Best VoIP Service for Call Centers 2023

Many businesses can benefit from switching to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), and call centers are no exception. VoIP often offers cheaper phone service and more features than a traditional phone system would.

So whether you want to create an entirely virtual contact center, to better integrate your phone service with your contract center software, or just to save money on your business phone bill, VoIP can help.

Of course, not all VoIP service has what it takes to meet the demands of a contact center. Don’t worry, though―to help you choose the right VoIP solution, we’ve rounded up the best providers for a VoIP call center. Our pick for best overall provider for a VoIP call center is definitely RingCentral. Of course, keep reading because these other options might have the features that are unique to your needs. 

For most business contact centers, RingCentral offers the best VoIP phone service. Why?

It starts with the integrations. RingCentral has tons of software integrations (more than 300), so it will work with the software your contact center already relies on ― whether that’s just your CRM, your live chat software, or something else entirely.

Of course, software integrations alone aren’t enough. Good thing, then, that RingCentral has lots of plans with heaps of features. In fact, RingCentral offers four dedicated contact center plans, in addition to its three standard plans that you might be able to adapt for your contact center. In other words, RingCentral gives you choices.

Oh, and those plans come with competitive pricing. (The standard plans, at least. You’ll have to contact RingCentral to get Contact Center plan pricing.) While RingCentral doesn’t offer the cheapest VoIP phone service out there, it’s not that far off either.

In a nutshell, RingCentral offers a great combination of pricing, features, plan choices, and integrations ― making it our favorite VoIP provider for contact centers.

There’s a lot to like about Nextiva. Just ask its customers, who give it higher ratings than any other VoIP provider on this list.

Nextiva currently has a 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot and a 3.7 out of 5 on the Better Business Bureau website.1, 2 Those ratings are much higher than most VoIP providers get. (Only Diaplad comes close, and only on Trustpilot.) Customers praise Nextiva’s excellent customer service and its competitive pricing. Plus, they love all the features that come with Nextiva VoIP plans.

We suspect you’ll like Nextiva too. Its higher-tier plans (Enterprise and Ultimate) include call center essentials, like voice analytics, free toll-free minutes, and call recording. Plus, you can add extra features to help with sales productivity, the customer journey, and more. And of course, you’ll get that praiseworthy customer service and competitive pricing we mentioned.

Hundreds of business owners recommend Nextiva. Try it out, and you might become one of them.

Does your VoIP phone system need to handle phone calls in more than one country? Then give 8x8 a go.

8x8 offers some of the best business VoIP for international calls. For centers that have incoming calls, 8x8 offers toll-free VoIP phone numbers in 120 countries. So whether you’re fielding phone calls from Canada, India, or somewhere in between, 8x8 can give your customers an appropriate toll-free number to call. 

And for outgoing sales calls, many 8x8 plans include unlimited calling in 47 countries. Your business can have a global reach with one phone provider. Those same plans will also give you everything you need to run your call center smoothly, from CRM integrations to supervisor analytics to advanced call handling rules. 

All that makes 8x8 a great VoIP provider for any call center―but especially for those that make and take international phone calls.

Lots of VoIP software allows for some coaching of your agents, but Dialpad does it best.

Dialpad offers just about every coaching feature you can think of. It has analytics, so you can tell which agents need help in the first place. It has all the usual call monitoring for supervisors (including whisper and barge). But it also has some coaching features you might not have thought of.

For example, Dialpad can use AI to improve coaching (and the whole customer experience as a result). Dialpad software can analyze voices to track your customer’s mood. It can alert managers when an agent needs help. It can actively transcribe live calls so managers can see how things are going. It can prompt agents with what to say next. And it has more coaching features than just those.

In other words, if you want to make sure your customer support center runs as smoothly as possible, then give Dialpad and its coaching features a try.

Look, we’re not going to pretend that GoToConnect has the most advanced call center VoIP plans out there―but it does have the cheapest.

You can get GoToConnect for less than $25 per user per month. Sure, you need to have 50 or more users to get that price. But even if you only have a handful of agents to begin with, GoToConnect will cost you less than $30 per user. Those prices make GoToConnect very, very affordable.

So while you won’t get all the fanciest features, you will get the basics your contact center needs―including ring rules, unlimited call queue, wait time announcements to callers, and more. And yes, it integrates with popular CRM software. If you decide you like GoToConnect, you always have the option of upgrading to GoToConnect Support Center or Contract Center Pro (but you’ll have to call to get pricing).

If price matters most, then you’ll have a hard time finding a cheaper VoIP provider for your call center than GoToConnect.

Vonage offers a whole suite of contact center plans. What really makes it stand out, though, are its add-ons, including tools for speech analysis, PCI compliance, and workforce management. Our favorite? A Vonage add-on that allows you to “gamify” the call center experience. In other words, the add-on helps you incentivize reps to perform better.

With features like leaderboards, breaking news alerts, and award points, Vonage’s add-on gives you everything you need to encourage agent productivity―without having to find and pay for separate reward software.

Mitel has communications plans specifically for call centers, plus standard VoIP plans that may work for some contact centers. Fortunately, Mitel lets you mix and match VoIP plans as needed. If, for example, you know that your agents don’t need top-tier features for their sales calls but their supervisors do, you can get mid-tier plans for agents and high-tier plans for supervisors.

And sure, some other VoIP providers offer mixing and matching if you ask―but Mitel’s website even lets you mix and match plans when you build a quote on its website. So you can build the perfect VoIP phone package for your business’s needs and budget.

PanTerra has just one call center plan, but it offers robust analytics features to go with its VoIP service. In fact, PanTerra lets you look at more than 100 different metrics at your call center. And to make things easy on you, it creates attractive, readable graphs and charts to display your data at a glance. You can even schedule custom reports, so you get automated analysis on a regular basis.

With so many reporting options, your analytic data can easily suck up your storage space. No worries though―PanTerra offers unlimited storage for your data. Whether you want to look at last week’s data or last year’s, PanTerra makes it easy to access and understand.

There’s a good chance VoIP can solve quite a few of your contact center’s problems. It can save you money, integrate with your business software, give you powerful phone features, and ultimately improve agent performance and customer satisfaction. 

Or, at least, it can if you choose the right VoIP service provider for your business.

With our rankings of the best VoIP providers for contact centers, you do just that. Whether you care more about budget, agent performance, or customer reviews, our recommended VoIP providers can help your in-person or cloud contact center.

Not sure VoIP is right for your contact center? See how VoIP compares to other types of business phone systems.

Placing a call over a VoIP service works pretty much the same way as placing a call on a normal desk phone or smartphone. You get a dialpad, you dial the number you want, and you get connected. (Note that you do need an internet connection.)

Of course, to call over VoIP you’ll need to use your provider’s VoIP app (on your computer, phone, or tablet) or a VoIP-enabled desk phone.

And if you’re using VoIP for a call center, you can likely integrate it with whatever software your center already uses. So if your software automatically dials out, for example, you can still use that feature with your VoIP service.

A call center phone system usually has lots of phone lines and may use software to assist with phone calls. 

For example, a call center may use CRM (customer relationship management) software that lets agents see details for the customers they’re talking with. Or a call center may use software that measures agent productivity, provides prompts to help with customer interaction, or uses a predictive dialer to reduce wait times.

We analyzed each vendor's suitability for growing call centers, customer service quality, value for the money, analytics, and ease-of-use, among other factors.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.