22 Small Business Phone Services

Can you hear me now? That phrase is one we all utter, most frequently from mobile phones, but sometimes from landlines and VOIP phones. We have to keep up with voicemail and text messaging.  I want phone services to keep up with me, not the other way around.

In this post, we highlight 22 phone services that small business owners will want to check out. Some of them save time, effort, money or a combination of those. Some say you can’t have all three, but you can.

Here are just a few of the many features these services provide for growing companies: Voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP), Voicemail, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, Conference Calling, Web Conferencing, Call Following (no, not stalking), Voicemail to Text or Email, Voice Transcription, and toll-free numbers.

Grasshopper is best known as the professional, but very hip virtual phone services company. They produce videos that are heartwarming in some cases and LOL funny in others. Plans start at $26/month.

Feature I Like: Faxes emailed as PDFs.

Ringcentral is a VOIP service aimed at small business. They offer unlimited phone and fax from your existing phone or a RingCentral one. No free trial, but 30-day money back guarantee. Plans start at $49.99/month with 1,000 free toll-free minutes.

Feature I Like: Flexible answering rules so you can specify hours and days that work for my company and employees.

Yahoo! Voice is similar to Skype or Google Voice. It is pretty simple if you’re a Yahoo! User (or even if you’re not). Computer to computer calls are free; all others are low per minute rates.  You can get a number so that those not on Yahoo! Voice can call you.

Feature I Like: Super fast site and rate checker so I don’t have to scroll through miles of country rates.

Jam is an up and coming VOIP provider.  Two-way SMS/text messages from web to mobile, or even email. Unlimited incoming text messages. 30 voicemail transcriptions a month. All the usual calling features. No free trial, but you don’t need it with plans starting at $4.99/month, then per minute charges.

Features I Like: All the texting (SMS) options. No one else has these. Oh, and you can manage groups of phone numbers.

Onebox is a virtual phone system with lots of great features, but the one thing that stands out is their LIVE receptionist option.  Many small companies want to have an affordable option for someone to answer their calls with a personal touch; Onebox offers it. They have a 14-day free trial, then plans start at $49.95/month for the phone portion. Live receptionist option starts at $169.95/month.