We have used Ooma for several years and love it's many features. I can't speak to Magic Jack's capabilities but the Pros & cons we love about Ooma include...
PROS
** Can be used with Ooma wireless handsets or any standard telephone sets. To use the latter, with or without Ooma sets, disconnect your residence phone service from Ma Bell and then plug a phone cord from the Ooma control unit into any phone jack in your home and Ooma will then ring and allow the use of standard phones as if they were plugged into the Ma Bell system.
** Voice Messaging is standard and includes full answering machine functionality.
** The base station controller speaker allows you to screen callers, so you can hear any message they are leaving and decide to pick up the call, or not.
** The Ooma handsets are feature rich with caller ID, Call Directory, redial, Do Not Disturb feature to shut off ringer, and speaker phone.
** Ooma has Smart Phone Apps that let you view your call logs from anywhere to see who has called recently. The Apps also allow you to make calls from your Smart Phone (eg, iPhone, Android) as "Data" calls that do not use your phone "minutes" but use your data plan instead.
** All calls are free, and calls to other Ooma phones anywhere in the world are free. The only recurring costs are state and federal taxes levied on phone services. These fees amount to just $2-3 per month.
That is all included in the FREE (Basic) Plan. If you pay $10/mo for the Premier Plan then the following features are included (which I really love!)...
** Voice Messages are recorded and emailed to you immediately as MP3 files, so you can be immediately aware of messages and listen to them on your smart phone anywhere in the world.
** You can Block any phone number that calls you (such as telemarketers) so you are not bothered anymore.
** You can Block any calls with a caller ID of "Anonymous"
** You can automatically block any callers that are on the "Community Blacklist" where multiple Ooma Users have identified the caller as "Spam."
** You can instantly forward your calls (using your myOoma web portal) to another phone. (Nice when away from home even for just a few hours and you want to get your calls.)
** You get a 2nd phone line free, which rings if you are already on the phone on Line 1. You can also make the ring different on this 2nd line, so if you moved for instance, and want to keep your old number but have a new primary number in your new area code, then your old number can be assigned to line 2 with a unique ring so you can identify "back home" callers from your new local friends.
CONS
** The following is probably true of Magic Jack and any other VOIP phone too, but all of these phones have to convert a "standard" phone call into a digital data stream to send over the internet. The process of doing this conversion requires compromises between fidelity and data bandwidth. In an effort to keep data rate bandwidth low, these conversions tend to make voices "muffled" sounding as the high frequencies are not included. Thus sometimes a caller sounds like they have a washcloth over their phone, and can be hard to understand. On the other hand all Ooma to Ooma connections are very high fidelity and sound wonderful. So if you have hearing issues, you may want to buy family members an Ooma phone to save them money and give you nice crisp voices to listen to. [:-)}
In short, we have found the Ooma to be a pretty remarkable solution, that not only saves money but makes our lives easier.
[:-)}
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