Compare the Best VoIP Services of 2025
10 Best VoIP Services Of 2025
Methodology
To create this list, I compared 20 phone systems based on their features, popularity and overall value. While testing these services, I tried out everything—making calls, sending chat messages, hosting video meetings, creating IVR menus, customizing analytics dashboards and calling service reps.
I divided these decision factors into categories, assigning each a weight based on its importance in choosing a VoIP phone system. I combined data, reports from other users and my hands-on testing experience to tally scores for each criterion and arrive at the final list.
Decision Factor | Scoring Weight | Description |
---|---|---|
Expert Score | 15% | My subjective scores for each VoIP software’s features, reputation and ease of use based on my testing experience |
Value | 9% | Not just the service’s price but its overall “bang for your buck,” considering monthly and yearly costs in relation to the services and features you get |
App Reviews | 3% | We considered the ratings each VoIP software received on the App Store and Play Store |
Customer Reviews | 15% | We aggregated customer reviews across various categories like call quality, ease of use, features, pricing and overall satisfaction to get a well-rounded picture of how small-business users feel about each service |
Service and Support | 4% | Each provider’s customer service availability, including the contact channels offered for customer support |
General Features | 15% | The most essential VoIP features, including the unlimited calling area, monthly SMS limit, phone number availability and voicemail |
Advanced Features and Channels | 22% | Higher-level features like analytics, call monitoring, call recording and additional communication channels, including team chat, video and live chat |
Call Management Features | 17% | Call routing and distribution tools such as IVR menus, ring groups, call queues and call center features |
How To Choose the Best VoIP Service
When choosing a cloud phone system, look for a plan offering the features and channels you’ll use, with a minimum of those you won’t. Prioritize important call routing tools like IVR menus and ring groups, and consider the locations you call most often to ensure your provider enables unlimited calling to those destinations. Before deciding on a final choice, ensure you understand how to set up the VoIP system and examine the app dashboard to ensure it’s appealing and user-friendly for your agents.
In particular, here’s what to consider when choosing a VoIP system:
Essential VoIP Features
The foundation of a VoIP phone system is based on features like the unlimited calling area and call routing tools because these organize your users and customer service efforts. In particular, prioritize the following features when choosing a VoIP plan.
- IVR menus: Also called auto attendants, interactive voice response (IVR) menus let you create a self-service menu for inbound callers. IVR provides the caller with dial-tone options to indicate which department, submenu or announcement they’d like to reach.
- Ring groups: Ring groups let you link agent phone numbers together so they ring in unison or in a custom order. This enables you to create departments, distribute call responsibility and improve your call answer rate.
- Voicemail with transcription: Voicemail transcription automatically transcribes your inbound voicemail, providing a written log that agents can read quickly without having to listen to the whole recording. While nearly all VoIP plans include voicemail, make sure you choose a plan with transcription as well.
- Toll-free and local numbers: Make sure the VoIP system you choose offers both local and toll-free numbers. Further, choose a platform that offers local numbers from the area codes you want for your caller ID. Many VoIP providers offer not only U.S.-based numbers but international ones, too.
While most VoIP platforms offer these core features, Zoom Phone’s Unlimited plan and Google Voice’s Standard plan are the best-value plans that include everything listed above. You should be able to find these essential features for under $20 per month, with advanced features typically exceeding this price.
Value
Value refers to how much you get for the price you pay. The cheapest VoIP service available or a free VoIP service isn’t necessarily the best value. To find the best value, choose a plan that includes all the features your company wants, with very few extra bells and whistles that will go to waste.
Google Voice’s Starter and Standard plans are some of the best values of any VoIP platform, with the Starter plan priced at an exceptionally low $10 monthly per user. Zoom Phone’s Unlimited plan is also an excellent value due to its low cost and great feature variety. However, Nextiva is also a strong value if you want additional communication channels, and RingCentral is a good value if you’re seeking team collaboration in addition to VoIP.
Communication Channels
While each VoIP phone system includes VoIP telephony and SMS texting, many cloud phone systems add other channels. These may include team collaboration channels like internal messaging and video conferencing or other customer service channels like social media and live chat.
RingCentral, Dialpad and 8×8 are our top choices for companies seeking unlimited calling and team collaboration since these systems include feature-rich video meeting features. For customer support features like live chat and social media, Nextiva is easily the top choice.
User Interface
Before deciding on a VoIP phone system, I recommend taking advantage of the provider’s free trial or checking out the agent dashboard through YouTube tutorials. Look for a user interface that looks modern, spacious and visually appealing rather than outdated or dark. All the features should be easily accessible, enabling agents to switch between communication channels while handling inbound calls and queues.
I found that Aircall has the best interface overall. Despite its advanced features and AI support tools, it was immediately easy for me to understand and use. Dialpad and OpenPhone also stand out with easy-to-use systems, despite both offering rich features.
Unlimited Calling Area and Texting Limitations
All the VoIP platforms on our list include unlimited calling within the U.S. and Canada, but some providers and plans go beyond that to enable unlimited calling to international countries. Intermedia Unite and 8×8 both include unlimited calling to over a dozen countries, which is included with your regular plan. Google Voice’s Premier plan also enables unlimited calling throughout Europe for European numbers, making it a great option if your company is based in Europe.
Similarly, while all VoIP systems include SMS, plans vary greatly in the number of monthly SMS they allow per user. RingCentral and 8×8 lower-tier plans limit users to as few as 50 SMS per month, while platforms such as Intermedia, Google Voice, Zoom Phone and OpenPhone enable unlimited texting.
Advanced Call Center Features
Depending on your business needs, advanced business features that improve customer service and sales efforts may be useful. These features are typically included in higher-tier plans, but some platforms offer them at a good value.
Here are some advanced call center features you may consider.
- Call queues: When agents are busy, call queues organize overflow callers on hold. You can assign multiple agents to share a queue, creating departments. This feature is especially valuable for companies that receive large call volumes for many different reasons.
- Real-time analytics: A supervisor tool, real-time analytics display to-the-minute call activity records and KPIs such as daily call volume, average conversation length, customer service, level and agent activity.
- Call monitoring: Call monitoring gives supervisors a real-time dashboard to observe which agents are on call. Supervisors can then click to listen in privately on a call, whisper private guidance to an agent or barge into the call as a third party.
- AI call transcription: AI-based call transcription provides a transcript of all calls, displaying it in real time to support on-call agents. These transcripts also power more in-depth analytics, such as service-level scores and customer sentiment detection.
Dialpad excels with real-time analytics and AI call transcription on all plans. RingCentral and Intermedia Unite include call queues and call monitoring. Finally, Aircall offers strong AI call summaries, supervisor support tools and queue features.
Third-Party Software Integrations
VoIP software typically includes ready-made third-party integrations that sync functionality and data with other apps your company uses. Common VoIP integrations include CRM software like Salesforce and HubSpot, communications platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, and marketing apps like Gong and Marketo. If your company relies on these platforms for daily workflows or wants to integrate your VoIP data, look for a plan that connects with the platforms you use.
RingCentral offers the most integrations overall, connecting with over 300 popular third-party systems. However, Aircall, OpenPhone and Zoom Phone include many of the most popular integrations, even on low-tier plans.
Which VoIP Phone Service Is Best for Your Business?
The best VoIP service for your company depends on several factors, including your size, budget and customer service goals. However, if cost-effectiveness is your main priority, or if you’re seeking a simple phone system without extra bells and whistles, I recommend Google Voice and Zoom Phone as the best options.
If you want to provide high-level customer service primarily by phone and SMS texting, OpenPhone and Aircall are great choices. OpenPhone’s number sharing will enable your agents to handle multiple call queues and serve customers more flexibly. Aircall’s queue callbacks, power dialer and custom call routing provide stellar control over how you handle inbound calls.
Finally, if you’re looking for communication channels beyond a simple phone system, RingCentral and Nextiva are strong options. Nextiva lets you serve customers through live chat and social media, unlocking touchpoints no cloud phone system can match. RingCentral’s team chat and video meetings improve internal team collaboration.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are VoIP services?
Voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) services are cloud-based telephony software that lets you make and receive calls over the internet rather than a landline or mobile network. Read our article “What Is VoIP?” to learn more.
What is the most popular VoIP service?
There are several popular VoIP services, including Nextiva, RingCentral and Google Voice.
What is the disadvantage of using VoIP?
The main disadvantage of using VoIP is that its advanced digital features and interface may have a learning curve for new users.