Vonage vs RingCentral: What’s best in 2020 | InnoList

Vonage and RingCentral are VoIP providers that offer plans with unlimited calling, an auto attendant as well as other features. Vonage offers three plans starting as low as $14.99 while RingCentral has four plans starting as low as $19.99. However, RingCentral is generally more robust while Vonage is customizable to meet specific needs.

When to Use RingCentral

RingCentral is more powerful out of the box, and its conferencing options are superior to Vonage, making it best to use if you want to make a lot of conference calls, operate a call center or make or receive calls from anywhere in the world. With a built-in conferencing system, video and audio conferencing is unlimited with all plans and supports as many as 200 callers, benefitting companies that hold virtual meetings.

When to Use Vonage

Vonage provides a phone system that can be customized with added features and should be used if you have specific calling needs that aren’t supported by prepackaged calling plans. Unlike RingCentral, you can customize your plan with add-on functions like call recording, visual voicemail and other premium features. This proves to be a benefit for businesses that need a specialized business phone system.

When to Use an Alternative

If either of these two options are robust for your needs, we recommend Grasshopper if you’re a solopreneur or a smaller business. The pricing is relatively similar, and it’s our best virtual phone number provider, making it the best to use if you need a business number on your personal cellphone as well as things like access to an auto attendant to help you look more professional.

Pricing and Features

RingCentral and Vonage both have pricing that is dependent on the tier and features selected as well as on things like annual or monthly billing and number of users. RingCentral can start as low as $19.99 while Vonage can start as low as $14.99.

However, this is for a larger number of users billed annually, and the prices below reflect monthly billing for up to four to five users. For specific billing and discounts based on annual billing and number of users, contact either RingCentral or Vonage.

Essentials

With RingCentral’s essentials package, you get 100 toll-free minutes, unlimited calling and SMS messages, voicemail to email, conference calling for up to four attendees, collaboration tools and 24/7 customer support. This is the starter package and starts at $29.99 with no volume discounts.

This plan is best suited for the small business with that has a smaller team and needs a simple calling solution. Unlike the other plans, the features and benefits are only available if your business has 10 users or less. So, if your business expands and gains more employees, you’ll need to upgrade to the Standard plan.

Collaboration Tools

RingCentral has the advantage over Vonage when it comes to collaboration tools because of its inclusion of Glip. Available at all price plans, Glip is the video chat conferencing tool that is built-in to the RingCentral system, meaning that you and your team can hold video conferences without having to use another application. It also provides video to chat, file sharing and group collaboration on documents, allowing you to eliminate multiple apps and get it all done with one.

Mobility

RingCentral and Vonage both provide a mobile app for both Android and iOS phones. Both providers offer the capability to integrate your other smart devices and tablets to the system, so there isn’t much to differentiate the two providers when it comes to mobile apps and therefore no need to look for a RingCentral alternative if this is your main focus.

Integration

RingCentral integrates with Salesforce, Zendesk and Desk.com for tracking all activities within your business. An advantage over Vonage is that RingCentral also integrates with Dropbox allowing you to fax directly from your Dropbox. Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive for file storage are also available at no additional cost.

If you need a CRM to keep track of your sales process or any interactions with your customers, check out Insightly. It offers a highly customizable CRM that can be used as anything from a contact management software to a project management tool. Check it out today for more information and to see how to integrate with RingCentral.

Customer Reviews

RingCentral and Vonage both offer great customer service and a wealth of information about how to use the service and different methods of getting help when needed. However, users have both positive and negative experiences using the two phone providers.

RingCentral Customer Reviews

Users who provided positive reviews of RingCentral were satisfied with the wide range of features offered while negative reviewers were disappointed with the inflexibility of the plan structure. For a more in-depth summary of user reviews, check out our user reviews of RingCentral.

Vonage Customer Reviews

Customers who provided positive feedback of Vonage were satisfied with the call quality and flexible plans. Negative feedback was provided by customers who were disappointed with how expensive the flexible plans can become as more features are added. For a more in-depth summary of user reviews, check out our user reviews of Vonage.

The Bottom Line

RingCentral and Vonage both deliver excellent phone services at different prices to meet your needs. While Vonage offers customizable plans that allow you to pick and choose the features you’d like to have, RingCentral comes out ahead because it offers strong built-in conferencing features, an easy out-of-the-box setup and 24/7 support. If neither are suits your small business, then check out banter, one of the best business phone systems in the industry.

A brief introduction about ‘banter’

Get a business phone line for just $4.99/month

Most of the offering in the VoIP market is unlimited plans, with a little or no space for the customer to make a choice, and a recent study has shown that 80% of the unlimited plans go unused. Breaking this standard pricing model ‘banter’ has introduced tiered pricing solutions, helping you save more than 50% of your phone bills.

Note that the prices mentioned or discussed in the article are subjected to change.