Vonage Review and Pricing

Vonage is one of the largest phone system providers, with VoIP services designed for both small to medium-sized businesses and large corporations. However, our researchers have found that it’s the best VoIP software provider for small businesses, with an affordable and scalable cloud communications platform for smaller companies.

This Vonage review will go through the key factors you need to look into when shopping for a phone system: pricing, inbound and outbound communication features, integrability, scalability and customer support.

Our comprehensive research on Vonage will be the basis to help measure how this phone system performs against the rest of the top 8 providers. We’ll also highlight its standout features plus its pros and cons.

Vonage’s Pros and Cons

✓ Pro: Wide Range of Software Programs and Features for Scalability

Vonage doesn’t just offer lots of CRM tools but helpdesk giants too. Some of these include Hubspot, Office 365, and Salesforce. Vonage also offers key features that will allow you to improve the efficiency of your business. There is no limit to the number of users on any of Vonage’s plans. Although, there’s an additional cost to add communication features, such as call queue, ring groups, call barge, and call whisper. This is why Vonage scores an impressive 4.5/5 in scalability. GoTo Connect, however, scores lower than Vonage at 4.4/5 in scalability because there are only a few software platforms that you can integrate with. Thus, research shows that Vonage has a more scalable system.

✓ Pro: Affordable Plans

Vonage’s least expensive plan starts at £9 and has over fifty standard features plus  24/7 phone support. However, it lacks some inbound communication features such as ring groups, customizable greeting, and virtual receptionist. Despite that, it still scores 4/5 in pricing because it’s still packed with other important communication features such as voicemail, spam prevention, and toll-free numbers.

RingCentral, however, scores 2.3/5 in this category because its lowest plan costs £7.99 per user, per month and it doesn’t offer ring groups and call queue in it, not until you upgrade to their Premium or Ultimate Plans.

✓ Pro: All Plans Include 24/7 Live Support

All of Vonage’s business phone plans offer 24/7 live support, with user forum, knowledge base, live chat, email, and phone support. Its customer support score is 4/5 because you need to pay an additional fee if you want to take advantage of the onboarding support during the initial setup.

Meanwhile, GoTo Connect also gets 3.4/5 because it doesn’t offer 24/7 customer support on any of its plans. Now, 8×8 gets a perfect score in the customer support category because all customer support channels are available in all its plans including those that aren’t included in GoTo Connect but, like Vonage, their onboarding support costs extra.

✘ Con: Limited Security Options

While all data signalling traffic flow through the Vonage platform is encrypted, multi-factor authentication can’t be set up for user accounts and password rules aren’t enforced. This sees Vonage score slightly above average of 3/5 for security in our research. It is, however, compliant in a number of fields, including HIPAA, HITECH, HITRUSTand PCI.

DialPad also scores 3/5 in this category because, like Vonage, it doesn’t enforce password rules, too. Hence, its low score.  8×8 scores a perfect score in security because it offers more security options such as multi-factor authentication, software encryption and compliant in a lot of fields. However, 8×8 doesn’t offer password rules and user permissions in its Express Plan.

✘ Con: Missing Some Important Outbound Communication Features

Vonage gets a score of 4/5 for features in our research because while it offers lots of outbound communication features across all of its business plans, it does fall short. Call conferencing, efax plus CRM and helpdesk software integrations come with additional costs. It’s also missing task management, call transcripts, and a call flow designer.

8×8, on the other hand, scores 4.6/5 in this category because it offers call conferencing, efax and software integrations without any extra charges.

How Much Does Vonage Cost?

These business plans come on a minimum one-year contract, which you may cancel at any time through Vonage’s online portal or customer care hotline. However, if you need to cancel within the contract period, an early termination fee may apply. Apart from that, a call set-up fee may apply if calls were made outside your plan. They are billed per minute where part minutes are rounded off to whole minutes and are billed to the nearest whole penny. Still, Vonage gets a pricing score of 4/5 because it offers great value for money.

Meanwhile, GoTo Connect also gets an average of 4/5 in this category because its plans offer more key features and provide 24/7 support and its least expensive plan costs only £8.95. Plus, it offers unlimited domestic and free international calls to over 50 countries without getting tied to a contract, making it best for businesses with international clients.

Vonage’s Standout Features

Smart WAN

Vonage seems to have fully embraced digital transformation by utilising an SD-WAN solution. Vonage’s SD-WAN solution, called smart WAN, allows you to enjoy voice, video, and data without compromising on quality, privacy, and control. It allows your business to continue through disasters, such as power outages, as it creates fail-safes on multiple broadband connections that help minimise disruptions. This will prove beneficial for businesses as it helps reduce overheads. There are other benefits that come with it too, such as enabling cloud usage and improving performance. This is why most phone system providers use SD-WAN software.Businesses that are shifting to remote work would benefit from this. A hybrid business, for example, has started to adopt this technology as part of its network connectivity strategy and security control.

Vonage Reach

With so many people making use of cell phones, it seems only natural that texting is the ideal form of communication and the main reason why phone system providers include this service in their plans. While there is an extra cost for the SMS feature to be added to your Vonage business plan, the additional cost isn’t just for a simple SMS/chat service. Vonage Reach is a powerful communication service platform that allows you to send a text message to one recipient or hundreds of recipients. This feature also allows you to do landline texting, cross-channel marketing and smart targeting which enables you to get more leads and close more deals in a short amount of time.

Volusion

Vonage’s e-commerce platform is Volusion, which has been in the e-commerce industry since 1999. You can request this app to be added to your Vonage plan and setting it up is so simple. You can create your online store in minutes and immediately start selling online.

Through Vonage’s unified communications solution, this integration between Vonage and Volusion will be able to provide a better customer experience and even lower communication costs.

What Kind of Business is Vonage Best For?

Vonage is best for small businesses because it has the ability to create a comprehensive service based on the features and tools it offers on all of its plans and because of that, it can serve as a powerful solution that fuels growth and innovation. With features such as unlimited nationwide calls, free international calls, and SMART WAN software, businesses get the opportunity to fully explore digital transformation and quickly scale digital solutions.  It is worth noting that Vonage’s comprehensive system can meet corporate-scale business communication needs, too.

How Does Vonage Compare with Other Phone Systems?

Our in-depth research allows us to measure Vonage’s performance and compare its ratings with the top phone system providers. Vonage scores fairly well in a few of these categories, but we will do a deep dive into each category below.

Inbound and Outbound Communication Features

Vonage scores 4/5 for features in our research because Vonage is feature-rich especially in the inbound communications services. Most features will be available especially when you upgrade to its Professional and Ultimate plans such as call queue which isn’t usually included in other providers’ plans. However, some outbound communication features aren’t available on any plans, such as call transcripts, call-flow designer, and task management.

Meanwhile, more outbound communication features are available in 8×8’s X2 and X4 Plans, including call transcripts and call-flow designer, which aren’t included in any of Vonage’s plans.

Integrability and Scalability

A scaling strategy can easily be mapped out and accomplished when the communication solutions you have are at a level that allows you to function far beyond the traditional system. Vonage has a line-up of powerful integration software services that you can choose from and integrate with your system. This includes: Hubspot, Office 365 and Salesforce.

However, RingCentral scores a near-perfect 4.9/5 in this category, despite not offering software integrations in its Essentials and Standard plans. That’s because it has a variety of software programs for CRM, helpdesk, web conferencing, and internal and external live chat integrations that you can choose from once you upgrade to its Premium or Ultimate Plans and with a variety of ready-made integrations, business growth is inevitable. Read more in our RingCentral review.

When it comes to scalability, however, Vonage’s good integrability record gives your business the opportunity to scale, earning an average of 4.5/5 in scaling. Aside from that, Vonage offers collaboration features, such as team messaging, document sharing, and video conferencing will allow you to improve the efficiency of your services. Adding communication features, such as call queue, ring groups, call barge, and call whisper will require an additional charge but despite the additional charge, adding these to create an optimal service is what makes it such a scalable system.

Customer Support

There is an additional cost if you need to utilise its onboarding service. Plus, Vonage’s uptime guarantee is only 99.99%, meaning there is a 0.1% chance of downtime per month, which is roughly 43 minutes. This ranks it third in the customer support category where they get a high 4/5 score in our research. However, Vonage has various customer support channels, including a user forum, knowledge base, phone and 24/7 live chat and email support.

8×8, on the other hand, ranks first with a perfect 5/5 in this category because it offers various customer support services, including onboarding support, where they offer free online courses.

Does Vonage Have Good Customer Reviews?

Our researchers have gone through customer reviews across business review sites, such as G2, Capterra, TrustPilot and TrustRadius. Vonage’s average customer score is a solid 4/5.

This is some of what they have to say about Vonage’s service:

How We Reviewed Vonage