The 5 Best Hosted VoIP Solutions in Australia

8x8's our favourite hosted VoIP provider in Australia for plenty of reasons. Firstly, it's got the biggest and best range of inbound and outbound communication features – including a virtual receptionist, call queues, ring groups, localised and toll-free numbers, external video calling, and call conferencing for up to 500 people. Better yet, lots of these features (apart from call queues and ring groups) are even available on 8x8's cheapest, most basic plan.

Secondly, 8x8 offers excellent security and scalability. With multiple compliance certifications, multi-factor authentication, password rules, and TLS/SRTP encryption, our research into 8x8 found that if offers the most airtight security of any of the providers on this page, shielding your team's conversations and data from breaches. Meanwhile, we've also found that 8x8's VoIP system is really easy to scale, so if your business is growing, you won't have trouble expanding your system and adding and onboarding new users.

Finally, we want to call out 8x8's comprehensive customer support offering. If you need help with the system, you can visit 8x8's knowledge base or user forum, or contact the company 24/7 via live chat or over the phone, which is super reassuring. That said, it's worth being aware that some customers haven't rated 8x8's customer service too highly. When we aggregated customer ratings from across the internet, 8x8's average was a mediocre 3.5 stars.

Our research has revealed that RingCentral is the best VoIP provider for Australian customer service teams – firstly, because it boasts a great range of features to help your team manage floods of incoming calls. A virtual receptionist, local toll-free numbers, and customisable greetings and hold music are available on all of RingCentral's plans, while ring groups and call queues are unlocked on the Premium and Ultimate plans. External video calling and SMS are also available, giving customers even more ways to contact your team.

Training is crucial to nurturing a successful customer service team. Call transcripts are available on all plans, while other training tools such as call recording, call monitoring, analytics, and call barge and whisper are available as you upgrade to RingCentral's more comprehensive plans. Giving you visibility over how calls are going and letting you jump into conversations if an agent needs help, these features enable you to coach your team to be as efficient and helpful as possible.

Finally, it's good to note that RingCentral comes ready to integrate with plenty of helpdesk, workspace, email, conferencing, messaging, and CRM platforms (it has ready-made integrations with a whopping 97 CRM systems), helping to unify your comms and streamline the way you hold customer data. However, most of this is only available on the Premium and Ultimate plans.

Our research confirms that, of all the Australian VoIP providers we've analysed, Vonage offers the best value for money. It earned a top score of 4 out of 5 in our pricing analysis, and with prices starting from as little as $15 per user, per month, it's one of the cheapest systems we've come across.

But what really makes Vonage such good value for money is the fact that it's so scalable. In our analysis, it scored 4.5 out of 5 for scalability, primarily because it offers great training features, such as call barge and call whisper. So, as your team grows large enough to need these functions, you can rest assured that Vonage can offer them despite being a low-cost option. It's also reassuring to know that Vonage allows you to have an unlimited number of users on all plans, plus make unlimited domestic calls on its very reasonably-priced Best Plan.

Vonage also offers good integrability with a number of platforms, including CRM, helpdesk, and workspace platforms. These are available on all of Vonage's plans, including its cheapest, so it's likely it'll be able to slot into your existing IT infrastructure without any extra cost. Similarly, unified communications features such as team messaging, document sharing, and video conferencing are built into all of Vonage's plans, so you won't have to pay extra for these capabilities.

GoToConnect offers a number of features that make it a great shout for startups and small businesses. Firstly, scoring 4 out of 5 in our pricing analysis, it offers plenty of bang for your budget, with unlimited domestic minutes, unified communications tools (such as team messaging and video conferencing), and more available on all of GoToConnect's pricing plans.

GoToConnect also offers all the features a small business would need to elevate their professionalism. Even on GoToConnect's cheapest package, you can set up a virtual receptionist, customisable on-hold music, recorded greetings, and voicemail capability, to give potential customers and clients and polished experience when they get in touch. You can also set up local toll-free numbers, so callers don't have to pay to contact you.

It's also good to know that GoToConnect did well in our scalability analysis, scoring 4.4 out of 5. GoToConnect's unlimited user allowance means you won't run into complications while adding new team members to the system. Plus, its helpful call management features should become in handy as your team gets bigger.

Dialpad stands out from the other VoIP providers in Australia for one futuristic feature in particular: its focus on AI (artificial intelligence). Known as Dialpad Ai, this feature can automatically transcribe your team's phone conversations in real-time, automate post-call summaries (that include highlights and action items), and flag whether each conversation is positive or negative in sentiment, empowering your team to check the call transcripts that need more attention and follow up accordingly.

Dialpad Ai can also help with coaching your team, as it enables you to create notes with tips and advice that'll pop up on a staff member's screen when certain keywords or phrases are spoken on their call.

Dialpad Ai is likely to prove most useful to businesses with sales teams, customer service teams, or call centres, as it can help make sense of high volumes of calls, quickly generating action items, insights, and coaching for your team to take advantage of.