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Jan 01, 2026
Phone Power vs Windstream
Compare Phone Power vs Windstream. Find out whether Phone Power or Windstream is better for your VoIP business or home needs. The experts at VoipReview have analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of Phone Power and Windstream and detailed analysis of the comparison can be found below.
User Ratings & Reviews
- 126 Reviews
- 7 Reviews
Overview:
Phone Power is a California-based VoIP company that delivers residential VoIP phone solutions throughout the US and Canada. Founded in 2005, Phone Power has a growing subscriber base and has earned a number of industry awards. In fact,the company...
Windstream is one of the industry leaders: a full-service communications service provider for the Midwest, South, and East Coast in the United States. Windstream provides not only VoIP phone service, but also offers Internet and cable television...
Provider Info
- Website: phonepower.com
- Headquarters Country: United States
- Founder Year: 2005
- Website: windstream.com
- Headquarters Country: United States
- Founder Year: 1997
Plans Available*
- Home Phone USA/Canada Plan - $8.33
- N/A
Users Average Rating
Recent User Reviews
I was with PhonePower for 5 years and recently "ported" to CallCentric. I am so glad I did! This summer, we learned that our home phone had been ringing busy for over a week and important calls had not gotten through. After much hassle with PP, I researched other Voip providers. Bottom line: I now have superb technical support, excellent custom features, and a much lower bill. Other than getting no calls for weeks, I was unhappy for a long time about other issues. #1: calls going through Nomorobo spam filtering rang once at home before Nomorobo killed spam. Calls that went through had the Callerid screwed up. The PP web interface was always very slow, clunky, and limited options, such as a small limit on blocked numbers, etc. I did not realize that other Voip providers now offer modern, fully customizable features, web gui and mobile apps. The PhonePower billing, rates, and policies are abominable compared to competitive providers. For example, when my credit card expired and got a new expiration date, as they do every few years, I don't think I ever received any notice. If they didn't email, they certainly knew the phone number to call me on! That was 9 months before recent issues and I did solve the billing problem. By the way, the online bills never show a name, jut an address. Which makes it more difficult to port a phone number out. Probably not by accident: "Hotel California" that is easy to get in and a huge pain to check out. Buyer beware. (I did get ported with the help of CallCentric support asking for a screen shot of the payment screen with my name on it). Five years ago PP was the best I could do after Verizon dumped us. Now, not so much.
I have been a customer since 2009. The service meets my needs with the main line and a cloned line, giving me the ability to have 2 calls simultaneously. From the beginning I have brought my own adapter (picking it from the list of supported devices). I recently replaced it and discovered that the automated provisioning scripts don't support the setup of the second line. That's okay -- I contacted PhonePower and they put me in touch with one of their technicians who was able to give me enough information so I could manually configure my adapter. Recently (August 2023), I noticed that my adapter showed everything was good but calls weren't coming through (going immediately to voicemail) and then one of the 2 lines became inactive. I contacted support via email and continued to work on the problem (I'm in IT so I don't mind digging into problems and stepping through a reconfiguration process). Using my notes from the manual setup, I got things working again. I also noticed that my firmware on my adapter was significantly out of date and updated it too. I had it fixed before customer support reached out to assist. Things ran well for a number of weeks and then suddenly calls were going directly to voicemail again. That's actually not a bad thing since PhonePower automatically sends a copy of the voice mail to my email. So, I typically screen my calls anyway. To fix it, I have simply unplugged my adapter for a few minutes and then everything works fine -- I can call the house phone from my mobile and everything rings through just fine. I don't know if this is a problem at PhonePower or with my adapter or perhaps my internet provider. I'll dig into it one of these days but it isn't on the top of my list to fix. The amount of spam calls has been reduced by use of NoMoRobo which Phone Power provides free along with good instructions to setup. So, overall, I'm happy with PhonePower. The sound of the calls is excellent; customer service has been responsive and helpful; and it does a pretty good job filtering out spam calls. Some reviewers have reported caller id not working in the past. All I can say is that it has always worked for me since 2009.
If you have a problem with Windstream's internet or telephone service expect to be on the phone for at least thirty minutes. It takes a least five minutes to even talk to a person while you are forced to listen to all their advertisements and other garbage that you are not interested in and don’t want to hear. Then after forcing you to give your name and the last 4 digits of your SSN three times, you ask your question and they put you on hold for ten to thirty minutes. The last time I called to report that my service wasn't working, I was on the phone, mostly on hold for almost an hour on a call that shouldn't have taken more than two minutes. If your internet or phone is not working, and they have to send out a technician it takes about ten days to two weeks. I called Thursday and was on the phone for an hour waiting on hold, time after time, I was told it would be fixed on Friday the next day. They lied. I called again on Monday and was told it would be the following Monday, (another 7 days) before they would send a technician. In the meantime, I am being charged for the time I am without service. His excuse was, I can call Windstream and they credit those ten days. However, because they will put you on hold, that takes at least another thirty-minute phone call. And, far worse, you are without your internet or landline telephone service. Needless, to I canceled the service and went with a different provider. Even after I finally got to talk to a person, to punish me for canceling, she put me on hold for over thirty minutes when it should have taken about sixty seconds. Naturally, she is polite and doesn’t tell you she is putting you on hold to punish you. Anyone that values their time, should never get service from Windstream. Now if you are a new customer, you quickly get to talk to a person and they will not put you on hold because if they did, you might hang up and they wouldn’t get your money.
We have an office with about 12-15 users (some are part-time so it depends on who is in). We are a legacy Broadview user. Though they merger went through a couple of years ago, The only recently turned off the BroadviewOfficesuite product. I learned this from a Windstream employee when I called for technical support. This technicial told me that the Broadview product was replaced with a newer and better Windstream Officesuite product. When I asked if the 50 to 75 external numbers that I had entered into the Broadview product would port over to the Windstream product, he claimed that it should. After installing the new product the external contacts did not port over. The technician escallated the question and reported back that with the new Windstream Officesuite product not only can you not transfer external contact from the older appplication, YOU CANNOT EVEN MANUALLY ENTER EXTERNAL CONTACT IN THEIR NEW SYSTEM! After again checking with his supervisor, he confirmed this and confirmed that they cannot return me to the older Broadview Officesuite. Separately, a Windstream sales person recently tried to conn us into a five-year contract. We are looking for a new provider right now!
*Plan pricing displayed here has been sourced directly from the provider's website or via the provider's sales team. Pricing is subject to change without notice. Check provider's website for most current pricing.Plan pricing may differ based on the country for which you are requesting service.
