The best conference call services offer you the best way to communicate with a large audience over the phone or through video calls.
Nowadays, after the pandemic, there is increased activity in the online space right from working at home to ordering daily groceries required.
With this, there is an increase in the virtualization of live events, expos, business meetings, and more through conference calls. Now which of these conference service providers matches the exact business requirements you are looking for can be a little challenging with a ton of options available in the market.
So to make your decision a bit easier I have reviewed and ranked the best conference call services based on ease of use, pricing, features, support, integrations, and more.
So let’s get started.
What Are the Best Conference Call Services?
Here is my list of the best conference call services to use this year.
1. RingCentral
RingCentral is overall the best conference call service platform that allows you to conduct online meetings and conference calls. It is a cloud-based communication and collaboration platform providing video conferencing and voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) services.
Their free edition offers you to invite up to 100 participants and conduct a conference call for up to 40 minutes. Also, you can utilize their messaging app to hold an HD video conference call.
Key Features
- Vanity Numbers and Area Codes – This allows you to choose a number from a collection of toll-free vanity numbers, 877, 866, 855, 800, 888, etc. Plus, it supports over 200 + area codes to suffice your requirements.
- Contact Import – This features provides you to import an existing contact list into your RingCentral account.
- Call Flipping – This allows you to flip calls between several devices so that you do not have to worry about single-point failure problems.
- Automatic Transcription – This functionality automatically converts voicemail into the required transcripts.
- Robust Analytics – Provides real-time key metrics of engagement to make quick decisions and changes accordingly. Additionally, it offers up-to-the-hour reporting to measure metrics like the average speed of answer, number of missed calls with voicemail, and more.
- Activity Status – This supports presence status like Available, Invisible, or Do Not Disturb. Also, allows you to perform actions like blocking numbers, taking calls from particular callers, and sending numbers to voicemails.
- Meeting Syncing – This feature allows you to sync your scheduled conference with tools like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and other third-party platforms.
- Meeting Highlights – This functionality stores the meeting highlights on the cloud for up to seven days.
- International Calling Support – Helps you increase your outreach with toll-free numbers, local caller ID, and international inbound numbers in over 70 countries.
Pricing Plans
RingCentral offers four pricing plans to its customers along with a 15-day free trial.
- Essentials – $19.99 per month
- Standard – $24.99 per month
- Premium – $34.99 per month
- Ultimate – $49.99 per month
2. BlueJeans
BlueJeans is a cloud-based video conferencing platform provided by Verizon that offers conference calls, webinar tools, live video calls, and more. It uses Dolby’s voice suppression to reduce background noise and support HD video streaming.
Moreover, it offers you to divide your online meetings into different sessions and showcase up to 25 participants in a single-screen view. BlueJeans collaboration with other tools like Workplace, Microsoft 365, Google calendar, etc. to help you access more features directly from the dashboard.
Key Features
- Improved Bandwidth – This uses peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming technology that shares attendees’ bandwidth to improve call and video streaming speed.
- Customer Support – Provides robust 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat.
- Automated ROI Analysis – This provides metrics on how much you have saved on travel and carbon emissions prevented.
- 360-degree view of your meetings – This enterprise-grade management console delivers immediate insight into network conditions, user-focused ROI, and meeting performance.
- Advanced Quality Metrics – This functionality provides you with real-time customer support, conducts root cause analysis, and identifies exceptions.
- Real-time Alerts – Provides customizable alerts that inform and enable proactive quality monitoring.
- Rapid Data Export – This allows you to share and download data in CSV format or via other API services for further analysis
- Live Meeting Controls – This allows you to tag specific meeting moments, closed captioning, end-to-end encryption, set virtual backgrounds, delegate scheduling, automatic recording, etc. Also, it allows other key functionalities like setting video layouts, changing recording settings, and muting participants for minimal disruptions.
Pricing Plans
BlueJeans offers three pricing plans to its customers
- Standard – $9.99 per month/host
- Pro – $13.99 per month/host
- Enterprise – Quote-based
3. GrassHopper
Grasshopper is a virtual phone system designed to support functionalities like business texting, call forwarding, Wi-Fi calling, VoIP services, etc.
Additionally, it offers local numbers, toll-free numbers, and vanity numbers, along with porting your current number for free. Plus, it has designed a smartphone app to handle all business calls right from its monitoring, forwarding, and management.
The only downside is that it is available in the US and Canada only and does not support video conferencing and other integration options.
Key Features
- Customer Support – Offers a 24/7 customer support system via live chat, phone, email, and even social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Ruby Receptionist – It is a chatbot designed by grasshopper to aid its client’s customers and resolve their queries via this virtual assistant.
- Virtual Fax – This is a cloud-based fax delivery service that lets you receive faxes without the need for a fax machine. It also allows you to deliver any fax anywhere around the globe.
- Incoming Call controls – This feature allows you to limit the number of particular incoming calls to a particular agent. You can also redirect the incoming call to some other agents who are available.
- Multiple Call Handling – This is possible using its call routing feature that allows you to route calls to another phone or member.
- Voice Transcription – This allows you to convert the voice into text. Moreover, you can direct calls directly to voicemail if no one from the team is available.
- Advanced Analytics – Apart from its own analytics it allows you to connect your Google Analytics account for further precision in tracking data.
Pricing Plans
GrassHopper offers three paid pricing plans to its clients
- Solo – $26 per month/billed annually.
- Partner – $44 per month/billed annually.
- Small Business – $80 per month/billed annually.
So now let’s cover the basics.
What is a Conference Call Service?
Conference call service providers offer you to manage, schedule, and place conference calls easily. A conference call is a video or telephone call that involves several people simultaneously.
Apart from this, the conference service providers offer interviews, knowledge transfer sessions, audio meetings, video conferences, host webinars, and more.
The conference service industry is experiencing massive growth after the COVID-19 pandemic as more and more businesses rely on online activities.
Some of the most popular conferencing services include Skype, RingCentral, Webex, Zoom, and more.
What Features Do You Need in a Conference Call Service?
Here are some of the essential features that any high-quality conference call platform should offer despite any industry vertical.
1. Virtual Whiteboard
This feature allows you to use drawing tools on your shared screen to pinpoint the points you want to convey to your audience. Also, you can hand over control to any team member to ensure optimal collaboration.
2. Conference Recordings
This feature is to ensure that you can later analyze or retrieve the conference calls to rectify things that were correct or wrong. Therefore, choosing the right conference platform that provides recording in a suitable format is important.
3. Third-party Integrations
This is to ensure that the maximum of your required tasks is getting accomplished in a single dashboard view. It should provide integrations to well-known software like Slack, PayPal, Office 365, Salesforce, GSuite, etc.
4. Noise Cancellation
Noise Cancellation is important to eliminate any background noise and to convey every word clearly to your audience. This ensures good quality audio recording which can later be reused by your audience for future reference.
5. Analytics and Reporting
Robust analytical tools help you gauge where your conference performance is heading. It will help you with key business metrics like attendance, feedback, registration, and other holistic engagement metrics.
6. Break Music
It is crucial that the conference call service providers offer custom music when there is a break time. This ensures that the user is not confused about whether the conference call is actually active or not.
Best Conference Call Services – Final Summary
This wraps up my list of the best conference call services to use for your business this year. I will keep updating the list with more good conference call services available in the market.
Every business has different requirements when it comes to services like training, client engagement, onboarding, etc. Most of these tools provide options for everyone including small businesses, startups, or individuals.
Luckily all these tools provide a free trial or freemium plan to allow you to understand their product and then move to the paid option.
Finally, go through every platform given in the above conference call services list before making the final purchase.
Which one of these conference call services are you planning to use? Let me know in the comment section below
More from Smashitbuck: Do check out my other articles on the 3pl logistics, CRM software, and sentence checker to read this year.
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