7 Best Cloud Phone Systems for Remote Teams – Compared (2024)

Cloud-based phone systems are a great option when your team members work remotely or work from home. However, choosing the best cloud phone system is an important decision because it can impact your business and customers.

As a company with remote employees all over the world, we know all about the trials and errors of picking the right solution for your needs. Eventually, after a lot of testing, we settled on Nextiva as the best cloud phone service.

In this article, we’ll compare Nextiva and the other best cloud phone systems we’ve tried. We’ll go over their features, pros, and cons, to help you find the option that suits your remote team.

What Is a Cloud Phone System?

A cloud phone system is a business VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone system that allows you to make and receive business phone calls through your internet connection.

Because your phone calls are managed in the cloud over the internet, you and your employees can take calls from anywhere. You don’t need to be physically connected via an on-premise landline, as you would in a traditional phone system.

Cloud phone system is perfect for remote teams. Instead of employees giving out their personal cell phone numbers for business calls, they can receive inbound business phone calls using the virtual business phone number app on their cell phones.

As a remote company with 200+ team members worldwide, we’ve had many people ask us at WPBeginner what software we use for payroll, email marketing, phone systems, and other business needs.

That being said, here are the top business cloud phone systems for remote teams, starting with our own favorite.

Rank	Cloud Phone System	Best For	Price
🥇	Nextiva	Unified communications	Starts at $21/mo
🥈	RingCentral	Team collaboration	Starts at $20/mo
🥉	Zoom Phone	Phone and video meetings	Starts at $10/mo
4	Grasshopper	Unlimited texting	Starts at $14/mo
5	Ooma Office	Toll-free numbers	Starts at $19.95/mo
6	Phone.com	Basic features	Starts at $12.74/mo
7	Google Voice	Personal use	Free plan available

Now, let’s dive into the full reviews of the best cloud phone systems.

1. Nextiva

Nextiva offers an excellent easy-to-use cloud phone service that’s ideal for remote teams. It comes with all the features and functionality you need for your business communications, such as unlimited free domestic calls, advanced call routing, voicemail to email and text, SMS messages, auto attendant, and online faxing.

The web-based admin panel is simple to use and manage. You get a free local or toll-free number, free number porting, and all the call management features you’d expect. These include caller ID, call forwarding, custom greetings, auto-attendant, advanced IVR (interactive voice response) system, and more.

Within the US and Canada, you have unlimited VoIP calling with Nextiva. For international calls, they have very affordable rates.

The Nextiva communication platform offers additional powerful features that integrate with your phone system. These include a fully-featured CRM, marketing automation, and live chat, making Nextiva an UCaaS (unified communications system as a service), also called a complete cloud platform.

Nextiva also offers online surveys and call analytics. The voice analytics software gives you real-time insights into phone activity across your organization. This lets you monitor call volumes and spot potential problems.

Larger companies, contact centers, and call centers often use Nextiva to transition their existing private branch exchange (PBX) system into a powerful cloud phone system.

You can use your existing desk phones with Nextiva, or you can buy IP phones for your remote team to use instead. Nextiva also offers computer apps that work as a ‘softphone’, so your team can make voice calls through their computer.

Nextiva also has a business phone app that works on iPhones (iOS) and Android smartphones.

Most importantly, Nextiva gives you great call quality, uptime, and connectivity through its incredibly reliable data centers. They have had no outages at all in the last two years.

If you ever need any help with your business phone service, their customer service team is always helpful and responsive.

Price: Nextiva starts from $21/user/month with our Nextiva coupon. Regular pricing starts at $30/user/month.

Editorial Note: We use Nextiva for our team at WPBeginner and Awesome Motive. We’ve been huge fans of their platform and highly recommend them.

2. RingCentral

RingCentral is another popular cloud-based VoIP system for remote teams. Their feature-rich system includes all the standard options you’d expect, like unlimited cloud calling, call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, text messages, online faxing, automatic call recording, team messaging, call monitoring, and more.

You also get video conferencing with screen sharing, plus integration addons with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Dropbox, Microsoft Office365, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and other services. This can enable RingCentral to operate as the heart of your communications platform.

Like Nextiva, RingCentral will not charge you for calls in the US and Canada, no matter how many calls you make. Your team members can take calls through the RingCentral mobile or desktop app, giving them plenty of flexibility.

RingCentral also works as a cloud PBX or virtual PBX system, meaning incoming calls can easily be routed to the right department or extension. You can also add extra virtual phone lines as needed.

You can also use RingCentral to buy vanity phone numbers like 1-800-GoFedEX.

Price: RingCentral costs from $20/user/month, billed annually. There’s also a free 15-day trial available. This gives you a maximum of 5 users and 50 minutes of talk time per user.

3. Zoom Phone

Zoom Phone is an affordable cloud phone service provider that’s built on top of the user-friendly Zoom platform. It’s an all-in-one VoIP solution that includes unlimited calls, video conferencing, and team chat.

Zoom Phone allows you to select a U.S. or Canada-based number, toll-free number, or you can port an existing phone number. It offers essential features like call forwarding, call routing, voicemail transcription, auto attendants, music on hold, call queues, call logs, call recording, call monitoring, SMS, and more.

Plus, with the click of a button, you can turn a phone call into a Zoom Meeting without requiring participants to manually join. This is a great way to streamline collaboration with your customers and team members.

It also seamlessly connects with CRM software like Salesforce and offers integrations for Google Workspace, Microsoft Outlook, and Slack as well.

Zoom Phone is easy to set up and use. Simply choose a cloud phone plan and you can start using the Zoom mobile or desktop app to make calls right away.

Price: Zoom Phone starts at $10/user/month for unlimited internal calls. For unlimited outbound calls, pricing starts at $15/user/month.

4. Grasshopper

Grasshopper is a great virtual phone system for small businesses. It gives you a virtual phone number that can forward calls to any phone number or mobile device.

You get all the cloud phone system features you’d expect, including call forwarding, routing, hold music, voicemail to email, unlimited business texting, and more. There’s a mobile app plus a desktop app, so it’s easy for your team to use while working remotely.

With Grasshopper, you are able to get a US or Canadian local or toll-free number. You can also add custom greetings and extensions. All Grasshopper’s plans include unlimited minutes.

Other notable calling features include virtual receptionists, simultaneous call handling, quick response, and more. However, it doesn’t offer international calls on any plan.

Price: Grasshopper costs from $14/month, billed annually for one phone number and one user. You can upgrade to the Solo Plus plan, which costs $25/month, for unlimited users and up to 3 extensions.

5. Ooma Office

Ooma Office is a popular business VoIP provider that makes a great cloud communications solution for remote teams. It gives you lots of useful features like a virtual receptionist, extension dialing, hold music, ring groups, a mobile app, a desktop app, and more.

You can add a toll-free number (1-800 number) for free. There are also toll-free calling plans, so you get more minutes of incoming toll-free calls per month.

It’s simple to get your cloud VoIP phone system set up with Ooma. You have the option to keep your existing business number or get a new one from Ooma.

Ooma also operates as a cloud PBX or hosted PBX system. This means it’s easy to transfer calls and enable team collaboration between remote employees.

You can set up team members with their own phone, purchased from Ooma or from a third party. Alternatively, you can reduce the upfront costs by creating a new line that directs to the employee’s existing Android or iOS device.

Keep in mind that with any phone system, your team members will need a reasonable amount of bandwidth (upload speed) to make high-quality calls.

Price: Ooma pricing starts at $19.95/user/month.

6. Phone.com

Phone.com offers a simple web interface and mobile app to manage your cloud office phone system. Like the other phone system providers we’ve covered, they offer all the standard features you’d expect. These include call forwarding, call routing, caller ID, text messaging, call queues, voicemail to email, conference calling, and more.

Phone.com includes Canada plus some European countries in their local call minutes. This makes calling out to those countries much more cost-effective.

With Phone.com, you can also pay for extra telephony features, including call recording and more phone numbers.

The cheapest plan limits you to 500 monthly minutes and doesn’t include text messages. This may be enough for your business needs if your small company doesn’t make many calls or texts.

There’s also 24/7 live customer support in case you need help getting set up.

Price: Phone.com pricing starts at $12.74/user/month when billed annually.

7. Google Voice

Google Voice is a cloud business phone system from Google. It offers all the features you need, like free calling to US and Canadian numbers, call forwarding, voicemail transcription, text messaging, call screening, and more.

With Google Voice, you also get integration with Google Calendar, Google Fi, and Google Meet.

A Google Voice number can be used through cell phones or through the desktop/laptop app with a dial pad, letting your employees work on the go. They can set their Voice number to forward to their mobile phone or other devices.

Price: Google Voice is free for personal use. The business plans pricing is from $10/user/month.

Which Is the Best Cloud Phone System for Your Team?

We believe that Nextiva is the best cloud phone system for remote teams. It has lots of advanced features, excellent support, and scalability. You can easily add remote team members and set up call-forwarding rules.

Nextiva’s mobile and desktop apps are easy to use. This makes it a great phone solution for remote business owners and teams when hands-on training is difficult.

Plus, Nextiva’s unified communication platform comes with built-in CRM, marketing automations, and live chat features.

This is why we use Nextiva on WPBeginner and believe it’s the best cloud phone system in the market.

If you want an alternative to Nextiva, RingCentral is another excellent option. It has similar features and comes as a close second in our list.

Disclaimer: We also looked into many other cloud business phone systems that are not listed in this article like Vonage, 8×8, Dialpad, eVoice, and so on. But, we decided it wasn’t best to include them because we don’t want to cause choice paralysis.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Cloud Phone Systems

Here at WPBeginner, we’ve helped thousands of business owners find the best cloud phone system for their business needs. So, we’ve answered quite a lot of questions.

Below are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about cloud business phone systems:

What are the pros and cons of cloud-based phone systems?

Before investing in a cloud phone system for your business, you should consider the pros and cons.

The pros of a cloud-based phone system are:

• More cost effective than traditional analog phone systems.
• Quicker and easier to set up compared to traditional phone systems.
• You can work from anywhere with an internet connection, which makes it perfect for remote or hybrid work.
• Unified communications for phone calls, video calls, instant messaging, online faxing, etc.
• Easier to scale than traditional phone lines.

The cons of a cloud-based phone system are:

• You need a reliable internet connection.
• Slow internet speeds can cause call quality issues like latency and jitter.
• It provides limited location info for emergency calls.

How much does a cloud phone system cost?

The price of cloud phone services typically range from $0 to $50 per month per user. The price varies based on the specific features you need and the number of users.

We hope this article helped you learn about the best cloud phone systems for remote teams. You might also like our comparison of the best live chat software and best push notification software to connect with your customers after they leave your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.