Is your old phone system holding you back?
You’re probably facing poor call quality and a system that can’t support your remote team, leading to missed business opportunities.
Plus, maintaining that hardware is a constant drain on your budget and IT resources. It also quickly becomes obsolete.
A Microsoft report highlights that 82% of businesses reported cost savings after moving their communications to the cloud. This shows just how inefficient traditional systems are.
But the right system can solve this, giving you crystal-clear calls and lower costs without the technical headaches of old phone setups.
While we’re discussing IT management, my guide on best remote support software offers valuable insights for your business.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through my top picks for the best cloud phone system to help you choose wisely.
You’ll discover how to improve team connectivity and enhance customer service, all while significantly cutting down on your operational expenses.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RingCentral → | Global enterprises & remote teams | |
| 2 | Nextiva → | Cost-conscious mid-size businesses | |
| 3 | 8×8 → | Small & medium-sized businesses | |
| 4 | Zoom → | Scalable growing businesses | |
| 5 | GoTo → | Cost-sensitive small teams |
1. RingCentral
Are outdated phone systems draining your business resources?
You might be grappling with poor call quality, missed opportunities, and the burden of maintaining expensive, obsolete hardware. This means your remote workforce might struggle with connectivity.
RingCentral provides an all-in-one AI communications platform to handle these issues, bringing employee and customer experiences together seamlessly. You can empower every employee with AI-powered calls, messages, and meetings across devices.
Here’s how to boost your business calls.
RingCentral’s AI Receptionist acts as a 24/7 digital concierge, routing calls, answering questions, and even sending text follow-ups. This ensures you never miss a critical call again, just like Integral Recruiting Services, who handle 93% of their calls with AI Receptionist.
Additionally, with RingCX, you can effortlessly manage agents, coach performance, and improve customer satisfaction with every interaction. You can also explore RingSense to unlock value from every customer interaction with conversation intelligence that’s deeply integrated with your CRM.
Plus, RingCentral offers AI-powered video collaboration.
You can streamline your workflows.
Key features:
- AI Receptionist: Offers 24/7 support with AI that answers questions, routes callers, and sends texts, ensuring no missed calls and efficient handling.
- Integrated Communication: Provides an all-in-one platform for AI-powered calls, messages, and meetings across various devices, enhancing team collaboration.
- Conversation Intelligence: RingSense unlocks valuable insights from customer interactions with automated recordings, instant summaries, and AI-powered coaching.
RingCentral features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: RingCentral stands out as a reliable and global leader in AI communications, making it an excellent choice for the best cloud phone system. With features like the AI Receptionist and integrated communications, businesses like Heartland Dental have handled over 1 million inquiries per month, increasing chat inquiries by 2X.
2. Nextiva
Struggling with fragmented business communication?
Nextiva unifies all your customer interactions across voice, chat, and social channels, offering a seamless experience.
This means you can say goodbye to outdated systems and complicated setups, and focus on connecting with your customers efficiently.
It’s time to elevate your customer conversations.
Nextiva’s AI-powered Unified-CXM platform helps you acquire, retain, and grow customers by bringing all interactions into one centralized hub. This allows you to engage anywhere, anytime, with personalized support that improves customer lifetime value.
You can operate more efficiently by reducing cost per interaction using their pre-built AI and automation features like generative AI knowledge bases and workflow automation. This boosts workforce productivity and reduces attrition. Additionally, the platform consolidates and integrates your technology investments, cutting IT overhead and enhancing team collaboration. Plus, you get deep insights with conversational analytics and real-time dashboards to improve customer satisfaction.
The result is better outcomes that drive overall business performance.
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Key features:
- Unified Agent Experience: Centralizes all customer interactions from voice, live chat, SMS, and social media into a single inbox for seamless agent operations.
- AI-Powered Contact Center: Offers intelligent routing, predictive dialing, speech-to-text transcription, and sentiment analysis to optimize customer service and agent efficiency.
- Workflow Automation: Provides robust tools like journey orchestration, automated dispositioning, and integration via REST APIs to streamline business processes and improve productivity.
Nextiva features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Nextiva stands out as a best cloud phone system for businesses aiming to cut costs and improve communication, offering an AI-powered Unified-CXM platform that consolidates diverse channels, automates workflows, and provides real-time analytics to boost customer and employee satisfaction.
3. 8×8
Are outdated phone systems holding your business back? This means you’re likely struggling with poor call quality and missed opportunities that impact your bottom line.
8×8 offers a single intelligent platform that connects your employees and customers, designed to deliver the outcomes that matter most to your business. This solution targets frustrations like complicated setups and expensive hardware.
The result is a powerful, unified platform that modernizes your communications while increasing operational efficiencies. You’ll find it easy to manage, reducing the burden on your IT resources.
Ready to simplify your communications?
8×8 tackles communication challenges head-on by unifying contact center solutions, unified communications, and no-code APIs onto one platform. This allows you to build customer loyalty through top-tier customer experiences.
The platform helps you become a well-oiled customer experience machine with powerful automation and data-driven insights, ensuring a seamless transition to cloud telephony that reduces operational costs and improves team connectivity. It also redefines your customer experience with an intentionally engineered platform to propel business growth today and tomorrow.
Plus, 8×8 enhances Microsoft Teams with advanced communication capabilities and contact center integrations, empowering all customer-facing teams to stay connected. This holistic approach ensures secure, compliant, and accessible communications across your entire organization.
Ultimately, you can build trust and drive business impact.
Key features:
- Unified Communications & Contact Center: Connects employees and customers on one intelligent platform, streamlining interactions and improving customer service.
- AI-Enabled Communications Suite: Leverages AI to simplify contact center operations and provide data-driven insights for maximizing operational efficiencies.
- No-Code Communications APIs: Allows you to connect with customers on their preferred channels from a single platform, enhancing customer reach and convenience.
8×8 features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For small and medium-sized businesses aiming to cut costs and boost customer service, 8×8 stands out as a best cloud phone system. Its unified platform and AI-enabled insights help maximize operational efficiencies and modernize legacy systems, making communications faster and easier, as seen in Southampton FC’s ability to react to change in seconds.
4. Zoom
Struggling with outdated, expensive business communication?
You need a scalable system that supports your growing team and remote work flexibility. This means your business calls will be clear, reliable, and always available.
Zoom offers a unified platform designed to help you streamline your communications and boost productivity.
What if your calls just worked?
Zoom integrates phone, chat, meetings, and more into one easy-to-use platform. This helps you save money and simplifies your entire communication setup.
You can connect your teams and customers with seamless video meetings, reliable phone calls, and intuitive chat, all from one powerful application. Plus, it offers advanced features and integrations to enhance your existing workflows.
The result is truly effortless business communication.
Key features:
- Unified Communications: Combine phone, video, chat, and meetings into a single platform for streamlined team collaboration and simplified customer interactions.
- Cost Efficiency & Scalability: Reduce operational costs by eliminating expensive hardware and scale your communication system easily to support your growing business needs.
- Enhanced Connectivity & Reliability: Ensure crystal-clear call quality and dependable connections, preventing missed opportunities and improving overall customer service.
Zoom features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you’re looking to upgrade your communications, Zoom presents a strong contender for the best cloud phone system. Its unified platform addresses pain points like outdated systems and high costs, offering reliable, scalable solutions for your business.
5. GoTo
Struggling with outdated, unreliable business phone systems?
GoTo Connect offers an AI-powered cloud communications platform, including a phone system and softphone, designed to unify your team’s conversations. This means you can say goodbye to missed calls and hello to effortless, reliable support for your customers.
The software helps you overcome the burden of maintaining expensive hardware by offering a cloud-based solution that is easy to use and manage, and effortless to scale. Plus, it’s remarkably affordable, helping you cut costs.
Here’s how to boost your business calls.
GoTo Connect streamlines how your organization connects, engages, and builds relationships with an all-in-one, AI-powered cloud communications platform. This helps you elevate your customer experience.
You get a smart business phone system with over 100 features for all your communication needs. For example, the AI Receptionist is a 24/7 smart assistant that answers calls, automates tasks, and improves customer service at every step, ensuring no customer inquiry is missed.
Additionally, GoTo Connect CX provides a comprehensive suite of customer experience tools, while the Contact Center offers an AI-powered omnichannel solution to empower your agents. This lets you focus on higher-value work, simplifying setup and integrating seamlessly with your existing workflow.
The result is smarter, more reliable communication.
Key features:
- AI Receptionist: A 24/7 smart assistant handles incoming calls and automates tasks, ensuring no customer inquiries are missed, freeing your team for higher-value work.
- 100+ Business Phone Features: Get a comprehensive cloud-based business phone system packed with capabilities like softphone access and digital channels for diverse communication needs.
- Customer Experience (CX) Suite: Access a full range of customer experience tools and an AI-powered omnichannel contact center solution for elevated customer interactions.
GoTo features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: GoTo Connect stands out as the best cloud phone system for businesses aiming to cut costs and improve connectivity. With its AI Receptionist and over 100 features, including CX tools and an AI-powered contact center, it transforms communication, as demonstrated by BMW of Murray’s positive experience with unified texting, faxing, and reporting.
6. Dialpad
Struggling with outdated, expensive business communication tools?
You need a solution that simplifies calls, messages, and meetings, while boosting efficiency. Dialpad offers an AI-powered platform designed to elevate every conversation.
This means you can streamline your interactions with real-time AI insights, ensuring that every customer communication is enhanced and optimized.
Unlock smarter business conversations today.
Dialpad solves your communication woes by providing a unified platform for calls, messages, and meetings, complete with instant AI summaries and action items. This reduces the burden of maintaining complex, on-premise systems and ensures you can support your growing remote workforce seamlessly.
You’ll benefit from next-gen contact center solutions, featuring AI agents, assistants, and real-time coaching. Additionally, outbound sales calls gain a massive edge with AI coaching, insights, and automations, saving valuable time and improving overall effectiveness. Furthermore, Dialpad integrates with essential apps like Salesforce and Microsoft Teams, ensuring your existing workflows run smoothly, ultimately driving agent success, reducing training time, and boosting efficiency by consolidating multiple applications onto one reliable platform.
The result is better customer outcomes.
Key features:
- AI-powered insights: Delivers real-time AI coaching, call summaries, and action items for all calls, messages, and meetings, enhancing customer interactions and streamlining workflows.
- Unified communications: Consolidates business calls, messaging, and video meetings onto a single platform, eliminating the need for multiple disparate communication tools and reducing complexity.
- Seamless integrations: Connects with critical business applications like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Microsoft Teams, ensuring smooth data flow and efficient operations across your tech stack.
Dialpad features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Dialpad truly stands out as a best cloud phone system for businesses seeking to modernize their communications. Its robust AI capabilities, like automated call grading and time saved through transcriptions, directly address common pain points, while case studies from RE/MAX and Randstad highlight impressive efficiency gains, making it a powerful choice.
7. Ooma
Tired of unreliable, expensive phone systems?
Ooma offers comprehensive phone, video, and messaging solutions tailored for businesses of any size. This means your remote workforce stays connected with flexible communication tools.
With Ooma, you can ditch the hassle of outdated hardware and enjoy clear call quality with reliable service. The result? Reduced operational costs and enhanced customer service capabilities.
Here’s how Ooma delivers.
Ooma’s business phone service offers a robust suite of features, including virtual receptionist, call parking, and simultaneous ring. This allows you to manage calls efficiently, ensuring no opportunity is missed.
Additionally, Ooma provides a desktop app and mobile app, offering the flexibility for your team to communicate from anywhere. These tools support videoconferencing and team chat, fostering seamless collaboration.
Plus, you get vital customer experience features like a “Contact Us” website widget, shift-to-text, and virtual fax. You also benefit from integrations with popular CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot, ensuring your existing business tools work together to streamline sales and customer interactions.
You can truly boost your business calls and cut costs.
Key features:
- Business Phone Service: Provides phone, video, and messaging solutions with features like virtual receptionist and call management to streamline communication for any business size.
- Mobile and Desktop Apps: Offers flexibility for your team to stay connected and collaborate from any location with features like videoconferencing and team chat.
- CRM Integrations: Seamlessly connects with popular CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot to enhance customer service, sales processes, and overall business efficiency.
Ooma features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you’re seeking a comprehensive, scalable, and cost-effective communication solution, Ooma stands out as a strong contender for the best cloud phone system. Its robust features and integrations make it ideal for businesses aiming to cut costs, improve call quality, and support a growing, distributed workforce effectively.
8. Aircall
Tired of missed calls and lost customer context?
Aircall introduces AI Voice Agent, your always-on teammate, ensuring no inbound call goes unanswered, boosting your productivity.
This means your small or medium business can eliminate the frustration of unreliable connections and missed opportunities, even with limited IT resources.
Here’s how to elevate your customer interactions.
Aircall transforms your sales and customer support by enhancing every interaction with AI Voice Agents, instant insights, and WhatsApp Messaging.
Its AI Voice Agent handles and qualifies inbound calls 24/7, while AI Assist provides real-time conversation intelligence for better prep and follow-up. You can also reach 3 billion WhatsApp users directly from Aircall’s unified hub for calls, texts, and messages, centralizing all your communications. This platform automates busywork, so your team focuses on customer relationships.
The result is smarter sales, achieving better resolution rates, and ultimately, boosting your business calls and cutting costs.
Key features:
- AI Voice Agent: Provides 24/7 autonomous handling and qualification of inbound calls, ensuring no calls are missed and customers always receive assistance.
- AI Assist: Offers real-time conversation intelligence and AI-powered workflows to optimize call preparation and follow-up for sales and customer support.
- 100+ Integrations: Connects seamlessly with essential business tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk, centralizing data for improved efficiency and context.
Aircall features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: For any growing business aiming to enhance customer service and streamline operations, Aircall stands out as a strong contender for the best cloud phone system. Its AI-powered features, like AI Voice Agent and AI Assist, coupled with over 100 integrations, ensure your team can manage calls efficiently, gain insights, and improve overall customer experience.
9. CloudTalk
Struggling with outdated, expensive phone systems?
CloudTalk provides a cloud-based solution to replace your old hardware, ensuring a seamless transition and crystal-clear call quality.
This means you can say goodbye to frequent call drops and integration headaches, freeing your team to focus on what matters most: connecting with more customers and closing deals.
Ready to transform your business calls?
CloudTalk’s integrated AI business calling software empowers your team with unparalleled reach and efficiency. Its multi-carrier network supports over 160 local calling numbers, boosting call pickup rates by over 40% globally.
Additionally, AI-powered tools like the AI Dialer and Conversation Intelligence automate time-consuming tasks like voicemail skip and call analysis, letting your sales team connect with 10x more live calls and cutting analysis time by 80%. Plus, the drag-and-drop Call Flow Designer simplifies setting up inbound call routing. This comprehensive approach streamlines operations, making your team more productive and improving customer satisfaction, ultimately leading to higher revenue and reduced churn.
The result is superior voice calling that is reliable, global, and scalable.
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Key features:
- AI Dialer and AI Voice Agents: Automate dialing, skip voicemails, and leverage human-sounding AI agents for 24/7 lead qualification and meeting confirmation, freeing your human agents.
- Advanced Call Routing: Utilize IVR menus, skill-based routing, and call queuing to direct customers to the right agent instantly, reducing missed calls and wait times.
- Comprehensive Analytics: Access real-time dashboards, call recordings, and AI Conversation Intelligence for automated insights, sentiment analysis, and team performance tracking.
CloudTalk features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: If you’re seeking the best cloud phone system to revolutionize your communication, CloudTalk is an outstanding choice. Its blend of AI-driven efficiency, extensive global reach with local numbers in 160+ countries, and seamless CRM integrations like Salesforce and HubSpot, means your business can double connections and achieve up to 81.7% increase in call volume.
Conclusion
Still wrestling with your old phone system?
I get it. Choosing the right platform is tough when you’re trying to cut costs without sacrificing the reliable call quality your remote team needs.
The 9cv9 blog reports that small enterprises can see a 90% reduction in startup costs with VoIP. That’s a massive impact on your bottom line, freeing up essential capital for growth.
Here is what I recommend.
After reviewing them all, RingCentral is my top pick. Its all-in-one AI platform directly solves the common challenges of poor connectivity and high expenses.
For additional insights, my analysis of best VoIP phone services provides valuable perspectives on scaling communication.
Features like its AI Receptionist ensure you never miss a critical call. It’s why I consider it the best cloud phone system for most businesses today.
I suggest you check out RingCentral pricing to see how easily it fits within your budget. It’s a solid first step.
Your team’s productivity will thank you.
