The big move by many businesses to a mostly work-from-home culture (aka hybrid work) doesn’t mean there’s less chat on the phone—instead, probably a lot more. The office place needs a good phone system no matter the size, and a virtual PBX, more commonly called a voice over IP (VoIP) system, delivers the goods.
If you’re in the market for a VoIP service, you’ll want one from a reliable, trustworthy brand. That’s why we asked PCMag readers to rate the VoIP services they use most to help us pick this year’s Business Choice Award winners. And not all services are the same. Some of the contenders in these results are only for single-PC setup at home; others could provide voice ability for an entire skyscraper. But the winner below handles just about any size and shape you need for a voice network, even going so far as to provide abilities for mobile devices.
Read on to see which VoIP service you should consider for serious talking.
Voice over IP (VoIP) Services for 2022
We have fewer players appearing in our VoIP survey results than last year (down from 15 to nine). However, there’s one consistent constant. That is OomaOoma, not only making the cut but also scoring so high that it really is the only brand you should probably consider for your office’s voice service, no matter how many employees work there. (Click the arrows to toggle through the categories on our interactive chart; click at the bottom for the full results table.)
Ooma’s 8.9 overall satisfaction rate is great, but down a bit from last year’s 9.0, and the company’s highest score in our survey, a 9.4 back in 2014. Satisfaction hasn’t dipped below 8.7 out of 10 for the entire decade since we started dedicated surveys about business VoIP. Ooma is also the top performer in all but two of the categories, and even for those (cost and ease of use) it’s a high-placing second.
That’s not to say there Ooma doesn’t have serious competition. For big businesses, Cisco and RingCentral have great satisfaction scores but tend to falter when it comes to cost and mobile support (for Cisco) and tech support (for RingCentral).
There’s also a couple of VoIP providers in here with middle-of-the-road scores that are suitable only for sole proprietors: Google Voice for voicemail and over-the-internet calls, and the still-beloved (by some) magicJack hardware that connects to a PC. They score well for cost and ease of use. Look elsewhere if you have a staff to support.
That said, some big names that can and do support groups don’t get much love in these results. Vonage, which is at this point a venerable company in the world of VoIP, scores poorly uniformly across all the metrics. Along with it are business-specific phone services from Spectrum, Microsoft, and Avaya. None of them hold up in comparison with Ooma.
For more, read The Best Business VoIP Providers for 2022The Best Business VoIP Providers for 2022.
The PCMag Business Choice survey for VoIP Services was in the field from January 31, 2022, to February 21, 2022. For more information on how our surveys are conducted, read the survey methodologysurvey methodology.
