The Best VoIP Services in October 2024 Compared - Techreport

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The best VoIP services offer substantial savings, easy scalability, and numerous features to improve internal and external communications for businesses, and VoIP systems are equally beneficial for residential use cases.

This article explores some of the best VoIP providers, including their best features, pros, and cons. Read on to find the ideal VoIP solution for your needs.

Based on factors like uptime, functionality, security, and ease of use, we’ve shortlisted and ranked the market’s best VoIP service providers. Here’s an overview of your options:

When it comes to choosing a VoIP service, it’s key to understand the different types available. Here’s a quick breakdown of each one:

These are probably two of the most common types of VoIP systems you can find:

Unified Communication as a Service (UCasS) goes a step ahead of traditional VoIP systems. You can integrate other cloud-based communication services into existing applications.

This includes things such as:

This provides you with an integrated one-stop solution for all your business communication needs.

CPaaS works similarly to UCaaS, with the major difference being customization. With CPaaS, you can use various APIs to connect any business tool to a pre-existing application.

On the other hand, UCaaS is a more out-of-the-box solution with few customization options.

Related:

Are you unsure about whether you should use a VoIP system? Here are the main pros and cons worth noting when deciding:

Businesses have been using VoIP systems for well over two decades now. Here are some of the most common uses of VoIP:

Businesses use VoIP to provide customer support and service.

For example, whenever a customer calls a business, a VoIP platform automatically routes them through a virtual receptionist to the most appropriate agent who can resolve their issue.

This is another popular use of VoIP, where marketing teams call users to inform them about ongoing promotions, discounts, or sale offers.

Making these calls one by one can be a lot of hassle. However, VoIP’s auto-dialer makes the whole process faster, eliminating manual dialing errors.

Different internal teams also use business VoIP to connect to each other. This is more economical than getting a dedicated landline connection for every employee.

VoIP has also improved customer data analysis over the years.

Tools like call recording, voicemail transcriptions, and AI-powered assistants have made it easier for businesses to identify customer trends, likes, dislikes, and promotion effectiveness and adapt accordingly.

Apart from business use, VoIP systems are also used for residential communication, especially after the development of faster internet.

Users benefit from HD call quality, cost savings, having robocalls blocked and seamless connections.

To help you decide on the best VoIP phone service for your needs, we’ve done a quick overview of the market leaders. Here’s a rundown of each one:

Zoho Voice is one of the best VoIP services around, especially for large businesses that need to define user roles between agents and admins.

Many features under the Enterprise Telephony plans have to be specifically configured by admins, ensuring agents only get access to important functions.

With all plans, you get unlimited calling to the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, along with a local and toll-free number.

One thing we liked about Zoho Voice is that you get call recordings on all the plans, whereas competitors like Nextiva reserve this feature for their high-end plans.

You can also set up an automated IVR to guide your customers to various internal teams based on who’s most suitable to handle their query or problem.

Managers can listen to live calls and barge in if required. Call whispering also helps agents get input during the call to improve customer service.

Even if you miss a call, you can redirect the customer to voicemail and later use Zoho’s voicemail transcription to quickly grasp a summary of the recorded mail.

If a customer doesn’t answer the phone, agents can use Zoho’s voicemail drop to record custom messages and apply them without having to read the same script every time.

Due to its seamless integration, Zoho Voice is also a perfect pick if you already use other Zoho products, such as Zoho Books, Zoho People, Zoho One, or Zoho CRM.

For example, if you have CRM Zoho integrated, you can make calls directly from your CRM and helpdesk systems using ZDialer. Plus, you can import all your agents from these accounts.

That said, Zoho Voice doesn’t offer any third-party integration, which can be a deal-breaker for some businesses.

Ooma has one of the best virtual receptionists. For starters, it allows you to set up your menu options in various languages, such as English, Spanish, and French.

You can also define business hours and after-hours. Calls during business hours will be routed directly to available agents, while after-hours calls will go to voicemail.

The IVR can also be customized to improve the customer experience. For example, you can add on-hold music when a customer is in the queue or being transferred to an agent.

Ooma also has impressive video conferencing features. For instance, you can share your screen during meetings, and it automatically removes background noises.

Plus, it integrates easily with Outlook and Google Calendar so that all your tasks are automatically added to your calendar, a huge plus for sales and marketing teams.

Ooma’s Call Parking feature is especially handy for agile teams on the go. You can ‘park’ a call without transferring it and then retrieve it from a different device.

Similarly, we were equally impressed by Ooma’s hot desking feature. This allows you to use any unassigned device to receive and make calls.

For example, let’s say you’re traveling and have no dedicated phone at that location. Simply get any unassigned phone and dial *50, followed by your extension number and voicemail PIN.

When your work is done, simply dial *51 to unassign the phone. Mobile teams with various work locations can really benefit from this, as it reduces the overall hardware cost.

Plus, Ooma offers many hardware options, including IP phones, Wi-Fi IP phones, Cordless phones, conference phones, adapters, and loads more.

Want to learn more? Read our in-depth Ooma review now.

MightyCall is a well-rounded traditional VoIP service provider ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses. Its plans include unlimited calls, SMS, and MMS, which is rare.

Plus, you can get a CNAM number, where your business name shows, even if the receiver doesn’t have your number saved, increasing the chances that a lead will answer your calls.

You can also reduce spam calls using the STIR (Secure Telephony Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Signature-Based Handling of Asserted Information using toKENs) protocols.

When enabled, MightyCall checks the identity of every incoming caller (not just the caller ID), and if you keep getting spam calls, you can easily block the number.

You also get various call management functions. For example, you can set up ring groups, which means more than one phone will ring so that any available agent can answer it.

Similarly, you can use the Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) to set up various routing rules. The dashboard even shows you things like average wait times and the number of active calls.

Plus, we were impressed that you can add as many as 7 filters to the MightyCall log to quickly find a caller or share it with your team.

Besides this, you get 5 inbuilt integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, WhatsApp, Zapier, and Zoho. You also have Zapier and the option to build custom integrations using MightyCall’s API.

Learn more with our full MightyCall review.

There aren’t many VoIP providers like Sonetel that offer a free forever plan. Although limited, it’s ideal for startups and residential use.

You get features like voicemail-to-email, SMS-to-email, and 2 GB of storage per company, making it one of the best free VoIP providers around.

However, the best thing about the free plan is the AI features. This includes voicemail summaries, and you can even create meeting minutes or entire blog posts with AI for free.

Sonetel is also budget-friendly. Its Premium plan for businesses starts at just $9.95/user, and it offers free calls to 40+ countries and a 40% discount on calls to other countries.

As you move up the plans, you get more AI credits, which you can use to write or rewrite blog articles, company descriptions, or voicemail summaries.

One thing we liked about the platform was its custom AI training. To train Sonetel’s AI, you can upload a list of frequently asked questions in an Excel sheet.

This will teach the AI system to provide more accurate suggestions to your agents while handling calls.

Another huge plus is that call recording is included on all paid plans, even the starter plan. This is in stark contrast to providers like Vonage, which offer call recording only as a paid add-on.

If you’re looking for a modern VoIP provider with advanced AI capabilities, look no further than RingCentral. With its RingSense AI, the platform has made communications far easier.

For instance, the AI takes notes during a call and segregates the information into categories like ‘key updates’, ‘decision made’, and ‘actions,’ so you have a clear picture of the call’s outcome.

Another area where RingCentral shines is HD video calls. The cherry on top is that, depending on your plan, it supports 100-200 participants.

The best part is that every plan includes unlimited video call recordings and one year of cloud recording retention. The RingSense AI elevates your entire video-calling experience.

Just like audio calls, you get real-time live transcriptions. After a call, the AI generates a highlight video with all the key moments for easy recall and sharing.

Even if you’re simply messaging someone on the team, you can use AI to compose messages and run a quick one-click grammar check.

You can even translate the messages into various languages such as Spanish, French, Chinese, and loads more.

If you’ve been away from the office and have accumulated a lot of messages, you can summarize all unread messages for a quick overview of all the essential takeaways.

Plus, you get an online whiteboard for members to type, draw, add shapes, and upload images—excellent for remote sales and marketing teams that need to brainstorm ideas.

RingCentral also offers unlimited audio conferencing on all plans for up to 1,000 members – something that large teams will truly appreciate.

Dive into our comprehensive RingCentral review now.

Vonage is one of the few to offer excellent VoIP services for both business and residential use. Its home plans start at a mere $9.99/month.

Beyond this, it offers unlimited calls to the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, making it easily one of the best VoIP for homes.

This is especially true because the Vonage Extensions App lets you make and receive calls from your smartphone over Wi-Fi and cellular data.

Simply download the app on your iPhone or Android and link it to your Vonage account. You can use 3 phones simultaneously with Vonage.

Other useful features include a simultaneous ring for all your devices and contact filtering to avoid any spam calls.

The Vonage Business plan also includes a well-designed admin portal for managing your entire VoIP system. From here, you can view call details, analytics, and audit logs.

The platform also offers excellent voicemail functions – it automatically sends all your voicemails to your email so that you don’t accidentally miss out on any important calls.

However, although Vonage Business plans start at a mere $13.99/month, it can quickly become expensive, as key features like call recordings are add-ons.

Read our detailed Vonage review now.

Nextiva offers free local and toll-free numbers along with unlimited internet fax with all its plans. You can also host video meetings on the basic plan with video-enabled desk phones.

The platform’s auto-attendant service is quite robust. You can set up custom greetings and use conversational AI capabilities.

Conversational AI essentially means that it’s smart enough to understand what the customer is saying and can respond accordingly, making it among the best small business VoIP platforms.

Like Ooma, Nextiva offers an extensive range of hardware devices, such as desk phones, conferencing setups, cordless phones, headsets, and adapters.

Instead of only Nextiva-branded devices, the company has ties with some of the best telephony brands. You can even rent this hardware if you’re not prepared to buy one yet.

We were quite impressed by its Call Pop feature. This small box pops up every time you receive an inbound call and contains key customer data.

It also tells you the tools you may require to handle that call, depending on the customer’s sales cycle stage.

As we found during our testing, it offers 20+ integrations on its highest plan, whereas rivals like MightyCall offer 5. This makes it easy to connect various business tools for a unified experience.

Nextiva also goes above and beyond with its Customer Experience Suite, which enables seamless omnichannel conversations with customers.

You get a 360-degree view of each customer and can design AI-automated workflows. You even get voice AI bots to keep customers engaged until an agent is ready to answer the call.

However, these impressive features (and more) start at $99/month, which can be expensive for small and mid-sized businesses.

Need more? Here’s a full Nextiva review.

CallHippo offers a business phone system with some really useful unique features. For starters, we liked the Sticky Agent feature, especially for customer service teams.

When a customer calls multiple times regarding an issue, they have to explain their problem multiple times to different agents.

But, with Sticky Agent, calls from a particular customer are connected to the same agent every time, so that resolution can be quicker.

Another useful CallHippo feature is its Global Connect, which is useful if you have customers outside your home country.

Global Connect automatically dials a customer’s number based on their time zone during a period when they’re most likely to pick up the call.

You can combine this with the Answering Machine Detection feature, which identifies when you reach a customer’s voicemail, automatically drops the call, and moves to the next one.

This will save you a lot of time spent sending messages to voicemails. Similarly, there’s an Auto Rotate function that lets you avoid the spam tag.

When you call too many times, your number may be marked as spam, reducing the chances of your call being answered.

With Auto Rotate, CallHippo displays a different number every time you call so that customers actually pick up your call and do not block you.

The platform also makes performance management much easier with gamification. Agents are assigned points based on performance KPIs and are kept motivated through leaderboards.

Lastly, there’s voice broadcasting that lets you send the same message to multiple customers. This can be used to convey urgent messages, limited-time promotions, or for SMS marketing.

For more information, read our in-depth CallHippo review.

Here’s a quick table that highlights the main differences between the best VoIP providers so that you can make a quick yet informed decision:

Are you still unsure about which VoIP best suits your needs? Here’s a quick guide on how to choose the best VoIP service for your business or home:

You need to determine why you need VoIP in the first place. Is it for your customer service, sales, and marketing team, or just for internal communication purposes?

Or are you simply looking to upgrade your residential landline to VoIP systems? Knowing this will help you shortlist your best options.

Once you’ve decided on your dedicated use case, you need to set a realistic budget. VoIP plans can cost as little as $15 a month or as high as a few hundred dollars.

Hosted VoIP is also more affordable than on-premise systems. That’s why we’ve recommended VoIP providers that offer hosted services.

Next, list the features that are absolutely necessary for your use case. For example, not all VoIP systems offer video conferencing capabilities.

If you need that, you may need to shell out more. Other essential features may include call tracking, call recording, and voicemail.

Ensure that the provider you choose follows industry VoIP security standards. For example, the provider must offer TLS and AES encryption.

While Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) encrypt data packets while they’re transmitted, Transport Layer Security (TLS) encrypts user data, such as phone numbers and names.

All the providers recommended in the article adhere to these security protocols, so you won’t have to worry about this if you opt for one of these platforms.

Lastly, you might want to consider the quality of customer support offered by the VoIP provider. Ensure that support is available during your business hours and that the team is knowledgeable and swift in solving any queries.

Here are some VoIP features you can expect from the best VoIP providers.

TechReport has over 12 years of experience in using and testing VoIP products. Over the years, we’ve tested some of the best and worst VoIP providers.

Our experts spend days with each VoIP service to test call quality, call drop rates, VoIP admin portals, and other call management features, such as barging and whispering.

Overall, we check if the VoIP is easy to deploy and use. We also contact the customer support team to gauge their effectiveness and knowledge base.

Not only this, but we corroborate our findings with customer reviews on popular review sites such as Trustpilot and G2, ensuring we bring you a well-rounded review without any bias.

VoIP systems use the Internet to make and receive calls, resulting in better call quality than traditional phone systems. Plus, they’re more affordable, leading to large-scale cost savings.

We found Zoho Voice to be one of the best VoIP providers around, offering unlimited calling in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Plus, all its plans include call recordings—something that not many VoIP providers offer. There’s also a multi-level IVR that can be configured according to your business needs.

Other features include live call tracking, voicemail transcriptions, and advanced reporting and analytics. Zoho Voice offers a 15-day free trial that allows you to try it risk-free.

VoIP is a technology that allows you to make phone calls using the internet. Unlike traditional landline connections, VoIP devices are connected to your internet router via LAN. It then converts your speech into small data packets, which are transferred using an internet connection.

Sonetel is one of the best free VoIP providers. Although the features are limited, you can still make calls through the internet and access features like voicemail to email, AI voicemail summaries, and get 1,000 AI credits.

No, VoIP doesn’t require any dedicated hardware to function. Any device that has an active internet connection can be used as a VoIP device. This can be a smartphone, laptop, or tablet. Even if you have a traditional landline phone, you can convert it to a VoIP phone using SIP trunking.

Since VoIP uses the internet to make phone calls, it can be susceptible to cyber-attacks. Make sure that the VoIP provider uses adequate encryption to secure all conversations. This essentially encrypts the data packets being transferred, making it difficult for hackers to extract valuable information.

As long as the device has an active internet connection and the VoIP provider’s application is installed, it’ll be compatible. You can even convert traditional landline phones to VoIP phones with SIP trunking if it is compatible. If not, you’ll need to get a specialized VoIP gateway to translate analog calls to digital ones.

Yes, VoIP is relatively cheaper than traditional phone systems when it comes to international calls. Most VoIP providers offer international calling from as low as $.10 per minute. You even get specialized international calling plans, which are way cheaper than traditional phones.On the other hand, traditional phone system’s basic International call rates can start from as high as $3 per minute.

Krishi is an eager Tech Journalist and content writer for both B2B and B2C, with a focus on making the process of purchasing software easier for businesses and enhancing their online presence and SEO.

Krishi has a special skill set in writing about technology news, creating educational content on customer relationship management (CRM) software, and recommending project management tools that can help small businesses increase their revenue.

Alongside his writing and blogging work, Krishi's other hobbies include studying the financial markets and cricket.