Zoom Phone Review 2024: Pros, Cons, Cost, and Features

Zoom Phone is an affordable VoIP solution with a gentle learning curve, making it ideal for beginners. When we tested it out, we were impressed with how intuitive the interface was and how quickly we got everything set up. What’s more, businesses can unlock a range of useful calling features – including call forwarding, recording, and transfers – for just $10 per user, per month, making it one of the cheapest VoIP providers available.  

However, despite Zoom’s strengths, there are certainly a few downsides. Security issues have been an issue in the past, with breaches compromising user data, although it’s been a while since these have plagued anyone. The VoIP service is also not ideal for sales and customer service teams who make high volumes of external calls due to its lack of outbound calling features.

Read on to learn more about Zoom Phone’s VoIP capabilities, pricing structure, user experience, and more, based on our desk-based research and user testing, to learn if the telephony provider is a good match for your business.

In this guide:

• What Is Zoom Phone?
• Zoom Phone vs Zoom Meetings vs Zoom Workplace
• Zoom Phone: At a Glance
• Zoom Phone Features
• Zoom Phone Pricing
• Zoom Phone Customer Support
• How Does Zoom Phone Compare to Other Providers?
• How Did We Evaluate Zoom Phone?
• Verdict: Is Zoom Phone Worth It?

What Is Zoom Phone?

Zoom Phone is the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service offered by Zoom, the popular video conferencing platform that rose to prominence during the COVID pandemic.

Effectively, it’s a business phone system powered by the internet that allows your employees to communicate with internal staff and external clients, either through VoIP desk phones or their own smartphones.

How Zoom Phone works

Zoom Phone, like all VoIP platforms, works by utilizing the internet to make and receive phone calls, unlike traditional landline systems that rely on phone lines. This generally allows for better audio quality due to the modernized infrastructure, more advanced features, such as call groups and auto-attendants, and lower costs on outdated hardware.

What’s the Difference Between Zoom Phone, Meetings, and Workplace?

Before we get into this Zoom Phone review, we’d like to clarify that this article is a detailed look at Zoom’s VoIP/softphone offering, Zoom Phone. We aren’t covering the company’s world-famous video conferencing software that had a 48.7% share of the video conferencing market in 2021, after becoming a near-universal fixture for companies offering remote working during and after the pandemic.

Even though it is a rather new product, Zoom Phone quickly shot up in our ranking as one of the top three providers in our last round of VoIP research.

Zoom also launched Zoom Workplace, a consolidated plan — formerly known as Zoom One — that includes Meetings, Team Chat, Whiteboard, and VoIP phone products. However, Zoom Phone is only available on the Zoom Workplace Business Plus or the Zoom Workplace Enterprise plans, with the latter providing a fully featured PBX (private branch exchange). It is possible — and cheaper — to buy Zoom Phone as a standalone product, which is what we’ll be discussing in this article.

Zoom Phone: At a Glance

Before we dive into the details, here are some important factors you should know about Zoom Phone right off the bat. 

• Pricing: Prices for Zoom Phone start at $10 per user, per month, for the provider’s metered package, with its Unlimited package costing $15 per user, per month. 
• VoIP features: Zoom Phone offers basic inbound calling tools such as call recording, call queue, and ring groups, yet it lacks collaboration features, such as document sharing and task management. 
• No outbound calls: Zoom Phone doesn’t offer outbound calling as part of its basic package, requiring users to purchase ‘Pay as You Go’ credits to make outbound calls.
• Video conferencing: Zoom Phone integrates seamlessly with its video conferencing solution, Zoom Video, allowing users to access both services from one centralized platform. 
• User experience: Zoom Phone’s software is stripped-back and isn’t overloaded with too many features, making it a good VoIP platform for beginners to get started on.
• Customer support: Zoom Phone lets you resolve queries through phone lines and a 24/7 live chatbot. However, you need to upgrade to a premium plan to talk to a member of Zoom’s customer service team.

Who should go for Zoom Phone?

• Businesses on a budget
• Beginners to VoIP software
• Businesses that need to take, rather than make, calls
• Businesses that already use Zoom Video

Who shouldn’t go for Zoom Phone?

• Businesses that regularly make outbound calls
• Businesses that want to talk to a person to resolve queries

Zoom Phone Features

While Zoom Phone isn’t as feature-rich as competitors, such as RingCentral and 8×8, it still offers heaps of capabilities. We’ve rounded up some of its highlights below.

Call management

All plans offer HD call qualities, with active noise and echo cancellation along with keyboard typing suppression to ensure your voices are heard. The provider lets you record calls with ease too. I was impressed by how easy it was to activate this feature when I used Zoom, all I had to do was click the automatic call recording toggle and it was enabled.

Zoom also has advanced conversation features such as call forwarding, call flip, call whisper, and call barge on all of its plans. These features allow users to transfer calls, switch devices, and join calls between other users and customers. These features are must-haves if you’re working in customer service or sales and you need to be supervising and training new staff members.

It was easy to leave voicemails with Zoom Phone and I could even leave a note alongside the message. Source: Tech.co testing

These features are less common for a VoIP provider, particularly one as affordable as Zoom Phone: Neither 8×8 nor RingCentral offer call whisper or call flip on their first two plans, even though these are two of the best smartphone apps for businesses. Net2Phone, another VoIP provider we tested, does not offer this at all.

Number porting

Zoom Phone lets you procure new or migrate phone numbers from your existing service provider at no extra cost. Porting takes place between Monday and Friday, but as Zoom ports numbers from all over the globe, porting windows will depend on where your company is based.

What’s more, businesses should be aware that the provider will require a copy of a telephone bill dated within the last 3 months before porting requests can be approved. Therefore, if you’re considering switching to Zoom Phone in the near future, we’d recommend leaving a small window when transitioning between providers.

Collaboration

SMS and live chat features are included in all of Zoom Phone’s plans. They don’t cost extra either, unlike alternatives such as Nuacom, which charge businesses per SMS. Zoom Phone users can set up 1:1 and group chats too, depending on their communication needs. Users can use the feature to send audio, video, and image files, and can even attach GIFs using the platform’s GIPHY integration. When we tested the live chat tool ourselves, we were impressed with how many mixed-media options are available, and with how easy the feature was to access.

Zoom Phone lets you communicate with your team virtually with its chat feature. Source: Tech.co testing

Zoom Phone also lets you launch video calls with just a tap using its Zoom Video integration. You will have to pay extra to make unlimited 1:1 calls, or to make calls over 40 minutes, though.

Scheduling

Zoom Phone’s in-house scheduling feature, Zoom Scheduler, seamlessly connects users to their calendars, where they’re able to generate lots of scheduled availability for call attendees. Zoom Scheduler also supports Google, Office 365, and Zoom Mail services, allowing users to streamline their schedules across different platforms.

Users can also customize meeting notifications, and choose between email or SMS reminders based on their preference. Zoom Scheduler does cost $4.99 per month, per license extra, however, so it’s important to factor this in when working out overall costs.

Security

Although Zoom’s VoIP security features haven’t always been strong, recent improvements have ensured there are very few holes in Zoom’s armor. Users can now enable two-factor authentication to add a second layer of security to their accounts, and Zoom now enforces a range of complex password rules so users can’t make weak passwords. All Zoom Phone voice recordings are stored in Zoom’s cloud.

While it’s good that Zoom has a wide variety of certifications and attestations, so do a lot of VoIP providers. Zoom’s historically poor score was down to the fact that there were no password rules users had to abide by when the product first came to market but, once again, this is no longer the case.

While both of these features have been included in all Google Voice plans for much longer, Zoom Phone really has closed the gap on its rivals in this regard. Now, in 2024, Zoom Phone even offers user permissions and role management features, which allow admins to restrict other users from accessing parts of the software.

Zoom Phone Integrations

If you want to get even more out of Zoom Phone, the VoIP provider integrates with some of the most widely used software solutions out there. These include:

• Salesforce CRM
• Zendesk Helpdesk CRM
• Zoom video conferencing service
• Gmail 
• Microsoft Outlook
• Google Workspace

However, compared to the competition, Zoom’s integrations aren’t anything to write home about. RingCentral has 96 CRM-related integrations, at least 57 analytics integrations, and external live chat options in the form of WhatsApp and Facebook. The caveat here is that RingCentral’s pricing plans aren’t nearly as affordable as Zoom’s.

Zoom Phone Pricing

Zoom Phone has three pricing plans: the Metered plan ($10 per user, per month), the Unlimited plan ($15 per user, per month), and the Select plan ($20 per user, per month).

Take a look at how the plans compare at a glance below or scroll down for a deeper dive into each package.

Zoom’s Metered plan tied with Google Voice as the cheapest VoIP provider plan we tested. Both plans offer 24/7 support and basic calling and messaging features. However, while Google Voice’s Starter plan is capped at 10 users, Zoom Metered’s unlimited user limit makes it a better value for large teams looking to keep costs low. Google Voice doesn’t let you record or monitor calls on its entry-level tier either, making it less suitable than Zoom for users looking to do anything but just make calls.

Unfortunately, as the name suggests, Zoom Phone Metered charges extra for outbound calls. For unlimited domestic calling inside the US and Canada, you’ll have to upgrade to Zoom Phone’s Unlimited package. You’re also able to augment the package with unlimited international calling at a premium.

If you’re based outside the US and Canada, Zoom Phone’s Global Select plan offers unlimited regional calling in 48 countries and territories. The package also unlocks direct dial numbers capabilities, allowing the phone number to ring directly instead of going through a menu or an extension.

See how Zoom Phone’s pricing compares with other providers with our free tool.

Zoom additional costs and add-ons

Zoom has a few optional add-ons that cost a little bit extra, but might just make one of its packages a better deal for your business, especially if these are essentials. The most popular add-ons are:

• Toll-free numbers: from $5 per month
• Additional phone numbers: from $5 per month
• International calling: from $10 per month
• Zoom Scheduler: from $5 per month

There’s also a “Zoom Phone Power Pack” that costs $25 per month, and it’s designed for call center supervisors and receptionists. It includes what Zoom calls “enhanced call queue analytics” as well as “historical insights”.

Zoom Phone Customer Support

As with any software, if it’s difficult to acquire support when things go wrong, you can end up with some serious periods of downtime that can significantly affect your bottom line.

Overall, Zoom’s customer support is okay, with the provider offering a user forum and an extensive online knowledge base for customers to refer to if they’d like to attempt to troubleshoot a problem themselves. While some of Zoom’s customer support options were previously only available for an additional cost, live chat and phone support are now included on all Zoom Phone plans.

However, there’s still no onboarding support offered on any of Zoom’s plans, so the platform might not be as ideal as alternatives such as 8×8 and RingCentral for businesses that hire and train staff on a regular business. See if one of their plans is a better fit for your business by using our free quote comparison tool.

Zoom’s AI live chatbot is available to users on all plans. Tech.co testing

How Zoom Phone Compares to Other VoIP Providers

According to our research and testing, Zoom is a solid option for smaller teams looking to keep costs low. However, it won’t be the natural choice for every business. RingCentral will do a better job for larger teams as it offers a broader selection of call management features than Zoom Phone, as well as more than 200 integrations with other software platforms.

8×8, on the other hand, will be the preferable choice for call centers as it offers extensive outgoing call features, and training features such as “call whisper” and “call barge”, which let you connect to or listen in on the phone calls your staff are making to assess their on-call manner, or perhaps script adherence if you’re in sales.

However, if your team is growing fast – or you simply have a high turnover of staff – Vonage should be on your radar. This is because our research found the VoIP provider offers the best onboarding and training tools on the market, including call recording and monitoring. However, with Zoom offering more useful calling features in its entry-level plan, the VoIP provider will still be a better option than Vonage for budget-conscious businesses.

Still undecided? Find out how Zoom compares to its competition by checking out the best Zoom alternatives, and by looking at our comparison table below.

Methodology: How Did We Evaluate Zoom Phone?