We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Business-grade voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers are a popular choice among small businesses and startups, especially now that many of us have to comply with shelter-in-place (SIP) protocols to ensure social-distancing through the COVID-19 pandemic. VoIP excel at replicating the functionality of a big business PBX for a fraction of the money, further reducing the cost burden by billing monthly and per user in most cases. VoIP is a great platform to facilitate a businesses' communication needs, specially during extended work from home settings. On top of that, you get a whole new landscape of flexibility because your phone calls are now data. Add the various file-sharing, messaging, and even video-conferencing features make them even more critical for businesses.The versatility of VoIP solutions means they can be integrated with other systems, like your customer relationship management (CRM) or help desk system, and they can also be mined for new insights into how your customers are feeling about your business and what demographics make up your core audience. Eminently versatile, VoIP services and their soft phone components (apps that emulate phone features and functionality on PCs or mobile devices), offer a variety of solutions any business user should consider, but what balance of features and pricing should you be looking for?If you've decided to upgrade to a VoIP service but you're wondering where to start, the short answer is: Move slowly, do your homework, and don't make cost the primary consideration. There are a bunch of amazing business VoIP systems out there, but each one has a different set of features and a different pricing structure, so choosing can be difficult. RingCentral Office is one of our Editors' Choice picks, but that doesn't mean you should automatically run to their website to buy it. In fact, other systems might focus on different capabilities, like Freshcaller with its specialization in call center features or Ooma Office, which stands out for its versatility and deployment options. We've compiled this list of important criteria you need to consider before choosing a business VoIP system.1. Pricing and PlansWe might as well start with the most important characteristic: cost. What good is choosing a business VoIP service with all of the bells and whistles if you can't afford it? AT&T Collaborate, our other Editors' Choice winner, has a fantastic selection of features, but it starts at $34.95 per user per month for its Basic Voice Solution package, though this is reduced to $17.48 per user per month if purchased online. RingCentral offers similar basic and intermediate pricing starting at $19.99 but that is limited to 20 users and lacks integrations. If you move to the premium tier, you'll be starting at $44.99 per user per month, but this level brings with it new capabilties, including multi-level auto-attendant, inbound caller ID name, call recording, and some identity management capabilities.There are cheaper solutions than our Editors' Choices, however, such as Grasshopper, which begins at $26 per month per number, but you'll trade features here. For example, with Grasshopper, you won't be able to transcribe voicemail messages, and your system won't automatically record every call for posterity. These are great services for companies that do everything from their laptops or tablets, but they're not as good as RingCentral or AT&T Collaborate for companies that handle a high volume of incoming and outgoing calls.How do you know what's right for you? Stop focusing on price and think only about the features you need. Growth-stage businesses should anticipate their current requirements but also be creative enough to map out what they will need in the future. Check that your VoiP provider can scale at will and consider the price implications down the road.  Once you map features to the business processes that need voice, you'll know what your bare minimum voice platform will need to support. From there, it's just comparison shopping. 2. Custom Mobile AppsFront line workers and mobile workers often need the full suite of VoIP functionality to run on their mobile devices. With the workforce shifting to an increasingly distributed and remote models, workers will need a VoIP service that can travel with them. Unfortunately, not all VoIP providers offer mobile apps that deliver the same value and services as the desktop apps. Most of the systems we reviewed offer both Apple iOS and Google Android mobile apps, but quality varies and so does the feature set between what's offered on the full-fledged desktop softphone and what you'll find in the mobile client. Sometimes, for example, the mobile app won't be able to create a log for these calls nor create voicemail transcripts if the call isn't answered. There's definitely an industry-wide push to make mobile VoIP apps as feature-filled and robust as their desktop counterparts but it pays to test these out for your chosen mobile device deployment.Full-featured VoIP services can offer a variety of collaboration tools your employees can use to meet, interact, and work jointly online. Users can access these capabilities either through a single unified communications client (see below) or through separate apps offered either by the VoIP provider or via third-party integration (also below). Basic options include SMS texting, video conferencing, and online meeting collaboration. As these services mature, however, you'll find several with either additional capabilities more evolved interpretations of the basics. For example, online meeting collaboration and video conferencing typically includes the ability to share one's screen in order to deliver a presentation or conduct a software demonstration. Newer interpretations, however, might include the ability to give every attendee on the call the ability to annotate the shared document, keeping track of both participants and versions. Schedule and calendar integrations are also common, typically using a common directory service as the hub. Really advanced capabilities can offer customization tools allowing you to combine specific features of the base VoIP platform with features gained through third-party integrations to build custom app workflows your employees can move forward automatically during conversations or presentations. 4. Call ManagementAs VoIP platforms mature, feature sets become tailored for specific audiences. That means you won't necessarily find the same capabilities even in products that compete directly with one another. For organizations that are investing in VoIP because of its software "brains" that means you'll need to be very careful to make sure the smarts your business needs are actually in the product. Call management is a good example as this is an umbrella term for almost everything the system can do with a typical phone call.For example, if you've got a large volume of calls coming into a certain set of phone numbers (like a service desk) or hitting the system at a certain time of year (holiday calling), you might need call queuing where the VoIP system can intelligently distribute calls between different extension based on availability, geography, or other criteria. Another example might be extension management, where the system not only assigns extensions to individual users, it might also manage a name directory that integrates with your IT department's network directory.5. Third-Party IntegrationThis is one VoIP's key draws. Because it's software, these systems often have a list of pre-built integrations with whatever apps the vendor believes their customers like. RingCentral, for example, offers a healthy dose of extensions, including Desk.com, Dropbox, and Google Drive.Using these extensions, customers can build custom workflows to help them work more efficiently. For example, an incoming customer phone call via RingCentral might kick off the RingCentral softphone inside the Desk.com help desk app. The service rep might take the call and, as per standard procedure, fill out a trouble ticket that gets stored on Dropbox as a document file that's also linked to the ticket number in the Desk.com database. But as part of the integration, you might also store an automatic recording of the call as a .wav file that's linked to both the ticket text file and the Desk.com ticket number, so whenever anyone calls up this ticket record, both those files appear as supporting documentation.If you want to develop your own custom integrations, look for vendors that support integration APIs, either as extra cost options or freely available for download to customers. Typically, those will conform to the REST standard, which has become a very common way to integrate different cloud services. 6. SupportAs with any product, the level of service you'll receive is crucial to how well your service functions. RingCentral offers 24/7 phone support for customers with plans for two or more users. If you're a single user, you'll only be able to get someone on the horn during 13-hour blocks Monday through Friday. RingCentral also offers 24/7 live chat support. If you run a global business with round-the-clock needs, you're going to want to find a service provider that can guarantee your queries will be answered immediately (or at least in a timely fashion). If they can't offer that, you might want to look elsewhere, especially if your phone system is the main method of communicating with clients.Be careful as you add capabilities to your phone system, however, especially in the case of the custom integrations mentioned above expect the price to go up. Just because RingCentral offers a good customer support policy doesn't mean the vendor of whatever you've integrated with RingCentral does. And even if they do, it's unlikely they'll support an integration mechanism that was developed in-house. Look at each component of your overall voice communications system and make sure you know who to call, when to call, and why. Also, if you're going to develop custom integrations, it's a really good idea to look into premium support options. Yes, that's extra money, but having experts available during both development and day-to-day operation can pay huge dividends in the future.7. SecuritySecurity is a must for every cloud-based service that's plugged into your business, and the attack vectors evolve every day. For an internet-connectrd application like VoIP, one that's serving as the hub of your business communications, inside-out security measures are even more imperative. Do your due diligence on vendors to know where the responsibility lies for data stored in a cloud-based service, and if possible negotiate security terms into your contract. Look for services that offer end-to-end encryption, encryption for data at rest (if there is any), and not just basic authentication, but advanced options, too, especially multi-factor authentication and biometrics. The good news is that VoIP solutions are built for enterprise and many put a premium on their security stack. Behind your firewall, talk to your IT staff and make sure security is top-of-mind there, too. Make sure your on-premises networking hardware is VoIP aware and has business-grade security features available...then make sure they're enabled where they need to be. For example, virtual LANs (VLANs) are often used to segregate voice traffic for call quality reasons as having a dedicated network for that traffic means other network apps' data can't interfere and cause audio artifacts during calling or even dropped calls. But VLANs are also great for securing VoIP conversations as long as IT sets them up with that in mind. For more, check out this list of do's and dont's when it comes to securing your VoIP communications. 8. Unified CommunicationsYour VoIP service provider can also be a one-stop shop for all of your communications needs, and most have implemented this capability under the name unified communications as a service (UCaaS). This means integrating your chat functionality, conference calls, emails, phone calls, video calls, and voicemail within one app. All of the services we reviewed offer some form of this kind of service, but not every VoIP provider handles it the same way.  Functionally, there's some crossover with team messaging apps, which started out as convenient tools to organize text messages and document collaboration, but which have expanded to handle voice and video-conferencing tasks as well.Platforms like our Editors' Choice winners, AT&T and RingCentral, have very rich unified communications capabilities that cover all the channels mentioned above as well as smart meeting spaces and similar collaboration features. More software-oriented providers, like Dialpad, will offer very advanced and highly unified softphones, but the won't be able to incorporate hardware phones as easily. Finally, very low-cost vendors, like Grasshopper might not offer any unified communications provision or just one or two extra channels, such as fax and text.Every businesses’ needs are different and the ways the prefer to communicate with internal and external contacts will vary, If all you use is voice, then you don't need to worry about it, but in this day and age that's practically a unicorn. Every business communicates using more channels that simply voice, and having a unified system means being able to use those channels more efficiently.  Further Reading VoIP & Phone Service Reviews

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