Alternatives to Broadvoice: The definitive rankings

We wager you’ve landed on this article about alternatives to Broadvoice for one of two reasons:

You currently use Broadvoice and think it’s time to look for a new VoIP provider,
or
You’ve researched Broadvoice and aren’t sure it’s the right choice for your business.

Whether it’s one of these cases or a mystery third, you’ve come to the right place. Broadvoice is a solid PBX provider, especially for small businesses on a budget. They’re an affordable, no-frills cloud phone service that touts flexibility and scalability, with a generally happy base of customers.

But hold the phone: you might need more features or reliability than Broadvoice can provide. They currently don’t offer advanced call routing, and their video conferencing and call recording options are separate from their cloud PBX. If you think these services will come in handy for your business, it might be a good idea to shop around.

So, Broadvoice might not feel like the best fit. You’re not alone. Every small business is unique, with different needs when it comes to connecting with their customers. And there’s good news about the world of VoIP technology today: you have options!

Lots of options.

So many options, in fact, that it’s hard to know where even to start.

Before the cold sweat kicks in: we’ve got you covered. We rounded up and ranked six of the top alternatives to Broadvoice, with small businesses in mind. These are affordable options (some more than others) that offer different levels of service and features, depending on your price point and needs.

How we ranked these 6 alternatives to Broadvoice

These are the criteria we used for this comprehensive ranking of UCaaS products:

• Ease of use. Time is a valuable resource for small businesses, so we looked into customer reviews about how easily folks adapted to the new software.
• Quality of service. In a small business, outages can mean the loss of real customers. How reliable is the cloud phone connection?
• Affordability. Every dollar counts when you run a small business. How much will this service impact your bottom line?
• Integrations. How well does the platform sync with your current applications, like your CRM or email client? The less toggling you have to do, the better.
• Customer support. How easy is it to reach the tech team, and how helpful are they in a crisis?
• Overall value. Affordability is important, and the features you get for that price determines a product’s true value. A la carte apps might look cheapest on the surface, but the add-ons can really add up.

Based on these criteria, here’s our ranking of six alternatives to Broadvoice and what they’re best for:

1. RingCentral: Best overall for quality and value
2. 8×8: An affordable step up from Broadvoice
3. Fuze: Good for on-site teams
4. Dialpad: Easy to use
5. Vonage: A fan of small businesses
6. Star2Star: Good for disaster recovery

1. RingCentral: Best overall for quality and value

TechRadar named RingCentral the #1 VoIP service provider of 2020 [1], and small businesses love the reasons why.

RingCentral earned top marks for best overall quality of calls, ease of use, and our range of pricings to satisfy any budget. As a small business owner, you’ve probably learned that real value beats the cheapest price every time. RingCentral is both affordable and offers a high-quality VoIP phone system for businesses of all sizes, with toll-free minutes included at every pricing tier. Plus, the app has a clean, beautiful interface:

RingCentral is so much more than a cloud phone, though. This modern system comes with over 50 robust features that let you turn any mobile device into a powerful business tool, including:

• 99.999% uptime SLA and guaranteed high quality of service (versus Broadvoice’s 99.99%)
• Full cloud PBX service in 40+ countries
• Easy-to-use desktop and mobile app
• Business numbers for desk and mobile devices: over 200 area codes available
• HD quality for voice and video
• Unlimited audio conferencing
• Up to 200 video conference participants
• Team messaging and collaboration: group chat, file sharing, tasks
• Voicemail transcription for easy reading
• Business SMS and online fax
• Seven layers of security across all devices
• 24/7 live support: phone, chat, email

RingCentral app integrations

RingCentral also pairs seamlessly with over 200 popular third-party apps. You can sync a CRM like Salesforce with RingCentral to track and route every  interaction for better customer service and lead nurturing:

All of these features add up to time saved on manual tasks and toggling between different tools, which means more time spent on the work that matters most to growing your influence. That’s real value for a small business.

RingCentral customer engagement

And speaking of growing your business: RingCentral also offers an omnichannel contact center that can take your customer service game to the next level:

This additional service helps you handle and track all your customer interactions—phone calls, emails, text messages, even social media comments—all from one easy-to-use platform that’s built for collaboration.

RingCentral customer reviews

It’s one thing to brag about our own VoIP phone service, but how does any of this work in the real world? Here’s what customers are saying about RingCentral:

“I am totally satisfied with all aspects of RingCentral! – Fairly priced – 99.999% uptime – Excellent tech support. I can offer no higher recommendation. Thank you!” – William Kisse, RingCentral user

“Within the first week, we deployed to hundreds of employees. A few weeks later, thousands. The app works great for users, managers and admins. User adoption rate is impressive. I can’t say enough to promote RingCentral support and professional services. Thank you for bringing so much to a modern, easy to use interface.” – Justin Davidson, RingCentral user

“The system was built so that minor problems can be handled by the end-user, on average. When help is needed it’s available immediately by chat. Most everything is resolved on the first attempt. If not, RingCentral escalated immediately. Having the ability to expand our system and network at the touch of a keyboard is invaluable. Additionally, integrating with Salesforce was a snap. We couldn’t be happier with the choice we’ve made in this technology for our business.” – Ron Joyal, RingCentral user

“I was stressed about changing business phone plans, especially during these challenging times. The staff at RingCentral were absolutely awesome to work with. The implementation team went above and beyond to make sure everything was set up and configured properly as well as making sure that I understood the setting in the Admin console. The mobile app and softphone app work very well. I’ve tried and tested several different plans without too much success. I would highly recommend RingCentral.” – Thomas Cote, RingCentral user

If you’re interested, we’ve compiled all of our online reviews for easy reading. Read more RingCentral customer reviews.

🕹️ Get a hands-on look at how RingCentral works by booking a product tour:

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💰 You can also use this calculator to see roughly how much your business could save by using RingCentral to support your team’s communication with each other—and clients.

2. 8×8: An affordable step up from Broadvoice

8×8 is another solid choice for small businesses in need of VoIP services, and it’s ranked high because of its affordability. Upfront, they’re on par with Broadvoice for price. They offer competitive quotes, short contracts, and deep discounts. But buyer beware: their pricing can be a real study in “you get what you pay for.”

We recently did a deep dive on 8×8, and here’s what we found. Compared with RingCentral, 8×8 falls short on live phone support availability (only certain products qualify), and their number of app integrations (a couple dozen versus RingCentral’s 200+). They still deliver good service and a user-friendly interface, and they rank well overall as a VoIP service provider.

What’s the verdict? 8×8 could be the right choice if you’re looking to spend about the same as you would on Broadvoice for a new VoIP provider. But like Broadvoice, be prepared to pay more for additional features over time. This might mean outgrowing their service more quickly than an all-inclusive, scalable choice like RingCentral.

3. Fuze: Good for on-site teams

Fuze is a solid unified communications platform. Just like RingCentral, they offer a 99.999% uptime and one central app for all of their capabilities, which makes your life easier. They’re also in the Top 3 of Gartner’s 2019 UCaaS Magic Quadrant [2] for completeness of vision (behind RingCentral, who has been an MQ leader for five years):

There’s a reason RingCentral is so far out in front, though. If your business has distributed teams—either in different office spaces, on the road, or working from home—Fuze might not be the right platform for you.

According to recent customer reviews of Fuze, their main pitfalls are call quality, service reliability, and tech support. People have complained about the app itself freezing or seizing up and taking a long time to get started. They’ve also struggled with the mobile messaging feature crashing and slow or unavailable phone service.

As a small business, these are areas that could really cost your business valuable time and customers. And if your team works from home or on the road, issues with the app could slow down collaboration.

(RingCentral, on the other hand, won PCMag’s Editors’ Choice Award for our reliable service and easy-to-use app. Just sayin’.)

4. Dialpad: Easy to use

Dialpad offers low-cost plans for small businesses. Besides the price point, customers most appreciate the easy installation and ease of use, and Dialpad integrates with a few of the big-name apps: Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft 365, and a handful of others. Their paid plans include some of the features RingCentral offers: cloud phone, video, and text messaging capabilities, as well as internal group chat in one app.

But just like the other more cost-conscious options on this list, you might notice the difference in quality. While RingCentral guarantees just about the highest level of phone service in the industry, Dialpad customers have complained about spotty calls over Wi-Fi at times. [3]

Also, their video conferencing software is somewhat in flux; they recently acquired Highfive for this functionality within the app after outgrowing UberConference. [4] This could mean the video portion of Dialpad improves and becomes more powerful. But there could also be some growing pains that customers feel while the companies merge, especially when it comes to tech support for the new service. Only time will tell.

5. Vonage: A fan of small businesses

Vonage is a big name in the communications game, and for good reason. Like RingCentral, they offer an extensive set of features with several tiers of pricing and service, so you can choose the plan that makes the most sense for your small business and the option to add on a customer engagement suite.

They also have a good-sized base of customers who are small business owners, which means they know what they’re doing when it comes to your unique needs.

There are, of course, a few catches. For one, they’re one of the most expensive products on this list. You also can’t sample the app with a free trial. So if you’re considering Vonage, be sure to ask lots of questions about functionality specific to your business needs before signing that contract.

Vonage also owns less of their tech than RingCentral for some of their features. That means behind their app, Vonage is juggling several different platforms, which might lead to snags in seamlessness on your end.

6. Star2Star: Good for disaster recovery

Star2Star is another top contender for small business VoIP, offering a 99.999% uptime SLA just like RingCentral. Customers seem happy with the ease of use and price, and Star2Star touts being affordable, but they don’t list their plan prices on the website.

Star2Star has also come out strong on their disaster recovery capabilities: the ability to keep your business up and running no matter what happens, thanks to the cloud and constant monitoring of service.

It’s worth noting, though, that these functions and the other few they list for disaster recovery all come standard in other UCaaS offerings, including RingCentral, so it’s not clear how exactly they’re doing disaster recovery better than their competitors.

Star2Star includes the ability for external collaboration through their messaging feature, but it’s limited to, at most, 20 outside contributors at their highest price point. This might not be the best product for your business if you’re any kind of consulting or creative team that collaborates heavily with your clients, sending drafts or other items back and forth for multiple projects at once via the messaging function.

It’s also unclear what the video conferencing capacities are at each pricing tier, so be sure to ask about this if face-to-face remote meetings are important to your business.

Which alternatives to Broadvoice are right for your small business?

RingCentral is the clear industry leader and offers serious bang for your buck thanks to hundreds of integrations, team collaboration tools, and high-quality phone and video service. But we know every small business is different, and that’s why we pulled together this diverse set of alternatives to Broadvoice for you to investigate as you weigh your options and priorities.

It’s always a good idea to take these products for a test drive with your team, so you can choose with confidence the option that makes their lives easier and increases productivity. Our biggest advice: take advantage of free trials or demos from the tools on this list, or others that you’re researching, before you buy.

[1] “Best VoIP services of 2020.” techradar.com/best/best-voip-service

[2] This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from RingCentral. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide, Daniel O’Connell, Megan Fernandez, Rafael Benitez, Christopher Trueman, Sebastian Hernandez; 30 July 2019.

[3] “Dialpad Talk Reviews 2020.” capterra.com/p/148730/Dialpad/reviews

[4] “Dialpad acquires video conferencing service Highfive.” https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/01/dialpad-acquires-video-conferencing-service-highfive/

Originally published Jul 01, 2020, updated Nov 04, 2024