Ooma vs RingCentral: Which VoIP Provider Is Better?

Our research found that RingCentral is better than Ooma, and is in fact our best VoIP provider overall. The VoIP solution is more scalable, has a better range of external connections, and offers top tier customer support. On top of that, it provides excellent security features, which makes it a great choice for healthcare and retail businesses handling sensitive customer data, while its competitive pricing makes it a good fit for small businesses.

However, Ooma has a low price point and an extensive and useful feature list. It also has two home phone plans (one of which has no monthly rate), which are excellent if you work for yourself and run a small home office. Ooma also scores well for customer satisfaction, so if the customer experience is important to you, it’s definitely worth a look.

In this Ooma vs RingCentral guide, we’ll be taking a look at features, integrations, pricing, support options, equipment, and more, so read on to find out what pushes RingCentral over the line. Or, if you’re ready to sign up for a new VoIP service now, sign up with Ooma or RingCentral today using our comparison tool. 

In this guide:

• Ooma vs RingCentral: Head-to-Head
• VoIP Provider International Call Rates
• About Our Research
• Alternative VoIP Providers
• Verdict: Ooma or RingCentral?

Ooma vs RingCentral: Head-to-Head

The fight between Ooma and RingCentral is a close one, but it’s RingCentral that emerges victorious. That being said, Ooma is marginally cheaper than RingCentral. Ooma Office starts at $19.95 per user, per month, while RingCentral begins at $20 per user, per month when you pay annually, and Ooma has a variety of other plans that are a bit cheaper overall than RingCentral.

Ooma also offers its integrations as part of its standard tier, whereas with RingCentral, some integrations are locked behind its pricier tiers – meaning you’ll need to spend more to access them. Ooma also has cheaper call rates than RingCentral for international calls and offers calls to Mexico and Puerto Rico as part of its package. With RingCentral, these calls cost extra.

RingCentral does have a wider range of phones available to customers than Ooma, which only offers one brand (Yealink). However, RingCentral does not offer its own phone hardware, whereas Ooma does offer its own phone hardware.

To find the right Ooma package for you, use our free tool now.

Which VoIP System Is Best for What?

Our independent research team investigated features, scalability, security, customer score, customer support, and pricing to see how Ooma and RingCentral compare side-by-side. This is how they performed:

• Best Value VoIP Provider: Tie
• Best for Business Features: RingCentral
• Best for Integrations: RingCentral
• Best for Security: RingCentral
• Best for Customer Satisfaction: Ooma
• Best for Scalability: RingCentral
• Best for Customer Support: RingCentral
• Best for Equipment: Ooma
• Best for Mobile App: Tie
• Best for Call Quality: Tie

Best Value: Tie

Ooma is cheaper than RingCentral to begin with. Ooma’s pricing plans start at $19.95 per user, per month for Ooma Office. RingCentral pricing starts with the Core plan, which costs slightly more ($20 per user, per month), but you do get features like spam prevention.

Ooma’s Pro plan ($24.95 per user, per month) has ring groups and call conferencing, which aren’t available on RingCentral’s Advanced plan ($25 per user, per month). However, RingCentral offers call recording, CRM integrations with Salesforce and Zendesk, call transcripts, and collaboration features not available on any Ooma small business plans, such as task management.

RingCentral Ultra plan starts from $35 per user, per month, and comes with access to the provider’s business analytics platform. Ooma’s third plan, the Pro Plus plan  ($29.95 per user, per month). It doesn’t offer email support among its customer support options as RingCentral does, and doesn’t offer nearly as many integrations either.

Ooma has three Enterprise plans starting from $19.99 per user, per month and cap at $47.99 per user, per month for the Call Center package. These plans used to be most comparable to RingCentral Ultimate, which cost $49.99 per user, per month if customers paid annually – but this plan has now been discontinued and the features repackaged into the RingCentral Ultra plan. 

Ooma’s home phone plan is perfect if you’re self-employed and working from home (but not many others). Ooma’s home plans cost a one-time fee of $99.99, after which it is free on the Basic plan, or $9.99 per month on the Premier plan.

Ooma Office has a 30-day money-back guarantee for those not satisfied with the service, while RingCentral offers a free trial period. For even more options, use our VoIP comparison tool to find the best provider for your company.

Best for Business Features: RingCentral

Both RingCentral and Ooma score pretty well for overall features. RingCentral received a score of 4.4/5 during our recent testing round, whereas Ooma scores 4.1/5.

RingCentral has one of the best feature sets on the market, with an array of useful inbound comms features, such as spam prevention, a virtual receptionist, hold music, and localized + toll-free numbers. Ooma offers a similar set of inbound comms features, with not much between the providers.

In terms of outbound comms features, you’ll need RingCentral Engage to unlock features like predictive dialing, custom call lists, and so on. These aren’t available on any Ooma plans.

The gap between the providers really widens when it comes to management and collaboration features (which is discussed in more detail in the section on scalability).  Ooma’s plans for small businesses have very few management or collaboration features, and only really offer some analytics tools, call recording, call routing, and video conferencing.

Best for Integrations/External Connections: RingCentral

Integrations are a key component of VoIP software. Being able to use a VoIP platform alongside other solutions that you use can be a huge time saver, and really speeds up your work processes.

RingCentral scores 5/5 for external connections, whereas Ooma only scores 2.7/5, and generally offers less in this area. That being said, Ooma, still integrates with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Teams, Zendesk, Microsoft 365, G-Suite, ServiceNow, and Outlook, which are some very popular platforms you may already be using.

When it comes to RingCentral, there are a huge 97 CRM and 57 analytics integrations available, as well as connectivity with Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, G-Suite, Zoho, Zendesk, and Google Workspace, to name a few.

Best for Customer Satisfaction: Ooma

Ooma has a better customer score than RingCentral. Ooma scores an impressive 4.4/5 average customer score compiled from various product scoring websites.

On the other hand, RingCentral has a customer score of 3.5/5 — so it isn’t pleasing users at quite the same rate as its VoIP system rival. In the Ooma vs RingCentral battle, this is the only place where RingCentral comes out on top.

Generally speaking, the customer score measures how comfortable actual users feel when using the VoIP solution. It measures everything from customer support responses to ease of use, and it can give you a little insight into how well your team will actually be able to use these services.

For a little context, the customer score from our research is an aggregate of customer reviews and rankings across a wide range of business software websites. This score is derived from sites including G2, Capterra, TrustPilot, and TrustRadius, all of which are considered some of the most valuable resources of online business software reviews online.

Best for Customer Support: RingCentral

Both providers have good customer support scores, especially when compared with the general business phone market – but RingCentral edges it.

RingCentral is great for customer support and scores 5/5, and you’ll have multiple ways to contact RingCentral staff if you choose one of the provider’s plans. On top of 24/7 live support, there’s a user forum, knowledge base, a live chat option, as well as email and phone support..

Ooma, on the other hand, doesn’t have email support and there’s no onboarding support on the Ooma Office or Ooma Office pro plans. While RingCentral has support options available on every single one of its plans, including implementation support on the Core, Advanced, and Ultra plans.

Best for Scalability: RingCentral

RingCentral scores 4.9/5 for scalability, thanks to, among other things, a mix of useful collaboration and management features, including call transcripts, call recording, customizable call routing, team messaging, and task management tools.

Security also plays into our scalability score, and RingCentral’s 4/5 is more than sufficient.

RingCentral also has a wide enough range of integrations (especially when it comes to CRM and analytics), which will satisfy growing businesses. Its offering is also much larger  than Ooma’s. Other features that will be useful for growing businesses, such as call barge, call whisper, and ring groups, are also available.

Ooma Enterprise scores 4.2/5 for scalability, thanks to features like call barge, call whisper, and management features, like document sharing and team messaging. However, you still can’t set up teams and departments, there’s no task management feature and there are no workspace or analytics integrations.

Ooma Office, on the other hand, only scores 2.8/5 for scalability – with very few collaboration features and a severe lack of management features, too. On top of this, Ooma only scores 1/5 for security, so will decrease in suitability the more sensitive or confidential data you’re handling as your business grows.

Best for Security: RingCentral

This feature category is home to perhaps the starkest difference between the two providers. RingCentral scores an impressive 4/5 for security, whereas Ooma only scores 1/5.

In fact, Ooma scores the worst for security out of the providers we tested, so if you’re a small business dealing with sensitive information regularly (either about customers or your own staff), we’d definitely opt for RingCentral in this head-to-head. Alternatively, you can pick another provider altogether, like 8×8, which scores 5/5 for security and stacks up when compared to RingCentral.

RingCentral scores 4/5 in this category because it has multiple compliance certifications, multi-factor authentication, and secure password rules if you purchase “RingCentral Engage”. Ooma, on the other hand, has no multi-factor authentication option and it has no password rules.

In addition to this, one of our researchers noted, “Ooma does not display any compliance certifications online. Their T&Cs specifically state they’re not HIPAA compliant.”

Ooma Vs RingCentral: Equipment

The beauty of VoIP is the flexibility it affords its users. You can use your existing phones (with a VoIP converter), buy dedicated VoIP phones, or even eschew phones altogether and instead use the apps provided.

Both Ooma and RingCentral offer a range of equipment to complement their services. None of it is mandatory, but you may find it useful to have equipment supplied by your VoIP provider.

Home offices

Ooma has a range of VoIP phone hardware available for self-employed people working from home.. As we mentioned in the Ooma pricing section of this article, Ooma Telo costs $99.99, while the Ooma Telo Air costs $129.99, and Ooma Telo LTE costs $149.99.

Ooma Telo LTE connects to your router, whereas Ooma Telo Air can connect via a cellular network with no home internet required. It is worth noting that the standard Ooma Telo hardware needs an ethernet cable to connect.

Businesses

Ooma also offers first-party desktop phones for small businesses, including both IP and Wi-Fi models, which have the advantage of not having to be tethered to an ethernet cable. The Ooma 2602 IP Phone is currently the cheapest on the website, with prices from $59.99

For third-party phones, prices start at $69.99 for the Yealink T21P E2 – a solid choice for small businesses – but there are regular promotions, such as two-for-one deals on certain models.

At the other end of the scale is a model like the Yealink T48U phone, which is priced at $299. This model boasts a large 7-inch screen, the ability to handle up to 32 simultaneous calls, and an HD speaker.

Note that Ooma Office will only work with phones provided by, or compatible with, Ooma.

RingCentral, on the other hand, has no first-party phones available, but it does integrate with Poly (pictured below), Cisco, Yealink, Unify, Mitel, and Avaya. You can find a full list of supported models from these providers here.

To get an idea of what equipment you’ll need, and how much you’ll have to spend, use our free comparison tool for a quote.

Ooma vs RingCentral: Mobile App

Naturally, every platform worth its salt has a mobile app these days, and Ooma and RingCentral are no exception here. Both have apps available for Apple and Android devices, offering key elements of the platform, and allowing users to make and take calls wherever they are.

The Ooma Office app is rated very highly by Apple users, with an impressive score of 4.9 on the App Store from more than 6,000 reviews. On the Google Play store, it has a slightly lower 3.8 rating, based on almost 700 reviews – although these reviews are, for the most part, very positive.

RingCentral’s app (pictured below on desktop and iOS) now includes Glip, its free video conferencing service, which is a nice bonus. With over 33,000 reviews on the Apple App Store, RingCentral has a very impressive 4.8 rating, and actively replies to queries from reviewers – always a good sign.

RingCentral’s app on the Google Play store for Android users is rated 4.6 from more than 18,000 reviews.

Both platforms appear to have solid, well-respected apps, but we can’t ignore the huge volume of positive reviews that RingCentral has garnered.

Ooma vs RingCentral: Best for Call Quality

There’s no denying that VoIP call quality has come a long way from its early days, and is now indistinguishable from a traditional landline – your customers won’t notice the difference. However, there can still be some variation in call quality between providers, so it’s important to know that the VoIP provider you opt for can deliver.

We know that Ooma takes call quality seriously because it regularly sends out its own surveys to customers. In its most recent survey, 76% of Ooma Office users rated its sound quality as an eight or higher on a scale of one to 10. Less than three percent of users reported experiencing regular call quality issues.

RingCentral offers both a VoIP Quality of Service and a VoIP Capacity Test online. If they don’t meet the expected standard, RingCentral offers a troubleshooting guide to ensure your calls are hitch-free in the future.

Unlike Ooma, RingCentral’s service will work with third-party phones, although they must have been unlocked by a previous supplier. It also has a wider range of models to choose from, provided by different brands, such as Polycom, Cisco, Unify and Yealink. Its cheapest model, the Polycom VVX 150, is priced at $89, or can be rented for $3.99 per month.

RingCentral also offers a wider range of conference phones than Ooma, with four models from Polycom on offer, starting at $600 per month.

International Calling Rates

Here, we’ve compiled the international call rates provided by some of the top business phone systems. Remember, international call rates vary from country to country (as you can see from the table below) and often change.

Alternative VoIP Providers

Of course, Ooma and RingCentral aren’t the only VoIP providers worth paying attention to – far from it. If you’ve spent more than a minute researching the subject, you’ll be well aware that there are plenty of VoIP providers out there to compare –  so let’s take a look at a couple more competitors.

Ooma vs Vonage

Vonage is a big name compared with other VoIP providers, but how does it stack up against Ooma? Well, this one was a tough call because both providers have a genuinely strong product.

According to our test results, Vonage scores 4.4/5 while Ooma scores 4.1/5. Vonage has a wider range of integrations than Ooma, better security (including more compliance certifications and user permissions), a better overall feature offering, and was more scalable than Ooma with better management features.

However, Ooma has a better average customer score and better customer support options, however, including a 24/7 live chat and phone. But Vonage clinches it in our Ooma vs Vonage head-to-head.

Ooma vs MagicJack

When we directly compared Ooma vs MagicJack, it was clear Ooma came out on top. MagicJack only scores 2.5/5 – the lowest score out of all the business phone systems we tested – while Ooma scores 4.1/5.

Ooma was more scalable than MagicJack and is a much better fit for growing businesses. In addition to this, our research team discovered Ooma had significantly more support options than MagicJack, as well as a better customer score. Importantly, MagicJack doesn’t integrate with other software, which gives Ooma the edge in another area, thanks to its multiple external connections.

While MagicJack does have some compelling things going for it (the $15.99 price tag for one), we found that its service overall just didn’t compare. When compared with Ooma, MagicJack has fewer integrations, fewer features, and poorer support all counted against it.

MagicJack effectively has no management and collaboration features, and even though RingCentral beats Ooma comfortably in this regard, Ooma, in turn, will be a lot better for businesses than MagicJack.

If Vonage and MagicJack don’t tick your boxes, rest assured — the market is bursting with quality VoIP solutions. Read our guide to the top Ooma alternatives to discover what other IP telephone options are out there if you’d like to compare beyond Ooma vs Ringcentral, MagicJack or Vonage.

How We Decided Ooma vs RingCentral: About Our Research

Here at Tech.co, we have an insights team that researches all of the products we write about. They scope out the biggest players in the market, devise complex testing criteria based on conversations with businesspeople and real users, and then put all the providers through their paces.

For business telephones, our insights team focused on six key areas: features, customer support, security, scalability, customer score, and pricing. Weighted averages of provider performance across these categories are then used to create overall scores for the purpose of comparison.

Although we have commercial partnerships with many of the providers we write about, we are completely editorially independent and the research we conduct sculpts the conclusions we draw about products, services, and software – and it always will. So read on with confidence or, if you’d like to find out more about our research.

Ooma vs RingCentral: FAQs