Cheap VoIP Providers for Small Businesses

Need to cut costs at your small business? A good cheap VoIP plan is an excellent place to start. Today, we’re listing the best cheap VoIP providers for all different types of small businesses.

VoIP.com

VoIP offers business VoIP plans starting at $17.95 per month. VoIP plans include all of the features you expect and need from your business VoIP provider, including a nationwide network with fault-tolerant capabilities that helps you not only minimize downtime – but avoid it entirely.

One of the convenient things about VoIP.com is its easy web portal. You can use that interface to edit all major features on your VoIP plan, including adding or altering extensions.

With VoIP.com, you can also order multiple plug-n-play IP telephones to add to your business. These phones function just like normal phones, but are plugged into the VoIP system and let you save costs without being much of a hassle to your employees.




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Other valuable features on basic VoIP.com plans include custom voicemail, fax-to-email transcription, virtual faxing, call forwarding, call transferring, and more.

Vonage

Vonage caters to both consumers and businesses, and its business plans tend to be very competitively priced. With Vonage, you enjoy features like call forwarding, voicemail to email, simultaneous rings, call screening, and full Microsoft Outlook integration (so you can send and receive virtual faxes and voicemail to and from your email inbox, for example).

Vonage also aims to make life easier for telecommuting employees with features like call continuity, cell phone integration, and voicemail transcription.

By the way, in a lot of “best cheap VoIP provider for small business” rankings, you’ll see “Vocalocity” listed. Vocalocity has since been taken over by Vonage – so all of the features you used to read about with Vonage can now be found with Vocalocity.

As one of the longest-running VoIP providers, Vonage is also extremely feature-rich and customizable. You’d be hard-pressed to find a VoIP feature that isn’t available on a Vonage plan. For that reason, Vonage is excellent at scaling to meet the needs of your business.

OnSIP

OnSIP is a leading business VoIP provider in the United States. Plans feature most of the same improvements as other VoIP providers on this list. However, one of the things that make OnSIP VoIP for business famous is its video CRM solution.

OnSIP has video cameras attached to its IP phones, letting customers interact with salespeople in a way like never before. Companies like ArsTechnica, Mozilla, Disqus, and Tumblr all use OnSIP for their VoIP services.

Plans start at around $10 per month per user, although that cheapest plan will be pretty restrictive for many people. Nevertheless, if you just need basic VoIP without many fancy bells and whistles, then you may find the basic OnSIP plan to have everything you need without paying extra for things you don’t need.

The basic plan, for example, won’t give you low international calling rates and 3 way video conferencing – but if you’re just a small business with a handful of employees, then these may be moot points anyways.

OnSIP is also totally scalable for businesses between 10 and 300 users.

Mitel

Mitel is a Canadian company that was founded all the way back in 1973. Over the years, Mitel has provided a wide range of communication services for businesses. Today, the company is all about facilitating mobile communications for modern businesses.

Part of that is providing high-quality corporate VoIP services. Starting at $17.50 per month, Mitel plans use a patented AnyWare phone system to allow for unified business solutions from internet service to hardware, support, and more.

With Mitel, you can either get Hosted PBX – where your business’s virtual phone system is hosted offsite with Mitel – or you can get on-premise service if you prefer your PBX systems to be accessible within your business (many small businesses will find it easier and cheaper to host their PBX off-site).

RingCentral

RingCentral is a particularly popular option for small businesses with a mobile workforce. If your employees are constantly on-the-go and need to interact with the office, then they can easily do that with RingCentral.

One of the biggest advantages of RingCentral for portability is the excellent mobile app, which is available for both iOS and Android. Employees can use that mobile app to access things like virtual faxing or to connect into the company’s virtual PBX system. If your office receives a call, for example, and you want to send that call to an employee who’s out in the field, then you can forward the call to the extension as you normally would with a traditional PBX system.

There’s also RingCentral “softphone” software available on the employee’s computer. Oh, and there’s a free trial where you can test drive all of these features without paying anything.

Nextiva

Nextiva is popular for its wide range of business VoIP services, including virtual faxing, virtual PBX systems, and basic VoIP connectivity for consumers and businesses.

Business plans with Nextiva start at $19.95 per employee per month. Everything takes place over the cloud and can scale to meet the needs of your small businesses as it continues to grow.

Nextiva is also popular for its hosted call center service. Available at custom prices, the hosted call centers let you enjoy the benefits of a full-service call center at a fraction of the cost you would pay for an in-house call center.

8×8

8×8 often appears at the top of the list when you search for cheap VoIP providers for small businesses. It’s a popular VoIP service that caters specifically to small businesses.

8×8’s business VoIP plans offer unified communication over the cloud and include features like mobile apps, web conferencing, call centers, and more.

Each plan is customized to the needs of your business (there are no flat pricing plans), so you don’t have to squeeze your business into a plan that doesn’t really work for you.

AT&T

AT&T’s business VoIP services have evolved to compete with some of the industry’s biggest players. Today, AT&T’s hosted VoIP plans provide your employees with modern PBX infrastructure to suit the needs of your small business.

There are all of the services you’d expect to find with a larger company – like the ability to setup call centers for your business and the ability to create a unified communications platform with all of your voice and data services delivered through a single network connection.

Ooma Office

Ooma Office has plans catering to small businesses. Although not as large as some of the other providers listed here, Ooma Office lets you use normal analog phones connected to a VoIP network.

Other key features of Ooma Office include unlimited calling in the United States in Canada, caller ID and name with every package, and emergency 911 service. Office users also get bonus features like a virtual receptionist, extension dialing, voicemail, call transfer, and on-hold music.

The main downside of Ooma Office is that the company does not currently have a mobile app.

How to Pick the Best Cheap VoIP Provider

Picking a good cheap VoIP provider can be challenging. You don’t want to pay a lot of money, but you also don’t want poor-quality service. How do you balance these two things to find the VoIP provider with the perfect value? Here are some important things to look for

Unlimited Calling: Typically, North American VoIP providers give you unlimited calling across the United States and Canada. However, you’ll typically pay extra for international calling. Most small businesses are perfectly okay with unlimited domestic calling – you may not do a lot of business with overseas clients or suppliers, for example.

Unlimited International Calling: Unlimited international calling is typically available on higher-priced VoIP plans and rarely comes standard. If your business does a lot of work with overseas clients, then paying say, $20 more per month for an international calling plan can immediately help you save money over per-minute calling rates.

Bonus Features: VoIP providers often try to compete each other by adding bonus features to their plans. Those bonus features can include things like virtual faxing, voicemail to email, conference calling, video calling, and much more.

Backup Plans and Redundancies: There’s only one major downside to implementing VoIP at your business: when the power goes out, your VoIP system may go down. To get around this problem, some providers will offer backup power systems. This can be the difference between shutting down your business for the day and being able to continue without interruption. If you live in an area prone to power outages, then paying a little more for a VoIP provider with backup power plans might be worth it.

Downtime: Every VoIP provider promises strong uptime. Not every VoIP provider, however, lives up to that promise. Read customer reviews to see how often you can expect your VoIP system to go down every month or year. No provider is perfect.

VoIP plans offer a number of valuable advantages for your business. You can generally get plans contract-free, for example. You minimize equipment costs, maintenance fees, and other charges. You also get the convenience of employees being able to connect to your network regardless of their physical location.

For all of these reasons, cheap VoIP providers for small businesses are a better option today than ever before.




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