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SRFax Review

It’s a common notion that faxing has become obsolete. However, many businesses still rely on online faxing even today, in part because faxing takes care of some very specific aspects of business management. Online fax services facilitate receiving and sending crucial faxes from anywhere and can help retrieve old faxes with just a simple search. 

SRFax provides a smooth, secure, and HIPAA-compliant online faxing experience, ideal for healthcare providers. While it’s not in our top recommendations for online fax services, SRFax offers plenty and can be the right fit for several organizations. Read on to find out why.

SRFax logo

SRFax Compared

Even though SRFax is an excellent option to consider, it did not make it to our top list of the best fax services. The best online fax service for most of our readers is RingCentral Fax because it’s easy to set up and has a user-friendly interface. Try its Fax 1500 Package for free to make an informed decision for your business. 

  • RingCentral Fax — Best overall
  • eFax — The most popular online fax service
  • Ooma — Best online fax and phone service bundle
  • MetroFax — A best mobile app for online faxing
  • Nextiva — Best standalone online fax service
  • iFax — Best enterprise fax solution
  • FAX.PLUS — Best for offices that fax occasionally
  • MyFax — Best online fax service for personal use
  • HelloFax — Best for small teams and cloud storage integration
  • FaxZero — Best for faxing a few pages
  • Sfax — Best HIPAA-compliant online fax service
  • Biscom 123 — Best email-to-fax service

You can read the in-depth analysis of these platforms here.

About SRFax

SRFax is an excellent online fax service for many businesses. It is end-to-end encrypted and has a top-notch web interface. It also offers two-factor authentication logins that further increase its security. It is the only online fax service willing to sign a Business Associate Agreement with its users. The BAA is an important document that details the responsibilities of both parties in compliance with legal rules and regulations.

SRFax also integrates with a user’s email account, making sending a fax directly from the email inbox easier. The website is exceptionally well-designed and follows a responsive design principle. All subscription plans offered by SRFax provide unlimited storage, allow scheduling of outgoing faxes, and integration with internet fax API in your application.

With SRFax, users can keep their existing number or get a local number. It also provides one of the best 24/7 customer support, charges no hidden fees or startup fees, and allows you to cancel your plan anytime.   

SRFax Health and Stability

SRFax was launched in 2004 in British Columbia, Canada. It was the first platform to introduce email-to-fax service in a rapidly growing SaaS industry. Its selling point was its commitment to providing cyber security. Moreover, the company is also committed to delivering gold-standard customer service to all its users. 

After its creation in 2004, SRFax gained considerable attention from businesses of all sizes from different industries and in multiple locations in Canada and the US. Moreover, people working remotely from home or elsewhere also preferred using SRFax. So far, it has thousands of positive reviews from regular clients.

Since SRFax is HIPAA compliant and SSL encrypted, many medical professionals and people working in industries with sensitive information, like law firms, hospitals, and pharmacies, trust its services to communicate sensitive information.

SRFax is suitable for the healthcare industry, small businesses, and large enterprises. Ever since the creation of SRFax, its users have continued to grow and are predicted to grow even further. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that SRFax is here to stay for a long time as a secure online fax service.     

SRFax Pricing

SRFax has various pricing plans, and each plan offers some new advanced features. Unlike other online fax service providers, SRFax prioritizes security and encryption above all other features. Therefore, all its plans provide robust application security, hardware safeguards, automated backups, organizational safeguards, and more.

Based on the pricing plan, SRFax provides different fax pages per month. All paid plans allow a trial run before users commit to a plan, and a 15% discount is provided to all users on annual payments.

All paid plans offer unlimited storage, unlimited outbound users, additional fax numbers, and consolidated billing. Each paid plan offers additional fax pages and advanced features at a slightly higher cost. 

Apart from the paid plans, you can contact the sales staff to explore more features and get a custom plan made specifically to meet the needs of your business. 

SRFax Pricing Structure

The price of each subscription plan offered by SRFax depends upon the number of features or services offered in each package. It also keeps coming up with new limited-time offers and discounts from time to time, so keep an eye out for them. Some of the primary services provided in all the plans include unlimited storage, unlimited outbound users, multiple users with a unique fax number, and consolidated billing.

Each of its pricing plans has a different fee based on the number of fax pages and other features. Moreover, each progressive plan offers a few additional advanced features. Users can also try a free trial of each package before committing to it.

The five standard paid plans offered by HelloFax include:

  • Basic Plus Plan costs $9.95 per month
  • Standard Lite Plan costs $12.95 per month
  • Standard Plan costs $18.95 per month
  • Standard Plus Plan costs 32.95 per month
  • Customized Larger Plan has a custom quote based on the features that you avail

It gives a 15% discount to users who are billed annually. If the featured services and features don’t fulfill the requirements of your business, you can always request a custom plan with additional benefits at a higher cost. The final price quote is always based on the number of services you request. Overall, each service provides more value to your business. You can request a discount if you take a bundle of services. 

SRFax also offers separate healthcare plans as follows:

  • Healthcare Lite Plan costs $10.95 a month
  • Healthcare Basic Plan costs $13.95 a month
  • Healthcare Basic Plus Plan costs $19.95 a month
  • Healthcare Standard Plan costs $35.95 a month
  • Custom Plans has a customized fee per month based on availed services

The healthcare plans are specifically designed to fulfill the faxing needs of physicians, healthcare workers, and medical facilities.

SRFax Pricing Comparison

SRFax offers many services to its clients, be they healthcare facilities or other small businesses. However, some other fax services offer similar features at a lower price or provide more features at a similar cost.

Nextiva is one such example. It is considered the best standalone online fax service provider, and its most basic Essentials Plan provides 550 fax pages at only $10 per month on an annual payment.

Almost all fax service providers offer a discounted rate on annual payments, and each service provider offers a different discount percentage. For example, eFax and MetroFax provide a 17% discount on annual payments for a plan, but SRFax offers a 15% discount on annual payments.

FAX.PLUS offers one of the most affordable basic plans, which costs only $6.99 a month and provides 200 fax pages in addition to some other unique features. MyFax also offers 100 fax pages per month for only $10, but it also provides unlimited lifetime fax storage and 24/7 dedicated customer support.

There is a considerable variation in the prices of different subscription plans offered by various services. Every service has a unique and specifically designed plan for its users. The features offered in one platform’s basic plans often differ from those offered by another platform’s similar-looking plan. Therefore, the price also varies based on the number of services or features being offered.

SRFax Trials and Guarantees

SRFax is a secure platform with various features like a user-friendly interface and optional optical character recognition. Its easy-to-use interface makes it easier for even beginners to send faxes. Many healthcare institutes trust SRFax to fax confidential data securely. Some small businesses actively utilize fax for communication and rely on SRFax to fulfill their needs. 

Each SRFax subscription plan offers security, compliance with local data-related laws, and a free trial. Free trials can help users get the hang of the platform and decide whether they want to continue using it. However, it doesn’t offer free trials for its healthcare subscription plans.

The company also runs different limited-time discount offers throughout the year. So, keep checking to get a higher discount if you want to subscribe to a paid plan. Moreover, you can contact the customer support service to understand the purpose and benefits of various services and features being offered.

Get started today to understand how the standard plans of SRFax work.

SRFax Online Fax Service Review

There are several better online fax service providers present in the market today. Those platforms outperform SRFax in different aspects. However, SRFax is only slightly lesser than them in terms of features and quality of service. If you are on the lookout for a fax service that is highly secure and provides excellent client support, consider SRFax.

Our research also suggests that SRFax is ideal for healthcare providers. Healthcare professionals can seamlessly set up their accounts and automate the deletion of fax data after delivery to prevent leaks. To see how SRFax’s online fax services stack up against some of its top competitors, read our comparison of the best online fax services.

What Makes SRFax Online Fax Service Great

SRFax webpage with headline that says "How to Send an Email to Fax" and directions to complete Step 1 of the process
SRFax makes it easy to send a fax using your email account.
  • Responsive interface: SRFax has a simple, easy-to-use, modern and responsive interface. It has a lighter color scheme, and the website loads quickly even though it reloads whenever a new section is clicked. The menu has five main categories that further open up more sections. It is easily navigable for beginners and is loved by all users. Additionally, it offers two-factor authentication, further strengthening its security—a feature not offered by many other similar platforms.
  • Multi-step security: With technological advancement, hackers have also become sophisticated, and the importance of cyber security has increased more than ever before. SRFax fulfills this demand and provides top-notch security features, including two-factor authentication and end-to-end encryption on platform servers. Moreover, it allows users to delete faxes right after sending them to protect against data leaks.
  • Affordable pricing: The pricing tiers offered by SRFax provide good value for the money invested. All plans are fairly priced based on the features and services offered. Many users believe that the services provided by this platform are pretty affordable compared to other online fax service providers. 

Where SRFax Online Fax Service Falls Short

SRFax webpage illustrating Steps 2 and 3 for how to send an email to fax
With SRFax, you can quickly send a fax in three simple steps.
  • No mobile app: Mobile apps for any service are crucial to connect with users on the go. The lack of a mobile app can significantly reduce the usability of an application. SRFax, like a few other fax service providers, doesn’t have a mobile app for iOS or Android. Whereas most of its competitors have an app that allows users to view, sign, edit, and send faxes from anywhere at any time. 
  • Lack of digital signature tools: A significant drawback of SRFax is that it doesn’t allow users to sign documents digitally. Therefore, users often have to print, sign, and then scan the documents just to put a signature on a document. The lack of digital signature tools puts it behind its competitors like HelloFax, which offers this feature.
  • International faxing fees: SRFax charges an additional fee per page to send a fax to an international destination. For example, sending a fax to someone in Norway will cost you five additional cents per page. Many users find these additional costs unfair and prefer other platforms like FAX.PLUS, which, instead of charging a fee, deducts a specific number of extra pages from the user’s monthly limit.

SRFax Online Fax Service Compared

While SRFax is an excellent option for many businesses, the best online fax service provider for most of our readers is RingCentral Fax because it’s easy to set up, affordable, and simple to use. Moreover, it offers the feature to schedule faxes and allows users to send faxes from all types of devices.

  • RingCentral Fax — Best overall
  • eFax — The most popular online fax service
  • Ooma — Best online fax and phone service bundle
  • MetroFax — A best mobile app for online faxing
  • Nextiva — Best standalone online fax service
  • iFax — Best enterprise fax solution
  • FAX.PLUS — Best for offices that fax occasionally
  • MyFax — Best online fax service for personal use
  • HelloFax — Best for small teams and cloud storage integration
  • FaxZero — Best for faxing a few pages
  • Sfax — Best HIPAA-compliant online fax service
  • Biscom 123 — Best email-to-fax service

Final Verdict

Even today, businesses require an online fax service to send and receive faxes. Online fax service providers offer businesses a more convenient alternative to traditional fax machines. They allow you to send faxes from phones, desktops, and tablets. There is an ideal fax service for every specific need of each type of business.

SRFax has been in the market since 2004 and has provided secure online fax services to several businesses. Its affordable pricing packages, robust security, and responsive interface have helped it stand out among its competitors. Therefore, SRFax is here to stay.

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Adobe Connect Review

Adobe is one of the biggest names in the tech industry, and its virtual hub, Adobe Connect, seeks to be the go-to service for webinars, meetings, and training. 

Although Adobe Connect may have quite a way to go to compete with more robust and affordable options, it will appeal to businesses who also want to utilize Adobe’s other tools, like PDF editors and content management systems. These services combine nicely, and some features even require other Adobe software to use.

Adobe Connect logo

Adobe Connect Compared

Adobe Connect did not make our top list of the best webinar software. Livestorm is our recommendation for most users for its interactive tools and deep performance analysis. Get started with Livestorm for free. 

  • Livestorm — Best all-in-one-combo of webinars and virtual meetings
  • WebinarJam — Best for hosting all types of webinars
  • ClickMeeting — Best for beginners
  • Demio — Best for marketing and sales
  • Webex — Best for hosting accessible webinars
  • BlueJeans — Best for scaling live webinars beyond 500 attendees
  • EverWebinar — Best set-it-and-forget-it webinars
  • Vast Conference — Best budget-friendly option 
  • Zoom — Best for educational institutions
  • BigMarker — Best for large virtual events
  • Crowdcast — Best webinar platform for a built-in audience
  • GoTo Webinar — Best for infrequent webinars
  • MyOwnConference — Cheapest way to facilitate simultaneous webinars
  • WebinarGeek — Best for GDPR compliance and/or EU audiences

About Adobe Connect

Adobe started back in 1982, before most people even used a computer. Today—40 years later—it’s going strong as an innovative company with a host of tools for businesses, from entrepreneurs to large corporations.

Adobe’s mission is to encourage creativity through digital tools. At its core is documentation, which the company has transformed from paper to collaborative, digitized documents that users can share and view from wherever they can find a screen. 

Known as Macromedia Breeze until 2006, Adobe Connect added virtual meetings and trainings to the Adobe ecosystem, competing with other well-known web conferencing software tools like Zoom and Livestorm.

Adobe Connect Products and Services

While Adobe has numerous products to fit specific digital needs, Adobe Connect focuses on webinars, virtual meetings, and online training. Its tools enhance productivity and engagement in conferences through collaboration and communication features. These tools include:

Multiple industries can use Adobe Connect’s tools, but the service is especially beneficial for industries highly focused on remote collaboration and training. Companies in the education, government, and healthcare industries are among the company’s top customers.

Adobe Connect Health and Stability

Adobe has been a household name for years with its four decades of experience in the tech industry. It’s clear that Adobe isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, thanks to its commitment to innovation and drive to stay ahead of the game with its many products and SaaS offerings.

For reference, Adobe has nearly half (45%) of the market share in the United States. Additionally, revenue in quarter 3 of 2022 was record-breaking for the company at $4.43 billion, a 13% year-over-year growth rate. 

Because of Adobe’s focus on creating and tweaking products to fit its customers’ needs best, the company consistently pumps out updates and new products that transition seamlessly into today’s digital world. It’s this adaptability that will likely carry Adobe into success for decades to come.

Adobe Connect Pricing

Adobe Connect is quite expensive compared to other webinar and conferencing software. Although the product offers meetings, webinars, and learning tools, each category is priced as a separate tier, in contrast to other services that bundle them together for one price.

In other words, if you want lots of collaborative learning tools, even on smaller webinars and meetings, you may end up overpaying with Adobe Connect.

Try Adobe Connect free for 30 days.

Adobe Connect Pricing Structure

Adobe Connect is available for free for micro-meetings with up to three participants. After that, pricing starts at $50 per host per month. This gives you room for up to 25 participants and includes transcription, breakout rooms, and interactive recordings.

For more collaborative tools for webinars and large meetings, pricing begins at $130 per host per month with space for a minimum of 100 participants. Branding and event management are included in these higher-tier plans. 

You can opt for annual pricing to save money, with the highest tier costing $3,500 per host per year compared to $4,440 when paid month-to-month.

Adobe Connect Pricing Comparison

Adobe Connect has a lot of features that could make its higher-than-average pricing worth it for your company, especially if you already utilize other Adobe products. Still, it’s certainly not the most budget-friendly option, and you might find another product that has what you need for less money.

To compare, BlueJeans is designed for large to massive meetings and webinars. The highest webinar tier allows up to 500 attendees for $69 per month or $57.50 per month when billed annually. It includes an array of production and collaboration tools similar to Adobe Connect to keep webinars engaging and interactive.

Livestorm is also highly scalable, with custom quotes for businesses and enterprises to ensure that you don’t overpay for what you don’t need. Or, take advantage of a prepackaged option with up to 500 attendees for $110 per month or $88 per month with annual billing.

Adobe Connect Trials and Guarantees

Adobe Connect’s free plan is good for figuring out if it’s something you want to stick with, but you can only test it with three participants. If you want to experience the full Adobe Connect package, use the free trial again. It’s good for 30 days of full access to the webinar and conferencing software.

Get a free 30-day trial of Adobe Connect.

Adobe Connect Webinar Software Review

Adobe Connect’s webinar features are numerous, catering to everything from highlighting company branding to virtual whiteboards and other productivity and collaboration tools. Upper tiers of the software have everything you need to keep teams engaged and learning, no matter where they tune in from.

Our research team initially considered Adobe Connect as a contender for the best webinar software. However, it ultimately fell short of the top list because of its more complicated setup and pricier packages than other services. 

What Makes Adobe Connect Webinar Software Great

Adobe Connect upgrades
Adobe Connect streamlines the process of logging into and off the system, creating a more accessible flow for everyone.
  • Recording capabilities: Record anything you use during your live webinars for future playback, including interactive polls and live Q&As. When participants replay your webinar, everything will appear just as it was when it was live streaming. 
  • Webinar types: You can host virtually any type of webinar to appeal to your audience with Adobe Connect, including on-demand, live, and automated webinars. This opens the doors for your audience to catch your information in the ways they enjoy most.
  • Simple logins and exits: With its newest update, Adobe Connect made it easier than ever to join and exit a webinar or meeting. Participants can enter a lobby to set up their cameras and microphones to ensure everything works before jumping in. Hosts can also leave a meeting without abruptly ending the session for everyone, allowing for a distraction-free exit. 
  • Accessibility: Although Adobe Connect can be more confusing for hosts to set up than other webinar software, it’s relatively simple for participants to use. There’s nothing to download, so attendees can join quickly via a link on their computer or mobile device. Users needing adaptive features for auditory, visual, or mobility needs can also benefit from a wide range of accessibility tools, like screen readers, customizable displays, and keyboard shortcuts.
  • Analytics: An engagement dashboard tracks useful stats about your meetings for you to review later, including the number of people who viewed your recordings, the most active meetings you’ve hosted, and lead conversions.
  • Engagement tools: Adobe Connect prioritizes engaging meetings with tools like immersive screen sharing, surveys and polls, games, and note-taking. Hosts can also add custom apps to tailor the experience for attendees.  
  • Education tools: Breakout rooms allow teams to meet in smaller groups for necessary training. Hosts and attendees can also share their screens with each other for test-taking, note-taking, and more. 

Where Adobe Connect Webinar Software Falls Short

Adobe Connect Security features
Adobe Connect offers AES-256 encryption to protect sensitive data across webinars and meetings.
  • Lack of auto-generated passwords: Although Adobe Connect does a good job with overall security through encryption and flexible deployments, it could improve its password protection system. By default, everyone uses the same password to log in, which makes it easier for non-invitees to attend. Hosts can manually set unique passwords for everyone, but that can be time-consuming with hundreds of attendees.
  • Limited non-paid support: Adobe Connect users are limited to support through live chat and the website’s community and tutorials. To get more premium support, you may need to pay extra in addition to your monthly or annual subscription. 
  • Limited integrations: Adobe Connect can integrate with several Adobe tools, unsurprisingly, but it doesn’t play as well with non-Adobe products. Third-party integrations are relatively limited outside of learning management systems. 
  • Significantly higher pricing: Our research found that Adobe Connect costs quite a bit more than many other webinar software tools with similar features and functionality. Some competitors, for example, offer customizable plans so that you only pay for what each host or participant needs. And nearly all of them simply don’t charge as much as Adobe does for similar offerings. 

Adobe Connect Webinar Software Compared

Adobe Connect has robust features for webinars and meetings, but Livestorm offers a good mix of features and affordability that may meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.

  • Livestorm — Best all-in-one-combo of webinars and virtual meetings
  • WebinarJam — Best for hosting all types of webinars
  • ClickMeeting — Best for beginners
  • Demio — Best for marketing and sales
  • Webex — Best for hosting accessible webinars
  • BlueJeans — Best for scaling live webinars beyond 500 attendees
  • EverWebinar — Best set-it-and-forget-it webinars
  • Vast Conference — Best budget-friendly option 
  • Zoom — Best for educational institutions
  • BigMarker — Best for large virtual events
  • Crowdcast — Best webinar platform for a built-in audience
  • GoTo Webinar — Best for infrequent webinars
  • MyOwnConference — Cheapest way to facilitate simultaneous webinars
  • WebinarGeek — Best for GDPR compliance and/or EU audiences

Adobe Connect Content Management System Review

Adobe offers a content management system known as Adobe Commerce, which was formerly Magento. Its inventory management makes adding and organizing products a breeze, even for ecommerce businesses with massive inventories.

Adobe Commerce is much more advanced than other CMS software, so it may be best for advanced users who feel confident with the multitude of tools at their fingertips. It did make our list of the top content management systems.

What Makes Adobe Connect Content Management System Great

Adobe Commerce Content Management
Adobe Commerce simplifies payment processing with secure and diverse payments and analytics solutions.
  • Inventory management: Adobe Commerce absolutely excels at ecommerce, especially in the realm of inventory management. The system updates inventory in real-time and allows you to use nearby fulfillment centers to ship items off quickly. Backorders, multi-address orders, and multi-channel inventory tracking are also available.
  • Omnichannel management: If your company offers a hybrid mix of sales points, like mobile ordering, in-store sales, and web-based sales, you can manage inventory from all places together from Adobe Commerce. Inventory and payments track across each channel to ensure that your data stays up-to-date. 
  • Scalability: Adobe Commerce can handle millions of SKUs at a time, allowing you to have multiple products with numerous variations and continue growing your product line as you scale. As a cloud-based service, there are virtually no limits as to what you can do with the platform. 
  • No transaction fees: Unlike other CMS software with transaction fees for payment processing, Adobe Commerce doesn’t charge these fees. However, you’ll still need to pay applicable fees for your chosen payment processors. 
  • Open-source coding: Because it uses open-source coding, Adobe Commerce is highly customizable by developers. Create themes and custom content types to make your website look and behave the way you and your customers need it to.

Where Adobe Connect Content Management System Falls Short

  • Steep learning curve: Adobe Commerce won’t be nearly as easy to start using as, say, Wix or Shopify. Still, the product isn’t necessarily targeted at beginners. Instead, large ecommerce companies tend to be the ones using this CMS platform, and they may have highly skilled teams at hand that can navigate the system.
  • Expensive pricing: Expect to pay much more for Adobe Commerce than you would with competitors like Squarespace or BigCommerce. However, the priciest options are reserved for the platform’s managed services, which may be worth the cost for companies wanting more of a hands-on approach to content management. Additionally, premade themes aren’t included, so you’ll need to budget extra for them.
  • Significant maintenance required: Small businesses may find Adobe Commerce too high-maintenance for their needs. Quality performance may require lots of upgrades and maintenance to the system and hosting for websites to load quickly and remain secure. 

Adobe Connect Content Management System Compared

Our pick for the best content management system is WordPress, which blends ease of use with beginner to advanced features to fit just about any content management needs.

Adobe Connect Digital Asset Management Software Review

Adobe Experience Manager Assets is an ideal option for advanced users who are confident in their understanding of asset organization and management. It’s impressively rich in features, but some businesses might find it to be too complex for their needs.

If you need a simpler solution, check out some of the other options for the best digital asset management software.

What Makes Adobe Connect Digital Asset Management Software Great

Adobe Experience Manager Assets
Adobe’s digital asset management software targets advanced users with its feature-rich platform that’s speedy and responsive.
  • Asset automation: Businesses can save time organizing, storing, and optimizing assets with Adobe Experience Manager Assets. The software’s artificial intelligence adds tags to assets and resizes them automatically to fit ideal content sizes for multiple platforms. Smart Tags make your content more searchable to find when you need it. 
  • Seamless integrations: As part of the Adobe ecosystem, Adobe Experience Manager Assets works smoothly with other Adobe products, especially Creative Cloud. Creative Cloud includes stock photos, graphic editing software, and other important digital assets and tools businesses use for marketing, offering an easy bridge between marketing and digital asset management. 
  • Lots of space: It’s unlikely that a business will run out of space or feel restricted with Adobe’s DAM solution. Up to 2 GB uploads are allowed, and custom packages are available to ensure you have the space you need.
  • Agile workspace: The Adobe DAM workspace allows for massive customization and collaboration between team members. Multiple people can work on the same workspace at one time to manage or pull assets. Although some features are advanced, the interface itself is simple enough for virtually anyone to use easily.
  • Approval process: Admin can set review and approval processes in Adobe Experience Manager Assets to manage workflow and ensure that assets get full approval before entering the system. The system sends notifications to relevant users, letting them know whether assets need more work or have been approved.

Where Adobe Connect Digital Asset Management Software Falls Short

Adobe Experience Manager Assets agile workspace benefits
Adobe’s DAM software offers a scalable workspace that allows teams to collaborate efficiently.
  • Tech-focused setup: If you plan to DIY your Adobe setup, you should be sure to have a solid tech team on your hands. Documentation for this software is quite complex, and connecting it to your network infrastructure requires intermediate IT knowledge, at minimum. 
  • Non-transparent pricing: Similar to other Adobe products, its DAM software only has custom pricing that you’ll need to reach out to the support team to learn more about. If you were interested in quickly comparing options, Adobe might be left off the list for this reason. With that said, you can expect to pay enterprise pricing for this software, as it’s mostly large businesses and enterprises that it caters to. 
  • Complex features: The Adobe Experience Manager Assets interface is user-friendly, but many of the features accessible behind-the-scenes require development experience to use. This software simply isn’t for beginners, at least those who’ll be working mostly on the backend. 

Adobe Connect Digital Asset Management Software Compared

While Adobe Experience Manager Assets is best suited for advanced users, we believe MediaValet has some of the most well-rounded features and is, therefore, our top digital asset management software pick.

Adobe Connect Electronic Signature Software Review

Adobe Sign is Adobe’s e-signature software that lets you and others sign electronic documents as quickly and conveniently as possible. It’s available as part of Adobe Acrobat, which also gives you access to PDF form creation, conversion, editing, and more.

We chose Adobe Sign as the best electronic signature software for small businesses because of its affordability and straightforward usage.

What Makes Adobe Connect Electronic Signature Software Great

Adobe Sign bulk signatures
Adobe Sign lets you send documents to multiple recipients in one click to get bulk signatures.
  • One-click bulk signatures: Rather than sending your document to each person separately for a signature, you can use Adobe Sign’s bulk-send feature to send a document to each recipient with the tap of a button. Your dashboard shows you who’s already signed and who still needs to, so you can send reminders if necessary. 
  • User-friendly: Unlike some other Adobe products that are built more for large organizations and advanced users, Adobe Sign is much less complex. Most people can begin using it without a walk-through, as the interface guides you through each step for signing and getting signatures.
  • Mobile scanning: Connect the Adobe Scan app to your account to access quick and easy mobile scanning, allowing you to skip the scanner and upload a document with your mobile device instead. Users can also sign documents using the app on their devices.  
  • Automated reminders: Although you can send manual reminders to document recipients to encourage them to sign, you can also save some time by setting automated reminders. Admin can also set reminders to appear in document audit reports to show reviewers when notifications were sent to various recipients.
  • Affordable pricing: Adobe Sign subscribers must purchase Adobe Acrobat Standard or Pro. However, either one is still a highly affordable option at $12.99 per month or $19.99 per month when paid annually. Plus, you’ll benefit from all Adobe Acrobat features for one price.
  • Custom branding: Every document you create or send with Adobe Sign can include your company branding for a cohesive look and feel. Signature invitations can also showcase custom messaging and logos. 

Where Adobe Connect Electronic Signature Software Falls Short

Adobe Sign custom branding
Put your company’s branding on documents and invitations from Adobe Sign.
  • Subpar mobile app: While the Adobe Sign app is a convenient addition to the service, several users note problems with it crashing or moving slowly, especially with large documents. Some features available on the web-based version also are not as easy to use on the mobile app, like resizing fields and syncing. 
  • Customer support issues: Adobe Sign doesn’t appear to have the same level of responsive customer support as other electronic signing software. A virtual assistant is available to help with some questions, but for more pinpointed support, you’ll need to wait for a response from the community forums or call the support center.

Adobe Connect Electronic Signature Software Compared

If your medium or large business needs more than what Adobe Sign provides, consider some of the other options for the best electronic signature software.

  • signNow – Best value electronic signature software
  • SignWell – Best free electronic signature software
  • SIGN.PLUS – Best electronic signature app
  • PandaDoc – Best for document management
  • DocuSign – Best multi-purpose electronic signature software
  • HelloSign – Best for legally binding documents
  • Adobe Sign – Best for small businesses
  • Signeasy – Best for individual and personal use
  • KeepSolid Sign – Best for signing documents offline
  • GetAccept – Best for B2B sales
  • SignRequest – Best for simplifying the e-signature process

Adobe Connect HTML Editor Review

Adobe’s HTML editor is known as Dreamweaver, which is part of the Creative Cloud bundle. It has a lot of exciting features and flexible coding capabilities, but it did not make our list of the best HTML editors.

One reason Dreamweaver fell short of our top picks is its confusing interface. Similar to many Adobe products, it errs more on the side of targeting advanced users than beginners, which can make it feel bloated and frustrating for people who are learning to code.

Unlike other editing tools, Dreamweaver is only available as a download, so you can’t use it in your web browser. This makes things a little clunky when switching between the tool and your website previews.

Finally, slower computers may not be able to run Dreamweaver efficiently because of its demanding specs compared to more lightweight solutions.

HTML Editors Compared

Adobe’s HTML editor is feature-rich and flexible, but there are a few others that we feel more precisely target specific use cases, making them land on our list of the best HTML editors.

Adobe Connect VoIP Call Recording Software Review

Adobe Connect includes a VoIP system that users can use to join meetings with audio. However, it does not offer a regular phone system, so this review focuses only on its Meetings product with VoIP. 

Although it’s not the most robust VoIP call recording software, Adobe Connect provides an excellent selection of features for businesses prioritizing educational meetings. 

What Makes Adobe Connect VoIP Call Recording Software Great

Adobe Connect for meetings
Adobe Connect offers an in-house VoIP system for dialing into meetings with audio.
  • Great interactivity: Adobe Connect with VoIP audio is one of the best of its kind in terms of interactivity, which is why it shines for educational purposes. Users can record video meetings, switch from a laptop to a mobile device and vice versa when on a call, share screens, draw and annotate, and more. Adobe Connect’s storyboards and layouts also let hosts present information in the most effective ways. Choose between layouts with multiple channels, multimedia types, and interactive elements to give participants the information they need.
  • Helpful audio controls: Whether you want to give only specific people the floor to speak during a meeting or you need to optimize VoIP audio levels, Adobe Connect provides numerous settings to do so. You can also allow participants to join with third-party audio rather than the Adobe Connect VoIP network.
  • Bandwidth allowance: Hosts can set a bandwidth allowance for meeting rooms to keep connections flowing smoothly while still getting information to attendees as necessary. The allowance also prevents poor connections from joining by setting a minimum connection per attendee.

Where Adobe Connect VoIP Call Recording Software Falls Short

Adobe Connect meetings interface
Adobe Connect’s new meeting interface is simpler and more responsive than its previous version.
  • Lack of basic phone features: While Adobe Connect shines in its ability to create immersive educational experiences and webinars, it’s not as ideal for businesses needing a traditional phone system, too. You can’t get business phone numbers or calling systems through Adobe Connect like you can with services like Nextiva or Ooma.
  • Higher prices: Considering that other options, like Nextiva and RingCentral, have plans in the $25-$35 per month range with full phone and video services included, Adobe Connect’s $50 per month pricing for its Meetings solution is relatively steep. Plus, adding Webinars is another $130 per month. 
  • Complex setup: A running theme with Adobe Connect is its complexity, which can be great for advanced users with detailed setup needs. However, setting up video meetings and VoIP audio can be more complicated than necessary with this system, which could be a turn-off for hosts who aren’t as well-versed with more intricate meeting and VoIP settings.

Adobe Connect VoIP Call Recording Software Compared

Adobe Connect is excellent for educational institutions, but other types of businesses may want to try another VoIP call recording software. 

  • Nextiva — Best all-in-one business phone system
  • RingCentral — Best business phone system with video call recording
  • Ooma — Best for small and medium businesses (SMBs) 
  • 8×8 — Best flexible call recording service
  • Adobe Connect — Best for educational institutions that host frequent webinars
  • Callcap — Best third-party call monitoring and analysis
  • CallRail — Best for tracking multiple campaigns 
  • CallTrackingMetrics — Best call recording controls
  • Cube ACR — Best free call recording service for Android phones
  • Gong.io — Best AI call analysis for sales teams
  • LiveAgent — Best all-in-one solution for customer support teams
  • MightyCall — Best for solopreneurs who need long-term call recording storage
  • Recite by Numonix — Best for security and compliance 

Adobe Connect Web Design Software Review

Adobe Dreamweaver is the company’s web design software in addition to its HTML editing solution. Although its live previews and templates are great, the software may feel too complicated for most individuals and companies looking to build sites quickly.

The primary reason for Adobe not making our list of the best web design software is that it’s not built for simplicity. Unlike other options, like Wix and Webflow, Adobe’s interface can feel overwhelming. 

We also didn’t choose it as a top option because of its speed. On high-performance computers, the software typically runs smoothly. But on slower systems, you might experience bumpy transitions and lags that interfere with speedy designing.

Web Design Software Compared

In terms of ease of use and speed, Adobe Dreamweaver doesn’t quite live up to these other options for the best web design software.

  • Webflow — Best for Designing Production-Ready Websites
  • WordPress — Best for Content Websites and Blogs
  • Wix — Best for Beginners
  • Figma — Best for Teams and Agencies
  • Sketch — Best for Creating Prototypes and Designs

Adobe Connect Social Media Scheduling Tools Review

Adobe’s social media scheduler, Adobe Express Schedule, is part of the Adobe Express suite of tools similar to Canva. 

Unfortunately, the scheduling tool isn’t available as a standalone option, which is the main reason it didn’t make our top list of social media scheduling tools. Adobe Express Schedule isn’t the right solution if you’re looking solely for social media automation.

With that said, you can pay $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year to get the full Adobe Express service with social media scheduling and graphics creation.

However, the social media scheduling tool itself lacks advanced features, like ideal post time suggestions, and connections to platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook Groups. 

Social Media Scheduling Tools Compared

Adobe Express Schedule is an easy-to-use content scheduler to help you stay on top of your social media game. However, it’s not quite as robust as others that made our best social media scheduling tools list:

Adobe Connect PDF Editor Review

Adobe Acrobat Pro is probably the most well-known PDF editor on the market. This is not a big surprise, given that Adobe was the original creator of the PDF file type back in the early 1990s. 

Adobe’s software has evolved to cater to a wide range of needs when working with PDFs. With Adobe Acrobat Pro, you have full control over PDFs, from creating and converting them to editing PDFs and gathering electronic signatures. Learn more about Adobe Acrobat Pro and other PDF editor alternatives.

What Makes Adobe Connect PDF Editor Great

Adobe Acrobat Pro PDF editing
Make fully editable PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Pro.
  • Complete PDF editing control: Adobe doesn’t leave a single feature behind when it comes to creating and editing PDFs. Document owners can edit any piece of the PDF at any time, as well as export, print, and share them with others. Additional highlights include the ability to add comments to and highlight parts of PDFs, merge multiple documents into one PDF file, and split larger documents into separate PDFs. 
  • Feature-packed mobile app: Mobile app users can do virtually anything with a PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro’s desktop version. The app provides collaborative tools, like signing, reviewing, and sharing PDFs with others, and all editing tools to help you manage PDFs on the go. You can also track PDFs as they get shared, downloaded, signed, opened, and more.
  • Document security: Adobe Acrobat Pro provides document protection with passwords to ensure that a PDF is only accessible by allowed personnel. Document administrators can remove passwords at any time, apply custom protections to a document, and add safety certificates to PDFs for an extra layer of protection. 
  • Document organization: Make documents look exactly how you need them to with Adobe Acrobat Pro’s organization tools, which include page rotation, deletion, reordering, and insertion. You can also extract single or multiple pages from a document to save as a new PDF. In other words, every document you create is fluid to adapt to your needs.
  • Affordable pricing: Adobe Acrobat Pro is $19.99 per month when billed annually, which is a small price to pay for such robust features, especially if your business heavily relies on PDF documentation. It also includes Adobe Sign, an added bonus if you frequently collect signatures on documents. Annual subscriptions can be canceled for a full refund within 14 days if you’re not satisfied, but you can also download a one-week trial before buying. 

Where Adobe Connect PDF Editor Falls Short

Adobe Acrobat Pro mobile app collaboration
Adobe Acrobat Pro’s mobile app allows the same level of collaboration as its desktop tool.
  • Conversions can be clunky: While Adobe Acrobat Pro excels with PDF document creation and editing, file types from other programs don’t necessarily convert as well to PDF with Adobe as expected. You might run into formatting and data loss issues when converting, although this problem is more of a PDF conversion issue in general rather than an exclusive Adobe issue. Still, it’s something to be aware of if you plan to convert a lot of files to PDF.
  • Layouts can be tricky: Adobe Acrobat Pro is simple to use for creating documents, but creating more complex PDFs can come with a learning curve. You might need to experiment a bit with your layout to get the final product to look the way you want.

Adobe Connect PDF Editor Compared

Adobe Acrobat Pro is our top PDF editor pick for most businesses, but you can also find other excellent solutions that might suit your needs better.

Final Verdict

Adobe’s suite of products does many things well, including video recording, collecting electronic signatures, and digital asset management. It also easily leads the pack in its powerful PDF creation and editing capabilities.

As webinar software, Adobe Connect is simply too pricey compared to competitors offering similar services. However, it could be the right solution for companies already investing in other Adobe products, as it seamlessly integrates with Adobe tools.

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How to Import Content in WordPress in 7 Simple Steps

Importing content in WordPress is simple when you use WordPress with Hostinger because it’s easy to get started and ensures you have the right capacity to manage your content. Start using WordPress with Hostinger now for $1.99 per month. 

WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS platform for a good reason. It’s an excellent option for blogging or any other type of content-heavy site. Switching to WordPress is a great idea if you run a website on another platform. 

But switching to WordPress doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch. You can simply import the content from your existing site to your new WordPress website. This step-by-step guide will walk you through that process. 

How to Import Content in WordPress

The Top Tools to Import Content in WordPress

Our team here at Quick Sprout has extensively researched the best tools to import content in WordPress. Take these into consideration as you’re going through this process. 

Import Content to WordPress in 7 Easy Steps

Importing content in WordPress might seem like a daunting task at first glance. But it’s actually fairly simple, and the entire process can be summarized in the seven easy steps below:

  1. Sign Up For WordPress with Hostinger
  2. Backup Your Site Files and Databases
  3. Make Sure You Have Sufficient Memory Space for the Import
  4. Identify Where You’re Importing Content From
  5. Export and Review the File You Want to Import
  6. Configure a New WordPress Import
  7. Backup Your New WordPress Content

The bulk of this guide will focus on using WordPress with Hostinger to complete these steps. That’s because Hostinger offers WordPress-specific hosting plans at an affordable rate with all the tools and features you need to seamlessly import your content and continue running your WordPress site with success in the long run. Get started today with WordPress and Hostinger for just $1.99 per month.

Step 1 – Sign Up For WordPress with Hostinger

The first thing you need to do is sign up for WordPress. Unlike other website platforms, WordPress is only a CMS—meaning it does not have web hosting built into the system. So for your site to be live on the web, you also need to secure a web hosting solution during this step.

While there are dozens of different routes you can take here, using WordPress with Hostinger is by far the best and simplest choice. This is especially true if you’re starting a brand new WordPress site and importing content from another site. 

One of the top reasons why Hostinger is ideal for this process is because they offer WordPress-specific hosting packages, so your hosting solution is optimized for WordPress out-of-the-box, and it comes with all of the great features you need to run a successful WordPress site. 

Hostinger for WordPress-Powered Websites webpage
Hostinger’s WordPress plans simplify the content import process.

All of these plans come with a one-click WordPress installer. You’ll also benefit from 24/7 WordPress support by the experts at Hostinger. So if you have any questions or need help during this process, they’re just a click away via live chat.

It’s also worth noting that every WordPress hosting plan from Hostinger comes with a free migration. So if you’re moving your site from another web host, they’ll take care of the technical complexities for you as your site gets transferred to its new servers. 

Best of all, this option is affordable for anyone. Hostinger’s WordPress plans start at just $1.99 per month. All purchases are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

Once you’ve signed up for Hostinger and installed WordPress, you can proceed with the remaining content import steps. 

Step 2 – Backup Your Site Files and Databases

Next, you need to switch over to the platform where your content currently lives. It could be a website platform or another CMS, and this step will look a little different for everybody. 

Regardless of where your content is, the platform should have some type of documentation that explains how to back up the data. In some instances, this will be handled for you automatically on a nightly or weekly basis, and other platforms require manual backups or third-party plugins.

While importing content into WordPress is generally safe and should not impact the data that’s hosted elsewhere, it’s always a good practice to back up your files before proceeding. Weird things can happen, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

So if something goes awry during the import process, you can always restore the content from your latest backup. 

Make sure the backup includes all of your website files and MySQL databases. This can typically be handled directly from your website platform or web host’s control panel. 

Let’s say you were already using Hostinger to power another WordPress site. This process would be as simple as navigating to the Backup Wizard on your cPanel. 

Example of cPanel with red arrow pointing to Backup Wizard button
Backing up your files helps keep your data safe in case something goes wrong during the import.

From here, you can generate full backups, partial backups, and even download your backups with just a few clicks. There’s a good chance that whatever platform you’re using also has a similar backup feature that should be easily accessible. 

Step 3 – Make Sure You Have Sufficient Memory Space for the Import

This next step requires you to do two things. First, you have to check the size of the content you’re going to import. Then you must verify that the file size is less than the allowed memory space for your import. 

If the import is too big, you’ll get an error message or fatal error code from your servers. Even if the import fails, some of your files might be partially imported to WordPress. This can be problematic when you try again a second time, as you’ll end up with duplicate data.

That’s why it’s so important to verify your memory space before you attempt a new import. 

Be aware that your maximum file upload size may not necessarily be the same as the SSD storage that’s offered in your selected plan from your hosting provider. 

Start by going to the backup that you generated in the previous step. You should see the file size displayed if you download it or attempt to download it.

To check or modify your maximum file upload size via Hostinger, simply navigate to your PHP Configuration and select PHP options. 

Example of Hostinger's Advanced screen with red boxes around PHP Configuration and PHP options buttons
Hostinger makes it easy to adjust your max file upload size through the PHP Configuration.

By default, there’s a good chance this will be set to 512 MB. But you can adjust it as needed. Make sure you adjust both the uploadMaxFilesize and postMaxSize fields. 

If you’re uncomfortable doing this alone, you can always contact Hostinger’s support team for assistance. They’ll likely be able to change this for you on your behalf. Just let them know the file size that you’re going to import, and they’ll ensure the space is sufficient. 

Step 4 – Identify Where You’re Importing Content From

To simplify imports, WordPress has several built-in importers. This is a great option for those of you who are importing specific posts or comments that are currently hosted on other platforms.  

Those options include:

  • Blogger — Use this tool to import posts, comments, and users from your Blogger site to WordPress. 
  • Blogroll — This tool imports links using OPML formatting.
  • Categories and Tags Converter — Allows you to bring your existing content categories and tags to WordPress.
  • LiveJournal — You can use the LiveJournal API to import posts in WordPress.
  • Movable Type and Typepad — Import blog posts and comments on either of these blog platforms. 
  • RSS — Use your current blog’s RSS feed to import content in WordPress.
  • Tumblr — Move posts and other media from Tumblr to WordPress using the Tumblr API.
  • WordPress — If you’re moving content from one WordPress site to another, you can import posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, and custom fields directly from an exported WordPress file. 

The steps for each of these options are different. But it’s as simple as following the instructions on the screen as you’re prompted. If your content currently lives on one of the platforms above and you’d like to proceed using one of these methods, navigate to Tools on the left side of your WordPress dashboard and select Import from the expanded menu. 

WordPress dashboard with Tools selected and Import screen displayed
The Tools import screen is an easy way to import content in WordPress.

Before you proceed, there are a few things you should know. First, if you’re importing content from one WordPress site to another, your web host should be able to help you. 

Hostinger offers free site migrations, which bring your site from your current servers to their servers. Depending on your situation, the migration alone could help you bypass some of the import steps. So it’s always in your best interest to check with your web host to see if they can save you from going through unnecessary steps or handle some or all of the importing on your behalf.

If you don’t see the importer on this page that matches where your content is coming from, there’s no need to panic. You can always install a WordPress plugin to facilitate the import. This can either be a plugin offered directly by the provider you’re currently using or a third-party plugin that works as an intermediary between multiple platforms and WordPress. 

This option all depends on the type of content you’re trying to import.

For example, some options will be better for blogs and comments, while others will be better for importing users, customer information, media, and widgets. 

Step 5 – Export and Review the File You Want to Import

If you’re not going to connect through an API or direct importer, you should be able to export your existing content via XML or CSV file. 

This is typically a better option for larger sites, as using plugins can create some errors. So a manual import can give you more control over exactly what you’re importing and how it’s formatted. 

Again, this step will look different for everyone. It all depends on where your current content is located. If you’re unsure how to export that content, there should be sufficient documentation for you to follow directly from that provider. 

Step 6 – Configure a New WordPress Import

Once your file is ready, go back to WordPress. You can use the WP All Import Plugin to configure your content after the import is completed. 

This plugin is regularly updated and has more than 200,000 active installations. 

From your WordPress dashboard, you can navigate directly to the plugin. Then drag and drop the file you exported in the previous step. 

The cool part about using this plugin is that it does more than just add your files and content to WordPress. It also gives you the ability to configure how everything looks once it’s moved over. 

WP All Import Drag & Drop screen
Configuring your content is easy and doesn’t require any technical expertise with this plugin.

This step helps ensure that the formatting in your XML or CSV file doesn’t get messed up during the import. Things like this could easily happen if the header title on a single column doesn’t align with what you want. 

This plugin allows you to create WordPress content using the format and template you create now. Then you can choose which type of data to include with the import.

For example, maybe you want to import everything, or maybe you only want the blog posts and images. 

Step 7 – Backup Your New WordPress Content

Once the import is complete, make sure you back up your WordPress site.

Every Hostinger plan supports weekly backups. If you upgrade to a Hostinger Business WordPress plan or higher, you’ll benefit from automated daily backups. 

If you’re on a lower-tiered plan, you shouldn’t risk waiting a week for the next backup. Instead, you can generate a new backup manually directly from your Hostinger account. 

Simply click on Manage and select Backups from the sidebar. Then click Generate new backup. 

Hostinger Backups Screen with red arrow pointing to "Select" button under "Generate new backup"
Creating a manual backup keeps your newly imported content safe.

Now you’re done! You can repeat this process as needed any time you want to import new content in WordPress. 

Final Thoughts About Importing Content in WordPress

Successfully importing content in WordPress all starts with the right web hosting solution. Using a WordPress-specific plan, like Hostinger, will simplify the process and ensure you have all the tools at your fingertips to import content without losing data. 

Keeping backups of your content is also crucial to avoid data loss. If you have a large file to import, make sure your plan has enough memory and storage space to accommodate your import. Just follow the step-by-step instructions in this guide, and you’ll be all set. 

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Interactive Voice Response Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Through our research, we selected Nextiva as the best business phone service for most companies in the area of interactive voice response. Nextiva offers savings of up to 30% for new customers.

When you want to serve your customers more efficiently through your call center, using interactive voice response (IVR) technology is a proven option. IVR delivers automation, allowing customers to fix some problems on their own. However, your automated phone system must run smoothly, or customer frustration levels will rise quickly. We’ll discuss the key components of using IVR.

The 13 Best Business Phone Services for Interactive Voice Response

We studied the best business phone services when seeking models that offer interactive voice response capabilities. Your business phone service can help with IVR setup while managing your calls and offering communications services like texting, faxing, and video conferencing.

  • Nextiva — Best for most
  • RingCentral — Best for hybrid or remote work
  • Ooma — Best for small businesses needing an easy setup 
  • 8×8 — Best for affordable, high-security calling services
  • Aircall — Best for brands with a consistently high call volume
  • Avaya — Best for using toll-free numbers
  • Dialpad — Best for gathering real-time analytics
  • Google Voice — Best for brands already using Google products
  • GoTo Connect — Best for getting a wealth of features in a basic plan
  • Grasshopper — Best for solopreneurs and microbusinesses
  • Net2Phone — Best for international business calls
  • Talkroute — Best for small teams on-the-go
  • Webex Calling — Best for SMBs who need enterprise features

How Basic Interactive Voice Response Works

Screenshot of Nextiva's Interaction Voice Response web page.
An IVR system answers calls for the company and automatically routes them to the appropriate department based on customer responses.

Interactive voice response is a call routing system that allows callers to enter responses to automated questions. The system uses the responses to determine which department should field the call or whether a self-service option would help the customer. 

IVR is the technology used to route the calls to the proper destination. Interactive voice response can involve using spoken word responses from the callers, who answer automated questions from the IVR system. It also can involve having callers press buttons on the phone to select menu options. The steps the interactive voice response system follows can include the following.

  • Answering the call: When a customer calls your company’s general phone number, the IVR system answers the call rather than a member of your customer service team. The system generates an automated greeting.
  • Gathering basic information: The IVR system may then ask the customer for some basic information, like what language the system should use or the customer’s account number.
  • Reason for the call: The IVR system asks the caller a series of questions about the reason for the call. Depending on the setup of the system, callers can use oral responses or can touch phone buttons to select an answer from a menu.
  • Routing the call: Once the IVR system determines the reason for the call, it then routes the call. It may automatically forward the call to the correct department. It may also give the caller the ability to solve the problem with self-service options.
  • Automated solution: If the IVR system believes it can help the customer solve the problem, it gives the customer the desired information. This might include providing an account balance or reading a list of the business’s hours. 
  • Sending the call to a human: If the IVR system cannot help the customer solve the problem, it routes the call to the proper customer service department. A team member can then answer the call and speak to the customer.

The IVR system consists of software that manages automated interactions with customers. It merges your company’s actual phone system with technology to manage incoming calls. 

The software pulls information from your company’s database to be able to verify customer information. If the customer provides a date of birth as a means of identification, for example, the IVR must be able to verify that the DOB is accurate.

How Advanced Interactive Voice Response Systems Work

Screenshot of Nextiva's conversational AI web page.
Advanced IVR allows customers to speak to the system in a normal, conversational manner.

Advanced IVR technology can bring a host of benefits to your company’s customer service response team versus using a basic system.

With Nextiva, for example, the software can use Conversational AI to make the automated interaction with customers seem more natural. The idea is that customers may be able to receive answers to their questions faster when the interaction with the IVR system feels more like a natural human conversation.

To create an advanced IVR system, the process starts with deploying high-level voice recognition capabilities. If the IVR system cannot understand natural conversation from the caller, the artificial intelligence won’t work properly. 

With advanced voice recognition, the system can understand full sentences, allowing for open-ended questions. Such interactions may help the IVR system determine the reason for the call faster than using a series of menus. 

Rather than hiring call center team members who can speak multiple languages, consider including multi-language support in the advanced IVR. Perhaps you can solve the majority of multi-language customer issues through advanced IVR rather than through human interactions, saving money.

Advanced AI inside the interactive voice response system can deliver answers to common questions without needing to involve a human. It could even help customers schedule appointments. The advanced system could ensure the customer connects with the correct doctor for the appointment by recognizing the doctor names that the customer says.

Benefits of IVR Systems for Businesses

Screenshot of Nextiva's interactive voice response system home dashboard.
Making use of IVR systems saves time for both the customer and the company’s customer service team.

By automating many aspects of routing calls, IVR saves time for your customer service team. This is a significant benefit of deploying this technology.

Interactive voice response saves time by routing calls and by gathering some basic information from the customer before the customer service rep speaks to the customer. The customer service rep saves time by having information about the customer on the computer screen before the actual conversation begins.

Because the IVR system can handle many calls simultaneously, there’s never a worry of customers being unable to make contact. Instead of having a department of receptionists become overwhelmed with a sudden influx of calls, the IVR system routes them to various departments, spreading out the calls.

Even though an expense exists for implementing IVR, the system may be cheaper than hiring enough employees to handle all the calls. By siphoning off a large chunk of inbound calls to the IVR system, you can have fewer people on your customer service team. Ultimately, fewer calls require a human touch when deploying interactive voice responses.

Interactive voice response systems can provide benefits for nearly any type of company. Even for a B2B company, where consumers don’t call your business regularly, you may be able to have IVR help with routing sales calls from your business clients. IVR also could provide product explanations to people who don’t need to speak to a salesperson.

You may be able to set up the IVR to collect information on inbound calls, such as the caller’s phone number and name. This information could help you create a sales lead from the inbound caller, even if the caller simply seeks product information from the IVR.

Benefits of IVR Systems for Customers

Although customers might prefer to speak to a human over an automated attendant, this option doesn’t always deliver the best result. 

The IVR system answers the customer’s call and begins working on the problem immediately, which is better for customers than sitting on hold. It’s also better than having a call ring and ring and ring with no answer because all your customer service team members are already on calls.

Customers like the idea of being able to connect with your company at any time on any day of the week. With an IVR system handling the calls, you don’t need to have specific customer service hours. When customer service employees are not available, the IVR system can simply record a message from the customer. The customer doesn’t have to worry about calling back during normal business hours.

When connecting with an interactive voice response system that can provide answers to common questions, customers can resolve their problems faster. Rather than having to wait on hold to speak to a human to find out the business hours for your company, the IVR system answers this question within a few seconds.

Importantly, an interactive voice response system can give your business clear branding that your customers trust. The IVR always answers the phone in a professional manner, allowing your customers to feel comfortable about the interaction with you.

How To Set Up an Interactive Voice Response System

Screenshot from Nextiva's IVR system with a call flow visual builder feature on display.
Making use of business phone services software simplifies creating the framework for how the call flows through IVR.

Although the process of setting up interactive voice response with your phone system can be challenging, it’s easier when you rely on business phone services software.

A system like Nextiva would allow you to use a series of drop-down menus to set up the system and customize it to your business. For example, you could use the software to quickly create your initial menu of options for the inbound call. 

The software’s menus also provide the ability to set the flow of the calls as customers make selections. You should be able to do this through drag-and-drop actions in the software, making the process as easy as possible. Choose to route calls to a certain department, to a particular extension number on your phone system, or to a voicemail system.

As part of the setup process, you can decide whether you want to use a natural-language voice-enabled IVR or a telephone touch-tone IVR. (With some business phone services, you pay extra to use a speech-enabled system.)

Certainly, performing the setup process for your IVR system can take a lot of time and testing. It’s not a project that you want to try to rush through with little thought given to it. 

Think about the organizational structure that you want from your interactive voice response system. It may help to create a flow chart, allowing you to visualize the system’s flow before starting the software’s building process.

Even better, Nextiva uses a process called Call Flow Builder to help you direct the flow of calls with your IVR. This works similarly to creating a flow chart on your own, giving you a visual representation of how customers can interact with your IVR. 

With the Call Flow Builder, you create a number of actions for each menu selection the customer makes. You even can set up different call flow processes based on whether the call occurs during normal business hours or on the weekend. Through the Call Flow Builder, you can make the process as detailed or as basic as you like.

Always look at the system setup and the flow of the call from the customer’s perspective. You want the calling system menus to make sense to the customer and to be easy to follow. Adding unnecessary complexity to the system only causes confusion and unhappy customers. 

To help with visualizing your system from a customer’s point of view, go through your completed flow chart as if you are a customer calling in to the system. Look for missing menu options and areas that are overly complicated.

Common Errors to Avoid in an IVR System

Screenshot of Nextiva's IVR call flow setup process with various features to select from.
Extensive testing of any IVR system is vital to ensure customers receive a smooth experience that they can trust.

Errors in the IVR system could cause numerous problems, ranging from unhappy customers to outright fraud. Some of the downsides of deploying an interactive voice response system that has errors in it include the following.

  • Fraud: If a caller is trying to steal someone else’s personal information, that caller may enter fake information into the IVR system. If the fraud works, the system may automatically reveal information that it shouldn’t. The IVR system’s verification process must be foolproof.
  • Input errors: If the system is unable to understand oral commands from the caller, this could lead to a misrouted call. You may want to give callers the option of touching buttons to enter selections if the oral responses are not working.
  • Menu errors: In a large company, the number of potential combinations for menu choices could be in the thousands. It’s important to test all possibilities to ensure the system is working as expected. Customer frustration grows quickly when an automated system makes an error, as the customer feels helpless.
  • Reaching a human: If the caller is unable to eventually reach a human at the end of dealing with the IVR system, the caller would consider this a significant failure. The IVR system cannot drop the call or send the caller to a dead end. Try to set up the system so it always defaults to a human operator if the system runs into a snag.

You do not want errors to leave your customers frustrated and angry. Before beginning to use the interactive voice response system with your company, it’s important to test it thoroughly. Double-check every possibility, behaving as you would expect a customer to behave, before implementing the IVR system.

Final Thoughts About Interactive Voice Response

As you decide on which software to use for your IVR system, it’s important to consider the cost of the system versus its benefit. The IVR software must ease the burden on your customer support team to be considered successful. If it isn’t saving time for team members by routing customer calls efficiently, for example, it’s not really helping you.

Ideally, the interactive voice response system you select will fit in nicely with your other call center services. Rather than forcing your team members to learn how to use multiple systems, try to find a system that can handle all customer service needs.

Deploying an IVR system should eventually lead to better performance and lower costs for operating customer service. Better customer service and better business performance often go hand in hand, so the selection of your IVR system requires careful consideration.

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Call Center Quality Assurance Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

For the most versatile call center software that helps with generating call center response statistics, Nextiva is the best overall choice. Nextiva offers savings of up to 30% for new customers.

When you want to improve the customer service results for your call center, it’s important to start with a quality assurance (QA) program. With QA standards in place, your call center team knows the expectations when dealing with customers. These standards ensure your company follows compliance rules while also improving the customer experience.

The 9 Best Tools for Call Center Quality Assurance

Maintaining your quality assurance standards becomes easier when using call center software like our top pick Nextiva. The software tracks interactions with customers, ensuring team members are following protocols. It also generates statistics about how the team handles calls. We’ve reviewed the best call center software tools.

  • Nextiva — Best overall
  • RingCentral — Easiest deployment for SMBs
  • Cloudtalk — Best call center software for remote teams
  • 8×8 — Best contact center software for enterprise-grade security
  • Zendesk Talk — Best call center software for support and automated ticketing
  • Freshdesk Contact Center — Simple contact center software for teams of all sizes
  • Five9 — Best all-in-one contact center software
  • CrazyCall — Best call center software for outbound sales
  • Talkdesk — Best call center software for end-to-end customer experience

How Call Center Quality Assurance Works

Following quality assurance techniques in a call center is important for generating a positive customer experience. When customers receive poor quality service from a call center team member, they may leave poor reviews for the company. They may even decide to switch to another company.

With a quality assurance program in place for the call center team members, everyone knows the expected standards. When team members run into difficult situations, they can stick to the quality assurance program and maintain a professional demeanor.

Part of running a quality assurance program in the call center involves gathering data about the calls your team is handling. Without data in hand, it is difficult to measure the performance of the team. It’s tough to know if team members are following the program without taking measurements.

Through the development of a quality assurance program, your company has a better chance of measuring costs related to running the call center, too. A call center that is performing poorly is going to end up costing far more to run. On the other hand, when you streamline the process, team members work efficiently, saving time and money while giving customers excellent service.

What Metrics Are Important for Call Center Quality Assurance?

Screenshot of Nextiva call center software dashboard.
Call center software helps you track key metrics for a QA program.

Measuring the performance of your call center quality assurance program often requires the use of software. Call center software helps you gather and decipher this data. With Nextiva, for example, you can receive help with measuring things like:

  • Average speed of answering calls
  • Average talk time
  • Average handle time
  • Customer satisfaction score
  • Customer total time on hold
  • Number of dropped calls
  • First-call resolution frequency
  • Average number of agents each customer spoke with
  • Time spent on additional tasks after the call ended

This information helps you determine whether you are receiving the results in customer interactions that you need. If customers are having to speak with more agents than you want to see, you may need to adjust your program to improve the routing of customers to the proper agent earlier in the call.

Not only can you track performance statistics with Nextiva, but it provides help with improving individual performance. Nextiva provides coaching tools that give team members quick feedback for items related to their calls. It can help with measuring an individual team member’s performance while delivering tips for making improvements.

Nextiva records and stores the calls, allowing administrators to review them later. It can generate automated surveys for customers, helping you determine the way your call center is performing from the customers’ point of view. Additionally, Nextiva helps your agents rate their own performance after calls, which reveals areas where the agent feels unsure.

How to Determine Which Metrics Fit Your Company

Screenshot of Nextiva's call center software data and metrics dashboard.
Although Nextiva tracks multiple metrics, you can focus on those that directly apply to your company’s customer service operations.

Although call center software can help you measure a large number of metrics related to quality assurance programs, certain metrics need greater emphasis. If things like average talk time and speed of answering calls lead to higher customer satisfaction scores for your company, you need to focus on these measurements.

You don’t want to spend a lot of time and money gathering data on metrics that do not fit the way your call center operates. 

The best way to find key metrics is to set goals for how you want the call center to operate. The goals should indicate areas where you want to make improvements in your customer service. You then can use the metrics to gauge your progress toward reaching those goals. Some common goals for call center performance include:

  • Customer experience: Keeping your customers on hold for a shorter amount of time and routing them to the right call center team member early in the process can lead to better customer experience results.
  • Call center productivity: With a more streamlined process, you can handle more calls with fewer agents. Your quality assurance program should measure time per call, helping you find areas for improvement.
  • Measure training effectiveness: You can use your quality assurance program’s metrics to determine the effectiveness of your call center training program. If your team members are falling short of benchmarks in certain areas with regularity, it may indicate a hole in your training.

Although setting goals can seem like a daunting task, one way to simplify the process is by thinking about the results you want from your call center. Then work backward from those results to set the goals for quality assurance.

It’s also important to set quality assurance goals that match your overall goals for the business. Even though these QA goals specifically relate to customer service, a successful result in customer service should go hand in hand with business success.

Best Practices For QA With Different Channels

Screenshot of Nextiva call center software assign feature for employees to have process, procedures, and expectations on their dashboard.
Use the metrics you are tracking to create the steps team members should follow with every call.

If your call center handles all types of communication from customers, you need to think about each channel independently. If your call center team deals with phone calls, live chat, email, social media messages, and other interactions, the QA program should address each channel individually.

As you create your call center quality assurance program, you may want to emphasize different areas of importance within each channel. For example, when answering customer telephone calls, it’s important to try to answer the question without having to pass the customer to another team member. Customers don’t like being passed around, running the risk of disconnection.

For a live chat interaction, responding to the customer as quickly as possible is important, or the customer may abandon the chat, assuming a technical glitch. For an email message, including multiple details within step-by-step instructions is important, even if it takes a little longer to create such a message.

How To Create and Implement Your Quality Assurance Program

Screenshot of metrics and data organization tools from Nextiva call center software.
Separately track metrics for each means of communication you use with your customers.

With your goals identified, you can begin laying out the details for the call center quality assurance program.

Start by spelling out the steps the call center team members should follow in a variety of situations they may encounter. Try to be as detailed as possible, giving team members the guidance they need for both typical and atypical customer service requests. The program should list separate steps for handling phone calls, text messages, and social media messages.

The QA program should spell out the types of metrics your call center software will measure. Expectations for team members in terms of the treatment of customers should be part of the program.

Additionally, the program should outline how administrators and supervisors will monitor calls and the performance of team members. It should specify how administrators will provide feedback. 

Once the specific aspects are in place, it’s time to implement the program. Training is a requirement to ensure all administrators and call center team members are on the same page. Everyone needs to understand the expectations for the call center’s performance. They also need to have an understanding of the new steps required to handle customer interactions.

How To Measure the Success of the Call Center QA Program

Screenshot from Nextiva's call center software showing example data and metrics for Taylor's Sporting Store.
Continue measuring metrics and compare them to past results to determine areas where the QA program needs adjusting.

Ideally, you are measuring the performance of your call center team well before you implement any quality assurance program. If you are not measuring performance now, you should start. This allows you to compare performance before you implement the QA program and after. Call center software can help you collect these measurements. 

Rather than immediately assigning blame to team members when the QA program is not delivering the desired results, look closely at the program. It may not have enough detail, or it may be missing instructions for dealing with some common types of customer topics. If so, team members won’t have the training and guidance they need for success. Some of the most important items to measure include:

  • Following the script: Were call center team members able to follow the script for dealing with the call? Or are some subjects forcing the team members to go off script?
  • Verifying identity: When team members are speaking with customers about personal information, does the program provide the steps needed to verify the caller’s identification beyond a doubt?
  • Routing calls: Are team members who initially handle the call able to ask the right questions to learn the subject of the call, so they can route the call to the right person quickly enough?
  • Time management: Are team members able to deal with the customer’s request in a timely manner? Or is the script for the call taking the agent and customer in directions that are just wasting time?
  • Resolution: Was the team member able to resolve the customer’s question to the customer’s satisfaction? If not, did the team member make arrangements to have someone else reach out to the customer? 
  • Tone of the call: Did the team member handle the entire call with the customer in the proper way, using a tone that matches up with the requirements of the QA program? Did the team member use inappropriate language or offend the customer in any way?
  • Abusive customers: Does the program have steps the agent can follow when a customer becomes belligerent? Are there methods in place to protect the team members or to pass the call to an incident resolution specialist when the caller is treating the agent unfairly?
  • Lost calls: If the team lost any calls during the day, what was the reason for the loss? Did the customer hang up in frustration? Did the team member lose the call while trying to transfer it to someone else? Was there a technical glitch for the customer or the call center?

Additionally, you may want to measure call results based on the nature of the call to gain the most accurate data. If a customer is calling in with a complaint, you may want to measure the outcome differently than if the customer is asking a product question, for example. The data measurements you can accomplish with your call center software are almost endless. 

How To Improve Your Call Center QA Program

Screenshot of Nextiva's call center software summary screen showing data for totals calls.
Call center software can collect data about team and individual performance related to the QA program.

As your call center team works through the quality assurance program, use call center software to collect data about performance. You should measure results on individual agent and team-wide levels. 

When you spot areas where one agent or the entire team is not hitting goals, revisit the quality assurance program. Study the program to determine if it lacks detail in certain areas, leading to undesirable results. The program may be too complex, leaving agents unable to follow it in a streamlined manner, causing delays in resolving customer issues.

You may find that additional company-wide or individual training may be enough to alleviate any problems. In other cases, though, your quality assurance program may need some adjustments and tweaking. 

Don’t be afraid to make changes to the program when the data shows that adjustments are necessary. We wouldn’t recommend making changes on a random basis or immediately after encountering one type of problem. Instead, study the data and make changes in areas where the data shows that the program needs improved performance.

As part of implementing your quality assurance program, you may want to designate a certain person to oversee the program. Asking a manager who already has multiple responsibilities to sort through all the data that the call center software is generating may leave the program neglected. Having a dedicated person in charge of the QA program nearly always yields the best results.

Final Thoughts About Call Center Quality Assurance

Screenshot of Nextiva's call center software showing their wallboard feature with data and metrics for calls over a three month period.
Tracking metrics can help you quickly spot areas where the QA program leads to direct improvements.

Ultimately, installing a quality assurance program in your call center streamlines the entire process. Rather than having team members wonder about how to handle certain problems, the program guides them in the right direction. Team members can diagnose the customers’ problems faster, freeing them up to work through more calls.

Your customer support results will almost certainly show improvement once you place more of a focus on quality assurance. You may find it also gives you better results with all aspects of customer outreach through your contact center.

The quality assurance processes you follow in your call center have far-reaching effects. By reducing mistakes and improving the customer experience, you will eventually see improved business results, which is the ultimate goal.

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Call Center Metrics Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Want to start giving your customers the best support possible? The best call center software on the market is Nextiva or RingCentral, depending on your needs. Click here to get started for as low as $50 per month.

Call centers are for more than just issue resolution—they’re also used to measure customer satisfaction, agent performance, and other key metrics. And because they play such an integral role in customer service, it’s critical to understand how to measure your call center’s performance.

So how exactly do you measure call center performance? Here’s a quick overview of the key metrics you should track to ensure your team is providing the best support possible.

The 9 Best Call Center Software of 2022

Depending on your needs, these are the nine best call center software solutions. To read in-depth reviews on our whole list, click here.

  • Nextiva — Best overall (For a limited time, get 25% off, plus a free phone, when you sign up!)
  • RingCentral — Easiest deployment for SMBs
  • Cloudtalk — Best call center software for remote teams
  • 8×8 — Best contact center software for enterprise-grade security
  • Zendesk Talk — Best call center software for support and automated ticketing
  • Freshdesk Contact Center — Simple contact center software for teams of all sizes
  • Five9 — Best all-in-one contact center software
  • CrazyCall — Best call center software for outbound sales
  • Talkdesk — Best call center software for end-to-end customer experience
Quicksprout.com's starter guide for call center metrics - brand logos for the 9 best call center software companies.

What Is Call Center Software, and What Metrics Does It Measure?

Call center software is software used to track, manage, and measure customer support and sales interactions. It can be deployed in-house or remotely, enabling teams to work together and access customer records more quickly.

With call center software, companies can better monitor agent performance and track key customer service metrics like average handle time, first contact resolution rate, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, and more. It also helps you track big-picture metrics like overall customer satisfaction, issue resolution time, and more.

These metrics can help organizations identify areas for improvement and drive better customer service.

Screenshot of LiveAgent software user dashboard.
Call center software in action.

The Benefits of Measuring Call Center Software Metrics

There are many clear benefits to using call center software. Here are just a few:

Enhanced Customer Service

Customers expect personalization every step of the way. McKinsey research found that 71% of customers expect companies they buy from or do business with to know their preferences and deliver personalized experiences.

Screenshot from McKinsey's website showing data for the importance of personalization.
McKinsey research shows how important personalization is in a business’s customer service strategy.

While there are a few ways to do this, call center software fits into the picture by helping you track customer interactions and preferences in real time. This makes it easier to deliver tailored support that meets customer expectations.

Improved Productivity

Call center software can help managers identify areas where agents need more training or additional support by tracking metrics like average handle time and first contact resolution rate. That way, they can make sure their team is operating at maximum efficiency.

In addition, the automated ticketing and routing features can help save time by quickly connecting customers with the right agents and departments.

Better Security

Finally, call center software provides enhanced security for your customer service data. It has a number of built-in features to protect confidential customer information and ensure compliance standards are met.

Especially if your company is in an industry where data security is of utmost importance (e.g., healthcare, finance), this is an invaluable benefit.

What Are the Most Important Call Center Metrics to Track?

No matter the vertical you operate in, there are a few universal call center metrics that should always be monitored.

Here are the most important ones.

Average Handle Time (AHT)

Average handle time (AHT) is the average amount of time it takes agents to resolve customer issues. It’s measured from when a call is received until it’s resolved and marked as “closed.”

AHT is so important because it’s a great indicator of agent productivity. Keeping AHT low helps to ensure your customers are receiving timely service and that agents aren’t overloaded with work.

For example, if you find that your AHT is increasing, it could be a sign that agents need additional training or support. In this instance, you would likely want to talk to your employees about how you could help reduce AHT, such as automation or additional staff.

First Contact Resolution (FCR) Rate

First contact resolution rate is the percentage of customer service inquiries that are resolved on the first try. It’s a measure of how well agents are able to resolve customer issues quickly, efficiently, and with minimal effort from the customer.

A high FCR rate indicates that agents are doing a great job of answering inquiries and resolving issues the first time. If you find your FCR rate to be low, it could indicate that there’s an issue with agent training or customer service processes.

By optimizing your customer service strategy in the areas where FCR is low, you can help reduce customer effort and improve their overall experience.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

Companies can measure their customer satisfaction in a number of ways, but one of the most popular is through CSAT scores. This metric measures how satisfied customers are with their experience by asking them to rate certain aspects on a scale from 1-10 (or another variation).

With this data, businesses can see exactly what areas customers are happy and unhappy with so they can make improvements accordingly.

Call Abandonment Rate

The call abandonment rate is the percentage of customer service calls that are terminated before being answered by an agent. This metric provides valuable insight into how long customers are willing to wait for assistance.

By tracking call abandonment, businesses can identify areas where they need to improve their customer experience, such as reducing hold times or adding more agents during peak hours.

Average Time In Queue

If your customers are waiting for a long time to get the help they need, they won’t be happy. We’ve all been there, and it definitely isn’t any fun.

According to 83% of consumers, one of the most important factors in customer service is how quickly they can be connected to an agent. By monitoring this key metric, companies can ensure that their customers aren’t waiting too long.

Service Level

This metric lets you know how productive your agents are based on the percentage of calls they answer within a certain time period (usually a number of seconds). If you find that your agents are failing to meet the predetermined service level, it could indicate a need for additional training or support.

It’s also important to note that having too high of a service level can be damaging as well. When agents rush to answer calls in time, they could be overlooking important steps or neglecting customer needs.

Agent Productivity

Agent productivity can be measured in a few different ways:

  • The number of calls they take, the number of emails they respond to, or their sales conversions
  • The amount of time they spend on each call or task
  • How often they handle customer inquiries without needing to escalate them

What’s important here is to measure the outcome of their efforts, not just the effort itself. This way, you’ll know if your agents are being productive or just going through the motions.

How to Track Call Center Metrics

Most call center software solutions have built-in reporting and analytics capabilities that can help you track and monitor all of these metrics. The reports will provide valuable insight into how your agents are performing, so you can make decisions to improve the customer experience.

That said, some metrics cannot be tracked through software. For example, you’ll need to measure customer satisfaction through surveys or interviews manually. Software can help automate the process by prompting customers to leave a review or feedback after being helped, but you may still need to manually tally up the responses.

Screenshot of Datapine's call center dashboard with example data.
Call center dashboard reveals key insights for customer support teams.

Other metrics like AHT and first contact resolution rate are a bit more straightforward, as they’re based on call data that can be collected in the software and visualized quickly.

Best Practices for Tracking Call Center Metrics

Of course, tracking these metrics is only half the battle. You’ll need to use them the right way if you want to make meaningful changes that will benefit customers and improve your business operations.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind.

Set realistic goals for your call center

Your call center metrics should be based on concrete goals that you can hold your agents accountable for, such as reducing the average time in queue or increasing customer satisfaction.

But they should also be realistic—don’t set the bar too high or you risk burning out your agents.

To determine what goals are realistic for your call center, the best thing to do is to get feedback from your customers and your agents. Collaborate with your agents on what they think is achievable, cross-reference the feedback you get with industry standards and business-specific data, and use this data to set realistic goals.

Don’t forget to look at the big picture

At the end of the day, metrics are just numbers. They’re numbers that should be used to inform your decisions, but they aren’t the only thing you should consider.

When evaluating metrics, take a holistic approach. Consider how all of the data points interact with each other and what kind of impact these interactions have on your call center operations.

For example, increasing agent productivity might come at the expense of customer service—this is common in contact centers where agents are expected to take more calls or handle more emails in less time.

One call center employee might end up taking more calls, but the customer experience could suffer as a result. Or you might find that agents are spending too much time on each call and not enough time helping customers.

By looking at the big picture, you can identify these issues before they become major problems.

Talk with your contact center support team regularly

We’re all human, and since your contact center team will be in a human-facing role, it’s important to talk with them regularly.

This will give you a better understanding of what agents are experiencing on the job, which can help inform your decisions in terms of call center metrics and goals. It also gives your agents an opportunity to voice any issues they may have and helps create an open line of communication between managers and agents.

Have a clear onboarding process that outlines your metrics and expectations

Your call center’s success is determined by the quality of your agents, and training plays a major role in that quality.

By having a clear and consistent training program, you can ensure that all agents are receiving the same level of instruction on how to handle customer inquiries. This will help them become more productive and efficient over time, which will have a positive impact on your call center metrics.

Here are a few tips for creating a solid training program:

  • Start by creating a comprehensive onboarding process that outlines the basic expectations for customer service agents.
  • Create a detailed training plan to teach your agents about call center operations and technology. Include classes on customer service best practices and the use of call center software.
  • Educate your team on the company’s core values, customer service policies, and any relevant tools or technologies that are being used.
  • Show your customers what some of the common call center metrics are, such as average call length or customer satisfaction scores.
  • Give them the opportunity to shadow current employees and ask questions about their experience.
  • Encourage them to practice on the job by simulating customer interactions in a safe environment.

By taking the time to create an effective onboarding process, you can ensure that your agents are equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in their roles.

Track and analyze call center metrics over time

Call center metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, average call length, and the number of calls handled per hour can be used to measure the performance of your agents.

But it’s important to track and analyze these numbers over time in order to gain a better understanding of how your contact center is performing.

For instance, noticing a sudden dip in customer satisfaction scores means that something has changed—you might find that the underlying issue was something within your control, such as an unclear onboarding process or a lack of training.

By tracking and analyzing call center metrics over time, you can make informed decisions that will help improve the overall performance of your contact center support team.

Final Thoughts About Call Center Metrics

When it comes to creating a personalized customer experience and optimizing your contact center operations, tracking and analyzing call center metrics is a key part of the process.

By looking at the big picture, regularly talking with your agents, having a clear onboarding process that outlines expectations, and tracking data over time, you can make sure your team is equipped to provide efficient customer support and reach those high-level goals.

So don’t fear the numbers—embrace them and use them to your advantage!

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Cloud Hosting vs. Shared Hosting: 5 Key Differences

Sign up for Kamatera today for affordable hosting, near-instant server setup, unrivaled uptime, and round-the-clock customer support. Try Kamatera risk-free with a 30-day free trial, including $100 worth of service credit with no contract or commitment required.  

Web hosting services offer critical storage and computing resources to ensure your website and applications are readily available to online visitors. However, there are many different hosting services to choose from, including cloud and shared hosting. This post will explore the fundamental differences between these two hosting types to help you make an informed decision. 

The 10 Best Hosting Companies for Cloud Hosting 

Spoiler alert: you’re likely to decide you’re better off with cloud hosting by the end of this post. Our research team has tested over two dozen hosting services to find the best cloud hosting services. You can see the results of that experiment in our post Comparing The Best Cloud Web Hosting Plans. Our top options include: 

  • Kamatera – Best for affordable versatility 
  • Hostinger – Most bang for your buck 
  • Scala Hosting – Best cloud hosting for custom resource allocation 
  • Cloudways – Best customizable managed cloud hosting 
  • HostGator – Best cheap cloud web hosting 
  • Nexcess – Best cloud hosting for ecommerce sites 
  • DreamHost – Best cloud hosting for developers 
  • SiteGround – Best cloud hosting for scaling resources 
  • A2 Hosting – Fastest cloud web hosting 
  • InMotion – Best cloud hosting for small businesses 

While it’s arguable that most people benefit more from cloud hosting than shared hosting, you can only come to a solid conclusion by thoroughly comparing the two hosting types. 

Therefore, below are the key differences between cloud and shared hosting. 

1. Hosting Architecture 

The most apparent and instantly discernable difference between cloud and shared hosting lies in the hosting architecture. Hosting providers offer each service differently. So it’s difficult to confuse the two hosting types if you know how they are delivered. 

Shared hosting falls under the category of so-called traditional hosting. Other traditional hosting types include dedicated and virtual private server hosting (VPS). With traditional hosting, a service provider houses your website on a single server. 

To differentiate shared hosting from other traditional hosting types: 

Shared hosting is when the service provider hosts multiple websites on a single server. Multiple websites draw from the same server resources, including disk space, memory, central processing unit (CPU), and bandwidth. 

Dedicated hosting is when the service provider allocates the entire server to only one website or web application. Therefore, the website doesn’t have to share the server resources with additional applications. 

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting is a middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting. There’s still only one physical server. However, the server is split into multiple virtual environments or virtual servers. Each virtual server has its own resources, including memory, processing, storage, and bandwidth. Rather than numerous websites pooling from the same physical server, each is allocated its own virtual environment with private resources. 

Kamatera homepage
With Kamatera, businesses of all sizes can experience the benefits of advanced cloud technology.

Now on to cloud hosting, which is a relatively new concept that is quickly gaining popularity. It’s worth noting that cloud hosting is more fundamentally similar to VPS hosting than shared hosting. Cloud and VPS hosting both require virtualizing a physical server. 

So what does it mean to virtualize a physical server? The process involves installing virtualization software in the physical server to partition it, thus creating multiple virtual machines (VMs). Each virtual machine works like a standalone server with its own operating system (OS) and resources. 

Here’s where the similarities between VPS and cloud hosting end. Where VPS hosting creates multiple independent virtual servers from one physical server, cloud hosting does the reverse, and instead, the hosting provider creates a virtual server from multiple physical servers. 

Cloud hosting allows you to utilize computing resources from multiple servers as if they were a single machine. Furthermore, it is often the case that the servers are dispersed across the globe. Therefore, your website data, files, and configuration settings are stored on multiple servers, so you don’t have to worry about a server outage. 

These servers are also interconnected, so your data and configuration settings are always available. 

2. Resource Allocation 

Another big difference between cloud and shared hosting is how each type of hosting allocates resources. It’s an essential factor since server resources impact the performance of your website. For example, the website may load quickly or slowly depending on the website’s allocated disk space, CPU, bandwidth, and memory.  

As the name suggests, shared hosting divide the server’s resources among multiple websites. It’s a good strategy for reducing hosting costs since the users split the cost. However, it also means that each website has fewer available resources. 

Additionally, shared hosting is ill-equipped to handle sudden traffic spikes. As a result, you can quickly max out your resources, causing decreased performance or potential downtime. Similarly, other websites on the shared server can reduce your performance if they take up too many server resources. 

Most shared hosts solve the problem of one website hogging the server’s resources by imposing hard limits on server usage. For example, the web host may cap resource usage such as CPU, physical memory, or input/output. Unfortunately, these limits mean the server doesn’t scale to handle sudden or unexpected bursts in traffic. 

It’s worth noting that sharing resources isn’t always bad. For example, a small personal blog or hobbyist website may never use up all the resources of a dedicated server. So shared hosting makes sense since the host can still allocate sufficient resources for the small website. 

Cloud hosting is far more generous with resource allocation. In many cases, the host provides unlimited resources. It’s also not unusual for the host to upscale and downscale server resources to match your traffic demands in real-time. 

Therefore, cloud hosting is highly adaptable to sudden traffic spikes. You don’t have to worry about not having enough resources to run the website optimally. Many cloud hosts also offer autoscaling, allowing the server to automatically adjust your resources based on traffic demands in real-time. 

3. Scalability 

Scalability refers to the server’s ability to increase performance in response to your website’s changing system processing demands. For example, most websites target a monthly traffic growth between 10% and 20%. Therefore, you need a web host that can scale to meet your growing demands. 

Generally, shared hosting isn’t scalable because you can’t add more resources once you hit your limit. Instead, you’ll need to upgrade to a different plan, such as VPS or dedicated hosting. Some websites shared hosts offer scalable bandwidth, but even this is capped beyond a certain point. 

Scalability also works in the opposite direction. Ideally, you shouldn’t monopolize resources that you aren’t going to use. The extra resources could easily be allocated to another user that needs a performance boost. 

Again, shared hosting plans typically don’t scale resources up or down. Therefore, you might end up paying for resources you don’t use. 

The great thing about cloud hosting is that scalability is built into the cloud web architecture. It’s one of the significant reasons cloud hosting has seen such an explosion in popularity. Remember that cloud hosting uses multiple virtual servers concurrently?

That means there is a ready pool of additional resources in case of a sudden traffic surge. Furthermore, the extra resources can be allocated in a few clicks or even automatically. Hence, cloud hosting users enjoy near-instant scalability. 

You don’t have to worry about downtime or performance issues while you contact your hosting provider to migrate you to a higher plan. The quick scalability is ideal for websites that experience traffic spikes during sales, promotional campaigns, or peak seasons. 

4. Pricing Structure 

You’ll often notice a significant difference in pricing models between cloud and shared hosting. Most shared hosting providers charge a fixed monthly fee. Additionally, most providers offer steep discounts for long-term contracts, such as if you pay an annual subscription upfront. 

Shared hosting is also standard across most service providers. You’ll likely pay a fixed amount for bundled resources on a shared server. For example, the host may charge $1.99 monthly for 50Gb SSD storage, 768MB RAM, and 100GB bandwidth. 

The shared hosting provider also typically handles the technical aspects like server maintenance, security updates, and system updates. However, many shared hosts also provide a cPanel. You can use the cPanel for website management tasks like publishing websites, organizing web files, creating email accounts, and managing domains. 

Kamatera price calculator
Kamatera’s price calculator makes it simple to calculate the total cost of your cloud server.

Most cloud hosting providers have a pay-as-you-go model. You’ll only pay for the resources you need. And, with deep infrastructure knowledge, it’s possible to save on resource spending. For example, more efficient policies for how employees copy and version data can reduce the monthly storage cost. 

It’s also worth noting that cloud hosting is an umbrella term. There are different types of cloud hosting depending on your requirements. These include: 

Software as a Service (SaaS) – This is the most common type of cloud hosting. The host provides a complete ready-to-use platform. 

Platform as a Service (PaaS) – This cloud hosting distributes responsibilities. For example, the host may cater to the operating system and system software while you handle the applications. 

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – This hosting type offers the most control over the infrastructure. While the host owns the virtual server, you can install any operating system, software, or application you want. 

Finally, shared hosting is significantly cheaper than cloud hosting. The price difference isn’t surprising, given that shared hosting distributes costs among multiple website owners. However, you can get affordable cloud hosting on a tight budget. 

For example, Hostinger’s cloud hosting plans start at $9.99 per month and renew at $19.99 per month. It’s more expensive than your typical shared hosting plan. However, it’s still affordable enough for most small businesses. 

5. Latency 

Latency refers to the time it takes to access data over a network, usually measured in microseconds (µs) or milliseconds (ms). Multiple aspects are involved in latency, including the distance between two ends, the amount of time required to go through load balancers, firewalls, proxies, and routers, and the queue in case of congestion. Therefore, low latency is preferable over high latency. 

Server location plays a significant role in latency. Your server should be as close as possible to your audience, and this ideal situation isn’t possible with shared hosting. While users in your host country may not experience high latency, visitors browsing from geographically distant locations may experience lower speeds. 

Cloud hosting is terrific for minimizing latency. The hosting provider typically has multiple servers in different parts of the globe. The infrastructure means that website visitors are directed to the server closest to their location. 

Similarities Between Cloud Hosting and Shared Hosting 

There are also similarities between cloud hosting and shared hosting. 

First, most hosting providers offer an uptime guarantee. You’ll typically find the terms and conditions for the guarantee in the host’s service level agreement (SLA). Uptime refers to the percentage of time your website is available to users, so the uptime guarantee helps gauge the host’s reliability. 

Most service providers also offer managed services regardless of your hosting type. In this case, the web host is responsible for the technical aspects. For instance, the hosting provider may offer automatic security patches or automatic daily backups as part of the package. Most web hosts also provide a ready-to-use platform with minimal installations and configurations required. 

Additionally, the web host provides the computing power required to power your website. Naturally, these resources vary depending on the hosting type. However, you can count on storage, bandwidth, RAM, and CPU resources. 

Many hosts also offer security features as part of your package. You’ll see features like free SSL, firewalls, DDoS prevention, and malware scanning included in most hosting plans. Generally, even shared hosting offers top-notch security features despite the considerably lower price point. 

Finally, most web hosts provide customer support if you need professional assistance. The support level may vary depending on your plan. However, the web hosts offer support using multiple mediums, including live chat, email, and phone. 

Final Thoughts About Cloud Hosting vs. Shared Hosting

Cloud and shared hosting have more differences than similarities. Therefore, it shouldn’t be difficult to choose the better option. Cloud hosting offers more advantages for most people, including low latency, better performance, and seamless scalability. 

However, there are instances when shared hosting is the better option. This is especially true if you take the time to compare the best shared hosting plans. For example, you can choose shared hosting for a basic website that doesn’t take up too many resources. 

Nevertheless, there are a few things to look for despite the hosting type you choose. First, consider factors such as uptime, renewal price, bandwidth, and customer support. These crucial factors should help you find the best service provider for your web hosting needs. 

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VoIP Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

After several weeks of in-depth research, we found Nextiva to be the best VoIP provider because of its high performance and quality standards. Get a free trial to experience the platform today.

If you’ve ever used a service like Zoom or Google Voice, you’ve already experienced the convenience and cost-saving benefits of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). In this article, we’ll explore what VoIP is and how it works and discuss key VoIP features that make it an extraordinary telephone service.

If you‘re a business owner looking to cut costs or simply looking for an alternative to traditional phone service, read on to get a comprehensive understanding of VoIP and its potential advantages for your business.

The Best 12 VoIP Phone Services for VoIP Calling

To experience the benefits of VoIP, you have to choose a reliable phone service provider. The good news is we‘ve already reviewed over 25 brands to shortlist the best VoIP phone services that are worthy of your time and money.

  • Nextiva — Best Overall VoIP Provider
  • RingCentral — Best for Hybrid and Remote Work Environments
  • Ooma — Best for Small Businesses That Want Simple Setups
  • 8×8 — Best VoIP Provider for International Calling
  • Dialpad — Best AI Functionality for VoIP Phone Systems
  • GoTo Connect — Best Feature-Packed Entry-Level VoIP Plan
  • Phone.com — Best For Businesses on a Tight Budget
  • Google Voice — Best Simple and Lightweight VoIP Phone Service
  • Aircall — Best Built-In Call Management Tools
  • CallHippo — Best VoIP Phone System for Industry-Specific Compliance
  • 11Sight — Best One-Click Audio and Video Calling for Sales and Marketing Teams
  • Zoom — Best Call Monitoring Features For Business Users

What is VoIP?

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, lets you make phone calls using a broadband internet connection instead of a regular phone line. It’s an advanced technology that converts your voice into a digital signal and then transmits it over the internet instead of traditional phone lines. It can be on-premise or hosted in the cloud by a VoIP provider.

One of the (many) reasons VoIP has become increasingly popular in recent years is it offers several advantages over traditional phone service. 

For example, it’s cheaper (at times, even free!), especially for making long-distance or international calls. It also offers a range of features, such as the ability to forward calls to multiple devices and conduct conference calls with multiple participants, which isn’t available with traditional phone service. 

It’s also incredibly flexible, where you can use a VoIP app on your computer or smartphone or a VoIP adapter to connect your regular phone to the internet.

How Does VoIP Work?

Here’s a quick rundown of how a VoIP call works:

  1. Your call is passed from your device to a router.
  2. The router passes your call over the internet, reaching a VoIP phone service server.
  3. Your call is then transmitted via local internet to the other end of the receiver’s router.
  4. Your call connects to the receiver’s IP device. 

As long as you have a high-speed internet connection (a router and modem), you’re ready to use VoIP.

Nextiva infographic explaining how VoIP works
Nextiva offers an easy-to-use VoIP system that can be managed from a single portal.

Generally speaking, a VoIP configuration involves a desk phone and a session initiation protocol (SIP) server, which is also your VoIP service provider. 

As VoIP runs over the internet, your data is stored in the cloud. You can manage the VoIP system through an online dashboard. You can adjust contacts, forward calls, and add new phone numbers directly on the dashboard.

Overall, VoIP is a convenient and simple way to make phone calls using the internet. You can communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world—provided both parties have a stable internet connection and a VoIP service-compatible device.

What are the Advantages of VoIP? 

The following are a few reasons why you should choose a VoIP service over traditional phone lines: 

Value for Money

Most VoIP phone providers offer unlimited missed calls for free. While international calls are chargeable, it’s still quite cheap. 

Moreover, most VoIP services are cloud-based, which means they don’t require hardware. This saves you money on repairs and maintenance, which you likely pay to your landline phone provider.

Greater Flexibility

VoIP eliminates the need to be at a specific place to make or receive phone calls. 

Instead of being in an office, on-premise, or sitting by your desk, you can take calls from anywhere using the app on your device. This is a big advantage for remote or hybrid teams or f you travel frequently.

List of benefits of using Nextiva's VoIP phone system
Companies like Nextiva offer advanced features with their VoIP phone systems.

Improved Scalability

With VoIP, you can grow easily and cost-effectively, whether you’re opening a new office in a new city or hiring more staff.

Unlike a traditional phone service that typically involves spending more money on expensive hardware to get a dedicated line, you can add team members with just a few clicks inside your VoIP service‘s account dashboard. 

The fact that VoIP works on all smartphones means you don’t have to spend more on additional equipment costs while freeing up disk space.

Improved Privacy 

VoIP allows you to add a second line to your cell phone, helping you avoid sharing your personal number with strangers.

Small business owners wanting to protect their privacy can set up a VoIP line for their customers in minutes. This is a great security feature keeping in mind the recent rise of phone hacking.

What are the Disadvantages of VoIP?

Next, let’s review the disadvantages of VoIP:

Lack of Offline Functionality

This is the obvious disadvantage of VoIP.

If you don’t have reliable internet, your clients and team members cannot reach you through your business number. But the good news is VoIP systems will directly send the caller to voicemail if service is unavailable.  

In addition to a good internet connection, you also need a continuous power supply. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until power is restored or invest in a backup power supply.

If you receive VoIP calls through Wi-Fi, you may also have to step out of the office, depending on the provider, and switch to your data plan to talk. 

Potential Connection Issues

As mentioned, VoIP sends small packets of data across the internet and reassembles those packets at the recipient’s IP address. 

This creates three potential issues:

  • Packet loss: occurs when data packets fail to reach their destination, resulting in dropped calls. 
  • Jitter: when packets reach the destination but arrive in the wrong order, resulting in unintelligible calls. 
  • Latency: the lag in time between when you speak and when the person on the other line hears what you say.

No Built-in Emergency Services

The good thing about non-fixed VoIP phones is they aren’t tied to a physical location. But this also means there’s no way for emergency services like 911 to trace your location. 

Suppose you have a physical address linked to your VoIP account. When you’re on the go, emergency workers may be dispatched to the wrong location.

The 11 Key VoIP Features that Help Boost Productivity 

VoIP’s advanced feature set is one of the main reasons it’s currently the most popular phone system in use. Here are some of its best features in detail to help you understand how your business can benefit from this technology:

  1. Interactive Voice Response (IVR): This feature uses pre-recorded voice prompts and speech recognition to allow customers to interact via a dial pad and direct their calls to the proper departments or individual agents. In other words, it automates business processes that either eliminate the need for your callers to speak to a live agent or drastically cut down call times.
  2. Call forwarding: This feature lets you easily forward calls to another number or device when you’re unable to answer a call or are away from your desk.
  3. Virtual receptionist: Certain VoIP services offer a virtual receptionist feature for small businesses that don’t have a dedicated receptionist. This means you can set up an automated greeting and menu system for incoming calls. 
  4. Call blocking: This feature allows you to block unwanted calls from specific numbers.
  5. Conference calls: Thanks to this feature, you can conduct conference calls with multiple participants at once. This facilitates collaboration with remote coworkers or clients.
  6. Integration with other tools: VoIP services are also incredibly flexible, meaning you can integrate the tech with other business tools, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software and project management software, to streamline communication and improve overall productivity.
  7. Voicemail: Voicemail allows you to receive and listen to messages when you cannot answer a call.
  8. Call waiting: This feature will notify you of all incoming calls if you or your team members are already on the phone, ensuring you don’t miss out on important calls.
  9. Call transfer: With VoIP, you can transfer calls to other extensions or numbers to ensure your caller is talking to a suitable person or department for their query.
  10. Call holding: The call hold feature allows you to temporarily put a call on hold and return to it later. 
  11. Auto-dialers: This feature simplifies reaching out to potential customers from a list of leads and extends the duration of calls. It eliminates the need for agents to manually dial phone numbers, allowing them to connect to calls only when a prospect is available to speak. 

What to Look for in a VoIP Provider?

Now that you know the key advantages of VoIP for your business, let’s quickly review how we at Quick Sprout identified the best VoIP providers.

The following are our core criteria for a good VoIP phone service:

  • User-friendly
  • Stress-free administration
  • Service quality and reliability
  • Mobile access
  • Simple call management features
  • Number porting options
  • International call capabilities
  • Reasonable pricing
  • Excellent customer service

While your individual use case may differ, ensure your shortlisted phone service provider has the above functionalities.

Final Thoughts About VoIP

Switching to VoIP is a no-brainer if you want a cost-effective and user-friendly option to make phone calls without being confined to a specific area. While there are a few drawbacks, VoIP is still a reliable technology that’s revolutionizing how we communicate compared to the traditional landline.

Once you optimize your VoIP network, you can stay connected and streamline customer interactions to enhance your workflows and improve productivity.

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Compare the Best Business Communication Tools

Our recommendation for the best business communication tool is Nextiva because it’s an ultra-reliable and versatile VoIP phone system that’s packed with business features. Get started now.

Gone are the days when businesses rely strictly on phones and email to communicate. Long email chains are tough to follow and often ineffective. With so many organizations using remote and hybrid workers, traditional phone systems just aren’t enough to replace in-person meetings or foster collaboration in multiple time zones. 

But the modern business communication tools in this guide can be used from anywhere—and they connect users with audio, live chat, video conferencing, collaboration, and even project management. 

The Top 6 Best Business Communication Tools

There are six excellent business communication tools that are all great for their own reasons. Nextiva is our top pick for any business that wants unlimited calling, texting, and faxing from a feature-packed VoIP phone system. Get a free Nextiva demo today.

  • Nextiva – Best VoIP phone system for most businesses
  • RingCentral – Best for unified business communications
  • Slack  – Best for internal team messaging
  • Zoom – Best for video conferencing
  • ClickUp – Best for project management collaboration
  • Microsoft Teams – Best for larger organizations already using a Microsoft ecosystem

Use the reviews and buying methodology in this guide to find the best communication solution for your business.

Company logos for our best business communication tools reviews

Match Your Scenario to the Right Business Communications Solution

Our research team identified the top reasons why organizations need business communication tools. If you see a scenario below that best fits your needs, you can jump straight to that section to quickly identify the top tools in that category. You’ll also learn more about what to look for while evaluating tools for that specific scenario.

Your team is fully remote or hybrid

Best Option: RingCentral

RingCentral is a hardware-free communication tool, making it an excellent option for remote and hybrid work environments. Your staff can access RingCentral from any device and have all of the communication tools they need at their fingertips—including phone, SMS, live chat, and video. 

It’s easy to deploy and add new users as well. So if you’re hiring new remote employees, they can get set up at home without any technical assistance. Thanks to the RingCentral mobile app, your staff can even stay in contact when they’re on the go.

Another Great Choice: Slack

Slack makes it possible to eliminate lengthy email chains and keep your entire team on the same page. Even if people are working from home or operating in different time zones, this instant messaging program is designed to keep everyone connected. You can use Slack to create organization-wide channels, department threads, small group chats, and even one-to-one chats that support audio calls, video calls, and huddles. 

If you have remote or hybrid employees applies to you, pay attention to:

  • Mobility: The tool should seamlessly transition between home laptops, office desktops, and smartphones to accommodate any type of work environment. 
  • Simple Deployment: Remote workers won’t have dedicated IT staff on-site, so they should be able to install and use the tool without any technical assistance. 

You need to host lots of virtual meetings

Best Option: Zoom

Zoom offers premium business plans that support virtual meetings with up to 1,000 attendees. Even the free plan lets you host 40-minute meetings with 100 attendees. This is perfect for organizations that constantly need to collaborate both internally and externally with presentations to stay on the same page. 

The software has built-in collaboration tools for screen sharing and co-annotations, and supports up to 49 videos on the screen. You can use Zoom to record your meetings and transcribe them as well, making it easy to share with anyone who was unable to attend. 

Another Great Choice: Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams lets you host unlimited group meetings with up to 300 participants. If you’re on a Microsoft 365 plan, you can enable live captions and meetings recordings with transcripts. Microsoft 365 Standard users get the added benefit of webinar hosting with up to 1,000 attendees. 

If you’re a high-volume virtual meeting user, look for:

  • Participant and Duration Limitations: You want to make sure the tool you’re using can handle the number of people attending your meetings and that your meetings won’t be cut short. Some free and entry-level tools might cap you at 40 minutes per meeting. 
  • Presentation Features: Screen sharing, hand raising, and live annotations are crucial for presenters during meetings—especially when you have dozens or hundreds of people attending. 
  • Recordings and Transcriptions: If people can’t attend a meeting, you can easily send them a recording. Transcriptions are also helpful for quickly jumping to a section without having to search for it in the recording. 

High-quality VoIP phone communications is your top priority

Best Option: RingCentral

If most of your business communication is happening over the phone, RingCentral’s VoIP phone system has you covered. Your entire team will benefit from unlimited calling within the US and Canada, so you’ll never have to worry about minute restrictions. 

As a cloud-based tool, your staff can access RingCentral’s phone system from anywhere without any on-premises hardware. With less than six minutes of annual downtime, the system is ultra-reliable as well. If you have global offices or need to connect with vendors, partners, suppliers, or customers in different regions, you can use RingCentral’s VoIP phone to reach 110+ countries.

Another Great Choice: Zoom

Zoom’s VoIP phone system is easy to use from the desktop or mobile app. It comes with powerful features like call transfers, call forwarding, call recording, and even Salesforce integrations for sales teams. You can get a Zoom VoIP plan on its own or get it included with a Business Plus subscription of Zoom One—which is the best value for a complete communication suite. 

For VoIP phone systems, keep an eye on:

  • Call Quality: Calls should be clear and crisp without any lagging or echoes. 
  • Uptime and Reliability: If the system goes down, your team won’t be able to make calls, and current calls could be dropped. So you should look for a solution with high uptime rates.
  • Minute Restrictions: Some systems give you unlimited minutes with specific plans. Others give you minute restrictions or offer pay-as-you-go pricing. 

Your team needs collaborative project boards

Best Option: ClickUp

ClickUp makes it easy to organize tasks and projects through visual project boards. Your team can use it to track progress, monitor responsibilities, and collaborate and tasks together. It also supports file sharing with unlimited storage, so you never have to worry about running out of space.

With Kanban boards, Gantt charts, sprint planning, and agile reporting, ClickUp supports a wide range of project management methodologies. The platform integrates with more than 1,000+ other tools, helping to streamline the way your team communicates with other systems your business is already using. 

Another Great Choice: Zoom

Zoom has an excellent whiteboard feature that makes it easy for teams to collaborate and brainstorm from anywhere. The use cases for this feature are extremely versatile and can be applied to interactive meetings, idea generation, presentations, and so much more. The platform also supports secure file sharing and a powerful search function that makes it easy to find files quickly.

If you’re working on collaborative projects, pay attention to:

  • Board View Type: There are lots of different ways that teams use project boards to collaborate. So you want to make sure the tool you’re considering can visualize your project in a way that your team is familiar with.
  • File Sharing: Document sharing and collaborative editing is crucial for collaborative projects. 

Most of your communication is handled via team chat

Best Option: Slack

Slack is the ultimate team messaging tool. It’s great for quick pings and questions between co-workers, but it also works for large group messaging. 

You can organize your Slack business account into different channels. This makes it easy to segment users by role or department. For example, you can create separate channels for marketing and accounting. So your marketing team won’t see any department-wide messages sent to the accounting channel.

Another Great Choice: Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a feature-packed team chat solution. Beyond basic instant messaging, the platform also supports voice messages, rich text editing, and even translations for team members collaborating worldwide. Similar to an email, you can also use MS Teams to schedule an instant message delivery if you don’t want to disturb a team member in another time zone at night or on the weekends. 

If team chat is your primary communication method, look for:

  • User Segmentation: So you can organize your team by role or department. 
  • File Sharing: To quickly deliver documents via chat.
  • User-Friendly Interface: So your team can easily find the person or group they want to connect with, even if you have hundreds or thousands of people in your organization.

Business Communication Tools Company Reviews

Our team has thoroughly researched dozens of business communication tools on the market before narrowing down our list to five that we can recommend with confidence. Each business communication tool reviewed below stands out from the crowd for a particular use case or scenario, which we’ve highlighted in the review. 

Continue below to read our reviews of the best business communication tools, which will make it easy for you to find the best option for you.

Nextiva – Best VoIP phone system for most businesses

Nextiva, one of the best business communication tools

Nextiva is a great option for any organization seeking a modern business phone solution. It works well if you’re switching from a legacy landline and also accommodates new businesses that want to deploy a completely new phone system.

One of the best parts of using Nextiva for business communications is its mobility. This is ideal for businesses with remote, hybrid, and field-service teams. Users can make and receive calls directly from their smartphones using Nextiva’s iOS and Android mobile apps. Calls can also be handled from computers through the Nextiva desktop app.

As a VoIP phone system, Nextiva does much more than just allow for traditional calls. The platform also supports video calls, live chat, SMS texting, faxing, and more. It’s feature-packed with team collaboration tools as well.

It’s worth noting that Nextiva doesn’t have a free plan or trial. You can get a demo, but there’s no way to test it beyond that.

What Makes Nextiva Great

Nextiva shines above other business communication tools with its crystal-clear call quality and reliability. It boasts a 99.999% uptime rate and has excellent 24/7 support. 

Nextiva VoIP phone service landing page
NEXTIVA’S VOIP TECHNOLOGY TURNS ANY SMARTPHONE OR COMPUTER INTO A BUSINESS PHONE SYSTEM.

You’ll benefit from unlimited calling in the US and Canada, faxing, and nationwide texting—all from the same plan. The software is versatile enough for regular calls, but it also works well for conference calls and team collaboration. You can even extend its functionality with helpdesk tools and sales CRM features to manage calls and customers from a single source of truth. 

Nextiva has insightful call analytics as well. This includes both historical and live call data and real-time call tracking. These features are great if you want to QA call quality, analyze business trends, or assess employee performance. 

The VoIP phone plans start at $21.95 per user per month. Pricing varies based on your contract length and user count. Get a quote today. 

Get more detail and see if Nextiva is right for your business from our in-depth Nextiva Review.

RingCentral – Best for unified business communications

RingCentral, one of the best business communication tools.

Business communications is a fairly broad term. It could apply to internal communications, external communications with customers, prospects, or vendors, team collaboration, and more. Fortunately, with RingCentral, you can get all of your business communications needs from a single provider.

RingCentral is an all-in-one platform for VoIP phone communications, video conferencing, team chat, SMS messaging, and more. You can even use it as an internet fax service, truly covering all of your business communications needs.

Whether you need a phone service for sales teams, live chat for internal messaging, or video conferencing for company-wide presentations, RingCentral has everything under one roof. 

One drawback of RingCentral is its entry-level plan. You’re forced to upgrade if you have more than 20 users, so it’s only a viable option for small teams. 

What Makes RingCentral Great

RingCentral shines above other business communications systems because it eliminates the need for you to use multiple tools for different solutions. From a single dashboard, your team has quick access to everything they could possibly need to communicate both internally and externally.

Screenshot of RingCentral's office - how it works web page.
RingCentral’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to navigate between phone, chat, and video.

As a cloud-based solution, there are no hardware requirements or complex deployments. This makes it a great option for dispersed teams working hybrid or remotely. With the RingCentral mobile app for iOS and Android, everyone in your organization can stay connected on the go as well. 

The platform supports unlimited calling in the US and Canada, unlimited storage, and integrates with your favorite third-party business apps. From document sharing to advanced analytics and reporting tools, RingCentral has it all. 

Pricing is based on how many users you have, with plans starting at $19.99 per user per month. The Premium plan, starting at $34.99 per user per month, is the best value for businesses with more than 20 users. You can try it for free with a 15-day free trial, and check out our RingCentral review to learn more.

Slack – Best for internal team messaging

Slack, one of the best business communication tools.

Instant messaging has become a popular way for modern teams to communicate. Whether your entire team is located in a single building or you have employees working remotely or hybrid in different locations, Slack is the best way to keep everyone on the same page.

Slack is just a simpler way to communicate than email. Teams can use it for one-off questions and messages or have full conversations via live chat—which isn’t an option when with email.

With Slack, every user can keep their team informed of their status as well. So you’ll know whether someone is in a meeting, out of the office, or simply doesn’t want to be disturbed. This is really helpful when you’re trying to connect with someone, as you’ll have some expectations on when you’re getting a reply. 

While Slack does offer audio and video chat functions, it’s not ideal for large virtual meetings beyond a handful of people. It’s also not a replacement for a complete business phone system, so you can’t use it to cold call a prospect’s cell phone. 

What Makes Slack Great

Slack’s way of segmenting users into groups and channels is an excellent way to stay organized—especially for large organizations. There are certain messages that you want everyone within a particular department or project group to see. But at the same time, you don’t want to overwhelm users who wouldn’t find the information relevant.

Screenshot of Slack's features - channels web page.
You can create a new Slack channel for every team, department, or project.

If you have sensitive or confidential information that needs to be kept a secret, Slack also gives you the option to create private channels for specific people. 

More than 100,000+ organizations rely on Slack for workplace communication. So there’s a good chance your clients, vendors, or partners are using Slack as well. Slack has a feature that lets you connect with other businesses using Slack—simplifying communication for all parties involved. 

Plans start at $7.25 per user per month, and you can try it for free to get started.

Zoom – Best for video conferencing

Zoom, one of the best business communication tools.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably heard of Zoom. While this tool originally gained popularity for keeping people connected in their personal lives, it’s quickly become one of the top business communication tools as well—specifically excelling in video conferencing. 

Whether you want to start a one-to-one video call on-demand or schedule a virtual meeting for hundreds of attendees, Zoom has you covered. It’s a great option for company-wide meetings and even extends to sales pitch presentations. The options are extremely versatile. 

One downside of Zoom is that the meeting quality is reliant on a strong internet connection. Otherwise, you may experience some lagging and other issues on the call. 

What Makes Zoom Great

Zoom shines with its ability to accommodate meetings of all sizes. It supports video conferences with up to 1,000 attendees and 49 simultaneous video streams on the screen. 

Screenshot of Zoom's product - meetings web page.
Take your video calls to the next level with Zoom’s built-in collaboration tools.

It’s also an excellent option to keep people interactive during a video call. There are features for hand raising, file sharing, polls, live reactions, and more. Zoom also has built-in collaboration tools and annotation features that take video presentations to the next level.

You can integrate Zoom with your calendar system to simplify scheduling and quickly access your meeting links. Users love Zoom’s ability to record and transcribe calls, as it’s easy to reference things later or share them with people who were unable to attend. 

Beyond video calls, Zoom also has other communication tools for live chat, audio, and VoIP phone. So your team can seamlessly transition from an internal video conference to outbound or inbound calls from external sources—all from one system. 

Plans start at $149 per user per year, and you can try it for free for 30 days. To learn more about Zoom’s plans and pricing, check our in-depth Zoom review. 

ClickUp – Best for project management collaboration

ClickUp, one of the best business communication tools.

Business communication extends beyond phone, video, and live chat. There’s also the team collaboration aspect that must be taken into consideration, which is where ClickUp stands out above the crowd. 

The problem with most modern business communication tools is that they’re not truly an all-in-one solution. You might be able to use it to chat with your team or hop on calls, but you still need to use a third-party solution to manage tasks and projects. Branded as “one app to replace them all,” ClickUp solves this problem. 

ClickUp offers task management, document sharing, and project boards from a single source of truth. It’s worth noting that it doesn’t have audio or video conferencing capabilities. But that’s fine if your team only needs the live chat option.

What Makes ClickUp Great

ClickUp eliminates the need for you to use third-party project management software in addition to your communication software. It gives you everything from a single solution, so you’re not constantly bouncing back and forth between multiple platforms.

Screenshot of ClickUp's home page.
ClickUp makes it easy to communicate and manage all of your work in one place.

It’s one of the only project management tools on the market with built-in live chat. So if you’re working on a task and need to quickly reach out to someone to share an update or get your questions answered, you can do so from the same screen.

But you’re definitely not sacrificing project management features, either. You can view tasks as a list, Gantt chart, kanban board, and more. Plus, ClickUp supports sprint planning and agile reporting to ensure you’re getting detailed analytics about how your projects are progressing.

Plans start at just $5 per user per month, which is perfect for small teams. ClickUp also has a free forever plan. But the free plan is fairly basic and should only be treated as an extended free trial. 

Microsoft Teams – Best for Larger Organizations Already Using a Microsoft Ecosystem

Microsoft Teams, one of the best business communication tools.

Managing business communications with just a dozen or so team members is fairly easy. But for enterprises with hundreds or thousands of employees, this gets a bit trickier. Fortunately, Microsoft Teams has you covered. 

You can use Teams on its own as a standalone communication solution. But most organizations would benefit the most by using teams as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription. This gives you access to the best enterprise-grade features, like SSO, multi-factor authentication, advanced audits, and more. 

If your organization is already using Microsoft tools like Azure Active Directory, Excel, Powerpoint, Word, OneDrive, or Outlook, this will be the best option for you.

However, Microsoft Teams doesn’t always play nice with products outside the Microsoft ecosystem, like Box, Drive, Google Docs, or Google Workspace. 

What Makes Microsoft Teams Great

Microsoft Teams is built for large organizations out of the box. Even the entry-level MS Teams Essentials plan supports meetings with up to 300 participants. 

Screenshot of Microsoft Team's online meetings web page.
Microsoft Teams is an enterprise-grade communication solution.

For such a powerful tool, Microsoft Teams is actually very easy to use. Your staff can easily start an audio or video call with another user or just use the team messaging feature for quick communication. 

The software has some of the best built-in accessibility tools on the market. You’ll benefit from transcriptions and even live captioning, which can help people who have trouble hearing or have a different native language. 

You can use it to set up private communication channels for collaboration and even manage access to files and shared documents. As a Microsoft product, it’s very easy to access and share Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, Excel sheets, and other MS files. 

Microsoft Teams starts at $4 per user per month. But it’s better to get it included with your Microsoft 365 subscription, where you can get a suite of Microsoft tools for $12.50 per month. Our complete Microsoft Teams review has more information on plans, pricing, and features. 

Quick Sprout Business Communication Tools Related Content

The topic of business communication has been covered extensively by our team here at Quick Sprout. Below you’ll find some related tutorials, company reviews, and other useful resources to help you get started and succeed with your business communication solutions. 

Business Communication Tools Guides and How-Tos

Business Communication Tools Company Reviews

Business Communication Tools Comparisons

Business Communication Tools Related Top Lists

The Top Business Communication Tools in Summary

The best business communication tools make it easy for organizations to communicate from anywhere. They include features for team messaging, VoIP audio, video conferencing, collaboration, and more. 

Nextiva is our top recommendation, as it checks all the boxes businesses need in this category. But if you have a unique scenario, you can use the reviews and recommended use cases in this guide to find the best business communication tool for you.

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Slack Alternatives and Competitors

Our preferred Slack alternative is Microsoft Teams, as its comprehensive features and third-party integration make it especially ideal for large businesses. Sign up for Microsoft Teams for free. 

Slack is a cloud-based instant messaging app designed for the workplace with direct messaging, group messaging, transfer of files, and various other tools. It is widely regarded as one of the most popular and well-known business communication tools and an excellent alternative to an internal email.

Slack’s intuitive user interface, customization, and built-in privacy settings have made it the leader in the market. At the time of its launch in 2013, there were no formidable competitors in the realm of business messaging, but that has changed over the years. 

The 5 Best Business Messaging Apps

We looked at some of the most popular business messaging apps used today and found Slack to be the ideal option for most companies. The following apps made it to our list:

  • Slack – Best for Overall Versatility
  • Microsoft Teams – Best for Large Businesses
  • Zoho Cliq – Best for Businesses on a Budget
  • Chanty – Best for Time-Saving Capabilities
  • Twist – Best for Organization

Slack and Microsoft Teams were a close call in our comparison of top business messaging apps, but Slack came out on top. The following section makes a case for our second pick,  Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams – Best For Large Businesses 

Microsoft Teams brand logo.

Microsoft Teams is a leading cloud-based communication and collaboration tool businesses use worldwide. Developed by Microsoft and launched in 2017, it includes messaging, voice calling, video calling, and screen sharing, among a ton of other features. Teams gained massive popularity and adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic when companies were forced to adapt to remote collaboration due to work-from-home policies.

It has an easy-to-use interface and includes many additional utilities like a calendar, integration with tools like Jira and GitHub, and integration with websites like Monday.com. Teams also has robust built-in security and privacy features that are essential for businesses with a large number of employees. This makes Microsoft Teams the ideal business communication platform for large companies and their unique requirements. 

Teams is used by corporate offices and the tech sector and has also helped aid remote learning. Students and teachers have adapted to using Teams to communicate during the semester as classes in several institutions worldwide have shifted to online seminars. Microsoft Teams can be a handy way to manage communication in a variety of settings and is catching on in popularity.

How Microsoft Teams Compares to Slack

Screenshot of a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Microsoft Teams offers excellent collaboration features for large businesses.

Microsoft Teams and Slack primarily cater to different market segments. Young tech-savvy companies tend to use Slack and larger organizations use Microsoft Teams. But it wasn’t always like this. 

Slack was clearly dominant in the small business as well as enterprise market segments until a few years ago. However, with the advent of COVID-19 in 2019, Microsoft Teams usage surged beyond Slack. By the first half of 2020, Teams was reported to have over 75 million users. According to the latest numbers, Teams has over 270 million daily active users compared to Slack’s 18 million. This is a drastic change in usage trends.

Slack and Teams both have free basic versions with limited capabilities, but Microsoft Teams also comes included with Microsoft 365 Business plans. Slack gives you unlimited users and messages in its free plan, while Teams offers up to 500,000 users and unlimited messages. A key difference in the free plans is Slack’s limitation of searching through up to 10,000 archived messages while Teams lets you dig anything up from your entire chat history.

Chat capabilities and other basic features are quite similar in both software, such as channels/teams, unlimited messages, file sharing, video calls, and apps for both desktop and mobile devices.  However, the two software have significant differences that may make one of them a better option for your business. 

Slack has a better onboarding process and offers more freedom than Teams, making it attractive to startups and small businesses struggling with digitization.  Slack also makes it easier to invite someone on a call. It also feels lighter and easier to get started with. 

Microsoft Teams has a slightly steeper learning curve, but many companies find it a better option for the long term. While Slack integrates with Office 365, too, Teams, being a Microsoft product, offers a smoother experience. The way Teams integrates with Microsoft Azure AD makes it particularly powerful and reliable for large companies. 

Microsoft Teams is included with Microsoft 365 Business plans, but a standalone Microsoft Teams Essentials plan is also available for $4 per user per month. Slack starts at $7.25 per user per month. Our extensive review of Microsoft Teams discusses its features and pricing in more detail.

Zoho Cliq – Best for Businesses on a Budget

Zoho brand logo

Zoho Cliq, also launched in 2017, is the streamlined and expanded version of the Zoho chat app. Cliq is a Slack-alternative team chat featuring integrations with Zoho CRM, Zoho People, Zoho Desk, and other tools by Zoho.

It includes direct messaging between individuals and groups, screen sharing, video calls, drag-and-drop file sharing, and various integrations. Its particularly impressive “fork” feature helps cut down on overlooked messages in channels and direct messages.  

Zoho Cliq stands out from its competitors with its impressive free version. Cliq’s basic plan includes 100 GB of storage space, unlimited Video calls, and a host of other features businesses have to pay for in other apps. Zoho assures its users that Cliq will always remain free. 

Google and Linkedin accounts can be used to log in to Cliq which makes it an even more accessible option for businesses with tighter budgets that don’t have their own internal email. Zoho Cliq’s budget-friendly paid version includes more advanced features and even an AI assistant named Zia. 

How Zoho Cliq Compares to Slack

Screenshot of a Zoho Cliq video meeting.
With Zoho Cliq, you get free collaboration features that others offer for a premium.

Zoho Cliq is a direct competitor of Slack. It’s most often recommended as a budget-friendly alternative to Slack for startups and small businesses. It’s particularly a preferred app among people who already use other business tools by Zoho, such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, and Zoho Desk, because of their seamless integrations with Cliq.

The free version of Cliq allows users to search 10,000 past messages. This can give small companies a larger search volume compared to the 90 days of message history that comes with the free version of Slack. Cliq’s free plan also includes SALM-based single sign-on, a feature that’s not even included in Slack’s Pro plan and only comes with the Business plan.

During our research, we came across reviews for Cliq where users have complained about how long it can take to set up the software, especially when it comes to onboarding new users. Other users found the UI to be confusing. A number of users also pointed out how slow and difficult the file-sharing feature can be. Finally, some users suggested using Cliq only if you’re using other Zoho apps because of how well the Zoho app suite works together.

While Zoho Cliq’s paid Unlimited plan does offer a bang for your buck, it lacks many features that businesses can benefit from. Budget is the only reason to choose Cliq over Slack.

Chanty – Best for Time-Saving Capabilities 

Chanty brand logo

Chanty is a business messaging platform that focuses on tasks instead of chats, which is quite unlike its competitors. The focus on tasks allows businesses to save valuable time by limiting distractions in the chat interface. It uses AI bots to improve communication and collaboration and aims to streamline company operations. 

The task button in Chanty features prominently in the top left corner of every conversation, keeping employees focused on the work at hand while they communicate. The app is especially geared toward software development, website building, and product development. It groups users into teams, with each team being assigned a different task.

How Chanty Compares to Slack 

Screenshot of Chanty group and individual chat channels with example conversations.
Chanty’s straightforward UI prioritizes productivity by keeping teams focused on tasks.

Chanty picks the most valuable features from Slack and other apps to create a platform that maximizes productivity. The app drops complex and confusing features that can overwhelm users on other platforms without contributing much. 

Chanty’s free version supports up to 10 people and gives unlimited searchable history. The paid version costs less than Slack’s paid plans and includes a range of team management features.

Chanty is best for workplaces where tasks are more important than meetings and conferences, such as software houses and engineering firms. However, it’s not the best app out there for processes that require constant coordination among team members, such as marketing and CRM.

Twist – Best for Organization

Twist brand logo.

Twist is a blend of email and business messaging featuring the best features of the two. Twist uses channels and threads that make information easily accessible for users later on. 

The hallmark feature of Twist is what it calls “async messaging”. The platform actively encourages team members to respond to messages whenever they see fit. It also ensures that important information doesn’t get buried and discussions stay on topic. Users that are away from the keyboard don’t miss out and can contribute to conversations at their own convenience.

How Twist Compares to Slack 

Screenshot of Twist dashboard showing various channels and threads.
Twist’s channels and threads give you the best of email and chat features in one application.

Twist is highly focused on threads, a feature more common in email clients and forums than business messaging apps. Threads allow users to access critical information without keeping the chat open. The feature also makes it easy for users to communicate at their own pace compared to the ASAP workflow encouraged by Slack. 

Twist also has a unique notification system that allows users to mark conversations as “done.” This ensures users don’t miss out on threads with information meant for them. 

Async messaging is a twist on conventional business messaging apps that can improve communication in small, closely collaborating teams. It’s less ideal for larger businesses and workplaces where productivity rather than the organization is a priority.

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Zoom Alternatives and Competitors

Our favorite Zoom alternative is GoTo Meeting because it is secure, simple, and affordable. Contact an expert to get a free demo.

In most cases, Zoom is the go-to brand for video conferencing these days. But even though Zoom did make it onto our list of the top video conferencing software, there are other options for businesses. There are many other options available in the market today.

The Quick Sprout research team spent hundreds of hours analyzing video conferencing software and researching several popular solutions available. After analyzing the data and following a set criterion system, the team narrowed down the list to the top seven video conferencing companies.  

The 8 Best Video Conferencing Services

The best Zoom alternative is GoTo Meeting, which integrates seamlessly with existing business tools and is ideal for small businesses. Contact an expert to get a free demo. 

  • GoTo Meeting — Best video conferencing service for small businesses
  • RingCentral — Best video conferencing service with VoIP business phone plans
  • ClickMeeting — Best video conferencing software for webinars
  • Zoho Meeting — Affordable video conferencing service with basic features
  • Microsoft Teams — Best video conferencing software for internal communication
  • Zoom — Best video conferencing service for scalability
  • Join.me — Annual contract video conferencing plans for small meetings 
  • Webex — Best video conferencing software for cloud collaboration
Brand logos for the eight best video conferencing services - quicksprout.com's review.

You can go through the detailed comparison of different video conferencing software on our full top list.

GoTo Meeting – Best Video Conferencing Service for Small Businesses

GoTo Meeting brand logo.

GoTo Meeting is not simply a video conferencing tool. It provides various other advanced tools and integrations that turn it into a highly collaborative workspace for a business. This elaborate workspace is convenient for remote teams, business managers, and even owners working with a small team. Its impressive features include single-click start, multi-channel support, cloud collaboration, bandwidth adjustments, integrated scheduling, and more.

One considerable benefit of GoTo Meeting is that it easily integrates operational processes without requiring additional adjustments. GoTo Meeting provides a kit that includes an installation guide and pre-configured software for all its users. The kit can help transform a physical conference into a digital one and has advanced hardware and software options. 

How GoTo Meeting Compares to Zoom

Screenshot of Go To Meeting's meeting web page.
GoTo Meeting is an ideal video conferencing platform for small businesses.

GoTo Meeting is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses as it only allows a limited number of participants. It offers excellent collaborative tools for remote teams and unlimited cloud recording storage.

On the other hand, Zoom has a higher participant limit allowing upto1000 participants in a single meeting, albeit with no cloud-based storage of the recordings. When it comes to security, GoTo Meeting is far more secure than Zoom.

In terms of pricing, GoTo Meeting and Zoom offer similar pricing plans. Even though Zoom offers a Basic Free Plan for meetings of up to 100 people, its paid plans range between $14 to $19 per user per month. GoTo Meeting also charges between $14 to $19 monthly for its various subscription plans, but it has no free plans.

Go through our detailed review of GoTo Meeting to decide if it’s the right option for your business.

RingCentral — Best Video Conferencing Service With VoIP Business Phone Plans

RingCentral brand logo.

RingCentral allows businesses to get rid of traditional phone plans through its unique VoIP business phone services. Its video conferencing service is only one aspect of the extensive communication services offered, which include messaging, screen sharing, and more. However, if you only want the video conferencing service, you can buy the Meetings app as a standalone product.

The RingCentral video conferencing service offers different subscription plans based on the region of the user and the total number of users. Its Free Plan includes the option to host around 100 participant meetings, store recordings on the cloud, join meetings in the browser, and many more features. However, if you want to add more participants, or store the recordings for a longer time, consider the RingCentral Video Pro+ Plan.

How RingCentral Compares to Zoom

Screenshot of RingCentral's webpage for video meetings
RingCentral offers various pricing plans for businesses according to their needs.

RingCentral and Zoom are both easy to use and ideal for businesses of all types and sizes. They both offer various integration options and are easily affordable. The audio and video quality is also excellent.

RingCentral allows users to delete any messages sent by mistake, making it a better option for some businesses. It also offers other unique features to keep users engaged. An additional benefit of RingCentral is that it provides live training, video support, and in-person help to users when required.

When it comes to pricing, RingCentral is somewhat more expensive than Zoom, but it also offers more features. Zoom’s free and basic plans only include video conferencing, while RingCentral’s include some business phone services. 

Read the in-depth analysis of RingCentral to make an informed decision.

ClickMeeting — Best Video Conferencing Software For Webinars

ClickMeeting brand logo.

ClickMeeting is a webinar software platform, making it slightly different from other video conferencing software. It is excellent for hosting virtual events, online training, and marketing products with video demonstrations.

Besides webinar services, it offers traditional video conferencing options to enhance business collaboration and facilitate team meetings. A prominent feature of ClickMeeting is its ability to translate meetings in real-time and screen sharing between multiple people.

How ClickMeeting Compares to Zoom

Screenshot of ClickMeeting's live webinar web page showing a live webinar in action.
The special webinar feature of ClickMeeting helps it stand out.

ClickMeeting boasts a fast user interface and is easily navigable for beginners. It also offers interactive features like question-and-answer sessions, activity tracking, analytical reports, customizable forms, and more. 

Zoom is also user-friendly and can easily be set up. However, it lacks several features offered by ClickMeeting. Zoom has no event tracking or management features and lacks moderation and monitoring tools.

In terms of pricing, ClickMeeting offers a free trial and various pricing plans costing $30 to $45 per month, whereas Zoom has an elaborate Free Plan with additional paid plans ranging between $14 to $19 a month. ClickMeeting also offers a custom plan with a custom quote based on the functionalities you want. 

Read a detailed analysis of ClickMeeting on our website.

Zoho Meeting — Affordable Video Conferencing Service With Basic Features

Zoho Meeting brand logo.

Zoho Meeting is a simple video conferencing software that doesn’t offer any advanced and complicated features. Its main features are screen sharing, moderator controls, lock meetings, in-session chat, RSVP scheduling, and embedded meeting links. Additionally, users can give over control, remove other users, and switch a presenter while hosting a video conference. 

Zoho Meeting easily integrates with Zoho CRM, which is an ideal option for anyone using a Zoho product. Even though it offers no fancy features, it is a quality solution for businesses already using Zoho products or only requiring basic video conferencing features.

It has a few different pricing plans and charges a minimal fee. It also offers a Free Forever Plan with 100 meeting participants or webinar attendees and limited features.

How Zoho Meeting Compares to Zoom

Screenshot of Zoho Meeting's meeting web page describing video meeting and share screen features.
Zoho Meeting is a basic video conferencing software with additional functionalities like screen sharing.

Zoho Meeting and Zoom both offer boast an easy-to-use interface and many strong functionalities. However, Zoom provides much better customer service than Zoho Meeting. Additionally, it also provides detailed in-person and online training, unlike Zoho Meeting, which doesn’t offer the same.

Zoho Meeting has a whole ecosystem of tools and software you can access and use easily. Zoom doesn’t have its own ecosystem, but it works well in all browsers. Additionally, adding or inviting more people to a meeting is extremely easy in Zoho Meeting. In Zoom, attending a meeting doesn’t require downloading the application, and anyone can join a meeting from any device using a shareable link. 

In terms of pricing, ZohoMeeting offers a Free Forever Plan for $0 a month. Its paid packages are highly affordable, ranging from $2 to $19 a month. Zoom also has a free-of-cost plan, and the functionalities offered by the free Zoho Meeting plan are on par with it. Therefore, choose the option most suitable for the needs of your business.

Go through a thorough review of Zoho Meeting here.

Microsoft Teams — Best Video Conferencing Software For Internal Communication

Microsoft Teams brand logo.

Microsoft Teams is an excellent software for internal business communications. It has a video, audio, and chat feature that can be used for instant communication. It also supports meetings with up to 10,000 participants and offers mobile and desktop versions.  

Microsoft Teams is slightly more complex to use than other similar software available in the market. It has a complex onboarding and setup process, which makes it not so beginner friendly. Since Microsoft Teams is a product of Microsoft, companies using a Microsoft ecosystem may find it easier to incorporate Microsoft Teams into their system.  

In terms of pricing, Microsoft Teams offers different annual pricing options for different regions of the world. All the paid plans have 1TB of cloud storage, meeting recordings, app integrations, and more.

How Microsoft Teams Compares to Zoom

Screenshot of Microsoft Teams web page.
Microsoft Teams is excellent for internal communications in a business.

Microsoft Teams and Zoom are pretty similar to each other. They both provide excellent video conferencing services. Microsoft Teams offers additional collaborative tools along with video conferencing tools. Zoom also provides additional workspace features like a digital whiteboard, team messaging app, and more.

Overall, Microsoft Teams is better suited for business communication. Zoom can also be used for business dealings, but it is less secure in comparison. Users need to download Microsoft Teams to use it, whereas Zoom meetings can be joined directly through a browser without downloading an app.

Microsoft Teams offers free and separate paid plans for homes and businesses. The maximum capacity of participants allowed by Microsoft Teams is 1000, irrespective of your subscription plan.  

Read a thorough review of Microsoft Teams here.

Join.me  — Annual Contract Video Conferencing Plans For Small Meetings

Join.me brand logo.

Join.me is an excellent video conferencing solution for teams, individuals, and businesses. It has one of the fastest signup processes and is endorsed by startups and big enterprises alike. You can launch a meeting on its website without consulting a sales representative.

Join.me started as an independent platform but now has become a part of the GoTo Meeting software. However, it still retains its free version and offers its video conferencing services separately. Compared to GoTo Meeting, it is far simpler and has only a few features.

If you are starting a new meeting, you can invite people to join it through a link or an email. Join.me allows you to change your conferencing background, customize your URL, and share your screen with one click. People who aren’t using Join.me can still accept your meeting links with just one click.

Join.me is an exclusive video conferencing service. Users have to sign up and install the application to get started. Therefore, there needs to be more transparency in pricing. If you want to hold a meeting, you must have an account on Join.me. Its customer support can assist you with the initial procedure. However, if you are an attendee, you can simply attend the meeting by putting in a specific nine-digit Join.me ID.

How Join.me Compares to Zoom

Screenshot of Join.me's join a meeting page with enter 9-digit join.me ID field and join meeting button.
Join.me is a simple video conferencing software for individuals and small businesses.

Join.me is just as easy to use as Zoom. A benefit of Join.me is its easy screen-sharing options. It also provides excellent value for your money. However, Zoom takes the lead in terms of customer service and functionality. 

An advantage of Join.me over Zoom is that its video and audio quality are top-notch. Moreover, the many integration options offered by Join.me make it a more attractive option, specifically for individual users. 

One drawback of Join.me is its lack of transparency in pricing. The service only provides custom quotes based on users’ needs. Therefore, it is difficult to guess the amount of money charged to individuals or businesses.

Give Join.me’s review a read and decide if it suits your needs.

Webex — Best Video Conferencing Software For Cloud Collaboration

Webex brand logo.

Webex is a highly regarded video conferencing service. It allows users to host huge virtual events with as many as 100,000 participants and also enables users to hold interactive webinars for almost 3000 people.

The platform is ideal for people who run on-demand training lessons and businesses wanting to onboard employees in multiple locations. Its mobile app makes it easier to host and join meetings from anywhere at any time, and cloud collaboration features make it excellent for teams.

Screenshot of a Webex cloud call meeting in place from their cloud calling web page.
Webex is ideal for meetings and events in the cloud for all teams.

How Webex Compares to Zoom

Webex allows the highest number of participants among all the video conferencing services. It allows as many as 100,000 participants, which is much higher than the 1000-participant limit of Zoom. Moreover, it offers video recording and advanced screen-sharing options. 

Overall, Webex offers just as many sophisticated tools and features as Zoom. Even with a wide range of unique features, Webex charges a minimal fee for each subscription plan.

The four different pricing plans make it ideal for small teams wanting business-level features and tools. Its pricing plans range between $0 to $32 a month. Overall, it suits businesses requiring collaboration with teams in different locations. 

Read our Webex review before choosing it for your needs.

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Google Meet Alternatives and Competitors

Our favorite Google Meet alternative is GoTo Meeting because it is secure, simple, and affordable. Check out the free demo for all GoTo Meeting services to make an informed decision.

Google Meet has become a popular video conferencing service in recent years. It offers various benefits, like video calls with as many as 100 participants. However, like any platform, Google Meet also has some drawbacks, which is why it didn’t make it to our top list. Fortunately, you can look into plenty of alternatives and choose the most appropriate service for your needs. 

The Quick Sprout research team invested many hours in carefully analyzing the several video conferencing services available in the market. Based on a specific criterion system, the team shortlisted the following eight services to be the best video conferencing services.  

The 8 Best Video Conferencing Services

The best Google Meet alternative is GoTo Meeting. It seamlessly integrates with the existing business tools and is ideal for small enterprises. Avail of a free demo to look at all GoTo Meeting features and make an informed decision.

You can read the in-depth analysis of these services here. 

Brand logos for Quick Sprout's eight best video conferencing services.

GoTo Meeting – Best For Small Businesses

GoTo Meeting brand logo.

GoTo Meeting takes video conferencing to a new level by making it a collaborative workspace. It easily integrates with the systems and is ideal for remote workers. It offers impressive features like automatic bandwidth adjustments, single-click start, multi-channel support, integrated scheduling, cloud collaboration, and more.

The service provides a special kit to its clients containing software and hardware that can transform any conference room into a digital one. This kit’s hardware includes a microphone, speaker, and camera. 

It offers three pricing plans, Professional, Business, and Enterprise, and charges a reasonable fee for each. Each plan provides unlimited meetings, integration options, cloud storage, and more. 

How GoTo Meeting Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of a video meeting on GoTo Meeting.
With a broad set of collaboration features and numerous easy integrations, GoTo Meeting is an excellent choice for small businesses not using Google Workspace.

GoTo Meeting is an excellent tool for small and medium-sized businesses. It helps you arrange webinars through its GoToWebinar with no limit on meeting times. Despite being more advanced than Google Meet, it is less efficient for new businesses with limited budgets, and Google Meet fulfills the needs of a new business much more efficiently. GoTo Meeting also doesn’t offer a free plan, unlike Google Meet. 

Google Meet is suitable for businesses that use Gmail and other Google products, while GoTo Meeting can be integrated with any software system or product. Therefore, GoTo Meeting is relatively easier to set up.

When it comes to pricing, Google Meet is cheaper than GoTo Meeting. Google Meet alone can be used for free, while GoTo Meeting charges between $14 and $19 for its various subscription plans.

Go through our detailed review of GoTo Meeting to decide if it’s the right option for you.

RingCentral — Best Service With VoIP Business Phone Plans

RingCentral brand logo.

RingCentral is another excellent choice for video conferencing. Its VoIP business phone services allow you to get rid of your traditional phone plan. The video conferencing service is an additional feature of RingCentral, but consumers can purchase the Meetings app as a standalone product. 

The RingCentral video conferencing platform offers various subscription plans and pricing options based on the user’s region. The Free plan allows you to attend and hold unlimited meetings and host up to 100 participants. It also helps store all recordings on the cloud for almost seven days. 

How RingCentral Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of a video meeting on RingCentral.
RingCentral offers a complete suite of business communication tools with over 300 easy integrations.

RingCentral is an easy-to-use service ideal for all types of businesses. It allows several integration features and provides value for your money, just like Google Meet, and the latter also provides better customer service than RingCentral.

However, the plus feature of RingCentral is the freedom to delete a message sent by mistake. Google Meet doesn’t allow that. Moreover, Google Meet has limited features and is often deemed boring by users, whereas RingCentral keeps its users excited with its various unique features. An additional benefit of RingCentral is that it offers in-person and live training with video support.

When it comes to pricing, Google Meet can be used for free. However, RingCentral has both free and paid plan options. Its free program provides enough features that are ideal for video conferencing. Its paid program provides many useful additional features.

Read the in-depth analysis of RingCentral to make an informed decision.

ClickMeeting — Best For Webinars

ClickMeeting brand logo.

ClickMeeting is slightly different from other video conferencing services because it’s a webinar software platform. Webinars are excellent for holding online events, hosting virtual training, and marketing products with video demonstrations. 

Moreover, it also offers traditional video conferencing options for business collaboration and team meetings. ClickMeeting’s video conferencing tool is slightly more expensive than other brands; however, it is worth it if you use the webinar feature. It offers two pricing plans at different costs, and the cost mainly depends on the number of attendees. 

How ClickMeeting Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of a video meeting on ClickMeeting.
ClickMeeting is ideal for online classes, team meetings, and business video conferences with up to 40 active participants.

ClickMeeting is user-friendly and offers several interactive features like question-and-answer sessions and much more. Its beautiful interface has always been its selling point because it can easily be navigated even by beginners.

However, Google Meet’s video quality is better than ClickMeeting’s. GoogleMeet also offers several customization options ClickMeeting doesn’t, as well as excellent customer service and functionality.

Regarding pricing, ClickMeeting offers a free trial and various pricing plans costing $25 to $40 a month, whereas Google Meet offers its video conference services for free. ClickMeeting also provides a custom plan with a custom quote based on the functionalities you avail. 

Read a detailed analysis of ClickMeeting on our website.

ZohoMeeting — Affordable Service With Basic Features

Zoho brand logo

ZohoMeeting is a straightforward video conferencing tool without any fancy or complicated features. Its top features include screen sharing, RSVP scheduling, moderator controls, in-session chat, lock meetings, and embedded meeting links. Users can remove other users, give over control, and switch a presenter.

ZohoMeeting easily integrates with Zoho CRM. Therefore, it is an ideal option for anyone using a Zoho product. It has no fancy features, but it is a quality solution for businesses that only require basic features or are already using Zoho products. 

It has no set pricing plans and charges based on the number of participants. It also offers a free forever plan with 100 meeting participants or webinar attendees and limited features.

How ZohoMeeting Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of a video meeting on ZohoMeeting.
Zoho Meeting is one of the most affordable and easy-to-use video conferencing software on the market, offering top-notch collaboration features.

ZohoMeeting and Google Meet offer excellent customer service, robust functionality, and ease of use. However, ZohoMeeting is slightly better than Google Meet in some aspects. For example, ZohoMeeting provides its users with live training, but Google Meet doesn’t. 

Moreover, ZohoMeeting has a whole ecosystem of tools and software you can access. Additionally, adding or inviting more people to a meeting is extremely easy. 

Regarding pricing, ZohoMeeting offers a free forever plan for $0 a month. Its paid packages are incredibly affordable, ranging from $1 to $16 a month. Google Meet is also free of cost, but the functionalities offered by the free ZohoMeeting plan are on par with Google Meet. Therefore, choose the option most suitable for your business.

Go through a thorough review of ZohoMeeting here.

Microsoft Teams — Best For Internal Communication

Microsoft Teams brand logo.

Microsoft Teams is specifically designed for internal business communication. It is an instant texting service with video, audio, and chat capability. It supports meetings with 10 to 10,000 participants and is ideal for in-house communication.

Microsoft Teams offers superior video conferencing technology, but its setup, onboarding, process, and usage are slightly complicated compared to the other available options. It is an ideal video conferencing tool for companies that already use a Microsoft ecosystem. 

It has both a desktop and mobile version. However, the mobile app is challenging to navigate, making the desktop app easier to use. It offers five annual pricing options. All the paid plans have 1TB of storage, meeting recordings, app integrations, and more.

How Microsoft Teams Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of a video meeting on Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams offers excellent collaboration features for large businesses to communicate internally.

Microsoft Teams and Google Meet seem similar, but they have stark differences. Both platforms provide excellent video conferencing services. However, Microsoft Teams offers other collaboration tools along with video tools. On the other hand, Google Meet is a stand-alone video tool and doesn’t offer any other collaborative tools. 

Overall, Google Meet is more suitable for individual users, while Microsoft Teams is more suited to businesses. While Google Meet works on a browser, Microsoft Teams requires users to download the app.

Microsoft Teams offers a free plan and paid plans costing as much as $12 a month. The maximum capacity of participants allowed by Google Meet is 500 and 1000 by Microsoft Teams, irrespective of your subscription plan.  

Read a thorough review of Microsoft Teams here.

Zoom — Best For Scalability

Zoom brand logo.

Zoom is an industry leader in the video conferencing space. It is the go-to video conference app for many big businesses like Uber, Pandora, GoDaddy, and Ticketmaster. It is a simple service and offers unique plans for all types and sizes of companies. 

Zoom is a secure platform that provides password protection, waiting rooms, and role-based security options. It offers excellent collaboration features for a team, like screen sharing and other interactive features. 

The company offers four pricing plans. Its Free plan is ideal for freelancers or small businesses that only utilize the video chat feature once in a while. Each paid plan offers excellent features, and customer service improves with each plan upgrade.

How Zoom Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of Zoom's products meeting web page.
Zoom is an industry leader that not only offers great value to its paid users but also provides a ton of features on its free plans.

Zoom and Google Meet also share several features. Both services provide unlimited meeting times. They are also extremely secure and allow several unique integrations. However, there are slight differences between the two.

Zoom allows almost 1000 participant meetings compared with the 500 participants allowed by Google Meet. Moreover, Zoom is more accessible, modern, and easy to use on the phone. Therefore, it is ideal for people on the go.

In terms of pricing, Zoom is more expensive than Google Meet. Even though Zoom’s Free plan provides basic features that Google Meet offers, the Pro and Business plan cost $149 and $199, respectively.  

Carefully review Zoom’s detailed review to choose the best video conferencing service for your business needs.

Join.me — Annual Contract Plans For Small Meetings

Join.me brand logo.

Join.me offers unique solutions to startups and big businesses. It is an excellent option for teams, businesses, or individuals. Easy to set up and use with one of the fastest signup processes, users can simply start a call using the website without even consulting a sales representative.

Join.me is now a part of the GoTo Meeting ecosystem, but it has its own free version and offers its video conferencing services separately from Join.me. It seems like a simpler video conferencing service with limited features compared to GoTo Meeting. 

If you are starting a new conference, you can invite people to join the meeting through a link or an email. It allows you to customize your URL, change your conferencing background, and share your screen with one click. People who aren’t even using Join.me can still join your meetings which is a great feature.

Join.me is an exclusive video conferencing service. You have to sign up and install the application to get started. Therefore, little is known about the pricing options and plans offered by Join.me. If you want to hold a meeting, you must have an account on Join.me. Its customer support can assist you with the initial procedure. However, if you are an attendee, you can simply attend the meeting by putting in a specific nine-digit Join.me ID.

How Join.me Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of a video meeting on Join.me.
Now part of GoTo Meeting, Join.me is an easy-to-use video conferencing tool with an intuitive user interface and tons of useful features.

Join.me is just as easy to use as Google Meet. It also provides excellent value for your money. However, in terms of customer service and functionality, Google Meet takes the lead. A benefit of Join.me is its easy screen-sharing options.

Another advantage of Join.me over Google Meet is that its video and audio quality are top-notch. Moreover, the many integration options offered by Join.me make it a more attractive option, specifically for individual users. 

One drawback of Join.me is its lack of transparency in pricing. The service provides custom quotes based on users’ needs. 

Give Join.me’s review a read and decide if it suits your needs.

Webex — Best For Cloud Collaboration

Webex brand logo.

Webex is another highly regarded video conferencing service. It allows you to host huge virtual events with as many as 100,000 participants. It also enables users to hold interactive webinars for almost 3000 people.

The platform is ideal for people who run on-demand training lessons and businesses wanting to onboard employees in multiple locations. Its mobile app makes it easier to host and join meetings from anywhere at any time. Its cloud collaboration features make it excellent for teams.

How Webex Compares to Google Meet

Screenshot of a video meeting on Webex.
Webex is a sophisticated, yet affordable solution for companies that host large-scale virtual events and webinars with as many as 100,000 participants.

Webex allows the highest number of participants among all the video conferencing services. It allows as many as 100,000 participants. Moreover, it offers video recording and advanced screen-sharing options. 

Overall, Webex offers far more sophisticated tools and features than Google Meet, which offers basic video conferencing tools and services. Even with a wide range of unique features, Webex charges a minimal fee for each subscription plan.

It offers four different pricing plans and is ideal for small teams wanting business-level features and tools. Its pricing plans range between $0 to $32 a month. Overall, it suits businesses requiring collaboration with teams in different locations. 

Read a Webex review before choosing it for your needs.

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PBX Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Nextiva is one of the most versatile and well-rounded options for using a cloud-based PBX system. New Nextiva customers can receive a 30% discount when signing up for the service.

PBX, or public branch exchange, is a private telephone system that uses hardware and software to route calls rather than forcing humans to route the calls manually. Although PBX traditionally consists of on-premise hardware and software, cloud PBX services are growing in popularity. These services provide you all the hardware and software, running through your current phone system.

The 4 Best Business Phone Services for PBX

Selecting a PBX system depends on the features that are most important for you. We put together a list of the best business phone services to help you determine which service fits your PBX needs most closely.

  • Nextiva — Best for most
  • RingCentral — Best for hybrid or remote work
  • GoTo Connect — Best for getting a wealth of features in a basic plan
  • Ooma — Best for small businesses needing an easy setup

How PBX Works

Screenshot from Nextiva's hosted vs on premise phone system blog.
When selecting a PBX system, you can choose an on-premises PBX or a cloud-based PBX.

Your PBX system is the internal telephone network for your company. It manages the routing of calls from external sources. It allows your employees to make calls to each other. It allows for outbound calls as well. 

The PBX system provides advanced calling features that make telephone communications as smooth as possible. In a simplistic manner, think of the PBX as the automated answer to the old days of having a human operator sit in front of a switchboard and move cables among the various ports to route calls.

The hardware required to run your PBX system depends on the type of PBX you want to use. 

  • On-premises PBX: When you select an on-premise PBX system, you need phone hardware for each user. You also need software to manage the system, a server to host the software, and PBX routing hardware. 
  • Cloud-based PBX: With a cloud-based PBX, also called a hosted PBX, you manage your own phone hardware for your users. The software, PBX routing hardware, and server hardware used to run the system exist with the cloud provider. You access the software through a high-speed internet connection.

The setup process for an on-prem PBX system can be quite complex. Your company probably would need to hire someone to set up the PBX hardware on-site with the communications features that you want to use. Some companies have system administrators who have the experience needed to set up and manage the system, but it is a challenge. 

Setting up your own PBX can be far easier if you use a cloud-based PBX system. 

Advantages of On-Premises PBX

With the PBX hardware and software on-site at your company, you always have full control of your phone system. You don’t have to worry about a cloud PBX provider suddenly having an outage or going out of business, leaving your phone system inoperable. 

With an on-prem PBX, your internet connection quality doesn’t control your telephone system. If your internet connection is shaky or intermittent, you could have very poor phone call quality with a cloud PBX, and you also could have frequent dropped calls.

If you like the idea of only allowing calls to go through the system, an on-prem PBX gives you this option. Employees cannot use the system when working remotely unless you add digital capabilities (using the Internet) to your on-prem PBX.

Although the on-prem PBX system often has quite a bit of expense associated with it initially, its cost over the system’s lifespan often is lower than a cloud PBX. However, with an on-prem PBX system, you will also have hardware upgrade and maintenance costs that you must bear in the future. If you have regular hardware failures, the cost will increase quickly.

Ultimately, some companies simply prefer the on-premises PBX because it is proven to work. Although cloud-based PBX continues to grow in popularity and works well for many companies, the on-premises PBX has decades of success behind it.

Advantages of Cloud PBX

Screenshot from Nextiva's products cloud pbx page showing what is cloud PBX? with description answering the question.
A cloud PBX system provides telephone communications for your company across an internet connection.

When using a cloud-based PBX, your company will subscribe to a PBX service from a business phone service, as we explain in our Nextiva review. Some companies prefer the per-user, per-month subscription cost found with a cloud PBX because it’s a known, fixed amount. It’s easier to budget for the monthly cost versus the variable costs of purchasing the hardware and software for an on-premises system.

The cloud PBX offers a number of built-in features that are possible with the on-premises PBX but that may be more difficult to use. For example, the cloud PBX automatically provides support for mobile devices, automatic call recording, and built-in video conferencing.

When your company’s communications needs are constantly changing and evolving, the flexibility of a cloud PBX may fit your needs better. The on-premises PBX is nowhere near as flexible. 

You can request an increase in call capacity at any time with a cloud PBX, such as when you have extra phone traffic around the holidays. You can then go back to your original capacity once your busy time ends. Adding temporary capacity for inbound calls is far more complicated with the on-premises phone system.

Although you may worry about downtime with a cloud PBX system, the reality is that the best business phone services claim at least 99.999% uptime. A cloud-based PBX gives you nearly worry-free performance as long as you have a reliable, high-speed internet connection.

Automated Features in a Cloud PBX

Screenshot from Nextiva's features and voip admin portal web page showing a call flow graphic with short description of their service.
A cloud-based PBX can automate many aspects of your inbound phone system, including using IVR.

Beyond inbound and outbound call management, a PBX can provide a number of other features, should your business need them. Some of the best automated features available in a cloud-based PBX include auto attendant services and an IVR (interactive voice response).

Rather than dedicating your customer service team to answering the initial inbound call, you can use an auto attendant that’s built into the PBX. The auto attendant serves as a virtual receptionist for inbound calls. It answers the call and then directs the caller to press a button on the phone to route the call. 

To set up the auto attendant and IVR with Nextiva, you can take advantage of a tool called Call Flow Builder. The setup process works like building a flow chart, so you can see exactly how different commands from the caller will affect the routing of the call. By designing the call flow with this tool, you can be sure the IVR is sending calls to the correct location.

For a small company with only a few destinations for routing inbound calls, a basic auto attendant may serve your needs well. However, if you have more complex requirements for an auto attendant, you may want to consider activating an IVR with your cloud PBX.

The IVR system answers the call, like the auto attendant, but it offers more advanced features. With an IVR enabled, you can have callers press buttons on the phone to activate actions in a menu. You also have the ability to let callers give verbal commands to the IVR system to explain the purpose of the call.

If you activate the voice commands function in the IVR, the system can answer simple questions that callers may have. Rather than having a customer service team member provide your mailing address or store hours, the IVR system can provide this type of information upon request.

One final automated feature often found in a cloud PBX is call queuing. When all your customer service team members are engaged in phone calls, the PBX can place other calls on hold. It can play hold music and let them know estimated wait times.

Training Tools in a Cloud PBX

Screenshot of Nextiva's dashboard showing various call data.
Nextiva’s cloud-based PBX provides a number of statistics about call volume and the performance of your customer service team.

When you want to measure the performance of your customer service team and provide training, a cloud PBX system can help. 

With a cloud PBX like Nextiva, you have the option of automatically recording all incoming calls. Administrators can use the recordings to train team members on better ways to handle certain situations. They also can highlight recordings of extremely successful customer service calls.

If a dispute arises with a customer after a call to your team, use the automatic recording in the cloud PBX to determine exactly what happened. If the dispute could lead to a legal problem for your company, having the recording can be invaluable.

With Nextiva, the administrator can choose to have all calls recorded for a particular user, to have no calls recorded, or to allow the employee to turn on and turn off call recording.

Additionally, your cloud PBX system should provide detailed analytics about your customer service team’s performance on inbound calls. The PBX system can measure things like:

  • Time per call
  • Time until the call reached the correct person
  • Average number of team members who spoke to the customer on a single call
  • Calls answered per day
  • Calls lost per day
  • Average number of calls at different times of the day (which can help with having the correct number of team members on the phones)

You can see measurements for the team as a whole or for individual team members. 

From a training standpoint, if one team member is successfully completing calls faster than others, you may want to incorporate some of the techniques that that team member is using. The statistics also can point out areas where your IVR system may be struggling to route calls properly.

Managing Remote Workers in a Cloud PBX

A screenshot from Nextiva showing a mobile phone, hardline phone, and a laptop to communicate their mobile device service solutions.
When deploying a cloud PBX through Nextiva, you can easily manage remote workers who are accessing the network via a mobile device off-site.

With many companies allowing employees to work remotely on occasion, a PBX system needs to be able to support these users. With a cloud-based PBX like Nextiva, employees can use an internet connection to the PBX. They can connect to the network from a desktop computer at home or from a mobile phone while out of the office. 

The remote employee still has full access to the PBX’s features. They can participate in audio conferences. They can accept inbound calls and have the PBX system include their call numbers in the analytics.

If having remote team members use the cloud PBX is especially important to you, pay close attention to the app that the PBX system provides. Remote users should connect to the cloud PBX system through either a desktop or mobile app. A poorly designed app in the cloud PBX could frustrate your remote workers.

Additionally, by selecting a cloud PBX system that allows remote users to connect via an app, there’s no need to purchase extra hardware. Those working remotely can use their own phone and desktop computer through the app. They don’t have to purchase specific hardware items compatible with the cloud PBX system.

When remote workers access the cloud PBX system, having call encryption available is important. Encryption protects the data as it travels across the internet from the cloud provider’s hardware to your PBX system and to your remote users’ hardware. 

With a cloud-based PBX, the most common types of encryption are TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SRTP (Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol). When either encryption protocol is in place, hackers cannot intercept data, audio, or video transmissions through the cloud PBX system.

Audio and Video Conferencing in a Cloud PBX

A screenshot of Nextiva's video conference setup process with necessary information such as data, organizer's email, how many participants, as well as various number options to join the meeting.
A Cloud PBX system, like this one from Nextiva, can help you set up and schedule audio and video conference calls for your team members.

Cloud PBX systems can often do far more than simply routing and managing inbound and outbound calls. You may be able to set up audio or video conference calls for your team members through the PBX system.

Because your team members already have access to the cloud PBX system, running the conference through the software greatly simplifies the process. Team members do not need to download special software to join the conference. As long as the team members have access to high-speed internet, the call audio and video quality should remain high.

They don’t have to worry about hardware incompatibilities, either. Nearly any desktop computer or mobile phone should work with the cloud PBX system app so that hardware also can join the conference.

With Nextiva, you can set up the conference call through a virtual meeting room. Those who can attend the meeting will receive a passcode via email, allowing them to join and keeping others out of the meeting.

When selecting a video conference, team members can share their screens to demonstrate certain techniques. Again, there’s no need to download special software to access screen sharing, as it all occurs through the cloud PBX interface.

With certain pricing plans, Nextiva allows you to record your conference calls. This allows team members who cannot attend the conference in real-time to go back and watch it later. 

Final Thoughts About PBX

Choosing to use a cloud PBX gives you an impressive feature set and a high level of performance when you have reliable internet. Some smaller businesses may not need the complete feature set of PBX, however. They may prefer to use a VoIP phone system.

VoIP phone systems have a lower cost than PBX, and they provide the ability to easily use the phone system off-site. The best office phone systems should be able to handle either PBX or VoIP.

Cloud-based PBX continues to grow in popularity, and it serves many kinds of businesses well. It can expand as your company grows, giving you a reliable phone system that keeps your customers in constant contact with you.

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Call Center KPIs Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Keep track of your call center KPIs and metrics with Nextiva, using its advanced built-in analytics, dashboard, and reports that provide in-depth insights into call performance. You can get a 30% discount on all plans when you get started today. 

Tracking call center key performance indicators (KPIs) simplifies measuring call center efficiency.

These KPIs are measurable values that provide critical insights into your customer support team’s performance, helping you determine whether you’re on the right track to achieving business objectives and providing an enhanced customer experience.

But how do you identify the metrics that really matter? This guide covers the key call center KPIs you should track to improve overall efficiency and productivity.

The 9 Best Call Center Software for Call Center KPIs

Our team evaluated some of the best call center software options and found nine cost-effective and high-performing solutions to strengthen your customer relationships. Check out our in-depth reviews for each recommendation.

  • Nextiva — Best overall 
  • RingCentral — Easiest deployment for SMBs
  • Cloudtalk — Best call center software for remote teams
  • 8×8 — Best contact center software for enterprise-grade security
  • Zendesk Talk — Best call center software for support and automated ticketing
  • Freshdesk Contact Center — Simple contact center software for teams of all sizes
  • Five9 — Best all-in-one contact center software
  • CrazyCall — Best call center software for outbound sales
  • Talkdesk — Best call center software for end-to-end customer experience

What Are Call Center KPIs?

Call center KPIs are handy performance measurements that provide insight into your customer support agents‘ productivity and the quality of customer service provided.

You can use them to evaluate the success of your call center or of a specific process, as well as set goals related to performance, employee development, and revenue.

Why Are Call Center KPIs Important?

At this point, you’re probably wondering whether call center KPIs are worth it. Here are the key benefits of setting them for your business:

Determining Employee Performance

You can use KPIs to measure individual agent performance by tracking their calls and having daily and monthly goals for them. 

If you set a daily call goal for each agent at 80 calls and increase the number to 100 after three months, you can use the original KPI of 75 calls to determine whether the agent is ready to advance to the next call goal. It’ll also help you filter good employees from bad employees.

Pinpointing Call Inefficiencies and Call Blocks

Call center KPIs also tell you the total number of calls where the customer was either put on hold by the automated system or heard a standard dial tone. 

Tracking call blocks will help you identify any problems with the automated system or the volume of calls the company receives. For instance, if your agents are frequently putting callers on hold, you might consider hiring more agents to provide more open lines.

Screenshot of RingCentral webpage for Call Center Metrics and KPIs
RingCentral can help you measure your call center’s performance with its analytics and reporting features.

Reducing Call Abandonment

Call abandonment typically occurs when customers are made to wait for long or don’t receive an answer from agents. With the right KPIs, you can identify the chief causes of abandonment and accordingly address these issues to provide prompt and efficient support.

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Another reason measuring call center KPIs is worthwhile is to improve overall customer satisfaction.

By reducing call center queue times and call abandonment and increasing the number of available agents, your support team will be better equipped to effectively meet customer demands, improving company reputation and customer engagement.

Optimizing Business Costs

Call center KPIs help you calculate the basic costs of your business and accordingly set realistic financial goals. For example, you can use them to identify when it’s time to switch phone plans to reduce overhead costs.

By analyzing business costs, you can maximize revenue and create elaborate financial management plans to ensure your organization thrives in the long haul.

11 Call Center KPIs to Optimize Customer Experiences

Next, let’s review the main call center KPIs and metrics that make the difference between a good call center and an excellent one.

1. Average Handling Time (AHT)

AHT refers to the average time taken for a customer service rep to complete one conversation. It starts when a customer initiates a call, including any holds and follow-ups, until the agent can start the next call or chat. 

This call center KPI is a prime factor when deciding your call center’s staffing levels to prevent overburdening agents. You should know how long each call is likely to last and accordingly set your agents’ workloads.

You can also measure individual rep average handling time and determine which agents require more training.

2. Average Time to Answer

The average time to answer calculates the average time from when an inbound caller dials your helpline number until an agent answers it. It’s typically expressed in seconds.

Note that while this KPI does factor in the total time spent waiting in the queue, it doesn’t consider the time the caller takes to navigate through the IVR system. 

It’s useful for assessing your support team’s efficiency and degree of accessibility to customers. You can also use it to define service objectives (think: answering a certain percentage of calls within a specific time period) to improve the average time to answer.

3. Average Abandonment Rate

The average abandonment rate tells you the number of callers who disconnect the call before speaking to a rep. In other words, callers who grew frustrated enough to leave without receiving support.

4. Percentage of Calls Blocked

This call center KPI compares the number of calls that were put on hold to the total number of calls received. In other words, it shows the percentage of followers that heard the busy tone when they were calling you.

Naturally, you want to keep block calls to a minimum. Find the chief cause of the high number of block calls (think: understaffing, technical issues, or lack of adequate training), and work on implementing an effective solution.

5. First Call Resolution (FCR)

FCR measures your customer support team’s ability to resolve customer issues on first contact without any follow-up or callback. 

Generally speaking, the more capable your customer support agent is the higher their personal FCR rate. But there can be cases where a customer’s query warrants action by another executive, so it’s important to use your discretion.

6. Transfer Rate

Transfer rate indicates the total calls an agent had to transfer to another individual (another available rep or even another department) to ensure the caller gets the right support.

The reasons for transferring customer calls will vary, ranging from agent fault to special requests from the caller to incorrect call routing. Ideally, your transfer rate should be lower than your FCR.

7. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Customer satisfaction indicates whether your callers are happy with the service received. if this KPI is high, it means your customers add alighted with yard service; if it isn’t, it means you need to improve the quality of your service.

8. Average Idle Time

Average idle time, also known as after-call work time, indicates the total seconds an agent spends completing customer interaction-related tasks after ending a conversation. 

You’ve likely tasked your agents to input relevant information or notes into your organization’s call center software so that there’s a record of all past conversations. But, at the same time, you don’t want them to waste too much time keeping data.

9. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a useful call center metric to gauge customer loyalty and experience. It’s based on the response to a single question: “how likely is it that you would recommend this organization or agent?” 

The idea is to learn how likely your customers are to recommend your brand to others.

The scoring is based on a 0 to 10 scale, with 9 and 10 being promoters, 7-8 being passive, and 0-6 being detractors. You can calculate the NPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the promoters. 

If you score over 50, you’re good to go. Any lower, and you should take immediate measures to improve the quality of customer service.

10. Cost Per Call

You have to pay a specific price for every call, which is determined by the length of each call and the call center software your customer support team uses.

Long calls will likely cost more if your call center software doesn’t charge a fixed price. But a long call also has the potential to save money in the long run since the caller would be less likely to contact your team twice. 

11. Agent Turnover Rate

While measuring customer satisfaction is important, it shouldn’t be your only priority—you should also take care of your agents. After all, you can’t provide excellent customer support without them.

Agent turnover evaluates the rate at which reps leave your organization to work somewhere else. A high turnover negatively affects team morale and call scheduling and handling, ultimately lowering customer satisfaction. 

It’s why you shouldn’t neglect agent experience indicators when tracking customer center KPIs.

How to Set the Right Call Center KPIs

Here are three handy tips for identifying and setting the right call center KPIs for your business:

Choose Specific KPIs for Specific Processes

KPIs are very flexible. You can measure them as a large unit or in smaller specialized units for specific purposes. While most leaders factor in the former, they fail to choose metrics for specific call center activities.

For example, if you see a significant rise in your call abandonment rate, you should prioritize KPIs that help you identify and address the chief causes behind this issue.

With this approach, not only can you improve the accuracy of your data but also build a profile for each part of your business and accordingly set better goals that push your call center towards success.

Collaborate With Your Team

Your KPIs can be a collaborative effort between you and your employees. For example, you can ask the reps to monitor their call volumes.

The good thing about nurturing collaboration is it’ll help you verify the information and track more KPIs. Enlist your reps early on in the KPI process to get started. Make sure you explain why collecting KPIs is important to the business, so they participate actively.

Get Customer Feedback

As the ones spending the most time interacting with your reps, your customers are invaluable to your call center’s KPI process. 

Leverage them to identify and set the right metrics for your business by asking them for feedback and engaging them during calls. A good tactic is to get them to complete a post-call survey that will help you accurately determine the quality of the call and the performance of the call center agent.

Final Thoughts About Call Center KPIs

Tracking and measuring call center KPIs helps you better understand agent effectiveness, support success, and overall call center productivity. It gives you an in-depth overview of how to best use technology and talent to deliver enhanced customer experience and ultimately drive profitability.

If you want to learn more about enhancing customer service, check out the following related Quick Sprout guides:

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Multichannel Contact Center Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Set up your multichannel contact center with Nextiva, a cloud-based option that provides easy access to remote IT and customer support teams. Sign up now and get 30% off on all plans. 

Effective customer service involves multiple touchpoints, including voice, social media, SMS, and web. Case in point—customers will engage with three to five different channels to resolve a request. 

If your team isn’t responsive on these channels, your organization will likely collect bad customer reviews. 

The good news is that you can set up a multichannel contact center to keep up with the evolving demands of your customer’s communication preferences without investing in increased physical infrastructure. 

The 9 Best Call Center Software for a Multichannel Contact Center

Our team researched the best call center software and found nine affordable cloud-based solutions you can use to strengthen your customer relationships. Check out our in-depth reviews to find the best software to power your support.

  • Nextiva — Best overall 
  • RingCentral — Easiest deployment for SMBs
  • Cloudtalk — Best call center software for remote teams
  • 8×8 — Best contact center software for enterprise-grade security
  • Zendesk Talk — Best call center software for support and automated ticketing
  • Freshdesk Contact Center — Simple contact center software for teams of all sizes
  • Five9 — Best all-in-one contact center software
  • CrazyCall — Best call center software for outbound sales
  • Talkdesk — Best call center software for end-to-end customer experience

What Is a Multichannel Contact Center?

A multichannel contact center is a call center software that integrates multiple communication channels, such as voice, social media, SMS, email, interactive voice response (IVR), and web chat, to provide customers with seamless support. 

Customer support executives use this center to quickly connect with customers from one central software platform, regardless of where they contact you. It enables you to engage over digital channels outside a standard call center and custom call routing, thereby improving business efficiency and customer satisfaction.

How Does a Multichannel Contact Center Work?

Customer experience is subjective. A platform one customer enjoys may not necessarily be the preferred method of communication for another. 

With a multichannel contact center, you can give customers a choice to contact you in whichever way they feel most comfortable. Think of it as offering customers several options to interact with your brand.

Here’s a list of channels a multichannel contact center uses to offer efficient customer support across platforms:

Phone Support

Allowing customers to contact you via call facilitates quick and convenient problem-solving. Also, listening to another person’s voice can be reassuring for many, especially those trying to sort out urgent problems. 

Most millennials indeed prefer automated channels, but almost all boomers still prefer talking to an actual person. Therefore, it’s better to offer phone support as part of your customer service.

Email

Email is a super popular digital support channel because of its smooth and hassle-free experience. The fact that it’s relatively low effort is another advantage, where nobody has sent by phone or computer waiting for a reply from an available agent. 

Furthermore, customers communicating in a foreign language can take their time composing an email, making it ideal for exchanging complex or sensitive information.

Text Messaging

Text messaging or SMS is great for sending appointment reminders or providing customers with quick information at their fingertips. 

You can send both SMS and MMS messages from any business number you want, saving time that would have otherwise been wasted by making phone calls or holding video meetings.

Social Media

Customers are increasingly reaching out to companies through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others via public posts and direct messages.

Naturally, your business should also offer this communication channel to cater to this demographic. With customers expecting prompt and accurate answers, you need a support team to engage with them on social media within operating hours.

Knowledge Base

Use a multichannel contact center to provide users access to a library of information. 

Not everybody wants real-time support, so it’s best to offer other self-help communication channels. A comprehensive knowledge base filled with relevant articles and information is a great example here to help customers troubleshoot issues themselves.

Live Chat

Live chat has quickly become a hot favorite communication channel among customers because they provide instant answers, regardless of the location and device. 

This tool can also be used with a knowledge base, where your customer support agents forward customers in the live chat links to relevant articles stored in the knowledge base.

What Are the Benefits of a Multichannel Contact Center?

More and more companies are moving towards multichannel contact centers for their businesses. But before you hop onto the bandwagon, you should understand exactly what you stand to gain from this move.

Here are the key benefits of using this type of platform:

Centralized Customer Information

Although your company offers support across multiple channels, you enjoy access to all information from a single place. Even if a customer uses all the channels of communication, from self-help FAQs to social media platforms to live chat, you’ll have a single record of that customer and all the interactions between them and your team. 

Your customer agent will have access to all the information across communication channels, enabling them to provide the best possible support at every touch point. This single view of the customer also improves customer analytics results, giving you in-depth insights into customer preferences and behavior.

Improved Customer Engagement

It’s likely effective customer engagement is your #1 priority, and rightly so.

Setting up a multichannel contact center allows you to open up all communication channels with your customers and create and maintain a two-way dialogue, helping improve customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Accelerated Customer Support 

In today’s highly dynamic landscape, customers have a low tolerance for slow service and need instant gratification. They’ll jump from one channel to another and expect businesses to keep up.

With a multichannel contact center, you can be available at all the customer touchpoints, enabling your customer support team to nip most customer issues and drastically cut down waiting time.

Deeper Customer Analytics and Contact Center Analytics

A multichannel contact center provides single-point access to customer information, a knowledge repository of customer behavior history, and customer preferences, resulting in better customer analytics.

Use the valuable insights to educate your team about your target customers and customer segments and accordingly tweak your services, products, messaging, and selling tactics to maximize impact. 

Higher Support Agent Productivity

In a multichannel contact center, all communication happens through a single application, which means there’s only one version of the customer data. This allows an agent to multi-task and swiftly move across channels as possible and actively answer customer queries.

Enhanced Brand Image

Gone are the days when contact centers only focused on answering inbound customer calls. 

Today, they allow you to proactively answer customer comments at all touch points and better respond to any changes in customer sentiment. This will help you create a positive brand match of a customer-friendly organization that’s genuinely interested in what customers have to say.

What Is the Difference Between Multichannel Contact Centers and Omnichannel Contact Centers?

An omnichannel contact center is a type of multichannel contact center that lets you support customers across different channels simultaneously.

Suppose a customer reaches out to you from your website’s online chat and then calls the helpline for an update. With an omnichannel contact center, your customer support agents will know all the customer’s information from the online chat, allowing them to take the conversation forward on the phone instead of asking the customer to repeat their issue from the beginning. 

While both multichannel and omnichannel contact centers offer you a choice of custom communication channels, they take different approaches.

The main difference is that while multichannel approaches keep each channel separate, forcing employees to use different tools when switching methods, omnichannel strategies integrate the different marketing channels, enabling employees to access each source from a single location.

This also means a single team can handle requests on all channels using an omnichannel contact center. But you’ll need more than one team to handle customer support requests efficiently across all channels if you have a multichannel call contact center.

Screenshot of Nextiva contact center webpage
Whether you opt for a multichannel or omnichannel solution, Nextiva can help.

Is a Multichannel Contact Center as Good as an Omnichannel Contact Center?

Honestly, no.

A multichannel contact center has several advantages, but it also has certain shortcomings. The biggest one is that while you can communicate with customers across multiple touchpoints, the channels aren’t integrated. 

On the other hand, agents can seamlessly shift a conversation from one channel to another at the click of a button in an omnichannel environment. 

Suppose your customer support agent wants to shift a customer from live chat to phone support for quicker issue resolution. With an omnichannel contact center, they can do this without extra hassle.

3 Multichannel Contact Center Best Practices

Below are some best practices to help you develop your company’s multichannel contact center. Let’s take a look.

Include Communication Channels Your Customers Prefer

A 2021 NTT report emphasized the importance of offering communication channels your customers actually frequent. According to it, “The number of channels offered isn’t as important as how effective they are in serving different customer segments, reducing customer effort and enabling consistent customer experience across all customer journeys.”

Currently, inbound voice remains the go-to channel for customer service contact centers. But you can also include other channels based on the activity, such as SMS texting and a website chatbot for scheduling an appointment or making routine orders.

The channels you feature in your multichannel contact center should be determined based on the age and demographic of your customer base. Case in point—audiences under 25 prefer social media platforms to resolve issues, while audiences over 25 prefer speaking to customer agents over the telephone.

Include a Self-Service Option for FAQs

When seeking answers or troubleshooting issues, customers don’t like to wait even a few minutes. 

It’s why you should consider incorporating IVR into your multichannel experience that allows customers to listen to and press a number on the dial pad to learn more information—or get connected to a customer agent. Instead of agents manually routing calls to the right department, your customers will be auto-routed to the information they need. 

Ensure Your Supports Agent are Well-Prepared to Handle Multiple Touchpoints

Your customer support agent should be well-equipped to handle direct customer requirements and queries to avoid frustrations and improve customer experience. 

While hiding and training multichannel contact center agents is a no-brainer, you can also include AI and cloud management tools along with CRM and knowledge bases to offer the best possible customer support.

Final Thoughts About Multichannel Contact Center

A multichannel contact center creates the ultimate win-win situation for the customers and the business. 

Engaging with your customers on multiple digital channels, from voice to email to social media, allows you to take your first steps toward improving your customer journey and strengthening your brand to generate more revenue.

Want to learn more about delivering the best possible customer support? Check out other guides from Quicksprout:

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Applicant Tracking System Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Streamline your recruiting process today with BambooHR, an intuitive, all-in-one HR software that seamlessly combines application tracking and HR management capabilities. Sign up for a free trial today and try out BambooHR risk-free for seven days. 

The typical recruiting process has multiple moving parts, including updating job specifications, preparing recruitment material, sourcing and attracting candidates, screening candidates, and conducting interviews. These tasks can be challenging to coordinate. Yet, despite the workload, recruiters and HR managers are expected to find qualified candidates and fill positions quickly and efficiently. Therefore, an applicant tracking system (ATS) is a must-have solution in a recruiter’s toolkit, allowing them to automate most of these tasks. 

The 4 Best Applicant Tracking Software Tools 

We tested more than two dozen applicant tracking systems to find the best one. Ultimately, four software tools made it to our list, which you can check out in our best applicant tracking software post. Below we have the best applicant tracking systems:

  • BambooHR – Best for HR Teams that Handle Recruiting Themselves
  • Workable – Best for Filling A Niche Position Quickly
  • BreezyHR – Best for Lowering Your Cost to Hire 
  • JazzHR – Best for Companies That Are Always Recruiting 

What is an Applicant Tracking System?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a computer software program designed to automate and streamline an organization’s entire recruitment process. The software features may vary depending on the provider. However, one of the software’s basic capabilities is tracking candidates throughout the hiring process, from reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, compiling feedback, and extending offers to successful candidates. 

For example, even the most basic ATS has database functionality to store candidate information. The system also makes the data searchable, so recruiters or hiring managers can easily pull relevant information on demand. Similarly, the ATS can pre-screen applicants and automatically recommend candidates to proceed to the next phase of the hiring process. 

Finally, ATS features primarily focus on improving the hiring process for recruiters and candidates. For example, the software can help recruiters create compelling job descriptions to attract high-quality candidates. Likewise, a sound system creates a positive candidate experience and likely increases top applicants’ job offer acceptance rate. 

How Does an Applicant Tracking System Work? 

Remember that a good applicant tracking system should digitize, automate, and streamline as much of the hiring process as possible. So the following section looks at how the ideal ATS works. 

The typical talent acquisition process starts with a job requisition. For example, a department manager may create a job requisition to formally request new hires or create a new position in the company. The document may include details like justification for a new hire, the department that needs the new employee, job responsibilities, ideal start date, pay and benefits, and other information.

Most advanced ATS lets you create job requisitions. Then HR approves the requisition. Next, the software may create a candidate profile using details in the requisition form. Alternatively, the hiring manager may generate the candidate profile manually. 

The ATS software also helps create job descriptions, usually from built-in templates. The software also allows you to post the openings on multiple mediums, including internally, on the corporate website, and on public job boards.  

Screenshot from BambooHR's applicant tracking web page of a job description for their customer service team lead.
BambooHR lets you create job description templates.

Next, candidates submit their applications which the ATS collects and stores in a database. The candidates may be asked to answer specific questions such as their education and work experience. Most ATS allows you to set parameters to automatically reject candidates that don’t meet the minimum job requirements. 

Additionally, most ATS automatically parse resumes and rank applicants based on how well they match the job requirements. From here, it’s easy for recruiters to sort the applications and invite qualified candidates for interviews manually. 

Again, the ATS lets you invite qualified candidates for interviews. The software can also automatically send rejection letters to unqualified candidates at the click of a button. You may also enter notes in the ATS for each corresponding candidate during interviews to review later. 

Finally, you can send offer letters to qualified candidates from the ATS. The candidates can also use the software to accept the job offer, usually without signing up or registering for the software. Many advanced applicant tracking systems also let you onboard new hires. 

Who Needs an Applicant Tracking System? 

Most organizations have no trouble justifying acquiring marketing, accounting, sales, and messaging software. However, it’s not always clear if an applicant tracking system should be a priority. Fortunately, there are multiple signs that it is time to invest in an ATS. 

The first obvious sign that you need an ATS is if your recruitment process takes too much time. You can quickly eliminate manual tasks like posting ads to job boards, checking, categorizing, and filing applications, sending receipts of application emails, and weeding out irrelevant candidates. If you spend too much time on these tasks, an ATS can save you time and effort. 

Similarly, an ATS is helpful if you’ve noticed an influx of irrelevant or unqualified resumes and applications. An applicant tracking system can help you set up screening questions to identify candidates that meet your core or minimum requirements. This way, you don’t have to spend unnecessary time on unwanted applications. 

You should also consider investing in an ATS if you’re having trouble collecting recruitment data or creating reports. Recruitment reports are critical for identifying challenges and areas of improvement, streamlining future talent acquisition, and predicting ROI for each hiring decision. An ATS quickly generates reports with essential metrics like time-to-disqualify, cost and time saved, time-to-fill, and quality-per-hire. 

Screenshot from BammbooHR's applicant tracking web page of their candidate funnel with metrics for applicants.
BambooHR has excellent tracking metrics you can use to see how your recruitment process works.

Consider also using an applicant tracking system if you don’t have a career site or want to improve an existing one. A good career site can help optimize recruitment and attract new talent directly. In addition, most ATS help you create and customize a career site or page to highlight your brand. 

Finally, consider using an applicant tracking system if you use external recruiters for all your hiring needs. External recruiters are helpful for high-level or difficult-to-fill positions. However, using an ATS can save costs for low to mid-level hires. In addition, the software helps create a streamlined hiring process to increase the quality of your hiring pipeline for these positions.  

Key Features of an Applicant Tracking System 

Some applicant tracking systems offer more robust features than others. So it is essential to know what you want the system to do. Below are some of the most sought-out ATS features. 

Job Distribution – One core feature of ATS is distributing job postings to as many job boards and recruitment sites as possible. Casting a wide net helps to improve your applicant pool and the chances of finding the best candidate. It will also save you time and effort copying and pasting the postings to various sites. 

This integration is also helpful for screening resumes. The ATS should let you access applications from various job boards within the system. It will save you time logging into disparate boards to screen resumes. 

Keyword Filters – Filters are another basic ATS functionality. You should be able to define criteria such as location, application date, assessment status, and qualifications. Candidates matching your criteria appear on top, allowing you to review candidates quickly. 

It’s worth noting that the system doesn’t disqualify candidates based on keywords. Instead, these keywords allow you to search applicants based on criteria like availability, education, work experience, and travel preferences. It’s a convenient feature for narrowing down the candidate pool. 

Career Pages – Many applicant tracking systems provide a customizable career page layout. You can easily embed the page on your website and let candidates submit applications from the company website. These applications immediately appear in your ATS dashboard. 

The careers page builder should also be customizable. For example, you should be able to simplify application steps, add sections, and include your company logo and branding. This feature should also offer analytics to track the careers page’s performance. 

Interview Management – The ideal ATS lets you communicate with shortlisted candidates directly from the platform. Additionally, most software integrates with supporting tools like Google Meet, Zoom, and Google Calendar to help schedule and conduct interviews. Ideally, the software should allow you to take notes during interviews to review in the next stage of the recruitment process. 

Similarly, you want an interview management feature with alerts and notifications. For example, the alert may be an email or message reminding the recruiter and interviewee of the upcoming interview. More advanced software uses AI to translate schedules and determine the optimal interview times. 

Collaboration – The recruitment process has multiple people, including the recruiter, HR manager, direct supervisor, CEO, and hiring manager. An ATS system should support communication and collaboration among interested parties. For example, email integration or a team chat feature can optimize information sharing during the recruitment process. 

Smart Analytics and Reporting – Analytics and reporting are essential for improving and streamlining the recruitment process. Most ATS offers critical insights into the process, including metrics like the cost of acquisition, time to hire, and diversity compliance. It’s a valuable feature for determining what works and what could be improved. 

Onboarding Features – A robust ATS helps eliminate the need for a separate software stack. For example, an onboarding feature means you don’t need additional HR software. The onboarding features may include a welcome email, an overview of employee benefits, and document signing.

Data Privacy Compliance – Many organizations implementing applicant tracking systems overlook data privacy and compliance. Many data privacy laws govern the collecting, storing, and disseminating of personal information. These include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). So it is vital to choose a secure system. 

Therefore, look for an ATS with built-in security. These features may include access control, HTTPS enabled, and data encryption. Knowing the specific data protection laws governing your industry and choosing software with built-in compliance is also helpful. 

You can start by listing the challenges you want to solve in your recruitment process. Then assess the software’s features to determine whether it fits well. If more features lead to higher costs, identify the must-haves and set your budget accordingly. 

Best Practices for Hiring With an Application Tracking System 

An applicant tracking system is not a magic wand to solve all your recruiting problems. Instead, it is a supporting tool that helps optimize a well-thought-out talent acquisition process. Despite automation, there’s still the human element involved in the hiring process. 

The first step is to choose the best applicant tracking system for your use case. This process involves identifying the high-priority features and selecting a system that aligns with your unique needs and requirements. 

It’s also helpful to identify specific hiring goals, such as improving candidate interview review results, reducing new hire failure rates, accelerating the hiring process, or increasing job acceptance rates. Then, choose software that supports achieving these goals. 

Secondly, most applicant tracking systems offer a free trial or demonstration. The trial period allows you to test the software risk-free. So take advantage of the opportunity and try two or three software before purchasing. 

Third, involve key people in the software implementation. Employee buy-in is crucial when implementing software likely to change or interrupt the current workflow. Therefore, involve key stakeholders such as hiring managers, recruiters, direct supervisors, and HR leaders when assessing, testing, and purchasing the system. 

Furthermore, ATS can help create and distribute job postings quickly. However, it is not designed to refine or improve the quality of job descriptions and postings. Therefore, ensure that your job descriptions are thorough and accurate to increase your chances of matching with the best candidates. 

Finally, use broad and versatile keywords when using keywords to filter candidates. Some strong candidates may fail to integrate exact keywords in their resumes despite being qualified. Therefore, use filters cautiously and cast a wide net with your keywords.

Final Thoughts About Applicant Tracking Systems   

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) have multiple benefits, including time-saving, simplified job posting, improved cost per hire, and high-quality analytics. However, you can only leverage these benefits by choosing the best ATS for your specific usage. Therefore, it’s crucial to identify recruitment goals and challenges to help determine the best software for your needs. 

It’s also worth remembering that an ATS won’t solve all your recruiting needs. For example, you still have to create compelling and detailed job postings, present your company culture positively, and adjust your application process to the prevailing recruitment market to attract the best candidates. 

Finally, take advantage of free trials or demos before committing to the ATS. Check that the software makes your job easier rather than more complicated. Also, ensure that the software integrates with your existing software stacks, such as e-signature apps, file storage apps, business communication platforms, and employee onboarding tools. 

Below are two more related QuickSprout posts to supplement this guide to applicant tracking systems. 

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Paycom Review

Paycom is a payroll and HR technology provider focusing on user experience, ease of implementation, and employee-managed data. Founded at the inception of the dot-com bubble in 1998, it’s considered one of the first fully online payroll companies.

Paycom’s payroll software has several easy-to-use yet powerful tools that streamline payroll processing and help eliminate errors. Paycom also has software solutions for other HR processes, such as talent acquisition, talent management, and labor management.

Paycom brand logo.

Paycom Compared

While Paycom is worth considering, it didn’t make it to our top list. The best payroll services provider for most businesses is Gusto, whose comprehensive suite of tools simplifies payroll management like no other. You can join more than 200,000 other businesses by setting up Gusto for free.

  • Gusto — Best for dispersed workforces
  • Paychex — Best for experienced payroll teams
  • OnPay — Best for simplifying all things payroll
  • QuickBooks Payroll — Best for solopreneurs and small teams
  • ADP — Best for never outgrowing your payroll provider.

You can learn more about these services in our comparison article here. 

About Paycom

Paycom Software Inc. is recognized by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Enterprise Companies in 2022. Paycom’s online payroll management system includes tools such as Beti and Paycom Pay that improve the experience for employees and HR personnel.

Paycom also has talent acquisition tools for applicant tracking, onboarding, tax credits, and innovative tools such as Enhanced Background Checks and E-Verify. Paycom provides all the fundamentals for time and labor management, such as tools for time and attendance, scheduling, and labor allocation. It also has talent management tools to streamline incentivization and reward systems.

Paycom Health and Stability

Paycom has existed as an online payroll processing service provider since 1998 and an HR management service provider since 2001. This places Paycom among the longest-established companies in these industries. The company is well-established in the industry, with headquarters in Oklahoma City and offices throughout the US.

According to Fortune and Forbes magazines, Paycom is one of the fastest-growing publicly traded companies around the globe. The company reported a revenue of $1.056 billion after a solid fourth quarter in 2021, 25% up from the company’s revenue in 2020.

Reviews on job search websites such as Glassdoor and Indeed suggest a higher-than-average employee turnover rate for Paycom. However, the company’s rapid growth means this high turnover rate is likely an unavoidable consequence of the company’s otherwise highly successful business strategy.

Paycom Pricing

Like many other payroll service providers, including Paychex, Paycom does not provide pricing information on its website. This is because Paycom’s services are highly customized to the specific needs of businesses.

Instead of offering one-size-fits-all packages, the company takes it upon itself to help enterprises to implement their solutions. The company also trains employees to ensure businesses fully utilize Paycom’s various tools. The company offers personalized meetings where it presents interested businesses with a quote.

Paycom Pricing Structure

Paycom doesn’t disclose its pricing structure, but users report an average initial fee of $500 for companies with 15 employees and $1,200 for companies with 40 employees, according to Forbes. The monthly fees range from $4 to $6 per employee.

The flip side of not having defined price structures is that businesses only have to pay for the modules they need. This and training fees also only apply to the specific tools you purchase.

Paycom Pricing Comparison

Paycom appears to be quite competitive in terms of price compared to some of the top alternatives unless the user-reported average fees have a high variance. However, Paycom’s high initial training and implementation fees are an investment for most businesses. Its services are only cost-effective for businesses that choose to stay with the company for years.

The Simple payroll services plan from Gusto costs $40 plus $6 per employee per month. So a business with 20 employees would pay a total of $160 per month. Gusto’s Plus plan costs twice this amount. Paycom doesn’t have a flat fee in addition to the per-employee fees, making it an excellent option for small businesses.

The Essentials plan by Paychex costs $39 per month in addition to $5 per employee. Paycom’s services are the more cost-effective option in the long run, as Paycom’s initial fee spreads out over the years. The fee structure for more comprehensive packages by Paychex is also undisclosed so that no comparison can be made.

For companies with a large number of employees, the flat fees may be negligibly small compared to the total per-employee fees. This can make the basic packages by Gusto, Paychex, and other top payroll companies a more economical option. 

Paycom Trials and Guarantees

Paycom currently does not advertise any free trials or demos. Information about any guarantees isn’t disclosed on Paycom’s website either. It offers customized plans when you request a meeting.

Paycom Online Payroll Services Review

Paycom’s Payroll Software includes a comprehensive set of tools to streamline various payroll-related processes. Paycom’s new tool Beti gives employees a self-service experience by making payroll data easily accessible. Employees do their own payroll, saving time and limiting errors.

Still, Paycom is not the best option for most businesses, which is why it falls short of our top online payroll services list.

What Makes Paycom Online Payroll Services Great

Screenshot of Paycom employee portal home screen.
Home screen of Paycom’s employee portal.
  • Employee-managed data: Beti is a new tool from Paycom that allows employees to assess the accuracy of their payroll. Beti automates payroll for all employees according to available data, such as hours worked, rewards, and compensations. Employees can correct any inaccuracies in their data before it leads to errors. Paycom is leading the charge in this new, improved payroll process.
  • Unified HR tools: Paycom provides a single software to manage various payroll and other HR processes. Data entered for one tool is also available to all the other tools, improving satisfaction for employees who no longer have to enter the same data multiple times. Paycom’s tools also work together to allow for sophisticated automation while maintaining ease of use.
  • Customized services: Every business uses different payroll and HR processes. Instead of overwhelming companies by providing many tools, Paycom offers custom services to best meet their clients’ needs. Paycom’s focus on customized service is likely why it doesn’t offer any predefined packages with fixed prices like other companies.
  • Aided implementation and training: Paycom offers dedicated service to each business that subscribes to its services. The company helps its clients implement its various tools successfully for maximum ROI. The company also trains employees to use its service and tools to make the transformation easier.
  • Wide range of HR services: Besides payroll management, Paycom’s solution also has many other tools to automate HR management. Its tools can help companies with time and labor management, talent management, talent acquisition, and various other processes. Paycom has several innovative and original tools, such as E-Verify, BETI, and Enhanced Background Checks.
  • Unbiased performance management: In traditional workplaces, performance reviews are managed by management personnel with little to no governing rules. There’s much room for interpretation and personal biases. Paycom’s performance management and position management tools allow for unbiased employee performance management. This ensures the more talented and dedicated individuals are given preference and encouraged. The systematic nature of software performance management systems also improves employee satisfaction, lowering the turnover rate.
  • Easy integration with other services: Paycom’s software includes many modules offering a lot of functionality under one roof. However, since Paycom doesn’t have strictly defined packages, users can cherry-pick modules they find impressive and use other companies for other processes. For example, some Paycom users use other companies for criminal background checks that offer better prices.
  • Streamlined reward systems: Paycom’s Compensation Budgeting software allows businesses to streamline reward systems while staying under a decided budget. With Paycom’s software in place, employees have incentives to work towards goals decided by the employer. The system also takes subjectivity out of the equation, simultaneously improving productivity, profitability, and employee satisfaction.
  • Exceptional customer support: Paycom has designated representatives for different clients. Companies that use Paycom’s modules are always connected to the same agents who know everything about the company and offer highly personalized customer support.

Where Paycom Online Payroll Services Fall Short

Screenshot of Paycom's time management system time clock and recent punches feature.
Paycom’s time management system.
  • No trials or demos: Paycom currently doesn’t offer free trials or demos. The only way to know if Paycom’s services are right for your business is by requesting a meeting. This is unlike the companies in our top list, such as Gusto and Paychex, which offer free trials in one form or another. While it’s understandable that Paycom’s custom services would be rather costly to the company as a demo, Paycom can offer at least some of its unique tools for demos.
  • Undisclosed pricing information: Paycom doesn’t offer any predefined packages on its website. This can make Paycom more intimidating for businesses with a limited budget compared to service providers that clearly state their prices. This is unfortunate because companies that can benefit the most from Paycom’s dedicated service lack experience in digitization. Paycom can fix this by designing a pricing structure similar to Paychex and offering one fixed-rate Basic package and another custom package with variable rates.
  • High initial fees: Paycom reported charging an average of $500 in implementation and training fees. This makes Paycom’s services risky for businesses who are unsure of which online payroll company to choose.  Paycom could alternatively follow other leading companies and charge a fixed monthly fee and per-employee fees. The company could also make its implementation and training optional, eliminating the initial fees.
  • UI needs updating: While many users find Paycom’s UI quite intuitive, others find it outdated. This is not a technical problem, but updating its platforms according to contemporary design styles can improve user experience and employee satisfaction.
  • Too many reports: Paycom wants to keep HR personnel in the loop about the update the team makes to the software. The company also sends email notifications about requested changes. Some users find these notifications and reports overwhelming. 

Paycom Online Payroll Services Compared

In our comparison of the top online payroll services, we conclude Gusto is the ideal option for most businesses. Here are our top picks from the list:

  • Gusto — Best for dispersed workforces
  • Paychex — Best for experienced payroll teams
  • OnPay — Best for simplifying all things payroll
  • QuickBooks Payroll — Best for solopreneurs and small teams
  • ADP — Best for never outgrowing your payroll provider

Paycom HR Software Solution Review

Paycom offers a lot of functionality as an HR management software with its various modules. However, we don’t count it among the top HR software solutions for a few reasons. 

Paycom’s UI design is a bit outdated, which can negatively impact how a company is perceived, especially among new employees. Users have also found Paycom’s system to be unnecessarily convoluted.

The biggest reason Paycom doesn’t make it to our list is its pricing structure or, rather, a lack of one. There are no packages advertised on the website. To our best knowledge, Paycom’s services require a considerable initial investment. We recommend Paycom to companies particularly impressed by one of its innovative modules.

Paycom HR Software Solution Compared

While Paycom’s HR tech is impressive, it’s not as refined as some of the more popular options, such as Gusto. Our top picks for HR software solutions are better suited to the needs of most companies.

  • Gusto – Best for your first 50 hires 
  • Namely – Best for businesses that have outgrown basic HR solutions
  • BambooHR – Best support for a small in-house team
  • Zenefits – Best for hands-on HR administrators
  • Freshteam – Best for shortening your time to hire

Final Verdict

Paycom offers a comprehensive set of tools that allow businesses to streamline many fundamental HR processes. The company also offers dedicated services to help businesses implement their solutions, making the transformation easier.

While Paycom has some innovative Payroll tools such as Beti, it’s unable to compete with leading companies such as Gusto and Paychex that have better pricing structures. 

Paycom is worth considering, but not ideal for most businesses. 

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Compare the Best Business Text Messaging Services

Our recommendation for the best business text messaging service is SimpleTexting because of its versatility, reliability, ease of use, and fair pricing. Start your 14-day free trial today.

With consumers bombarded with dozens of promotional emails on a daily basis, it’s become increasingly difficult for organizations to reach their audience. Emails get ignored, deleted, or go straight to the spam folder. 

But texting is much more effective, as the message goes straight to someone’s phone—ensuring the message gets read. The business text messaging services in this guide will help you improve engagement, increase sales, and enhance customer service.

The Top 5 Best Business Text Messaging Services

The five text messaging services reviewed below are excellent options, and they each stand out for different reasons. SimpleTexting is the most versatile on the list, as it can be used for sales, marketing, mass messaging, and one-on-one texting. Try it free for 14 days. 

  • SimpleTexting – Best texting service for marketing and sales
  • Textedly – Best for bulk texting
  • OpenPhone – Best for unlimited calling and texting
  • Podium – Best for text-to-pay
  • Sendinblue – Best for texting combined with email services
Company logos for our best business text messaging services reviews.

Continue below for our business text messaging service reviews and buyer’s guide.

Match Your Scenario to the Right Business Text Messaging Solution

Our research team here at Quick Sprout identified the top five reasons why an organization would need a business text messaging service. Then we found the best texting solutions that fit within that category—making it easy for you to find the best texting service for your needs. If you see a scenario below that best describes what you’re looking for, you can jump straight to that section to see our top recommendations. 

You want to run SMS marketing campaigns

Best Option: SimpleTexting

SimpleTexting has customizable user segments and custom fields to help personalize your marketing campaigns. It integrates seamlessly with more than 1,000+ tools, so you can create automated workflows and connect data between your email marketing software and CRM.

Another standout feature is SimpleTexting’s results tracking. You can use it to monitor KPIs like deliverability, CTR, subscriber growth, and more. 

Another Great Choice: Textedly

Textedly has a unique feature for loyalty marketing. You can set up campaigns that reward customers based on visits or spending and track everything from their phone numbers. Then you can automatically send marketing messages to users, keeping them updated on their rewards and even letting them claim rewards via text. 

For SMS marketing campaigns, look for:

  • User segments: Ensuring the right message is delivered to the right person at the right time.
  • CRM integrations: So you can align your marketing campaigns across all communication channels with your customer database.
  • Analytics: To see what’s working, what’s not, and look for ways to make improvements.
  • Automation: So you can put campaigns on autopilot and schedule drips.

You have high-volume texting needs

Best Option: Textedly

With plans that support up to 240,000 messages per month, Textedly has the ability to accommodate organizations with massive contact lists. If 240,000 isn’t enough for you, Textedly will set you up with a customized plan—making it possible to send millions of messages every month.

You don’t have to worry about paying for contacts, either. Since Textedly plans are based on outbound messages, you can add an unlimited number of subscribers to your database at no extra cost. 

Another Great Choice: OpenPhone

Every OpenPhone plan comes with unlimited texting and calling in the US and Canada. So you can send as many texts as you want without having to ever worry about the cost. Every user on your account will also have a dedicated line.

For high-volume business texting, keep an eye on:

  • Reliability: Sending 200,000 texts is useless if only half are getting delivered.
  • Monthly limits: You don’t want the service to cap you at a maximum number of text messages every month.
  • Subscriber limits: Ensuring you won’t outgrow the platform. 
  • Auto reply: Because it can be tough to respond manually to recipients when you’re sending hundreds of thousands of messages simultaneously. 
  • Cost structure: Typically, the price per text should get cheaper as your volume increases.

You want a complete CRM to manage contacts

Best Option: Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a complete email marketing and SMS messaging platform with a built-in CRM. So you won’t have to integrate your software with a third-party tool to manage your contacts with multi-channel marketing. 

The software makes it easy for you to identify wins with each customer interaction, and you can quickly use it to close open deals in the sales pipeline. Users love Sendinblue’s ability to add notes, attach documents, and assign tasks to each contact so the entire team can be informed about a contact’s history.

Another Great Choice: Podium

Podium is a CRM built for local businesses. The platform makes it easy to track all of your customer interactions from every channel, and it keeps a full history of every conversation and payment. You can even use Podium’s CRM to segment your customers based on location, behavior, preferences, the amount they spend, and more. 

For CRM contact management, make sure you consider:

  • Built-in CRM: Eliminating the need to integrate with third-party platforms.
  • User segmentation: Ensuring your contacts are getting highly personalized messages.
  • Multi-channel support: So every text and email interaction is tracked from the same place.

You need to send texts internationally

Best Option: Sendinblue

Sendinblue makes it easy to pre-pay for SMS credits in different countries. So if you have customers or prospects overseas, you can still target them with text messaging campaigns. The credits never expire, so you’re not required to use all of them within a month, quarter, or year—which is great if you’re not planning on exhausting those credits immediately.

Another cool part about Sendinblue is the ability to purchase credits for WhatsApp messaging campaigns as well. This is one of the most popular messaging solutions worldwide and is great for contacts who may prefer WhatsApp over texting. 

Another Great Choice: OpenPhone

OpenPhone supports unlimited texts in the US and Canada. But they offer per-usage rates on texts in other countries worldwide—starting as low as $0.02 per text. You can send SMS messages anywhere and only get charged based on the country and how many texts you’re sending internationally.

If you’re sending international texts, be aware of:

  • Cost structure: SMS rates typically vary by location, so you’ll want to pay close attention to how you’re being charged to send international texts. 
  • Countries supported: The ability to text people internationally is useless if the countries you want to reach aren’t available. 

You need to send custom texts to single recipients

Best Option: Textedly

While Textedly is best known for its ability to send bulk texts, the platform is versatile enough to support one-on-one messaging as well. All of your subscribers have the option to reply to a text, making it easy to accommodate two-way chat. 

This is ideal if they need questions answered or want to continue moving through the sales process. Textedly sends you an instant notification whenever you get an inbound message so you can reply ASAP. You can also set up automatic replies that are delivered within three to five seconds of the inbound message. 

Another Great Choice: SimpleTexting

SimpleTexting makes it easy to have two-way conversations with people, which is perfect for sales teams. All incoming SMS messages are free and won’t count toward your monthly credits. You can also lend longer messages to your contacts and include phones, documents, zip files, and other MMS content. 

If you’re sending individual texts to one person, pay attention to:

  • 2-way messaging: So when the recipient replies, you can have a complete conversation via text.
  • Autoresponders: To ensure your audience gets a quick reply, even while your agents are away.
  • Extended messaging: So you’re not limited to just 160 characters or SMS only.

Business Text Messaging Services Company Reviews

Below you’ll find our in-depth reviews of the best business texting services on the market. Each solution shines above the crowd for a particular reason, a unique feature, or a use case, which we’ve highlighted in the review. 

Read on to learn more about these top business text messaging solutions. We’ll even call out areas where a particular service could use some improvements and give you more information on pricing so you can find the best value for your needs. 

SimpleTexting – Best texting service for marketing and sales

SimpleTexting, one of the best business text messaging services.

SimpleTexting lives up to its name in the sense that it’s ultra-easy to use. But don’t let that simplicity fool you. It’s still a feature-packed texting service that can be used for virtually any use case.

What makes SimpleTexting unique compared to other options on the market is its ability to accommodate multiple departments and needs within an organization. Your marketing team can use it for drip campaigns and bulk messaging. But your sales team can also use it to nurture leads with one-to-one conversations and two-way messaging.

The service can even be used for appointment reminders, interview scheduling, and HR job recruiting. It’s worth noting that SimpleTexting doesn’t have a built-in CRM or email marketing solution. But you can integrate it with the tools that you’re already using. 

What Makes SimpleTexting Great

When it comes to text campaigns, sales and marketing teams have very different approaches. Sales reps need to personalize messages and have two-way conversations with leads, while marketers need to blast bulk campaigns to thousands of people. Fortunately, SimpleTexting can handle both of these needs from a single platform.

Screenshot of SimpleTexting's features web page.
SimpleTexting supports both sales and marketing initiatives.

This really isn’t something that you’ll find from many other business text messaging services on the market, as most platforms tend to lean in one direction or the other. 

You can use it to announce sales promotions, improve customer satisfaction, find new customers, and follow up with leads faster than email. SimpleTexting supports more than 1,000+ integrations, making it easy for you to connect with business software you’re already using and create automated with a hands-off approach.

Pricing is based on how many texts you’re sending per month, and all incoming SMS messages are free. Plans start at $29 per month for 500 messages, and the price per message gets cheaper as your monthly volume increases. Try SimpleTexting free for 14 days—no credit card required. 

Textedly – Best for bulk texting

Textedly, one of the best text messaging services.

Most business text messaging services cap you at around 50,000 messages per month. Some let you go up to 100,000 texts with enterprise plans. But Textedly blows all of those out of the water with the ability to send up to 240,000 text messages each month.

This is an excellent option for large organizations with massive customer databases. If you want to take advantage of your existing contact list, Textedly won’t hold you back.

But it’s also a great tool for businesses with growing contact lists. You’ll never have to worry about outgrowing Textedly. Even if you need to send more than the 240,000 monthly texts available in the Textedly Champion plan, you can just give them a call for a customized solution. 

One downside of Textedly is its lack of built-in features. But it does integrate with more than 3,000+ third-party tools for sales, marketing, CRM, and automation.

What Makes Textedly Great

The great part about Textedly is that you’re not locked into a contract. If you double your database overnight or you want to ramp up the frequency of your campaigns, you can upgrade to a bigger texting plan at any time. 

Screenshot of Textedly's home page.
You’ll never outgrow Textedly, regardless of your contact list size or monthly volume.

When you’re sending tens of thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of texts, you need to consider how much it’s going to cost you if those conversations continue. Textedly gives you some relief here, as all incoming SMS messages are always free.

You can add an unlimited number of subscribers to your account at no extra cost. So if you end up with two million phone numbers in your database, you won’t be paying more than someone who has 200 numbers—making it easy to grow without limits. 

Plans are based on monthly messaging and range from $24 per month for 1,200 texts to $2,800 per month for 240,000 messages. You can try Textedly free for 14 days and send your first 50 texts at no charge.

OpenPhone – Best for unlimited calling and texting

OpenPhone, one of the best business text messaging services.

OpenPhone is an all-in-one solution for business text messaging, calling, and contact management. Every plan supports unlimited calling and messaging within the US and Canada.

All OpenPhone plans come with one local or toll-free number per user, so everyone on your team can have their own line. It’s the perfect solution for organizations seeking a complete business phone solution with the ability to send texts as well.

While OpenPhone has all of the standard features you’d expect in a business text messaging service, it does lack some of the more advanced marketing and sales features you’ll find from alternatives. That’s because the business phone solution is the primary service, and texting is somewhat secondary.

What Makes OpenPhone Great

One of the coolest features of OpenPhone is the ability for teams to simultaneously manage two-way texts with recipients. This is a huge bonus when you need someone from the right department to reply or the original sender is out sick or on vacation.

Screenshot of OpenPhone's home page.
Get the whole team involved, and your customers will never know the difference.

As a phone and text messaging service from a single platform, you can use OpenPhone to automatically send texts directly after a call. For example, you can follow up with surveys and post-sales campaigns. Or if you miss a call, you send an automated text apologizing for the delay and set up the engagement via text. 

Beyond SMS messaging, OpenPhone supports MMS messages, videos, files, GIFs, and more. You can even use it for group messaging—which is great for sales teams that want to keep multiple stakeholders involved in the process. 

OpenPhone plans start at $10 per user per month. Try it free for seven days to get started.

Podium – Best for text-to-pay

Podium, one of the best business text messaging services.

Podium is a versatile business solution that supports a wide range of features, from messaging to online reviews and more. It’s also a complete CRM that makes it easy to manage contact lists and keep track of interactions at every touchpoint.

But Podium stands out from the crowd with its built-in text-to-pay feature. This is handled directly through Podium’s platform, so you won’t have to set up any third-party integrations. 

One potential drawback of Podium is its pricing structure. It’s a bit more expensive than other services that are strictly for business texting. 

You’re getting so much more than just basic business texting. But the pricing is definitely something to consider if you’re not planning to take advantage of Podium’s other robust features. Organizations seeking a solution that’s strictly for text messaging should look elsewhere. 

What Makes Podium Great

Podium’s integrated text-to-pay feature is definitely its shining star. This capability is available on every Podium plan, including the entry-level tier. 

Screenshot of Podium's text payments web page.
Use Podium to get paid quickly via text.

This is so much better than emailing customers to collect payments or sending paper invoices through the mail. Podium says that the average text is opened within 15 minutes of delivery, ensuring you’re getting paid quickly. This also makes things easier for your customers, as they can pay for goods and services using a few clicks from their phones.

Text-to-pay works great within industries like healthcare, automotive, home services, dental, professional services, and more. 

After customers pay you via text, you can automatically send them a follow-up message asking them to leave a review. The message will include a link directly to the review platform of your choosing. 

Plans start at $289 per month for up to three team members and $449 per month for unlimited team members and unlimited contacts. Text-to-pay processing rates range from 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction to 2.7% + $0.30 per transaction, depending on your plan. Read our full Podium review to learn more. 

Sendinblue – Best for texting combined with email services

Sendinblue, one of the best business text messaging services.

Most business texting messaging tools do just what you’d expect—they allow you to send text messages. But Sendinblue is unique in the sense that you’re getting a text messaging service and email marketing solution from a single platform.

This means that you won’t have to worry about setting up integrations between your text service and email platform or CRM. You’re getting all the tools you need from a single interface.

It’s worth noting that Sendinblue is generally considered an email marketing platform first, with SMS messaging capabilities second. While the text messaging service is not an afterthought by any stretch of the imagination, it does lack some of the features you’ll see from platforms that are strictly for business text messaging. 

What Makes Sendinblue Great

The great part about using Sendinblue is that all of your contacts can be managed in one place. So you’ll see exactly how your database interacts with both email campaigns and targeted SMS messages.

Screenshot of Sendinblue's sms marketing web page.
Get SMS marketing and email under one roof with Sendinblue.

This is great information, as you can adjust your strategy to see when emails are more appropriate and when texts are more effective. Whether you’re sending texts, emails, or both, your team can keep track of all customer interactions from a single inbox with every interaction in a customer’s history.

Another cool part of Sendinblue is the ability to set up powerful marketing automation that moves customers through your flow based on their engagement and interactions. You can even set up both emails and texts from a single campaign or automation so your database gets a mix of both.

Plans start at $25 per month for the email marketing platform, with SMS credits available as an add-on. Rates are based on volume and country, such as $5.45 per month to send 500 texts in the US. Try Sendinblue for free today. 

Quick Sprout Business Text Messaging Services Related Content

For more about business messaging, how it works, and how to succeed with it, check out the related resources below—hand-picked from the Quick Sprout blog:

Business Text Messaging Services Guides and How-Tos

Business Text Messaging Services Company Reviews

Business Text Messaging Services Related Top Lists

The Top Business Text Messaging Services in Summary

SimpleTexting is the best business text messaging service for most organizations because it’s versatile enough to support both sales and marketing initiatives. You can use it to send mass messages to your entire contact list or start two-way conversations with individual recipients. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that SimpleTexting is right for you. Use the reviews, recommendations, and considerations highlighted in this guide to make sure you find a business text messaging service that aligns with your needs.