worked well. Now I have still more than 90 freedays, but now the program charges me the highest rate for calls that should be free. I posted a complaint several times, but no reaction on that. Don't think I am going to buy more credit. Just look for aonther system
My credit card was charged by Betamax without me even being aware of their existence. After doing some research on the Internet it seems that they have some access to stolen credit card details and make fradulent charges.
I have been using VoipStunt for a couple of years for all my calls land line and now voip-in, plus many mobile phones. I make calls all over the world and sound quality is excellent with little or no delay. I now use Siemens Gigaset S685IP phones and now the quality is even better and more consistent. It cost me next to nothing and I can find absolutely nothing bad to about the service.
I am searching the email-adress of voipStunt and I am hopeless because wihtout any result. Somebody would be able to help me and comunicate this adress to me? I would be really very gratefull. My email-adrss is haenel@alice.it.
Thanks - Klaus
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