There’s no need for your office to have a traditional landline if you sign up to a voice-over IP (or VoIP) service instead. We’ve taken a look at the best VOIP options out there for your small business.
VoIP is basically a different form of technology for talking with each other, just like a regular phone. At its simplest, it involves encoding voice into a digital form, before sending it via the internet (rather than conventional phone lines). However, many VoIP services go much further than this, adding a series of extra options that can substantially benefit the efficiency of your small business. These can include features like video conferencing, in-house texting, and online collaborative tools.
No VoIP service is perfect for all businesses. They each have their own respective pros and cons, whether that’s in terms of pricing or features like integration with cloud business services such as Salesforce. Whatever you’re after for your firm, we have you covered. We’ve looked at the best and worst features of each of our recommendations so you know what’s a good fit for you.
Best Overall: RingCentral
If you have it in your budget then you can’t go wrong with RingCentral. It’s reliable, easy to use, and frequently adds new features to its services. It’s more expensive than its main competitors given that many of its features require extra add-on purchases, but it’s worth the price.
At its most basic, the Essentials package costs $19.99 per user per month across the year (that rises to $29.99 per month if you pay monthly rather than annually) and allows for up to 10 users, 100 toll-free minutes per month, and up to 4 people video conferencing at any one time.
Upgrade to the Standard package for an extra $5 per month, and you get unlimited users and unlimited fax. The most popular package is the Premium one which throws in support for 100 people video conferencing, along with automatic call recording and voicemail-to-text services. That works out as $35.99 per user per month. There’s integration with Salesforce, Zendesk, and Desk.com too, which is sure to be useful for certain businesses.
As we said, RingCentral isn’t the cheapest when you start adding in the extra features, but it’s certainly flexible and adaptable to your business needs.
Best For International Calling: 8×8 Virtual Office Pro
8×8 Virtual Office Pro offers a lot of what RingCentral already provides, but at first glance—it seems pricey with its lowest small business package starting at $28 per month per user. So what gives?
It also offers unlimited calls within at least 14 countries, depending on what package you choose. For businesses that frequently deal with people overseas, this could save them a lot in the long run compared to other services. Such packages continue to go up in price and in terms of countries with the second most inexpensive package costing $38 per month per user but covering 32 countries, and so forth. You can review the specifics of which countries are in which packages on this page.
