VoIP phone service

VoIP phone services are how forward-thinking businesses ensure their communications systems are future-proof. Holding many advantages over traditional setups, a VoIP phone system is more scalable, mobile, and flexible. Not to mention relying on the internet, rather than the outdated public switched telephone network (PSTN) which is being phased out in many countries around the world.

The best VoIP phone service gives you more advanced call management than landline-based alternatives, and plenty more besides. RingCentral RingEX, for example, is a unified communications platform that includes the best VoIP phone service functionality, plus other communications channels, AI-powered features, and easy integrations with other business apps.

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol or Voice over IP. Also called IP telephony, it’s the underlying technology that lets you make phone calls using an internet connection instead of a landline.

VoIP turns audio signals into data packets so they can travel via the internet, rather than over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). There are a raft of benefits to VoIP services—which we’ll cover later—and systems based on VoIP technology are becoming increasingly popular with businesses as a result.

A VoIP phone system or service is a business communications solution based upon VoIP technology. At its core, a VoIP system lets businesses make and take all their outbound and incoming calls online, rather than via landlines.

VoIP phone systems, though, are increasingly a lot more than that. Take RingCentral RingEX, for example. It could be described as a VoIP phone system. However, more accurately, it’s a secure, reliable unified communications platform that eliminates the need for on-premises private branch exchange (PBX) hardware and offers far more than phone service.

With mobile apps, online meetings, and business SMS, it’s hosted business communications at its best. You can manage all of your business communications with your computer or mobile device from any location—there’s no additional hardware necessary, just an internet connection.

Best of all, RingCentral provides simplified billing, free onboarding services, and 24/7 customer support as part of your VoIP service plan.

Before we get any deeper into the benefits of these solutions, though, let’s take a look at how VoIP systems work.

VoIP technology lets you make calls over the internet. When you make a call, the audio data is encapsulated or compressed into small data packets. These packets travel through different networks until they reach their destination (the IP phone or computer of the person being called), where the packets are “unpacked” back into audio form. This goes back and forth in real time.

One great thing about VoIP is that there’s no one way to make a call. Legacy phone systems only let you communicate from phone to phone. On the other hand, VoIP lets you call from:

• Computer to computer - Just sign up for a Voice IP service, install it on your computer, and create and customize your account. That’s all you need to make a computer-to-computer call, which is free (as long as the person you’re calling is also using the same application).
• Computer to phone - Have your VoIP provider enable out-of-network calls (not always free, but still cheaper than services from traditional phone companies). Connect to a landline phone using a computer running a VoIP-enabled program. And that’s it! Businesses that regularly make calls to areas without a strong internet connection would benefit most from a computer-to-phone option.
• Mobile apps - This option is great for remote workers. Simply download a mobile version of a VoIP phone service and install it on your device. You’ll then get a softphone for making calls from your business numbers.
• Landline phones connected to an ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) - Plug your desk phone cable into the ATA. Start making VoIP calls by picking up the handset and dialing.
• VoIP to PSTN (and vice-versa) - When you make a call through IP to a landline, the digital audio goes through the same process as a VoIP-to-VoIP call. The difference is that the unencapsulated audio data passes through what’s called a VoIP gateway, which in turn converts digital audio to analog.

VoIP services make all of the above possible with the help of several protocols or rules which help in routing data:

SIP is the element of VoIP technology that sets up real-time multimedia sessions (calls, video meetings, etc.). It initiates calls, establishes the connection, and then terminates the call at its end.

As the name suggests, RTP is concerned with the transport of a call’s audio (or the multimedia in the case of a video call). It transfers the data packets from one end point to another, where codecs take care of the compression and decompression.

TCP and UDP are other transport protocols involved with the smooth-running of IP phone services. The former is relied upon for accuracy, thanks to its good integrity and error-checking capabilities. The latter focuses on speed, can send data packets without negotiation, and is a kind of “set-and-forget” protocol.

So far, so technical. You know how VoIP telephone services work in a nutshell, but why does that matter to you? We’re going to get into the overall benefits of VoIP services soon, but let’s start with a brief discussion of how they can help improve customer experience (CX) straight off the bat.

Customer service tends to have a lot of moving parts. Busy businesses might handle hundreds of queries a day, but each customer expects to be treated as if they are the only one. Organizations typically turn to CRM solutions to help.

CRMs act as a central repository of customer information and data for businesses to lean upon and use to deliver the best possible CX. A VoIP phone system—being software-based—can integrate seamlessly with your chosen CRM.

Thus, your agents have all that vital data on hand while they’re on calls or handling interactions on other channels. That’s a recipe for better first contact resolution (FCR) rates, higher customer satisfaction, and greater brand loyalty, too.

Businesses that streamline their workflows and optimize their operations are the ones that usually have a better chance at success. With massive, real-world benefits like the ones listed below, it’s easy to see that VoIP phone services for business improve not only communications but also productivity.

Traditional phone systems can be a lot more expensive than a VoIP business phone service. All the system upgrades, changes, maintenance, and repairs can take their toll on your company’s budget.

Setup and reconfiguration require time and are usually a cause of disruption. This is not the case when you’re using hosted VoIP phone systems, with which deployment doesn’t take time and all updates and repairs are handled by the VoIP provider.

If your business has multiple locations, you need just as many hardware units and phone lines to ensure a certain level of service mobility. That is, if you stick with traditional phone systems—it’s not a problem with VoIP business phone services, which allow you to make outbound calls and receive incoming calls from any device.

As long as there is an internet connection, your sales manager can contact field staff for an urgent task and your customer service rep working from home can easily address a complaint to avoid the customer’s ire. If you have to transfer a call to a colleague who’s working remotely, you don’t need to ask customers to call a different number.

So, you’ve opened up a new location and need more phones for your employees. But how many will you actually use over the next year? You better estimate carefully so you don’t spend precious money on phone lines that’ll end up untouched.

Unless you opt for VoIP phone services for small business. In that case, scaling up and down your lines, users, and features is quick and easy. Often, it just takes a few clicks in an online portal. Your business VoIP phone services scale and adapt as your business grows, and stay viable even if you don’t stay a small business.

There is definitely more to VoIP than just making or receiving calls. Apart from the basic features you get from traditional systems, modern VoIP systems can incorporate a host of other helpful communications tools. They include things like instant messaging, teleconferencing and video conferencing, virtual faxing, call recording, and more.

And yes, we did say virtual faxing. It allows you to send and receive faxes without purchasing an actual machine and, by extension, paper and toner. All fax messages, as well as voicemails, can be forwarded to and stored in a single location.

Gather your employees anytime using the video conferencing feature if you have to discuss important issues. You may also use real-time team messaging if you have to simultaneously work on a task and get things done fast. All these work, no matter where your employees are and whatever device they are using.

The above mentioned features are just some of the things that make VoIP such an efficiency booster for businesses of any type and size. Having access to advanced productivity tools allows workflows to be streamlined and empowers employees to multitask as the need arises.

Let’s say one of your sales agents is on a call within a queue. While waiting, he or she can also browse through other communications on their VoIP platform.

Perhaps, they’ll check out voicemail transcriptions sent to their email inbox via a voicemail-to-email feature or maybe archive or forward fax with the click of a mouse. You’ll be surprised to see the numerous features and a brand-new world of possibilities with a sophisticated VoIP phone service.

Integrating traditional phone systems with other tools your business uses is no easy task. In fact, it is incredibly difficult—as any company that’s experienced it could attest.

One of the many things that make the adoption of VoIP technology appealing is the fact that it is capable of integrating with many business systems you and your employees are already familiar with.

This is possible because VoIP systems are software-based and harness the power of the internet. For instance, an integration with Outlook® allows you to send and receive a fax or make outbound calls through that program.

Integrating business analytics is also relatively simple with VoIP. With actionable insights at your disposal, your business will be able to monitor and improve processes to further enhance your overall efficiency, connectivity, and productivity.

Traditional phone systems, which use cables and other hardware, can be compromised by fire, earthquake, and other unforeseen events.

When disaster strikes or power goes out, your employees will have a hard time communicating with each other and customers won't be able to reach them. If you fail to recover quickly, you'll suffer a huge loss in terms of production and customer confidence and deal with regulatory fines.

Healthcare facilities, for example, need to abide by the provisions included in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Otherwise, they could lose a huge amount of money on sanctions and penalties.

This is not a problem with a hosted VoIP phone system, which sits at a protected data center. It is monitored around the clock. So if something happens in your place of business, incoming calls will be forwarded to another location.

VoIP’s advanced call-forwarding functionality gives you the capacity to choose where and how your voice calls are forwarded so you don’t have to lose productivity in case of a disaster or a power outage.

Even if it’s impossible to answer your office desk phone, you still have a secondary phone service, like your laptop or smartphone, you can use to communicate with collaborators and customers.

Of course, VoIP does rely on good quality broadband internet—via Wi-FI, Ethernet, or otherwise. If you lose your internet connection at a particular location, you will lose access to your phone system. However, VoIP services are, by nature, mobile. So, you can simply move somewhere with the internet and carry on as before.

The above is just a taste of the benefits of a VoIP phone service. With the right provider, you can also:

VoIP service from trusted providers is encrypted with secure voice between endpoints on the network—including desk phones, desktop apps, and mobile apps.

Why does this matter for your business? The most trustworthy VoIP phone service providers ensure that your business communications are protected from service interruption threats such as natural disasters, power outages, and malicious attacks.

Without a secure, reliable VoIP network, downtime can have dire consequences for your bottom line. For example, with a traditional PBX, a simple power outage could result in lost customers or prospects who are attempting to call your business, which ultimately results in loss of profits.

The best VoIP business phone service provider offers businesses carrier-grade reliability and security, with Tier 1 network centers and 24/7 monitoring to ensure your VoIP service isn’t disrupted. Be on the lookout for an uptime guarantee of at least 99.99% as a benchmark.

Geographically dispersed data centers, too, provide redundant layers of security—at the perimeter, at the service delivery layer, and with SSL-encoded web applications.

To ensure the best possible call quality on all of your phone calls, the best providers offer customers the tools to check your internet connection speed as well as instructions on how to configure your router properly.

Keep in mind that several key factors can impact the quality of service (QoS)—including high-speed routers that prioritize voice traffic over lower-priority traffic, such as large downloads. To see if your current bandwidth can support VoIP, test it for free here.

Mobility is another key advantage of communications solutions based on VoIP technology. VoIP phone services are perpetually mobile-ready and are ideal for bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives.

With mobile apps for Android and iOS mobile devices, employees are empowered to work the way they want on their favorite device—all while maintaining a unified business identity.

For IT administrators and small-business owners alike, a centralized dashboard makes management easy and efficient. The entire VoIP phone system, including all extensions and company locations, can be managed from anywhere, on any device.

Whether your workforce is distributed across business locations, working remotely, or even using a home phone, keep them connected as if they never left the office.

The full-featured RingCentral mobile app, for example, boosts productivity and provides employees with voice, fax, text, conferencing, and online meetings—anywhere there’s an internet connection.

With a top VoIP phone service, you can expect all-inclusive pricing and one consolidated bill—eliminating complex management and billing associated with multiple vendors.

There are, in fact, a range of direct and indirect cost-savings you could enjoy by switching to a VoIP phone service provider. Direct cost savings can come from:

Every company knows how expensive it is to set up a traditional phone system. You’ll need to pay for, among other things, the dedicated copper wiring (which carries the voice communications) and the on-premises PBX system (which connects the landline phones in your office to one another). With VoIP, you could do away with all that hardware.

When a call is routed through a public switched telephone network (aka, a traditional phone network that uses copper wires), a dedicated circuit is opened between the caller and the recipient, and it should remain open until the call ends.

Otherwise, you'll hear delays on the call—this is probably something you’ve experienced on long-distance and international calls, because it’s harder to keep the circuits open when voice signals take longer to reach their recipient. (This is also why phone companies charge for calls like this on a per-minute basis.)

Because VoIP relies on the internet, you won’t get this issue. You aren’t charged by the minute either, which saves you even more money, especially if you make lots of long-distance and international calls. (VoIP providers charge on a subscription basis, with plans that cater to specific needs.)

Ongoing expenses like repair and maintenance fees can easily overwhelm your budget. But not if you get a hosted VoIP service, which typically rolls these costs into reasonably priced monthly subscription plans that fit your needs. You can sometimes even get additional features like call waiting and an auto attendant at no extra cost.

Now, let’s look at indirect cost savings:

With advanced functionality like conference calling and video conferencing, voice over IP makes it easier and more efficient to work remotely, which cuts down the costs of your office and utility bills.

Some advanced VoIP features can even cover repetitive tasks for you so that you can focus on more valuable work.

For instance, you might be thinking of hiring someone to handle phone calls (which translates to money spent on additional salary and benefits) or maybe giving the work to an existing employee, (which would probably require you to give them a raise). With the auto attendant feature, you won’t need a receptionist at all. That’s a load of savings every month.

Traditional on-premises PBX systems also may have hidden costs that are difficult to estimate upfront. Besides the obvious price tags on traditional phone system’s PBX hardware, software licensing, and new telephones, these can include:

• Telephone service maintenance contracts
• PBX replacement and upgrading parts
• Cost of connecting multiple locations
• Telecom charges for local, long-distance, international calling,* or toll-free calls
• Added costs for standalone services, such as online faxing, adding telephone numbers, or audio conferencing

Learn more about calculating the real cost of a business phone system and how cloud VoIP services compare with other types of telephony.

If you choose the best business VoIP phone service provider, you’ll be fully supported by a team of product and customer success experts who deeply understand how to service VoIP, and can help keep your entire business phone system running smoothly. In addition to this customer support, providers like RingCentral ensure customer success with free, comprehensive onboarding.

The onboarding process provides new customers with network readiness information, phone number transfer instructions, guided implementation, and training sessions. You will have a dedicated account manager to deliver product expertise and recommendations so your RingCentral VoIP phone system evolves with your company’s needs and the latest innovative solutions businesses require to stay at the forefront of communications.

While the benefits of VoIP phone services are clear and varied, there are also some challenges to be aware of:

The main limitation of VoIP is that it is entirely dependent on your broadband connection. No internet means no VoIP.

That’s not all. Poor internet connection can also affect the quality of voice calls. Some companies have invested in internet service to be used solely for VoIP so that it does not have to compete with other internet transmissions within the organization and ensures enough bandwidth for voice calls.

If for some reason you cannot get a dedicated internet provider for VoIP, another solution is to use specialized QoS (quality of service) routers. These routers can be set up so that they prioritize VoIP transmissions over other IP transmissions, ensuring the best quality of calls using your existing internet connection, and avoiding issues like jitter or latency.

Data traveling through the internet can be intercepted by third parties, and that includes VoIP transmissions. This means your voice calls can be in danger of being hacked or breached and can fall into the wrong hands.

That’s why the top VoIP phone services from the most reputable VoIP providers employ, at the very least, high-level encryption to protect voice calls during end-to-end of transmission. Choose the right service provider and you mitigate this challenge of VoIP systems.

Because of the natural mobility of a VoIP phone service, it can be a challenge for emergency services responders to pinpoint a location from a phone call. Something they can do with traditional phone numbers.

This can be overcome, however, by functionality built into your VoIP phone service. RingCentral, for example, lets you add an emergency 911 (E911) address to your account.

So, those are the main benefits and challenges associated with VoIP phone services for business. If that’s been a lot to take in, here’s a quick summary in comparison to traditional telephone services:

Traditional phone services

• Pay thousands of dollars for on-site traditional phone system hardware
• No free calls—long distance and international calls are costly and paid per minute
• Business features come with extra cost
• Requires additional physical cable lines for traditional landline expansion
• Can remain active during outages

VoIP phone services

• No expensive hardware required, so you save money upfront
• Free VoIP calls-long distance calls, if not entirely free, only require nominal fees
• Comes with standard business phone features like call monitoring, call forwarding, voicemail, and others
• Add-on extensions require a few clicks or taps on admin control panel
• Needs the internet to deliver service

The popularity of VoIP across all kinds of businesses has driven many VoIP service providers offering this technology to lower their costs in order to attract more clients. As such, it’s easy to fall for a VoIP provider that offers a cheap VoIP phone service.

Opting for what seems to be the cheapest VoIP business phone service, though, can prove to be a false economy. You shouldn’t be looking at the initial price alone but at the total cost of ownership, which is the sum of acquiring, deploying, and operating a VoIP phone system over its entire life cycle. Be sure to look at the upfront, deployment, operational, and upgrade costs.

• Upfront costs: Comprehensive, high-quality systems naturally come with higher upfront costs, but they are more reliable and easier to maintain—and still offer 30% cost savings over legacy phone solutions. Outside of the VoIP service pricing package, you should also take into account the cost of headsets, webcams, and a strong network connection to ensure call quality.
• Deployment costs: Get a service provider to design, implement, and configure your cloud-based VoIP system. Then you’ll need to hire experts to teach your employees how to use the system properly and effectively. A more experienced, knowledgeable provider can have all these covered for you.
• Operational costs: Think of the monthly recurring phone service costs, which may be dependent on the plan you choose. For instance, there are companies that offer long-distance calls per minute and there are others that provide unlimited calls for a fixed monthly fee. If you are managing your VoIP phone system on your own, you also have to consider the power, cooling, and maintenance costs on a monthly basis.
• Upgrade costs: Be sure to set aside some budget for when you need to make any upgrades. Then again, if you chose a hosted VoIP provider, you don’t have to worry about anything.

Any business can technically implement their own VoIP phone solution with the right combination of IT infrastructure to support VoIP technology and the skills and knowledge to make it happen. Unfortunately, the amount of capital investment needed to do that is staggering.

Cloud communication service providers like RingCentral are able to offer businesses VoIP services with advanced features like cloud PBX, automated-attendant, answering rules, call forwarding, hold music, caller ID, call blocking, and more with flexible plans and pricing by hosting the services on their own secure, multi-tiered, and redundant cloud IT infrastructure and leveraging the internet for delivery of service.

A VoIP provider is a business entity that offers VoIP services directly to consumers or businesses. These services are usually offered in the SaaS model, wherein the software is provided as a service (hosted by the vendor) rather than as a product (downloaded by the user).

There are many VoIP phone system providers out there, so it’s essential to choose wisely.

There are different types of VoIP providers in the marketplace. They generally fall under these three categories:

There are VoIP service providers who focus solely on directly providing telephony functions for businesses and consumers. This may include some basic features, like voicemail, call forwarding, and caller ID, but usually no call management features are included. If you are only looking for phone calling functionality and not much else, then these providers may already be on your radar.

There are providers who leverage the cloud by combining VoIP with cloud PBX technology. These cloud-based phone systems have VoIP as the foundation of their telephony component combined with the advanced routing capabilities of a hosted PBX.

Aside from the ability to make and receive calls over the internet, a VoIP provider in this category offers businesses call management features like auto attendant, answering rules, and virtual extensions for departments and individuals.

This type of VoIP service provider is similar to a VoIP with cloud phone system provider, but they take their offerings to another level. These companies combine different communications tools, like VoIP, cloud PBX, online meetings, and team messaging, into one platform.

This provides businesses a central hub for communications instead of having to use different vendors for different communication tools.

Once you know what type of VoIP solution you may wish to invest in, how do you go about choosing a provider? Following these simple steps is a good way to start:

Start by identifying the business communications needs of your organization.

Some of the questions you may want to ask in regard to those needs are:

• What type of business phone number does the business need? Does it need a toll-free number, local number, international number, or any combination of the three?
• Does your business make a lot of outbound calls?
• Does your business receive a lot of inbound calls? Do you need a call routing solution?
• Do you have multiple locations?
• Do you have a distributed workforce? Do you have remote workers or telecommuting workers?
• Do you use fax and/or business SMS?
• Do you need an audio or video conferencing solution?
• Do your teams collaborate a lot?
• Do you want your business tools to integrate with your communications solution?

These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself as a business owner on the lookout for new phone solutions. Once you have identified your operational needs, you can start to look for VoIP providers that can meet your requirements.

There are a number of VoIP providers that might be able to meet your business communications needs—you just need to narrow it down to one. Check all the call plans and packages offered by each of the reputable providers you were able to gather.

Most of these plans have tiers, so make a side-by-side comparison of the prices and included features for each plan by tier. This way, you can see the differences between the basic, mid-range, and premium VoIP plans and prices for each provider.

Even if a VoIP provider meets all your business communications needs, your scrutiny should not end there. You also have to determine how they keep their service reliable and secure.

To ensure reliability, the top VoIP providers also have multiple data centers set up in different locations. The idea is that multiple servers in multiple data centers result in redundancy of service. This means that in the event that a server fails, another server can take over in real time.

The same goes for when a whole data center goes down, another data center can take over the service so that there will be no disruption.

Other security and reliability practices that top VoIP providers employ include:

• Regular audits of data centers
• Support of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
• Advanced account management and administration
• Robust and secure networks

Another factor you should look at is the reputation of the VoIP provider you are evaluating for your organization. While it is difficult to separate valid reviews from spam reviews, it’s still worth investigating the general opinion people have about the company.

One thing you can look at is the number of subscribers. Generally, when a provider has a large number of users, it means they are trusted by their customers and the industry to provide reliable and secure service.

Another thing you can look at is the brands that trust the provider for their communications. Big brands do not just sign up for a service; they do their due diligence and get assurance that they will get a good return on investment.

If you are truly looking for the best provider, however, then you should go with an industry leader. RingCentral is the leading provider of not only VoIP but also unified communications as a service (UCaaS), which addresses multiple communications problems in one platform.

RingCentral also adapts to how your business operates. It has integrations with some of the most popular business apps like Salesforce®, Google Workspace, and Microsoft Office 365™. It also has open APIs that give you the power to add a communications component to your in-house apps.

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