Old phone systems are holding you back.
You’re juggling high operational costs and a system that can’t keep up with your remote team’s needs. It’s frustrating.
Worse, these clunky systems don’t integrate with your other tools, hindering your team’s communication and overall efficiency.
This isn’t surprising. A report from IMARC Group notes traditional systems lead to high capital expenditure. Those initial hardware and maintenance costs really add up.
But there’s a better way. Modern solutions can slash these costs and boost your team’s reach without the hardware headaches.
If you’re also looking into other business software, my article on best SaaS billing software covers complex pricing.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through my picks for the best cloud telephony software. I’ll show you options that can transform your business communications.
You’ll discover how to cut costs, improve scalability, and easily connect your team, whether they’re in the office or across the globe.
Let’s find your solution.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RingCentral → | Businesses of all sizes | |
| 2 | Nextiva → | Small to mid-sized businesses | |
| 3 | Zoom → | Remote and global teams | |
| 4 | GoTo → | Scaling small businesses | |
| 5 | Dialpad → | Enterprise communication teams |
1. RingCentral
Fragmented communication hindering your team’s efficiency?
RingCentral offers an all-in-one AI communications platform. This means you can bring employee and customer experiences together seamlessly.
This platform helps you manage fragmented communication, supporting remote teams, and adapting to changing business needs. It truly empowers every employee with AI-powered calls.
Here’s a deeper look.
RingCentral helps you achieve seamless communication across teams and locations, streamlining operations. You can easily manage agents, coach performance, and improve customer satisfaction with features like RingCX, powered by AI.
Additionally, with AI Receptionist, your business can offer 24/7 support, answering questions, routing callers, and sending texts. This means you can handle a high volume of inquiries effortlessly, just like Integral Recruiting Services, which handles 93% of calls with AI. Plus, RingSense provides conversation intelligence integrated with your CRM to give instant summaries and AI-powered coaching.
The result is improved customer service and reduced operational costs.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of Best IT Infrastructure Monitoring Tools helpful for maintaining optimal system performance.
Key features:
- AI Communications Platform: Combines business phone, AI receptionist, contact center, conversation intelligence, and video meetings for unified communication across devices.
- Advanced AI Capabilities: Includes features like AI Receptionist for 24/7 support and accurate call routing, and RingSense for conversation intelligence with CRM integration.
- Global Scale & Reliability: Trusted by over 400,000 customers in 100+ countries with 99.999% availability, ensuring mission-critical communication for all business sizes.
RingCentral features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: RingCentral’s comprehensive AI communications platform is a strong contender for the best cloud telephony software. Its integrated features, from AI Receptionist handling 93% of calls to deep CRM integration via RingSense, significantly reduce operational costs and boost team reach by streamlining all communication channels for businesses of any size.
2. Nextiva
Struggling with fragmented communications and rising costs?
Nextiva offers a Unified-CXM platform, bringing all customer interactions into one AI-powered solution. This means you can centralize voice, chat, SMS, and social media, streamlining operations and boosting your team’s reach. It’s an integrated solution that drives competitive advantage. Here’s how it helps.
Nextiva unifies all customer interactions, allowing you to engage with customers through any channel. You can manage inbound/outbound voice, live chat, business SMS, and video meetings within a single platform. This includes intelligent and skills-based routing, ensuring customers reach the right person quickly and efficiently, reducing wait times and improving satisfaction. Additionally, Nextiva provides a robust AI-powered contact center, offering features like generative AI knowledge bases and real-time dashboards for supervisors. You can leverage intelligent virtual assistants and secure payment assist, making interactions smoother and more secure. The result is better outcomes to drive business performance.
Key features:
- Unified Agent Experience: Centralizes all customer interactions across various channels, including voice, chat, and social media, into a single platform for seamless communication and enhanced team productivity.
- AI-Powered Contact Center: Offers advanced capabilities like intelligent routing, virtual assistants, and sentiment analysis to automate tasks, improve agent efficiency, and deliver personalized customer support at scale.
- Workforce Engagement Management: Provides tools for monitoring, coaching, quality surveys, and scheduling, designed to simplify management, reduce agent fatigue, and increase employee retention.
Nextiva features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For businesses aiming to reduce operational costs, unify communications, and boost team efficiency, Nextiva stands out as a best cloud telephony software. Its AI-powered platform with unified communication, intelligent routing, and proven cost reductions makes it a strong contender for any size business.
3. Zoom
Struggling with fragmented communication and high costs?
Your business needs a unified platform for seamless team and customer connections. This means bringing all your interactions together.
Zoom helps you achieve this by providing a reliable and adaptable solution, enabling your teams to connect effortlessly, wherever they are. This streamlines operations and significantly boosts your efficiency.
Here’s how to cut costs.
Zoom offers a complete communication platform, making it easier for you to manage calls, meetings, and collaboration in one place. You can connect with anyone, anywhere, ensuring your communication is always clear.
This platform integrates various communication needs, from video meetings to phone calls, giving your team the flexibility to choose how they connect. You gain the ability to scale your operations rapidly.
Additionally, Zoom’s robust infrastructure supports global connectivity, empowering your remote teams to maintain productivity and collaborate effectively without geographical limitations, fostering a cohesive and responsive work environment for everyone.
The result: a powerful communication hub.
While exploring various digital solutions, you might also want to review my guide on the best NFT platform to pick for your future projects.
Key features:
- Unified Communication Platform: Streamline all your communication, from video meetings to phone calls, within a single, intuitive platform, reducing operational complexity.
- Flexible Connectivity Options: Empower your team to connect through various methods, ensuring seamless internal and external communication regardless of location or device.
- Scalable Global Infrastructure: Grow your business confidently with a reliable and adaptable cloud solution that supports expanding team sizes and international reach.
Zoom features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you are seeking the best cloud telephony software to unify communications, reduce costs, and support remote teams, Zoom is an excellent choice. It offers powerful features for seamless collaboration and efficient operations, helping your business adapt and thrive.
4. GoTo
Tired of fragmented communication and high telephony costs?
GoTo Connect brings all-in-one business communication, including a cloud-based phone system and softphone, right to your fingertips. This means you can consolidate your communication tools, empowering your remote teams with seamless connectivity.
The software helps you manage fragmented communication, supporting remote teams and adapting to changing business needs. This offers an easy-to-use, easy-to-manage smart business phone system. The result is reduced operational costs and increased efficiency, freeing up your limited resources.
Here’s how GoTo helps you.
GoTo Connect simplifies how your organization connects, engages, and builds relationships with its AI-powered, cloud communications platform. It’s designed to be effortless to scale and remarkably affordable, addressing scalability issues and high operational costs.
You gain access to a comprehensive suite of customer experience tools, including a phone system, softphone, digital channels, and advanced reporting. This offers unbeatable value for improving customer service outcomes. Additionally, the AI-powered omnichannel contact center solution empowers agents and informs supervisors.
Plus, GoTo Connect’s AI Receptionist is a 24/7 smart assistant, ensuring no customer inquiries are missed and freeing your team for higher-value work. This feature integrates seamlessly, simplifying setup and workflow for superior customer service.
Elevate your communication and cut costs.
Key features:
- GoTo Connect Phone System: Provides an easy-to-use, easy-to-manage smart business phone system with over 100 features for all your communication needs, perfect for scaling.
- GoTo Connect CX: Offers a comprehensive suite of customer experience tools, including a phone system, softphone, and advanced reporting for unbeatable value.
- AI Receptionist: A 24/7 smart assistant built into GoTo Connect to handle incoming calls, automate tasks, and improve customer service, reclaiming your team’s time.
GoTo features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you’re seeking the best cloud telephony software to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance customer interactions, GoTo is an excellent choice. Its AI-powered capabilities like the AI Receptionist and comprehensive CX tools help overcome fragmented communications and integrate with existing workflows for reliable, scalable solutions.
5. Dialpad
Struggling with fragmented communication and escalating costs?
Dialpad offers an AI-powered customer communications platform for calls, messages, and meetings, ideal for your team’s diverse needs. This means you can consolidate fragmented systems, making communication cohesive and efficient, thereby reducing overhead.
This integrated approach helps your business achieve seamless communication across teams and locations, addressing common pain points like complicated legacy systems and high operational costs. The result? A more streamlined and cost-effective communication environment.
Here’s how Dialpad helps.
It delivers real-time AI insights to enhance and streamline every interaction, providing instant summaries and action items. This can include AI agents, assistants, and coaching to boost productivity.
Additionally, Dialpad is built for enterprise communication, ensuring unmatched accuracy and security with its proprietary AI model. You get reliable, resilient, and scalable performance, bringing your teams and workflows together on a dual-cloud architecture.
Plus, with integrations for Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Teams, and Google Workspace, Dialpad helps your business run smoothly, addressing difficulties in integrating telephony with existing CRM or sales workflows.
This means improved customer service outcomes.
Key features:
- AI-Powered Customer Communications: Provides real-time AI insights for calls, messages, and meetings, including instant summaries and action items, enhancing efficiency and streamlining interactions.
- Integrated Solutions for Sales and Support: Offers a next-gen contact center with AI agents and coaching, alongside outbound sales call capabilities with real-time AI insights and automations.
- Reliable and Scalable Enterprise Platform: Built on a dual-cloud architecture for best-in-class resiliency, reliability, and security, supporting over 30,000 customers in 70+ countries.
Dialpad features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If your team is looking to achieve seamless communication while reducing operational costs and scaling quickly, Dialpad emerges as a strong contender for the best cloud telephony software. Its AI-powered platform with deep integrations and proven efficiency gains, such as a 25% time reduction for Sunstate Equipment, makes it an excellent choice for improving workflows and customer interactions.
6. 8×8
Fragmented communication costing your business? There’s a better way.
8×8 offers one intelligent platform, designed to connect your employees and customers globally, simplifying communication. This means you can overcome the challenges of supporting remote teams and adapting to new business needs.
The software addresses your pain points by helping you maximize operational efficiencies through powerful automation. Additionally, it helps you modernize legacy systems and mitigate risk, ensuring secure and compliant communications.
So, how does it help your business?
8×8 simplifies complex communication challenges by offering a unified platform for every conversation. Here’s how it solves problems like high operational costs and scalability issues.
You can supercharge your customer experience with solutions like 8×8 Contact Center, which powers agents with AI to simplify operations and delight customers. This offers powerful automation and data-driven insights.
Additionally, 8×8 Work provides an AI-enabled communications suite connecting teams and customers globally. It also offers no-code APIs for connecting with customers on their preferred channels, alongside 8×8 Engage, empowering all customer-facing teams with ease.
The result is increased revenue and funds raised.
Key features:
- Unified Communications Platform: Connects employees and customers globally with an AI-enabled communications suite, fostering seamless internal and external conversations for your business.
- AI-Powered Contact Center: Simplifies contact center operations using AI to empower agents, ensuring delightful customer experiences and maximizing your team’s operational efficiencies.
- Flexible Communications APIs: Enables you to connect with customers on their preferred channels from a single platform, offering no-code options for broader reach and engagement.
8×8 features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: 8×8 stands out as a strong contender for the best cloud telephony software, particularly for businesses seeking to modernize fragmented systems and elevate customer experience. With over 3 million trusted business users, including organizations like San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, it provides a unified, secure, and AI-enabled platform to maximize operational efficiencies.
Conclusion
Ready to ditch your old phone system?
I know finding the right tool is tough. You’re balancing high operational costs with the need to support your remote team effectively.
The good news is the savings are real. Research from the 9cv9 blog shows a 90% reduction in startup costs with VoIP. That is a huge win for any small business looking to cut expenses.
So, what’s the best move?
After reviewing them all, I recommend RingCentral. Its all-in-one platform directly solves fragmented communication and boosts your team’s reach effortlessly.
To truly boost team reach, also consider how strategic planning software can streamline cross-team alignment.
What I love is its AI-powered functionality, like the AI Receptionist that handles high call volumes. It’s why I consider it the best cloud telephony software.
I encourage you to explore their options. You can check out RingCentral pricing here to see how it aligns with your budget.
You’ll see the impact immediately.
