Are you looking for the best business phone system for your small business? Adding a phone service to your WordPress website is an excellent way to manage calls from your customers. Yet choosing one that suits your company’s needs is challenging.
In this article, we’ve hand-picked the best business phone systems to use with WordPress, so you can offer fantastic customer support and help your business grow.
What is a Business Phone System
A business phone system is a multiline telephone system that connects your main business number to multiple phones on a single network.
Usually, you’d add your landline or mobile phone number to your WordPress site, and use that solution to receive calls from your customers. The problem with this is it doesn’t look professional, and it’s harder to manage calls as a team with a single phone number.
Yet with a proper business phone system, you can take advantage of the following:
- Track wait times, hold times, call duration, and overall usage.
- Call forwarding, inbound call routing, call recording, caller ID, etc.
- Share a single business number with multiple users simultaneously (auto-attendant feature lets you route calls to the first available team member).
- Use any phone system from desk phones and cordless phones to mobile cell phones and your computer.
- Cheaper pricing since private branch exchange (PBX) equipment is often stored in the cloud instead of facing up-front costs for on-premises and new phone equipment.
What’s more, most small business phone systems use voice over internet protocol (VoIP solutions). This means you can take your number anywhere you want, as long as you have a high-speed internet connection.
Using a business phone system is a game-changer for online stores and small business websites.
With the ability to connect to your customers anywhere and with call management tools at your fingertips, you can offer excellent customer service and increase sales for your business.
Best Business Phone Systems for 2020
Now that you know why using a phone service for your business is a great way to serve your customers, let’s look at the best business phone systems to use with your WordPress website.
1. Ring Central
Ring Central is the best business phone system for companies of any size. They offer one of the most feature-packed small business phone systems on the market.
The Ring Central platform includes everything you need for your business, including:
- Unlimited calls
- Caller ID
- Call forwarding
- Call waiting and transfer
- SMS text messages
- Sharing 1 line on multiple devices
- And more
It also includes video meetings with screen sharing, up to 1000 toll-free minutes, and integration with Google’s Gsuite, Dropbox, and Microsoft.
Managing your calls is easy with cloud-based administration, and their enterprise-grade security ensures 99.99% uptime.
Ring Central’s Essential plan begins at $19.99 monthly per user (billed annually) with the ability to add up to 20 users. Other plans are different price points and come with additional features.
Ring Central is an ideal phone system for both physical businesses and those moving toward remote working. It can work with your existing telephone system (if compatible), or you can use the virtual phone system included in the Ring Central mobile app, which works with all smartphones.
2. Nextiva
Nextiva is another popular business phone system service provider with a wide variety of advanced features, quick and efficient setup, and reasonable pricing. It also includes a web-based admin area, making it easy for small business owners to effectively manage their unified communications platform preferences.
Nextiva’s VoIP phone system comes with:
- Advanced call routing
- Unlimited calling (domestic)
- Voicemail to email and text
- Online faxing
- Texting
- Extension dialing
- And more
You’ll also receive a free local or toll-free number, number porting, and call management features such as caller ID, call forwarding, custom greetings, and an advanced interactive voice response system (IVR).
The Nextiva platform gives you access to more powerful features like Live Chat, CRM, online surveys, and call analytics that work well as part of a unified phone system.
The call quality is top-notch, with a 99.99% uptime for their VoIP phone service, so it’s rare you’ll face an outage. Plus, their customer service team is super-friendly and always available to help.
The price of Nextiva’s business phone service starts at $19.95 per user per month. And the pricing is cheaper as you add more users. If you’re looking to save a little money, you can also create a prepaid account.
Nextiva is a great solution for small and large businesses. With the ability to add a business line for cell phones (both iOS and Android), you can take calls from your office, even if you’re working remotely, without sharing your cell phone number.
However, if your business needs an office phone system that’s compatible with your existing handsets, Nextiva offers that too.
In fact, many call centers and enterprise businesses use Nextiva to transition from private branch exchange (PBX system) to powerful cloud phone systems with SIP trunking.
3. Phone.com
Phone.com is another excellent VoIP provider for small businesses. It has a user-friendly web and app-based admin panel and standard features that include:
- Caller ID
- Phone call forwarding
- Call Transfer
- Conference calls
- And more
Phone.com’s call minutes include Canada and several European countries, making it much cheaper to call those countries. It’s also possible to integrate your phone system with third-party CRM software such as Zoho and Salesforce.
There are 2 pricing options for Phone.com, which are either pay-per-minute or unlimited. Pay-per-minute plans start at $12.99 per month, with unlimited plans starting at $22.99 per month.
4. GrassHopper
GrassHopper is a business phone solution that offers VoIP, which is ideal for small businesses and solopreneurs. With a virtual phone number, you can forward calls to any number or mobile device. Yet, for outgoing calls, you’ll still need a standard phone line.
The intuitive web and mobile apps are easy to use for managing your account and phone service. It’s also possible to use multiple extensions for your business phone number, as well as local, vanity, and toll-free numbers for the UK and Canada.
You can expect all the standard features like:
- Call routing
- Call waiting
- Call forwarding
- Call hold music
- Automatic call transcripts to email
- And more
GrassHopper is an ideal solution for remote teams, as you can add extensions to use anywhere with their mobile or desktop apps.
Plans for GrassHopper start at $29.99 per month for 1 number and up to 3 extensions.
5. Vonage
Vonage is another great business phone system with plenty of features to improve your business communication. Along with standard cloud VoIP services, it has Amazon Chime so you can use their system for video conference calling and online meetings.
The web-based control panel makes it easy to get started with adding new users and managing calls. And with mobile access, it’s ideal for remote teams and removes the need for extra hardware.
Vonage’s mobile plan starts at $19.99 per user per month, but the features are limited. The premium plan at $29.99, and the advanced plan, which is £39.99, offers the best combination of features and usage.
Which is the Best Business Phone System for You?
After carefully comparing the top business phone systems, we decided that Ring Central is the best business phone system, with Nextiva coming in at a close second.
While both systems have similar pricing, we feel Ring Central offers better overall value as a small business VoIP service. It has a low starting price, a smooth user interface, and tons of powerful business communication features. They also don’t require such a long commitment for their annual plans.
Bottom line: you can’t go wrong with either of these solutions.
We hope this article helped you discover the best business phone systems for your business.
While you’re here, you might also be interested in learning how to make a click to call link in WordPress.
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