If you have been thinking you should start using VoIP for your phone calls instead of the expensive mobile phone you currently use, you will first want to find out which are the best VoIP providers.

After all, if you are going to use an Internet protocol to speak to people, you might as well use the best and most reliable one there is.

How to find the best VoIP providers? — There are many VoIP providers out there, and all offer different things.

For the most part, people use VoIP providers because they save money over traditional mobile phone companies. So this is one of the first things you will want to look at. The providers that charge and those that do not.

You will also want to look at the services each VoIP provider offers before making a decision.

Do they offer video calls? Do they have call routing, call recording, voice mail, SMS messaging and voice mail transcription? Do they offer group calls? Can you do video conferencing with them?

Look at all the services that each VoIP provider you find offers, and then decide which you need to have and which are not important.

From this, you should easily be able to narrow down the providers to a small list of possibilities.

Ask other VoIP who they prefer — There are online chat rooms set up for people who use VoIP services, and these are a good place to ask other VoIP users about the service they use.

Sign up with a couple of the chat room and then start a new topic. Tell people about the VoIP providers on your list, and about what your requirements currently are, then ask them to comment on each provider.

Not only will you usually get a lot of information about VoIP providers, and about those providers specifically, but you may even get recommendations for VoIP providers you have not heard of and that may be a better choice for you.

Make a note of any recommended providers and research what they offer.

Free VoIP providers over those that charge — Now you need to decide if you can make use of a free VoIP provider like Skype, or if you will need to pay to have more complicated services.

In many cases, you probably should sign up with both a free service and a paid one. That way you can use the free service for your VoIP calls when you do not need anything complicated, and save the paid one for when you do.

If you only do just this one thing, you could easily cut down the cost of your monthly phone calls to less than half of what you currently pay. If you just use the free service, you could cut down the cost of your calls to nothing at all.

If you use a service that has video, you will also be able to see the people that you speak to via a VoIP call, making it even more of a positive experience.