Olivia Maier
Having to decide between phone providers can seem like a complicated process. For a small business, each and every investment should help you further your business goals, but it can sometimes be hard to distinguish between providers when you’re just looking at a website.
Yodel
Yodel is able to join your small business as an additional employee, with the ability to become your very own virtual assistant. Beyond that Yodel is able to provide features built for small businesses, such as intelligent integrations with the tools you already love, features to enhance collaboration, and the ability to support both an in-person or fully remote team. You can get started with Yodel’s free 14 day trial.
Grasshopper
Grasshopper’s free 7 day trial will give you exposure to the various features they are able to offer. Grasshopper is often seen as an excellent choice for businesses with 1-15 employees. While this may make scaling an issue in the future, if your SMB fits that profile Grasshopper may be a great fit.
Google Voice
If you are already taking advantage of Google apps, Google voice might be a good fit. While Google Voice doesn’t come with many standard VoIP features, the convenience of connecting it to your other Google apps may be worth it.
RingCentral
RingCentral is a full-service VoIP solution with many features SMBs may appreciate. That includes voicemail-to-text, call screening, and more. RingCentral is able to offer a free trial to get started.
Aircall
Aircall is able to give your team access to a 7 day free trial, during which you can access an international, local, or toll-free number. Aircall offers pricing plans at $30/user/month, and $50/user/month.
This list is just a starting point for your small business to look at. There are a lot of different phone providers that your small business could utilize. The sheer amount of options might leave you wondering how you should even be searching for your business phone provider. That’s why we wanted to give you a few things to consider so you can confidently find an answer to the question “who is the best virtual phone number provider for MY small business?”
As a small business one of your goals may be to grow your business, now or in the future. This might make it seem tricky when choosing a business phone provider, but it doesn’t have to be. You should avoid phone providers who will lock you into a set number of users or parallel calls. This will add an unnecessary barrier that can make it harder to grow. Typically cloud-based phone systems will allow you to scale your phone plan as needed, making it a more flexible option for small businesses.
When you’re looking for a business phone solution, you should identify the capabilities and features that you wouldn’t want to live without. It can be as simple as having a unique business phone number, or as technological as having automatic call transcriptions. For a small business, we recommend looking for features that give you the advantages of a larger team, without needing to expand your personnel. For example, a virtual receptionist can help improve your phone experience, without having to hire a live receptionist.
How does your small business like to handle phone communication? Some teams prefer hardware phones, software integrations, or mobile options. For a smaller team or business, we suggest looking at integrations as a great way to streamline your communication. Integrating your business phone into software and tools you already are using will help maximize the return from each of those tools, as well as consolidating the tools you need to have open and running.
With many systems offering similar baseline features, it can be helpful to see where there is added value with different providers. This added value could come in a couple different forms, such as ebooks, a blog, webinars, live onboarding and training, etc. Identifying which of these value added options your small business may take advantage of can help you further narrow down your list of potential providers.
Traditional phone providers don’t really offer a way to try their product without some sort of a commitment. However VoIP providers are often able to offer some sort of trial period for your business. Yodel goes as far as to offer a free trial with no credit card needed to get started. This can help you test out a system to determine if it is the right fit for your team and business needs. Don’t settle for a system that doesn’t give you the chance to test it out before you commit.
We are happy to be the best virtual phone system for the thousands of companies who are proudly using Yodel. Do you think that Yodel might be the best virtual phone system for you? Get started with a free trial today to test it out!
