8 Best VoIP Providers for Small Businesses in 2025

The best VoIP provider plan for small businesses is Zoom Regional Unlimited thanks to its industry-leading call management features, flexible hardware options, and seamless integration with its video conferencing platform. It also lets you make an unlimited number of domestic calls for just $15 per user, per month, making it the best value package for small businesses with high call volumes.

Given the benefits of VoIP technology over landline systems, like lower costs and more advanced features, it’s understandable that small businesses would flock to this technology for their communication needs. Still, there are a lot of different VoIP providers out there, and finding the right one for your particular business may take a bit of research.

That’s why we’ve done the heavy lifting for you and collected some of the best VoIP providers in the guide below. We’ve also developed a free VoIP quotes tool to help you compare custom VoIP prices from all the leading providers on the market. Read on to learn more about how all the leading VoIP providers compare.

In this guide:

• Best 8 VoIP Providers for 2025
• How to Choose the Best VoIP Provider
• Methodology: How We Rate VoIP Providers
• Top VoIP Providers: The Verdict

Best 8 VoIP Providers for 2025

Our in-house experts have conducted user-testing and extensive research into the VoIP industry — examining the top VoIP providers based on their service, value, customer support, and features offered. The reviews below are based on this independent analysis and testing.

1. Zoom Regional Unlimited – Best Small Business Plan Overall

• Price: $15 per month

Zoom is more than just a video conferencing tool for facilitating personal calls. The company also offers business VoIP packages – called Zoom Phone.

After comparing the attributes of leading plans, our research concluded that Zoom’s Unlimited Calling plan is the best VoIP package for small businesses. Zoom Unlimited has no domestic call limit, gives you access to the provider’s AI companion, and offers extensive hardware integrations, lending it to a wide variety of small businesses, and cementing its position as the best overall VoIP plan for small businesses.

Zoom Regional Unlimited features

Despite Zoom Regional Unlimited’s small price tag, our research found it offered the most competitive call management toolkit out of any other plan we researched.

From standard VoIP capabilities like call queue and call screening to stand-out tools like shared line appearance and multi-level automated menus, the tier offers just about any call management feature your business may need, whether you regularly make sensitive phone calls, or have complex customer support needs.

Zoom Regional Unlimited also offers call queue capabilities, enabling businesses to place callers on hold and route them to available agents. With higher-priced plans like Nextiva Core and Ooma Office Essentials lacking this feature, Zoom’s plan is also the clear choice for busy businesses that receive high call volumes.

Here’s Tech.co’s Conor Cawley testing the platform out:

Zoom Phone’s interface on an iPhone. Source: Tech.co user testing

What really sets Zoom Regional Unlimited apart from competing plans, is its flexible hardware integrations. The plan lets you connect with desk phones from seven different IP phone manufacturers. For reference, Net2Phone Essentials and Ooma Office Essentials only integrate with two hardphone brands, giving Zoom’s plan an advantage for businesses with pre-existing hardware setups.

Zoom’s Regional Unlimited plan also offers loads of inbound communication features like instant messaging, SMS messaging, and video conferencing with its native Zoom Video integration. However, the plan does currently lack E-Fax features, which may deter businesses that still send and receive online faxes.

I found Zoom Phone easy to get started with, thanks to its simple, stripped-back software. Source: Tech.co user testing

Zoom Phone integrates with Salesforce, Outlook, helpdesk software, and of course, its video platform Zoom One.

While this selection should be enough for most teams if you need a VoIP plan that integrates with productivity, marketing, and CRM software, we’d recommend opting for Nextiva Core instead as the plan gives you access to its expansive app library.

The Team Chat functionality is built right into the Zoom Meeting platform, so we were able to communicate with our team via video or text. Source: Tech.co testing

Zoom Regional Unlimited lets users resolve queries 24/7 via live chat or phone lines. The package also gives users access to a knowledge base and user forums if they’d rather resolve their problems independently.

However, despite Zoom’s useful helpdesk features, its Regional Unlimited plan doesn’t offer direct onboarding support. It’s not ideal, but the modern interface shouldn’t cause you enough problems to require customer support too often.

Zoom Regional Unlimited pricing

The plan costs $15 per user, per month, and as you can likely guess from the name, provides inclusive outbound calling, so you won’t have to pay too much to make a call. You can also purchase an add-on that will give you unlimited calls in a further 19 countries, making it a good option for businesses with global customer/client bases. You won’t be able to access this add-on on the Metered plan.

However, if you don’t manage a lot of domestic calls, Zoom also offers a Metered package ($10 per month) which lets you make calls on a pay-as-you-go basis, so you just pay for what you need. If you want to unlock limitless international calls, you can also opt for the Global Pro Select plan for $20 per user, per month.

You can also purchase Zoom Phone as part of Zoom One, which rolls the provider’s Meetings, Team Chat, Whiteboard, and Zoom Phone products into one single package. You will need to purchase the Business Plus tier ($25 per license, per month) or the Enterprise tier (no public pricing – contact sales for a quote) if you’d like Zoom Phone.

Is Zoom Regional Unlimited a good fit for your business?

If you want a VoIP plan with generous call limits and a wide range of calling features, Zoom Regional Unlimited will be a great option. At just $15 per user, per month, its price undercuts most similar VoIP plans too, making it a reliable option for businesses that are mindful of their outgoings.

On top of that, it has a bevy of different hardware options to integrate with, making it an especially suitable option for businesses with pre-existing desk phone set-ups. Plus, hey, it’s Zoom, so you might be familiar with it already.

Grab a customized quote for your business by filling in this short 60-second form.

Who should use Zoom Regional Unlimited?

• Smaller teams that manage high call volumes
• Businesses with smaller budgets
• Businesses already using Zoom Video
• Customer service and retail teams

Who shouldn’t use Zoom Regional Unlimited?

• Sales teams that need advanced outbound call features like predictive and power dialing
• International businesses that regularly make calls overseas
• Businesses looking for onboarding support (Zoom offers none)

2. Dialpad Standard – Best Time-Saving AI Features

• Price: $15 per month, per user

Dialpad Standard is another affordable VoIP plan that’s packed to the brim with useful calling and communication features. At just $15 per user, per month, its price matches Zoom Regional Unlimited head-to-head. It also lets you enjoy unlimited calls to the US and Canada without fretting about per-minute charges, making it a reliable choice for businesses that regularly make outbound calls.

However, it’s Dialpad Standard’s raft of useful AI features that really give it the edge, and make it a perfect choice for busy businesses serious that are about streamlining their operational efficiency.

Dialpad Standard features

Dialpad Standard covers plenty of useful features for teams receiving frequent inbound calls, such as custom greetings, voicemail, a virtual receptionist, voicemail to text, customizable hold music, ring groups, and company hours.

Unlike rival plans like Ooma Office and Vonage Mobile, the VoIP package automatically transcribes voicemails and calls using AI, before sending them to the user so they can send a copy, and refer back to them in the future.

These smart AI features help businesses to quickly locate specific information in recordings and make Dialpad’s Standard plan particularly useful for businesses handling important data like banks and insurance companies, law firms, and healthcare providers.

Dialpad’s interface with the provider’s new AI feature. Source: Dialpad

Dialpad Standard will also be a great match for businesses that use SMS messages to connect with colleagues, clients, or partners. The plan lets you send an unlimited number of SMS and MMS messages and even lets you communicate with your team in real time with its built-in messaging features.

DialPad savings do mean you’ll miss a few features, though not as many as you might think. A lack of call queuing is a big downside of the cheapest Dialpad plan, and it also cuts out phone and email support. A lot of startups with small audiences/contact bases will benefit from the low prices without minding the feature limitations.

Dialpad’s homepage is modern and easy to navigate. Source: Dialpad

Dialpad offers onboarding assistance too, giving it a leg up over alternatives like Zoom Phone, Ooma, and Google Voice, which force users to adjust to the learning curve by themselves.

For all of Dialpad Standard’s strengths, it falls short when it comes to software integrations. It does let you connect with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, but it lacks CRM, helpdesk, and video conferencing integrations, making it less suited to businesses that don’t want to jump between different applications.

Dialpad’s Standard plan offers web and chat support, letting users resolve queries quickly online. The plan gives users access to a user forum and knowledge base too. However, if you’d prefer to talk to a live agent, you’d be best off upgrading to Dialpad’s Pro or choosing an alternative provider like RingCentral.

Dialpad Standard pricing

Dialpad’s Standard package costs $15 per user, per month, matching the price of Zoom’s Regional Unlimited plan eye-to-eye. The plan includes unlimited domestic calling, unlimited AI meetings for up to 10 participants, real-time analytics, and more.

However, if you want to unlock benefits like 24/7 live agent support, CRM integrations, and support for up to 10 office locations, you’ll have to upgrade to Dialpad’s Pro plan for $25 per user, per month.

Should you choose Dialpad Standard?

In addition to being a money-saver, Dialpad Standard gives businesses access to the latest AI features. The plans call management features domestic calling limits rival our frontrunner too, making it a reliable choice for a wide variety of small businesses, from fast-growing startups to sales teams.

Simply put, if you’re looking for a low-cost VoIP plan for your business, and won’t miss calling features like call queue, Dialpad is a great option.

Trying our price comparison tool can give you a clearer idea of what cost to expect for your specific needs, but on the whole, Dialpad offers a good selection of functions for its cost, which is why it’s made our list of the best VoIP providers.

Who should use Dialpad Standard?

• Businesses that handle sensitive data, like sales teams and professional services
• Businesses that make high volumes of domestic calls
• Startups that are looking to keep overheads low

Who shouldn’t use Dialpad Standard?

• Growing sales teams that require specific CRM integrations
• Businesses that require 24/7 customer support

3. Net2Phone Essentials – Great for Remote and Hybrid Teams

• Price: $19.99 per month

Net2Phone Essentials is a feature-rich VoIP plan that offers unlimited international calling to Mexico and Canada for just $19.99 per user, per month, making it a great value for businesses that regularly make calls to these locations. This plan offers some of the best unified communication features too, making it a safe bet for remote and hybrid teams.

Net2Phone’s prices increase for teams with less than 25 people, however, making it slightly less favorable than Zoom or Dialpad for smaller, budget-conscious businesses.

Net2Phone Essentials features

We found that Net2Phone’s Essentials excels at helping small businesses handle calls, offering the widest selection of call management tools out of any provider we researched behind Zoom Phone.

The plan offers all the staples you’d expect including call forwarding, call recording, ring groups, and customizable call routing. Unlike alternative tiers like Dialpad Standard and Ooma Office, the VoIP plan also offers call queue capabilities – allowing businesses to manage incoming calls when agents are busy.

Net2Phone Essentials offers tons of useful call management features like call routing and ring groups. Source: Net2Phone

Aside from VoIP calling features, the plan lets you communicate with instant message tools and SMS and MMS –  a perk that rival plans by Google Voice and Vonage don’t offer. These tools can be used for internal comms, with user-to-user, department, or company-wide messaging. This makes the Essential package a competitive option for businesses interested in consolidating multiple communication channels into one platform, including domestic or international businesses with remote teams.

The plan also has extension-to-extension calling, hold music and messaging, time-based greetings, three-way conferencing calling, group conference calls, and easy call transfer.

Net2Phone will also allow for voicemail transcription and voicemail-to-email functions. Plus, it has “find me/follow me” call routing, call queuing, and call forwarding, and can support multiple virtual receptionists. Finally, Net2Phone has strong analytics, with sortable reports by time frame, department, office, and agents. Plus, it has dashboards that let you see all this information at a glance.

Unlike with Dialpad, you don’t have to upgrade to a pricier package for premium support. Net2Phone offers 24/7 support on all its plans, as well as an extensive online knowledge base. While this will be able to meet the needs of most businesses, if you require even more advanced options like user forum for community troubleshooting, we’d recommend opting for RingCentral Core instead.

The team messaging functionality lets you connect with your team instantly. Source: Net2Phone

Net2Phone Essentials pricing

Net2Phone’s Essentials package costs $19.99 per user, per month for businesses with 25-99 users. Prices increase for smaller businesses, with the plan costing $21.99 per user, per month for teams of 10-24, and $27.99 per user, per month for teams of 1-9.

The VoIP provider also offers a professional package starting from $24.99 per user, per month, with unlimited international calling, and AI features like call transcriptions and summaries.

Should you choose Net2Phone Essentials?

Net2Phone Essentials will be a great fit for any business that needs to keep costs low, particularly if they regularly make calls domestically, or to Mexico, and Canada. The plan will also be an ideal option for businesses that want to streamline their internal communications, thanks to its SMS, and instant messaging tools.

If that doesn’t describe your operation, you can check out our pricing comparison tool to get bespoke quotes for your business.

Who should use Net2Phone Essentials?

• Businesses that regularly make calls to Canada or Mexico
• Businesses looking to streamline internal communications

Who shouldn’t use Net2Phone Essentials?

• Businesses that make international calls to a variety of countries
• Small businesses looking to keep overheads as low as possible

4. RingCentral Core – Best for Hospitality and Retail Businesses

• Price from: $20 per month

RingCentral serves more than 300,000 businesses for a reason. It’s a great fit for hospitality, retail, healthcare, and customer service teams, thanks to a range of features designed for fielding high volumes of inbound callers.

RingCentral Core features

RingCentral’s Core plan includes unlimited domestic calls, number porting, custom greetings, a virtual receptionist, spam prevention, voicemail-to-text, caller ID, call transcripts, and custom call routing.

The plan also lets you transcribe calls and voicemails using AI, giving it a leg-up over Net2Phone Essentials for businesses that are looking to move away from manual transcription.

When we placed a call, the pop-up dial-pad made it easy to interact with the interface. Source: Tech.co testing

Additionally, video conferencing is available for up to 100 participants in the Core plan. RingCentral’s video conferencing features are naturally limited compared to Zoom Phone, but they’re worth it if they mean you can avoid investing in another software program.

Our research found that RingCentral Core’s organizational and team management features make it an asset to growing teams. Collaboration features like a task manager and an online whiteboard, are really helpful for brainstorming ideas, and all plans have management features including team messaging and document sharing.

We used RingCentral’s audio transcription services in a video meeting, and it was nearly perfect. Source: Tech.co testing

RingCentral Core lets you integrate with Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams, making it easy for users to sync information between the platforms. However, if you want access to RingCentral’s entire suite of apps supporting CRM, productivity, and more, you’ll have to upgrade to its Advanced plan.

RingCentral also offers a suite of security features to help protect company and customer data, including multi-factor authentication options for end-users, and extensive compliance certifications. With competitors like Ooma lacking important security certifications, this gives RingCentral a competitive advantage for businesses handling sensitive data.

Businesses can connect with hundreds of third-party integrations with RingCentral Core. Source: RingCentral

RingCentral offers 24/7 phone and live chat support, which means you can contact them at any time of day. That’s probably one of the main reasons the provider can keep their customer downtime average to just 6 minutes a year. Plus, it has an extensive FAQs section that can help you fix your own problems, and training videos galore.

RingCentral Core pricing

Overall, RingCentral’s first plan isn’t quite as cheap as Zoom Phone’s $15 per user, per month Unlimited package. However, RingCentral has better collaboration and advanced outbound comms features.

The $25 per user, per month Advanced plan adds automatic call-recording, a Salesforce integration, single sign-on functionality, call queuing, ring groups (which lets multiple phone numbers all ring when one extension is called), call monitoring, call barge, call whisper, and analytics.

You’ll also get access to many more integrations for CRM, email, helpdesk, web conferencing, and both internal and external live chat services.

RingCentral also offers an Advanced and Ultra plan if you’re interested in unlocking extra features. Check out our complete guide to RingCentral pricing for more information.

Is RingCentral Core a good fit for your business?

RingCentral Core’s wide range of inbound communication features, combined with top-rated customer service, make it an especially great fit for hospitality, retail, and healthcare-focused businesses.

However, its monthly price isn’t able to rival Zoom Regional Unlimited or Dialpad Standard, so if you’re committed to spending as little as possible we’d recommend opting for these packages instead.

Who should use RingCentral Core?

• Growing businesses – it’s very scalable
• Businesses that prioritize security
• Businesses looking to get set up quickly

Who shouldn’t use RingCentral Core?

• Businesses with advanced web conferencing requirements
• Businesses on a tight budget with relatively simple calling needs

5. Nextiva Core – Best for Growing Teams

• Price: $30 per month

Nextiva has a straightforward interface and enough inbound call tools to satisfy a small or medium-sized business. The provider has recently pivoted to a full omni-channel customer experience platform, making it an asset to retailers and sales teams that utilize ecommerce and social media channels.

Its mid-tier package, Nextiva Core, will also be a great choice for small professional service due to its powerful client communication and team collaboration tools, as long as they’re able to front its price tag of $30 per user, per month.

Nextiva Core features

Nextiva’s desktop app supports voice and video calls, emails, messaging, and sales and service tools, as well as analytics. There’s also a suite of AI and automation tools that can help improve repetitive tasks such as data collection, and offer real-time predictions and suggestions of what to do based on how your team is performing.

Nextiva’s AI assistant helps you streamline a range of processes using prompts. Source: Nextiva

Truth be told, Nextiva is much more than VoIP solution. Acting more like an omnichannel communications platform, Nextiva Core gives businesses multiple ways to manage customer interactions, including by email, live-chat platforms, SMS, and social media channels like LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and more.

Nextiva lets you connect to a range of social media channels, like LinkedIn and Instagram. Source: Nextiva

Even if Nexiva Core lacks a feature you need, you’ll probably be able to make it up using one of its many third-party integrations. The plan outshone rivals in our research, by offering the widest selection of external add-ons, from CRM, helpdesk, customer-service live chat options, and beyond. This army of integrations makes the package extremely flexible, and positions it well for fast-growing businesses whose needs are constantly evolving.

Nextiva Core offers 24/7 unlimited customer support via phone or live chat. Email support is available, although it is not 24/7. The service also has a large help center to help you fix problems yourself.

However, Nextiva Core lacks a lot of fairly standard training features, like call barge and call monitoring. This will make it harder for managers to use the plan to coach and improve the performance of new employees. If this is a dealbreaker for you, then we’d recommend opting for a plan by Zoom Phone instead, as the provider is unbeaten when it comes to call training features.

Nextiva Core pricing

While Nextiva does offer a digital only plan ($20/user/month), it doesn’t let you make and receive calls. Nextiva Core, on the other hand, costs $30 per user, per month, and gives users access to unlimited inbound & outbound voice calls, video meetings, business SMS messages, and integrations to social media and messaging apps.

Nextiva also offers two prier packages with more advanced reporting and CRM features, Engage and Power Suite. The provider’s prices are are slightly higher than others on this list, but if you’d benefit from its omnichannel channel features, it’s plans would easily pay for themselves overtime.

Is Nextiva Core a good fit for your business?

Nextiva Core’s unified communication features will make it an asset to any business that need to deliver excellent customer service, including sales teams, and professional service businesses like consultants or accountants. However, the plan doesn’t cater well to businesses with large volumes, so contact centers would be better off upgrading to one of Nextiva’s pricier packages.

Who should use Nextiva Core?

• Sales teams and professional service businesses
• Businesses with high call volumes

Who shouldn’t use Nextiva Core?

• Businesses that regularly onboard new staff
• Businesses with very small budgets

6. Vonage Mobile – Best Staff Training Features

• Price: $13.99 per user, per month

Vonage is a versatile VoIP provider that offers a range of different scalable packages for small businesses. Its Mobile package can handle high call volumes, and offers a range of useful call management and training tools, all for just $13.99 per user, per month.

The entry-level plan works great through mobile devices and desktops, making it one of the most flexible options for small businesses. However, if you want to integrate Vonage’s software with desk phones, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the provider’s pricier plans instead.

Vonage Mobile features

Vonage Mobile lets you make unlimited domestic calls, and even offers unique capabilities like bandwidth saver, which lets businesses maintain strong call quality even with a poor internet connection.

Vonage Mobile packs in lots of features for managing incoming calls, including an admin portal, voice mail, spam prevention, voicemail to text, call queue, caller ID – and all on its cheapest plan. The VoIP package also boasts a fair few tools that will keep teams making a lot of outbound calls happy, including external video calling, SMS support, custom call lists, internet fax, and call conferencing.

The team messaging center in Vonage. Source: Vonage

Vonage Mobile will also let you forward calls, “flip” them to different devices to continue conversations, and has training features that will let you listen in on calls and join existing calls between users and customers/clients. For sales teams, ensuring your on-call manner is constantly improving is super important.

However, Vonage Mobile doesn’t currently offer a ring groups, so if you want to set up a group of phone extensions that ring simultaneously when a call is received, we’d recommend using another plan like RingCentral Core or Dialpad Standard instead.

Vonage integrates with a huge range of providers including (but far from limited to) Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, Office 365, and Slack. There are also CRM integrations such as Zoho CRM, HubSpot, and Zendesk, but they aren’t available on Vonage’s cheapest plan.

However, video conferencing and live chat integrations come at an additional cost, and this is one of the main reasons Vonage didn’t score as high as RingCentral for integrations.

Vonage Phone has a smaller range of help and support options than RingCentral Core and Nextiva Core — phone and email support is available with Vonage, but live chat isn’t. What’s more, none of it is 24/7, and you’ll need to pay a premium for onboarding support.

Check out our Vonage review for more information

Vonage Mobile pricing

Vonage’s cheapest plan, Mobile, gives you unlimited calls and SMS messages, plus all the features listed above and access to the Vonage app center. Right now, there’s a 12-month promotion running that makes the first plan just $13.99 per user, per month, helping it to undercut the price of all the other VoIP plans on this list.

See how the rest of Vonage’s plans compare in our comparison table below:

Is Vonage Mobile a good fit for your business?

If training employees quickly and effectively is a priority, Vonage is for you. The service is a great pick for retail as well, due to its inbound features and multiple ways to contact potential customers, including call conferencing, video calls, and (for an additional cost) SMS.

Check out how Vonage compares to the best VoIP providers on the market with our VoIP price comparison tool, which will show you relevant providers and plans based on your team’s size and needs.

Who should use Vonage Mobile?

• Customer service teams, who will appreciate the training features
• Businesses that onboard regularly, and want lots of help

Who shouldn’t use Vonage Mobile?

• Businesses that don’t want to rely on add-ons
• Businesses with advanced video conferencing needs

7. Google Business Premier

• Best for Google Workspace users
• Price from: $10 per month

Google’s VoIP service stands out for one big reason – great security. This is due to its myriad of compliance certifications, multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, password rules, best-in-class encryption, and user permissions on every plan. Its Google Business Premier plan offers its full suite of VoIP features, including unlimited domestic and international location support.

However, the plan isn’t as capable of managing high call volumes, and it barely offers any third-party integrations, which is why we weren’t able to place Google Business Premier higher on this list.

All Google Voice plans to offer voicemail support, voicemail to text, spam prevention, video calling (via Google Meet), SMS for those in the US, analytics, and custom call lists (via Google Contacts).

However, even its advanced plan – Google Business Premier – doesn’t have many management features at all, or features like call recording and call transcripts which are useful for training staff and are offered by Vonage, 8×8, RingCentral, and Zoom. There are also no call queues, custom hold music, caller ID, auto or predictive dialing, call conferencing, call forwarding, call flip, call barge-in, or call whisper. Calls can’t be monitored, and there’s no call-flow designer.

The call recording feature in Google Voice was straightforward to use. Source: Tech.co testing

If those features sound useful, you’d be better off picking an alternative provider for your VoIP solution, such as one of the ones above, or if you’re a team that’s already using Google Workspace, perhaps one of these Google Voice alternatives will be a better fit.

Google Business Premier’s security tools are its real selling point. It goes the extra mile to ensure end users are securing their accounts, enforcing password rules, and recommending multi-factor authentication options. What’s more, all your data will be stored in Google’s data centers, which are among the most well-maintained and tightly protected data centers on the planet.

The Google Voice homepage is stripped back and modern, and includes the contact list and on-screen numbers. Source: Tech.co testing

Unfortunately, this Google Voice plan really lets itself down when it comes to third-party integrations. It lets you integrate with Google Workspace but doesn’t let you connect with any popular third-party CRM, helpdesk, or web conferencing systems, which is why it received the worst research score in the category, alongside Vonage Mobile and Nextiva Core.

All plans have a user forum, knowledge base, and 24/7 phone support, but no email or live chat options, so if you prefer to resolve queries via message Google Business Premier probably isn’t the VoIP package for you.

Google Business Premier pricing

Google’s Business Premier currently costs $30 per user, per month, making its price point quite a lot steeper than other plans on this list – especially Zoom Regional Unlimited and Dialpad Standard.

However, unlike these competing plans, Google’s Business Premier package gives you access to perks like advanced reporting, and support for unlimited domestic and international locations, helping to justify its slightly higher price point.

Google also offers Starter and Standard plans with slightly more stringent user limits, costing $10 per user, per month, and $20 per user, per month respectively.

Should you choose Google Business Premier?

Very small, security-conscious businesses are the best customers for Google Voice, as the price will be right, and the limited features and poor scalability are unlikely to be as large an issue as they would be for established operations.

Any companies worried about cyberattacks will be reassured by Google Voice’s 5-star security options. However, if you’re unconvinced by Google Voice’s lack of additional features, our quick price comparison tool can help guide your decisions about which VoIP provider is best for your budget and needs.

Who should use Google Business Premier?

• Businesses that already use Google Workspace
• Businesses that manage highly-sensitive data

Who shouldn’t use Google Business Premier?

• Businesses with advanced call requirements
• Sales businesses and teams that manage high call volumes

8. Ooma Office Essentials – Great for Customer Support Features

• Price: $19.95 per month

Ooma Office offers a particularly good customer experience and generally gains high customer satisfaction ratings from existing users. It’s entry-level Essentials plans offers 24/7 customer support over the phone or via live chat, although not over email. It also offers an online forum, where experienced users can help you diagnose and fix problems yourself.

Ooma Office Essentials offers integrations with CRM platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, Microsoft 365, G-Suite, and ServiceNow. This, of course, will make managing sales and support calls significantly easier for your teams. However, VoIP providers like RingCentral offer a much wider selection (200+).

It also offers a mobile app for Android and iOS, which can be helpful if your teams are working from home without a full desk phone. Despite its selling points, the service does lack some features that other VoIP providers on this list offer, however. For example, no Ooma plans include custom call lists, auto or predictive dialing, call transcripts, call monitoring, or task management. In other words, it won’t be great for sales teams.

Ooma Office Essential’s security protocols really disappointed us in our testing, too. The service doesn’t display its compliance certificates so it’s unsure how strictly they comply with data security standards. Therefore, if your business handles sensitive data, we’d recommend Google Business Premier or Zoom Regional Unlimited as they both offer much more advanced security protocols than Ooma.

Should you choose Ooma Office Essentials?

If your business depends on high-quality customer experiences, Ooma Office Essentials is for you. Compared to other VoIP providers it offers excellent customer support, only missing out on top marks due to a lack of email support. All in all, only RingCentral scored higher for customer support.

Check out our in-depth Ooma review for more information

Who should use Ooma Office Essentials?

• Customer service and retail businesses fielding lots of inbound calls
• Remote or hybrid businesses

Who shouldn’t use Ooma Office Essentials?

• Organizations handling highly sensitive data about their customers and clients
• Businesses looking to create custom call lists

How to Choose the Best VoIP Provider

Choosing the right VoIP provider depends on several factors.

Overall costs

While many VoIP providers seem to offer similar pricing structures, each provider has little quirks in its pricing system which you might miss at first glance.

For example, most providers, including our top-rated picks RingCentral and 8×8, offer prices on a per user, per month basis. You also won’t get as many features on the cheapest plans as you do with the more expensive plans

It’s also worth pricing up the systems you’re looking at in full before choosing. There might be hidden costs with international call fees, for example. The easiest way to get a complete price is by using our comparison tool, which will give you bespoke quotes from the leading companies.

You can also check out our guide to the cheapest VoIP providers to discover the best cost-effective solutions available to your business.

Upgrade and growth costs

Your business isn’t standing still, and you’ll (hopefully) need to start adding new team members as it grows. Again, you need to think here about which platforms will scale the best with your existing business. What’s more, you’ll likely need to add more complex features.

RingCentral is a good fit for businesses that will need to expand their feature set as they grow, as its four pricing plans each offer many core features in comparison to similar competitor plans. Our researchers termed this “scalability,” and ranked RingCentral and 8×8 in joint first place for the most scalable, with Vonage close on their heels.

Customer support

If your business relies on its phones, any problem could be catastrophic to your bottom line.

Fortunately, most of the providers we’ve listed offer 24/7 support. RingCentral and 8×8 scored highest for support options overall (5/5) across all the VoIP providers we tested, while three more services tied for second place (4.5/5): Dialpad, Ooma, and Nextiva.

We would always recommend choosing a provider which offers 24/7 support where possible.

Devices

It is worth considering what sort of hardware your business currently uses for its phone calls. If you rely on desk phones, you might find that your service isn’t as flexible as it would be if you used software-only services.

Softphones, or even VoIP services that work through laptops or tablets, are a great way to help your staff remain mobile while working.

You might also have existing analog desk phones and might be worried about whether they’ll work with your new VoIP system. You can get adapters that will let them connect with your new system, but it’s unlikely to be perfect. Instead, you can take a look at some new VoIP phones, or your provider might even lease you some.

Check out our guide to the best VoIP desk phones for more.

Methodology: How We Rate VoIP Providers