The rise in remote work has skyrocketed the demand for VoIP providers in almost all organizations. The advantage that an online VoIP service provider offers is an easy-to-use, reliable, and cost-effective alternative to traditional phone systems.
It provides you the flexibility to use any device or gadget to make the necessary phone calls without comprising brand identity and security. All you need is a good internet connection and a device to make phone calls.
There are a lot of different features offered by the best VOIP service companies depending upon your business needs. To make things a bit easier for you I have reviewed and ranked the best VoIP providers based on their support, features, call quality, pricing, and more.
So let’s get started.
What Are the Best VoIP Providers?
Here’s my list of some of the best VoIP providers to use this year.
1. Grasshopper
Grasshopper is one of the most popular VoIP services that provide full-functional VoIP solutions on any device. It provides you with a virtual phone system for your business with the ability to present a professional image at all times.
This allows you to save a lot of investment required in setting up a traditional in-office phone system. Moreover, it offers excellent features to freelancers and mobile businesses without the need to rely on a landline connection.
It is best for those entrepreneurs and small businesses who aren’t looking for some high-priced solution and a professional business phone number routed to their computer or cell phone.
Key Features
- Unified Messaging – This feature allows you to keep track of all your useful information by managing emails. text, and calls from a single point.
- Customer Support – Grasshopper offers 24/7 support from the USA to ensure a smooth and reliable service experience.
- Gmail Integration – You can easily link your existing Gmail account for the information to start using its service.
- Vanity numbers – Provides an easy to remember vanity numbers so that more customers feel encouraged to contact your business frequently.
- Voicemail Transcription – Get your voicemails transcribed so you can read them without listening to the message.
Pros
- Provides reliable and clear voice calls on their communication channel.
- Offers a wide range of vanity, toll-free, or local numbers. Plus, it allows you to port your own number if required.
- Delivers quick replies and sends updates through a text message from your business number.
- Utilizes the timeline view feature to get a detailed understanding of the interactions made with the contact.
- Send incoming voice calls to voicemail through the click of a button.
Cons
- Not designed for large organizations
- Only available in the US and Canada region.
Pricing Plans
Grasshopper offers three paid plans with a 7-day free trial.
- SOLO – $26 per month (billed annually)
- PARTNER – $44 per month (billed annually)
- SMALL BUSINESS – $80 per month (billed annually)
2. CloudTalk
CloudTalk is a virtual phone system that is designed for customer support and the sales team of a business. This VoIP software vendor has offered services to more than a thousand clients and provides robust VoIP solutions.
It efficiently streamlines communication between team members and clients. Plus, it offers a wide range of advanced calling features to enhance your communication system. Its automated call distribution core features include providing personalized support for premium clients, managing inbound/outbound calls, and interaction and voicemail recording.
This is one of the leading VoIP providers designed for catering call center operations.
Key Features
- Speech Recognition – This feature allows CloudTalk to convert calls into text transcripts that can be searched easily in recordings.
- Internal Phone Number Tag – This allows you to give an employee a tag to help them and agents identify the number the client has dialed and how to adjust their approach accordingly.
- Customization – This feature allows you to create a personalized greeting for yourself that you can play with in different situations.
- Skills-based Routing – This feature allows you to redirect the calls to specific agents based on their skills and requirements to get the best result.
Pros
- Utilizes sentiment analysis to monitor your agent’s calls and allows the supervisor to intervene whenever necessary.
- Provides international phone numbers with non-geographic or geographic pin codes for over 70 countries.
- Allows you to specify your business hours when you are able to accept calls for support.
- Easily integrate Cloudtalk to any external systems to export or import contact lists and maintain phone calls, tickets, and regular download history of orders, among others.
- You can get access to end-to-end caller data through real-time customer card for agents
- Redirects incoming calls of customers to a specific phone number every time your agent is busy or unavailable for support.
Cons
- Some improvements are needed in their iOS and Android application
- Third-party Integrations could be more
Pricing Plans
CloudTalk offers four paid plans with a 14-day free trial.
- Starter Plan – $20 per month per user (billed annually)
- Essential Plan – $25 per month per user (billed annually)
- Expert Plan – $40 per month per user (billed annually)
- Custom Plan – Quote-based Pricing
3. RingCentral
RingCentral is famous for its robust network in Europe, the USA, and Asia for providing a reliable VoIP solution. The reason they are widely known is due to the vast features that they offer at a lesser cost than other VoIP alternatives available.
RingCentral offers you many advantages in its software management including mobility, flexibility, and improved call management. It bolsters some of the biggest companies like Del Monte, Evernote, Guess, BMW, Subway, and Twitter.
Ringcentral is best for small business that requires full-service VoIP which is cost-effective and reliable.
Key Features
- Business SMS and MMS – Provides a professional text solution to eliminate the usage of personal phones.
- Audit Trail – This feature allows you to track every change made to the system. Moreover, it offers an account history search feature to easily fix critical issues if occurred.
- Video Conferencing – Provides a video conferencing tool that can connect up to 500 people in meetings.
- Hot Desking – This allows users to share their shared phone usage, extensions, voicemail, greetings, and other features.
Pros
- Offers free calls to global offices to help cut down phone expenses.
- Its audio conferencing facility allows up to 1000 people to connect easily.
- Provides a single sign-on facility to eliminate the need for multiple passwords
- Offers live reports to track customer operations satisfaction and measure performance
- Enables real-time chatting for teams to collaborate through internet-connected devices.
- Its analytical portal provides data visualization, endpoint reporting, Quality of Service Reports, and consolidated Live Reports, among others with over 30 new metrics covered in it.
Cons
- Depend on rented customer support
Pricing Plans
RingCentral Office offers four paid plans to its customers along with a 15-day Free Trial
- Essentials – $19.99 per user per month (billed annually)
- Standard – $24.99 per user per month (billed annually)
- Premium – $34.99 per user per month (billed annually)
- Ultimate – $49.99 per user per month (billed annually)
So now let’s cover the basics.
What is Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)?
VoIP which means Voice over internet protocol is basically a technology that helps you make a phone call using your internet connection. The way it works is that VoIP sends the voice data in the form of packets to the end-user quickly, securely, and reliably.
VoIP gained popularity due to its ability to make phone calls to any number in the world, send emails, alerts, messages, and much more.
With a recent boom in digital transformation, thanks to the pandemic many organizations are now embracing VoIP to become more secure and data-driven.
VoIP offers support and a sales team to become more productive by providing a wide range of functionalities like call analytics, customer insights, mobile phone access, and easy collaboration among others. Organizations now combine these software features with a VPN service to make operations even more secure and robust.
What should you look for in VoIP Service?
Here are a few things that you should be looking for in a capable VoIP service for your business.
- Insights and Analytics – The platform service should provide call data analytics and customer insights to make better business sales decisions and enhance customer call support based on data-driven analysis.
- Mobile Application – Make sure they provide call features on iOS and Android devices to ensure uninterrupted business anywhere and anytime.
- Solid Customer Support – The VoIP service provider should provide robust customer support right from setup to after-sales calls to ensure smooth business activities.
- CRM Integrations – VoIP integrations to CRM software are critical for businesses to drive higher customer sales along with maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction.
VoIP Providers – Final Summary
This wraps my list of the best VoIP providers you can use for your business this year. I will keep updating the list with more good VoIP service providers available in the market.
The need for the VoIP service provider will vary from business to business. If you are an organization with more than a thousand employees then a VoIP service provider like Cisco will be a good choice for you. However, if you are an individual or a small business then you can go for Bitrix24 or RingCentral.
Hence analyze your business requirements carefully and decide the features you will be needing for your business. Compare the prices of all the products and then choose the best option that suits you.
Which one of these VoIP providers are you planning to use? Let me know in the comment section below.
More from Smashitbuck: To check out my other articles on the ERP software, youtube shorts to mp4, and POS system software to read this year.
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