Best Vonage Alternatives

After extensive testing of the best business telephones, we concluded that 8×8 is the best Vonage alternative. 8×8 has a better range of CRM and helpdesk integrations and scored full marks for security, integrations, and customer support, three areas where Vonage was found wanting. This makes 8×8 the better fit for small and medium-sized businesses.

However, 8×8 isn't the only Vonage alternative out there. RingCentral is our top-rated VoIP provider overall, and definitely worth a look if you operate in the retail, hospitality or healthcare sectors, while Ooma provides an excellent customer experience. We'll also take a look at GoTo Connect, Net2Phone, and Nextiva in this guide, which includes:

• Best Vonage Alternatives: Table
• Best Vonage Alternatives: Reviews
• Should You Choose Vonage Anyway?
• How to Choose the Right VoIP system for your business
• How did we compare Vonage to the other Providers?
• Verdict: 8×8 is the best Vonage alternative
• FAQs

Best Vonage Alternatives

So, you're looking for an alternative to Vonage. The best alternative for your business, will depend on what you're looking for. Vonage‘s strength is its excellent training features, with easy-to-use call recording, transcripts, and call monitoring making it ideal for retail, sales, and customer service staff – plus it's cheaper than many top providers, including 8×8 and RingCentral.

However, both RingCentral and 8×8 came out above Vonage in our VoIP software testing, due to their excellent value. RingCentral is our best-rated VoIP provider overall, as well as the best provider we tested for customer service, retail, hospitality and healthcare, while 8×8 is best-suited for small businesses and Sales teams.

Here are the top five best alternatives to Vonage:

• 8×8 – Best Vonage alternative, perfect for small businesses and Sales teams
• RingCentral – Best overall VoIP provider, best for customer service and more
• Ooma – Better customer experience than Vonage
• Nextiva – Better than Vonage for professional services
• Net2Phone – Cheaper than Vonage, great for international business

8×8 vs Vonage

The Best Vonage Alternative
Pricing from: $15 per user, per month
Tech.co Rating: 4.6/8

8×8 was the best Vonage alternative we tested and the second-best business phone system overall. It scored 4.6/5 overall versus Vonage's 3.8/5 result, and 8×8 was awarded better scores than Vonage regarding security (5/5 vs 3/5), customer support (5/5 vs 3.4/5), and has more useful features (4.9/5 vs 4.4/5) for businesses.

8×8 pricing – is it the best Vonage alternative?

On all of 8×8's plans, there are unlimited domestic inbound and outbound calls, but there is a 10-user limit on its first package, meaning businesses or teams with more staff will have to look at other plans.

As Vonage alternatives go, 8×8 would be our top-pick for those looking to switch providers. Vonage has great features for training, but 8×8 actually has more training tools than Vonage. This is why we rated it the best provider for sales teams, who will need features that can help staff can learn on the job.

Useful features offered by 8×8 include a Call Whisper (for monitoring), call transcripts, call recording, and analytics/reporting tools, whereas Vonage doesn't have transcripts on any plans or recording on its first plan.

Many of these management features factored into the reason we gave 8×8 a higher scalability score (4.9/5) than Vonage (4.5/5), as well as the wealth of useful software integrations 8×8 has. As mentioned, 8×8 also scored better for security, although Google Voice trumps all other providers for security, if that's your main concern.

Overall, our research team concluded that 8×8 is a great fit for small businesses with plans for significant growth. The only real downside is that 8×8 is a more expensive piece of kit, and the first 8×8 plan doesn't include all those training features mentioned above – so you'll need to invest heavily to see the real value. How much you're willing to spend on software might sway your decision.

If you'd like to find out if either 8×8 or Vonage (or another provider) is truly the best fit for your business, compare tailored VoIP price quotes using our free tool, to find the best deal.

Express  ($15 per user, per month): this is 8×8's cheapest plan and has a 10-user limit. The basic comms features you'd expect are included, but there aren't many features that help with training plus 100-person limits on video and call conferencing and limited integrations. There is quite a wide range of customer service options for though, including 24/7 live support and onboarding assistance.

X2 ($24 per user, per month): this plan has no user limit and a much bigger feature offering, including voicemail-to-text, call queues, and ring groups for improved communications. There are also plenty of features that help with training like a call recorder function and analytics tools. There's also a wealth of CRM, helpdesk, and Microsoft Teams for web functioning. This plan also has unlimited calls to 14 countries including Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US, and is cheaper than Vonage's second plan ($19.99 per user, per month).

X4 ($44 per user, per month): This plan offers unlimited calling to 48 countries, which is fantastic news for large businesses that have a global client base. a Call barge, a call whisper function, and call monitoring are added, which makes it a better prospect for sales teams and other businesses that are planning to do a lot of on-phone training to improve conversations. The most comparable Vonage plan is their Advanced plan ($39.99 per user, per month).

X6 ($85 per user, per month): This is the first plan with a task management feature, and there are several other communication features (like predictive dialing) that larger companies dealing with high volumes of calls would find useful, although they're only available at an additional cost. Like the X4 plan, you'll have unlimited calling to 48 countries.

X7 ($110 per user, per month): The X7 plan by 8×8 is one of the most fully featured products our research team reviewed, with a huge range of communication, management, and conversation features, plus a full suite of security provisions and integrations. There are chat, email, and SMS options too.

X8 (140 per user, per month): There isn't a huge amount of difference between this plan and the X7 plan, aside from quality management, speech analytics, screen recording, and multi-screen monitoring, so will be best suited to teams where oversight of call management is important.

RingCentral vs Vonage

The best business phone system overall
Pricing from: $14.99 per user, per month
Tech.co rating: 4.7/5

RingCentral topped our business phone system testing with an impressive score of 4.7/5.  For starters, RingCentral has better customer support options than Vonage (5/5 vs 3.4/5), including 24/7 live support, which Vonage does not provide.

On top of this, RingCentral has more capacity for adding a range of integrations and includes collaboration features (which Vonage doesn't have) that will help growing businesses, so was deemed more scalable (4.9/5 vs 4.5/5).

Our research team concluded that both Vonage and RingCentral would be good fits for Retail, Healthcare, and Customer service teams, but that RingCentral is just that little bit more impressive in all cases. For instance, RingCentral has better security (4/5 vs 3/5), so would be better for the sorts of sensitive data you'd handle in a healthcare capacity that could cost you millions if it was mishandled, lost, or stolen.

Vonage and RingCentral plans start at $19.99, but RingCentral has a user limit of 20 whilst Vonage is unlimited. 8×8 has a cheaper starting plan than both of them at $14.99 per user, per month, but it's got a user limit of 10 in the US and doesn't have many features). Use our free tool to find out which one is the best fit for your company.

RingCentral pricing

Essentials ($14.99 per user, per month): On this plan, there's a 20-user limit, but there are plenty of inbound comms features like spam prevention and a virtual receptionist. There's also the full range of customer service options (bar onboarding support) you get on all plans. Downsides include the fact there are no inclusive inbound minutes, and there are not many management or training-focused features nor any software integrations to write home about, so we'd advise going for the Standard plan.

Standard ($20.99 per user, per month): On this plan, the user limit is removed (now unlimited) and the inbound minutes are upped to 250 per month. There's also Call Recording, Call Conferencing, and Workspace Integrations (Google + Microsoft 365). Larger businesses (and businesses without dedicated IT teams) will appreciate the onboarding support included in this plan too, something that costs extra but is available on Vonage's most similarly priced (and cheapest) plan, the Mobile plan ($19.99 per user, per month).

Premium ($26.24 per user, per month): this is a truly impressive plan that's well worth the money, with 1000 inclusive inbound minutes. It's the first plan with a Call Barge, a Call Whisper function, Customizable SLAs, and a wealth of web conferencing, external/internal live chat, and analytics integrations. There are 96 CRM integrations to choose from, so if you're using a CRM system already, this could be the plan for you.

Ultimate ($37.49 per user, per month): the only big difference between this plan and the Premium plan is the number of outbound and inbound minutes on offer – but that can naturally be crucial for businesses expecting to make high volumes of calls. RingCentral only provides 4000 free outbound minutes a month on this plan, however, and it's the most expensive. It still comes in at less than Vonage's most expensive plan, however, which is $39.99 per user, per month.

GoTo Connect vs Vonage

A great VoIP for scaling businesses
Pricing from: $24.00 per user, per month
Tech.co rating: 4.2/5

GoTo Connect was only marginally beaten by Vonage in our last round of testing. GoTo has better security options (4/5) than Vonage (3/5), and includes some features that Vonage doesn't, like multi-factor authentication.

GoTo Connect also gained a better customer score (4.4/5 vs 4/5), and was one of the best business phone systems in terms of value for money when compared with other providers' offerings. The two providers both earned 3.4/5 for their customer support, although GoTo offers onboarding support at no additional cost whilst Vonage charges extra.

However, Vonage has a better set of features overall. GoTo's first tier plan is quite limited when compared to Vonage's, and it doesn't have certain training-focused conversation features (like Call Whisper) available on all plans, like Vonage does.

Another place where GoTo Connect falls down when compared to Vonage is in its integrations, of which it really doesn't have many. There's only really Salesforce and Zoho for CRM integrations, for example, whereas Vonage offers many more options, and so do providers like 8×8 and RingCentral.

GoTo Connect pricing

Basic ($24.00 per user, per month): On this plan, there's no user limit and unlimited domestic calls, as well as a full range of inbound communication features. There's not a huge number of integrations on offer, but there's a decent set of collaboration features including team messaging and video conferencing. There's a phone and email line for customer support too as well as onboarding assistance. It's not as cheap as Vonage's first plan, however ($19.99 per user, per month).

Standard ($29.00 per user, per month): There are some handy additional features on this plan including E-fax, call recording, and analytics tools, plus free international inbound and outbound calling to over fifty countries, which is even more than 8×8 offers (48).

Premium ($39.00 per user, per month): On this plan, call whisper, call monitoring and a call barge are added, all of which are useful features for assessing and training staff – and it's almost the same price as Vonage's Advanced plan ($39.99 per user, per month).

Ooma vs Vonage

Best for customer experience
Pricing from: $24.95 per user, per month
Tech.co score: 4.1/5

Ooma didn't score as highly as Vonage on our last round of business phone testing, with a score of 4.1/5 overall compared to Vonage's 4.3/5 – but it's still worth exploring whether it's the best fit for your business.

We rated Ooma the best for overall for customer experience, thanks to its strong customer support options (scoring 4.5 vs Vonage's 3.4) and high customer satisfaction score (4.4 vs Vonage's 4.0). Ooma has no support via email whereas Vonage does, but Vonage doesn't have 24/7 live support and Ooma does. Ooma also has “Customer Success Managers” to help with onboarding and other queries, whereas Vonage does not, and onboarding is only available for an additional cost.

Aside from that, Vonage rules the better phone system. It has more management features (like call monitoring) available on its plans, for example, which helped it gain a better scalability score (4.5/5 for Vonage compared to Ooma's 4.1/5).

Ooma also scored poorly for security (1/5) – the provider isn't HIPAA compliant, whereas Vonage is, and the provider doesn't display any compliance certifications on its site, despite them being an important aspect of VoIP security. On top of this, Vonage has user permission capabilities, whereas Ooma doesn't. This poor security score means it's just not as useful as Vonage for sectors that deal with customer and/or client data.

Ooma pricing

All of Ooma's plans have unlimited domestic inbound and outbound minutes, as well as no user limit – so for businesses of all sizes, it's worth taking a look at Ooma.

Ooma Office ($19.95 per user, per month): Ooma's first plan has a solid selection of inbound and outbound communication features – and is priced very similarly to the Vonage Mobile plan ($19.99 per user, per month) – but a lack of management and conversation features like a Call Whisper or Call Transcripts means it's not the best Vonage alternative. You do, however, get Ooma's full range of customer support options (bar onboarding). There aren't any software integrations available on this plan, however.

Ooma Office Pro ($24.95 per user, per month): On this plan, spam prevention and voicemail-to-text are added to the already large list of communication features, as is external video calling. This is the first Ooma plan with a call recording capability and video conferencing. There are integrations, but only for email and workspace.

Ooma Enterprise ($27.99 per user, per month): On this plan, CRM and Helpdesk integrations are added in the form of Salesforce, MS Dynamics, and Zendesk. There's also onboarding support – provided by “Customer Success Managers”, and collaboration features like a team messenger and document sharing.

Ooma Enterprise Call Center ($49.99 per user, per month): This plan adds a Call queue to the list of communication features, as well as a call flow designer. Aside from that, it's hard to split this from the Enterprise plan, although a call flow designer will reduce your number of missed calls meaning this plan would suit larger businesses receiving increasing numbers of calls.

Nextiva vs Vonage

Great for professional service teams
Pricing from: $23.95 per user, per month
Tech.co rating: 4.1/5

Vonage is a slightly better provider overall than Nextiva – Nextiva was awarded an overall 4.1/5 following Tech.co's tests, whilst Vonage got a 4.3/5.

Vonage scores better than Nextiva for features generally (4.4/5 vs Nextiva's 3.8/5) and scalability (4.5/5 vs 2.9/5 for Nextiva). As mentioned previously, our scalability scores are determined by specific features that businesses will need to grow, from security provisions to protect data, to collaboration features to promote efficient group work. Integrations with other software are also important, and Vonage has slightly more than Nextiva.

Notably, Nextiva has no capacity for external or internal live chat integrations, and you can only integrate with web conferencing software on Nextiva's most expensive plan. You can do this on all of Vonage's plans although it does come at an additional cost. To be fair to Nextiva, it does have a better set of its own collaboration tools than Vonage, which may explain why communication integrations aren't as numerous.

Nextiva has more in-house collaboration features when compared with Vonage and other providers, which are key for many of the industries mentioned above, whereas Vonage has more training-focused features like Call Whisper, which is why it's better for teams that require training (e.g. customer service).

Nextiva still remains one of the better options for professional services, including consultants, contractors, designers, and creative service teams, whilst Vonage is better suited to sales, retail, and customer service teams, based on the features each provider prioritizes. Consultants, for instance, have to be easily contactable by their clients, and Nextiva provides a great solution for low-volume inbound communications. It has a virtual receptionist, voicemail features, ring groups, and multiple ways to contact staff (like call groups).

Nextiva pricing

Nextiva includes unlimited domestic inbound and outbound minutes on all its plans, and no user limits on any packages, so bear that in mind when contrasting it with other business phone systems.

Essential ($23.95 per user, per month): this Nextiva plan has basic inbound communication features and some outbound comms features, but compared to other providers on this list, it's a bit of a thin offering. There is, however, a good range of customer support options and collaboration features like team messaging and document sharing.

Professional ($27.95 per user, per month): on this plan, there's everything on the Essential plan plus video conferencing, CRM, and helpdesk integrations, as well as call conferencing with 40 participants and an SMS/chat function. Vonage's second plan ($29.99 per user, per month) also has call conferencing, but there's a cap on 30 participants and it costs extra.

Enterprise ($37.95 per user, per month): There's no limit on call conferencing on this plan, and there's also an MS Teams integration and  Single Sign-on function. This is the first Nextiva plan with a call recording function.

Net2Phone vs Vonage

Great for international businesses
Pricing from: $19.99 per user, per month
Tech.co rating: 4.2/5

Net2Phone US achieved a 4.2/5, which isn't as good as Vonage's overall score (4.3/5). But Net2Phone is great for international businesses, and is an all-around cheaper alternative to Vonage – the most expensive Net2Phone plan is just $31.99 per user, per month, with free international calling to over 4o countries on all of the provider's packages.

Net2Phone is best for international businesses, and was one of the the best value VoIP provider we tested (scoring 4.5/5 for pricing), although Vonage has a better set of features, and GoTo Connect still won on value (comparing the ratio of features to cost). To compare exact price quotes for your business' needs you can use our VoIP price comparison tool.

Net2Phone doesn't have any features that will improve the staff's on-phone manner; there's no call whisper function allowing managers to give live feedback to their employee, for example, or features that will let other users join the call when needed (call barge). In contrast, Vonage has capabilities for both. There are no custom call lists or external video calling on any of Net2Phone's plans either, which Vonage has. These missing features somewhat account for the lower price.

Our VoIP software research team did conclude that Net2Phone was a little more scalable (3.1/5) than competitor Nextiva (2.9/5) – but still, not as scalable as Vonage (4.5/5), which is better for growing businesses.

Both Net2Phone and Vonage offer adequate security but Net2Phone does have the edge, with an updated scored of 4/5 in our latest round of testing, in line with competitors like RingCentral and 8×8 who both score 4/5 and 5/5 respectively.

Net2Phone did gain a better customer support score (3.9/5) than Vonage (3.4/5) – thanks to its 24/7 live support, which Vonage doesn't offer, and there's onboarding assistance available on all plans for free too, whereas this is only available with Vonage for an additional cost.

Net2Phone pricing

As mentioned previously, all of Net2Phone's pricing plans come with free international calling to over 40 countries, which is a lot more than other competitors featured in this article, making it the best bet for international businesses. There's also no user limit on any of Net2Phone's plans.

N2P Virtual ($19.99 per user, per month): for the price, there are a lot of features included on Net2Phone's first plan like spam prevention, customizable hold music, and ring groups. There are Salesforce and Zoho integrations available for just $2 per user, per month, 24/7 live support, and call conferencing. There are also analytics and reporting tools on this plan.

N2P Essentials ($23.99 per user, per month): this is the plan you'll need if you want third-party or desktop phones, and there's an e-fax function to add to the outbound communication functions.

N2P Professional ($27.99 per user, per month): this plan is the best-priced plan offered by Net2Phone, just $4 per user, per month more than the Professional plan, and has all the same comms features plus voicemail-to-text and call queue. There are also Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Workspace integrations. This is a lot cheaper than Vonage's third plan ($39.99 per user, per month), but Vonage actually integrates with more useful programs.

N2P Ultimate ($31.99 per user, per month): the Ultimate plan is quite similar to the Professional plan, but call recording is thrown in as an extra feature.

Should You Choose Vonage Anyway?

If you're not already a Vonage customer, looking to switch, you might still want to consider Vonage as an option. Or, if you are a Vonage customer, you might have it better than you think. Vonage (4.3/5) was ranked as the third best among business telephone systems we tested, only bettered by RingCentral (4.7/5) and 8×8 (4.6/5).

The provider's weighted customer score of 4/5 was actually higher than both RingCentral and 8×8 (both 3.5), meaning a lot more users end up satisfied with Vonage's software in the end. Vonage also scored marginally better for pricing (3.8/5) with lower overall costs than RingCentral (3.5/5) and 8×8 (2.5/5).

Vonage is a great fit for customer service and sales teams who will need to train their staff and provide feedback about their on-call manner, thanks to a number of useful training features. Vonage also provides very useful onboarding assistance so you'll be able to get set up quickly and efficiently. It also proved to be one of the more scalable products we tested (4.5/5) – it has no user limit on any of its plans – so would suit growing businesses too.

Of course, there are definitely areas for improvement. Vonage doesn't have multi-factor authentication options or any password rules for staff, for instance, which meant it lost marks when it came to security, despite having a decent list of compliance certifications, and there are better providers for handling sensitive data. There's also no 24/7 live support, which many other providers do offer.

How to Choose the Right VoIP System for Your Business

Choosing the right VoIP system for your business is no easy task, especially with so many things to consider, from pricing to integration with your existing software.

You'll need to consider, for example, if your business is going to be making exclusively domestic calls, or will you be expecting inbound and outbound international calls from other countries? If your business has an exclusively US or North American customer base, for instance, you won't need to worry about free calling to international numbers, or how many countries are covered by the provider.

Another thing to consider is integrations, and whether a provider integrates with other software you use, such as an existing CRM system. If you use Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Slack for internal communications, then you'll want to know if they can connect with your VoIP setup, as you may not want to transition to another comms platform, just for the sake of your VoIP system.

Next, you'll want to consider if your business is going to be expanding in the near future, and if so, then you'll want to consider how scalable a given piece of VoIP software is and how many employees there are in your company. For example, if your team's soon increasing from 10 to 30, then picking a plan with a user limit of 10 might make sense for now, but not later. Plus, the more customers, clients, or patients' data you'll be handling, the better security features you'll need, and the more compliance certificates it'll be useful if your provider has.

Another thing you may want to consider, on top of these key areas, is customer support and if you'll need onboarding assistance, which might be the case if you're a big business. Whether you need conference call features, or features to train staff with, may also be important and will differ depending on what sector you're in. So be sure to look out for that when you're reviewing Vonage alternatives.

Healthcare teams will be handling sensitive and confidential data, so might prioritize security, whereas a retail or sales team might prioritize a provider with call recording and call monitoring functions in order to provide feedback to staff on their on-phone manner.

How Did We Compare Vonage to Other VoIP Providers?

When a company ranks a provider as “number one” or “the best Vonage alternative” in the case of this article, wondering how this ranking was arrived at, is only natural. You might question if we've really tested the VoIP software, impartially, and what metrics we are really using to compare them.

At Tech.co, we're incredibly lucky to have a dedicated research team that creates in-depth research frameworks and carries out product-led testing on everything we write about. This industry-specialist team identifies the key pain points for businesses, assesses software and services based on a range of crucial criteria, and collaborates with our team of expert writers to ensure all our reviews and recommendations can be trusted.

There's one simple rule we have with our research: if we don't have the data, we don't write the review. You can also rest assured that while we do make money through commercial partnerships, we will never rank a provider or product top, based on this. Our verdicts are completely impartial and based on our verifiable, data-driven insights.

VoIP research and comparing Vonage alternatives

For our last round of VoIP research, our research team honed in on 7 key metrics and used them to assess the best VoIP providers currently on the market. They then awarded providers scores out of 5 for each metric:

• Price – Final scores are derived from what each provider offers, and what pricing plans they offer it on.
• External Connections – Final scores are based on the variety and quality of integrations available to product users.
• Features – Final scores are based on which features are included in the software, and how well they actually work when tested by our team.
• Customer Support – Final scores are derived from the customer support options that are on offer, and whether they function in a useful way when tested by our team.
• Security – Final scores are derived from an extensive test of a given product's security features, as well as the number of features on offer.
• Scalability – to arrive at our scalability score, whether a provider has specific security, management & collaboration features that would aid growing businesses are considered, as well as other relevant criteria like user limits.

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