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Shipfusion Review

Shipfusion is an ecommerce fulfillment solution that provides businesses across the United States and Canada with powerful fulfillment, inventory management, and customer support to assist in building a seamless ecommerce operation. 

With additional products in returns, freight, and warehouse projects, you can focus on growing your business with an all-in-one solution.

Shipfusion brand logo.

Shipfusion Compared

Shipfusion did not make it onto our top list of the best ecommerce fulfillment services, though it is still a decent option. ShipBob is the best option for most, with two-day shipping and omnichannel support. Request a quote for free. 

About Shipfusion

Shipfusion offers comprehensive features for ecommerce fulfillment that scale to the size of your business. Whether you need shipping for 10 products or 100 products per month, Shipfusion can help you process orders, manage customer returns, and track inventory without the hassle of outsourcing various fulfillment platforms. 

Along with Shipfusion’s ecommerce fulfillment platform, its other products and services include inventory management, fulfillment center locations, a returns program, a freight management system, warehouse projects, and a reporting portal. 

Shipfusion Health and Stability

Shipfusion was founded in 2014 as a privately traded company with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. Shipfusion has four investors, including Kanye Anderson Capital Advisors, Vitality Capital, Seek Captial Management, and MER Partners, collectively raising $40 million across four funding rounds. 

As of 2023, Shipfusion has hired more than 250 employees across the United States. With a 4.9-star rating on Glassdoor, most of Shipfusion’s current and former employees seem to support the CEO and like the work culture. 

Shipfusion Pricing

Unfortunately, Shipfusion doesn’t disclose pricing for any of its products on its website. This is because its ecommerce solution is highly customizable, and Shipfusion wants to work with the user to create a package that works well with their exact needs.

Shipfusion Pricing Structure

As Shipfusion doesn’t disclose pricing on its website, there isn’t much to discuss in terms of pricing structure. However, after extensive research, we found a few users claim that Shipfusion uses a monthly pricing structure.

But because Shipfusion works with you to create custom pricing, there’s a high chance that you can choose a structure that best suits your budget and business. 

Shipfusion Pricing Comparison

One of Shipfusion’s main—and most popular—products is its ecommerce platform, so I will compare the pricing for this same product between two competitors. Similarly to Shipfusion, many ecommerce platforms don’t disclose pricing on their website, but let’s take a look at two companies that do. 

ShipMonk bases its pricing on how many monthly orders you expect to pack and ship. For example, if you have between zero and 500 monthly orders, you will pay a $3.00 pick fee per order, a $0.75 fee for additional items per order, a $0.20 fee for promotional inserts, and $2.00 for return processing. ShipMonk also offers monthly storage fees that range from $1.00 per month to $25 per month for a pallet. 

Easyship offers a different pricing structure, with tiers that range from free to $29, $69, and $99 per month. Easyship’s free plan comes with 50 shipments per month and unlimited ecommerce integrations. 

Shipfusion Trials and Guarantees

Shipfusion doesn’t currently offer any free trials or guarantees. However, you can request a custom quote and view a demo for free. 

Shipfusion Ecommerce Fulfillment Service Review

Shipfusion stands out for its robust inventory software with incredible fulfillment features. Shipfusion’s ecommerce fulfillment service is flexible, with comprehensive customer support and smart storage. 

You will benefit from Shipfusion’s ecommerce fulfillment platform if you are looking for a flexible platform that will grow with your business. If you want to explore other excellent alternatives, check out our reviews of the best ecommerce fulfillment services. 

What Makes Shipfusion Ecommerce Fulfillment Service Great

A screenshot of Shipfusion's portal.
Shipfusion’s ecommerce portal is easy to navigate, with graphs, drop-down menus, and item lists. 

Robust inventory software: Shipfusion can help you manage your entire inventory with its robust inventory software. This software automatically updates your inventory data across multiple sales channels in real-time, which allows you to sell products on various platforms simultaneously while ensuring your data stays consistent. Shipfusion’s robust inventory software also allows you to transparently view all stock levels, including SKU continuity reports, back order notifications, and count/adjustment entries. 

Smart storage: If you’re looking to reduce storage costs and optimize how you store your products, Shipfusion offers storage solutions that target both areas. Shipfusion strategically designs its warehouses and inventory systems to assign your products to designated areas. And fewer shipment errors will likely result in fewer returns. Shipfusion also offers customized storage solutions, including temperature-controlled spaces and food-grade storage options.

Flexible shipping: Shipfusion works closely with its selected merchants to ensure you get the best rates possible. Shipfusion currently offers ground shipping, which is flexible and affordable for everyone involved. As a third-party logistics (3PL) fulfillment provider, Shipfusion handles the entire shipping process—from warehousing to distribution—and can help you deliver your products in as little as two days.

Comprehensive customer service: Slow customer support is a worry of the past with Shipfusion’s comprehensive customer service options. Instead of only having the options of phone or email customer support, Shipfusion allows you to choose from support tickets, live chat, email, phone, help video demos, and a blog. Plus, every Shipfusion user gets a dedicated account manager for additional support.

Powerful inventory fulfillment features: Aside from Shipfusion’s inventory management options, you’ll also benefit from its powerful inventory fulfillment features that help streamline your fulfillment and shipping process. For picking orders, you can choose from piece picking, which allows you to hand-pick orders, batch picking for bulk orders, or zone picking, where employees are assigned to one area of the warehouse at a time. You also have the option to integrate Shipfusion into your preferred sales channel for seamless order processing. 

Where Shipfusion Ecommerce Fulfillment Service Falls Short

A screenshot of Shipfusion's fulfillment services process via an infographic.
Shipfusion offers a seamless fulfillment service with shipment, order, and customer details in one centralized place.

Tracking issues: After reviewing dozens of reviews, I found a small percentage of reviewers who experienced tracking issues while using Shipfusion. They claimed that Shipfusion failed to accurately track their inventory, which led to overselling inventory they didn’t have.

Non-transparent pricing: Most ecommerce fulfillment services don’t disclose pricing on their website, so it’s not an uncommon practice. However, it does make it increasingly difficult for businesses to understand what their budget should look like for Shipfusion’s service. Instead, Shipfusion works with each customer to create a customized pricing plan that will suit your needs.

Sometimes slow shipping speeds: Despite Shipfusion claiming that its ground shipping can deliver products in as little as two days, this doesn’t seem to be the case for a few users. Some reviewers claimed that Shipfusion took up to a week to deliver their products, which caused them to lose money and time. 

Shipfusion Ecommerce Fulfillment Service Compared

While Shipfusion is a powerful ecommerce fulfillment service with smart storage and extensive inventory management, the best company on the market today is ShipBob, with reliable two-day shipping and omnichannel support.

Final Verdict

Shipfusion is an excellent ecommerce fulfillment service that caters to businesses looking to streamline their fulfillment and shipping processes. With robust inventory software, smart storage, and comprehensive customer service, Shipfusion can help you create a reliable ecommerce operation. 

Even though Shipfusion has been in the industry for nine years, the company continues to prove its reliability through generous funding rounds and a 4.9-star rating on Glassdoor.

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A Simple Method for Training GPT-2 To Generate Haiku Using the NanoGPT Repository

Purpose

In this article, I will show how to easily train GPT-class neural networks from home. Let me start by saying that we won’t train NN from scratch, as that would require 8 (eight!) A100-class GPUs at least and a massive dataset. Instead, we’ll focus on fine-tuning a pre-trained GPT-2 model using a smaller dataset, which anyone can easily make or find online. OpenAI has kindly released GPT-2 under Modified MIT License.

nanoGPT

We’ll use the nanoGPT repository created by Andrej Karpathy for fast and easy GPT training. He has a comprehensive video lecture explaining how GPT-2 works and how to train such a neural network. However, we’re interested in fine-tuning the model using our own dataset and seeing the difference from the original (GPT-2 trained by OpenAI).

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A Guide To Accessible Form Validation

When it comes to form validation, we can explore it from two perspectives: usability and accessibility. “What’s the difference between usability and accessibility?” you may ask. Let’s start from there.

Usability

Usability is about improving a given action until it’s as easy and delightful as possible. For example, making the process of fixing an invalid field easier or writing better descriptions so the user can fill the field without facing an error message.

To get a really good grasp of the challenges in this process, I highly recommend you to read the deep-dive “Designing better inline validations UX” from Vitaly. There, you’ll learn about the different approaches to validate a field and what are the caveats and trade-offs of each one.

Accessibility

Choosing the best UX approach is just half of the challenge. The other half is ensuring that any person knows the field is invalid and easily understands how to fix it. That’s what I’ll explore through this guide.

You can look at ‘Accessibility’ and ‘Usability’ as two equally important universes with their own responsibilities. Accessibility is about ensuring anyone can access the content. Usability is about how easy it is to use the website. Once overlapped will take ‘User Experience’ to its best.

With these two concepts clarified, we are now ready to dive into accessible validations.

Accessibility In Forms

Before we get into validation, let me recap the accessibility fundamentals in forms:

  • Navigation
    The form can be navigated using only the keyboard, so people who don’t use a mouse can still fill and submit the form. This is mostly about setting a compliant focus indicator to each form control.
  • Context
    Each form field must have an accessible name (label), so people who use assistive technologies can identify each field. For example, screen readers would read a field name to its user.

Screen Readers In Forms

Similar to browsers, screen readers (SR) behave slightly differently from each other: different shortcuts, different semantic announcements, and different features support. For example, NVDA works better with Firefox, while VoiceOver works best with Safari, and both have slightly different behaviors. However, this shouldn’t stop us from building the common solid foundations that are strongly supported by all.

A while ago, I asked on Twitter how screen reader users navigate forms. Most prefer to Tab or use special shortcuts to quickly jump through the fields but oftentimes can’t do it. The reason is that we, developers, forget to implement those fields with screen readers in mind most of the time.

Currently, many of the field validations can’t be solved with native HTML elements, so we are left with the last resource: ARIA attributes. By using them, Assistive Technologies like screen readers will better describe a given element to the user.

Through the article, I’m using VoiceOver in macOS Catalina for all the scenarios. Each one includes a Copeden demo and a video recording, which hopefully will give you a better idea of how screen readers behave in forms, field descriptions, and errors.

The Field Instructions

Field Description

The field label is the first visual instruction to know what to fill in, followed by a description when needed. The same way sighted users can see the description (assuming a color contrast that meets WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum), the SR users also need to be aware of it.

To do so, we can connect the description to the input by using the aria-describedby attribute, which accepts an id pointing to the description element. With it, SR will read the description automatically when the user focuses on the field input.

<!-- note: highlight the aria-describedby -->
<label for="address">Your address</label>
<input id="address" type="text" aria-describedby="addressHint"/>
<span id="addressHint">Remember to include the door and apartment.</span>

In this field, it would cause more harm than good to connect the entire description to the aria-describedby. Instead, I prefer to connect a short description that hints to the user about the full description so they can navigate to it on their own.

<input id="days" type="text" aria-describedby="daysHintShort"/>
<div class="field-hint">
  <span id="daysHintShort" hidden>
    <!-- This text is announced automatically when the input is focused
    and ignored when the screen reader users navigate to it. -->
    Below it's explained how these days influence your benefits.
  <span>
  <div>Depending on how many days....</div>
</div>

As this short description is exclusive to assistive technologies only, we need to hide it from sight users. A possibility could be using the .sr-only technique. However, a side-effect is that the screen reader user would bump into it again when moving to the next element, which is redundant. So, instead, let’s use the hidden attribute, which hides the short description from assistive technologies altogether, but still lets us use the node’s contents as the inputs’ description.

<input id="days" type="text" aria-describedby="daysHintShort"/>
<div class="field-hint">
  
<span id="daysHintShort" hidden>
    <!-- This text is announced automatically when the input is focused,
    and ignored when the screen reader users navigates to it. -->
    Below it's explained how these days influence your benefits.
  </span>
  <div>Depending on how many days....</div>
</div>

I find this pattern very useful for fields with long descriptions or even complex validation descriptions. The tip here is to hint to the users about the full instructions, so they won’t be left alone guessing about it.

Visually most people will recognize this pattern. However, people who use SR will get confused. For instance, Voice Over will announce “Address star, edit text.” Some screen readers might completely ignore it, depending on how strict the verbosity settings are.

This is a perfect scenario of an element that, although it’s visually useful, it’s far from ideal for SR users. There are a few ways to address this asterisk pattern. Personally, I prefer to “hide” the asterisk using aria-hidden="true", which tells all assistive technologies to ignore it. That way, Voice Over will just say “Address, edit text.”

<label for="address" class="field-label">
  Address <span class="field-star" aria-hidden="true">*</span>
</label>

The Semantic Clue

With the visual clue removed from AT, we still need to semantically tell the input is required. To do so, we could add the required attribute to the element. With that, the SR will say, “Address, required, edit text.”

<input id="address" type="text" required />

Besides adding the necessary semantics, the required attribute also modifies the form behavior. On Chrome 107, when the submit fails, it shows a tooltip with a native error message and focuses the required empty field, like the following:

The Flaws In Default Validations

Probably your designer or client will complain about this default validation because it doesn’t match your website aesthetics. Or your users will complain the error is hard to understand or disappears too soon. As currently, it’s impossible to customize the styling and behavior, so we’ll see ourselves forced to avoid the default field validation and implement our own. And just like that, accessibility is compromised again. As web creators, it’s our duty to ensure the custom validation is accessible, so let’s do it.

The first step is to replace required with aria-required, which will keep the input required semantics without modifying its style or behavior. Then, we’ll implement the error message itself in a second. 

<!-- note: this would be a diff -->
<input id="address" type="text" required="required" />
<input id="address" type="text" aria-required="true" />

Here’s a table comparing side by side the difference between required and aria-required:

Function required aria-required
Adds semantics Yes Yes
Prevents invalid submit Yes No
Shows custom error message Yes No
Auto-focus invalid field Yes No

Reminder: ARIA attributes never modify an element’s styles or behavior. It only enhances its semantics.

The Error Message

From a usability standpoint, there’s a lot to take into consideration about error messages. In short, the trick is to write a helpful message without technical jargon that states why the field is incorrect and, when possible, to explain how to fix it. For a deep dive, read how to design better error messages by Vitaly and how Wix rewrote all their error messages.

From an accessibility standpoint, we must ensure anyone not only knows that the field is invalid but also what’s the error message. To mark a field as invalid, we use the ARIA attribute aria-invalid="true", which will make the SR announce that the field is invalid when it’s focused. Then, to also announce the error, we use aria-describedby we learned about before, pointing to the error element:

<input
  id="address"
  type="text"
  required="required"
  aria-invalid="true"
  aria-describedby="addressError addressHint"
/>
<span>
  <p id="addressError">Address cannot be empty.</p>
  <p id="addressHint">Remember to include the door and apartment.</p>
</span>

Invalid Field With Description

A good thing about aria-describedby is that it accepts multiple ids, which is very useful for invalid fields with descriptions. We can pass the id of both elements, and the screen reader will announce both when the input is focused, respecting the order of the ids.

<input
  id="address"
  type="text"
  required="required"
  aria-invalid="true"
  aria-describedby="addressError addressHint"
/>
<span>
  <p id="addressError">Address cannot be empty.</p>
  <p id="addressHint">Remember to include the door and apartment.</p>
</span>

Open the Pen Field Validations — aria-invalid by Sandrina Pereira.

The Future Of ARIA Errors And Its Support

An ARIA attribute dedicated to errors already exists — aria-errormessage — but it’s not yet supported by most screen readers. So, for now, you are better off avoiding it and sticking with aria-describedby.

In the meantime, you could check A11Ysupport to know the support of a given ARIA attribute. You can look at this website as the “caniuse” but for screen readers. It contains detailed test cases for almost every attribute that influences HTML semantics. Just pay attention to the date of the test, as some tests might be too old.

Dynamic Content Is Not Announced By Default

Important to note that although aria-describedby supports multiple ids, if you change them (or the elements’ content) dynamically while the input is focused, the SR won’t re-announce its new content automatically. The same happens to the input label. It will only read the new content after you leave the input and focus it again.

In order for us to announce changes in content dynamically, we’ll need to learn about live regions. Let’s explore that in the next section.

Moments Of Validation

The examples shown so far demonstrate ARIA attributes in static fields. But in real fields, we need to apply them dynamically based on user interactions. Forms are one of the scenarios where JavaScript is fundamental to making our fields fully accessible without compromising modern interactive usability.

Regardless of which moment of validation (usability pattern) you use, any of them can be accomplished with accessibility in mind. We’ll explore three common validation patterns:

  • Instant validation
    The field gets validated on every value change.
  • Afterward validation
    The field gets validated on blur.
  • Submit validation
    The field gets validated on the form submit.

Instant Validation

In this pattern, the field gets validated every time the value changes, and we show the error message immediately after.

In the same way, as the error is shown dynamically, we also want the screen reader to announce it right away. To do so, we must turn the error element in a Live Region, by using aria-live="assertive". Without it, the SR won’t announce the error message, unless the user manually navigates to it.

Open the Pen Field Validations - instant validation by Sandrina Pereira.

Some nice to know about this example:

  • While the input is valid, the aria-invalid can be "false" or be completely absent from the DOM. Both ways work fine.
  • The aria-describedby can be dynamically modified to contain one or multiple ids. However, if modified while the input is focused, the screen reader won’t re-announce its new ids — only when the input gets re-focused again.
  • The aria-live attribute holds many gotchas that can cause more harm than good if used incorrectly. Read “Using aria-live” by Ire Aderinokun to better understand how Live Regions behave and when (not) to use it.
  • From a usability perspective, be mindful that this validation pattern can be annoying, the same way it’s annoying when the error shows up too early while we are still typing our answer.

Afterward Validation

In this pattern, the error message is only shown after the user leaves the field (on blur event). Similar to the ‘Instant Validation’, we need to use the aria-live so that the user knows about the error before start filling the next elements.

Usability tip: I personally prefer to show the on-blur error only if the input value changes. Why? Some screen reader users go through all the fields to know how many exist before starting to actually fill them. This can happen with keyboard users too. Even sight users might accidentally click on one of the fields while scrolling down. All these behaviors would trigger the on-blur error too soon when the intent was just to ‘read’ the field, not to fill it. This slightly different pattern avoids that error flow.

Open the Pen Field Validations - afterward validation by Sandrina Pereira.

Submit Validation

In this pattern, the validation happens when the user submits the form, showing the error message afterward. How and when exactly these errors are shown depends on your design preferences. I’ll go through two of the most common approaches:

In Long Forms

In this scenario, I personally like to show an error summary message, usually placed right before the submit button, so that the chances of being visible on the screen are bigger. This error message should be short, for example, “Failed to save because 3 fields are invalid.”

It’s also common to show the inline error messages of all invalid fields, but this time without aria-live so that the screen reader doesn’t announce all the errors, which can be annoying. Some screen readers only announce the first Live Region (error) in the DOM which can also be miss-leading.

Instead, I add the aria-live="assertive" only to the error summary.

Open the Pen Field Validations - on submit - error summary by Sandrina Pereira.

In the demo above, the error summary has two elements:

<p aria-live="assertive" class="sr-only">
  Failed to save because 2 fields are invalid.
</p>
<p aria-hidden="true">
  Failed to save because 2 fields are invalid.
</p>
  1. The semantic error summary contains a static error summary meant to be announced only on submit. So the aria-live is in this element, alongside the .sr-only to hide it visually.
  2. The visual error summary updates every time the number of invalid fields changes. Announcing that message to SR could be annoying, so it’s only meant for visual updates. It has the aria-hidden so that the screen readers users don’t bump into the error summary twice.

Check the screen reader demo below:

In Short Forms

In very short forms, such as logins, you might prefer not to show an error summary in favor of just the inline error messages. If so, there are two common approaches you can take here:

  1. Add an invisible error summary for screen readers by using the .sr-only we learned above.
  2. Or, when there’s just one invalid field, focus that invalid field automatically using HTMLElement.focus(). This helps keyboard users by not having to tab to it manually, and, thanks to aria-describedby, will make screen readers announce the field error immediately too. Note that here you don’t need aria-live to force the error announcement because the field getting focused is enough to trigger it.

Open the Pen Field Validations - on submit - auto-focus by Sandrina Pereira.

Accessibility Comes Before Usability

I must highlight that this is just one approach among others, such as:

  • Error text: It can be just a simple text or include the number of invalid fields or even add an anchor link to each invalid field.
  • Placement: Some sites show the error summary at the top of the form. If you do this, remember to scroll and focus it automatically so that everyone can see/hear it.
  • Focus: Some sites focus on the error summary, while others don’t. Some focus on the first invalid field and don’t show an error summary at all.

Any of these approaches can be considered accessible as long it’s implemented correctly so that anyone can perceive why the form is invalid. We can always argue that one approach is better than the other, but at this point, the benefits would be mostly around usability and no longer exclusively about accessibility.

Nevertheless, the form error summary is an excellent opportunity to gracefully recover from a low moment in a form journey. In an upcoming article, I will break down these form submit patterns in greater detail from both accessibility and usability perspectives.

Testing Field Validations

Automated accessibility tools catch only around 20-25% of A11Y issues; the more interactive your webpage is, the fewer the bugs it catches. For instance, those tools would not have caught any of the demos explored in this article.

You could write unit tests asserting that the ARIA attributes are used in the right place, but even that doesn’t guarantee that the form works as intended for everyone in every browser.

Accessibility is about personal experiences, which means it relies a lot on manual testing, similar to how pixel-perfect animations are better tested manually too. For now, the most effective accessibility testing is a combination of multiple practices such as automated tools, unit tests, manual tests, and user testing.

In the meantime, I challenge you to try out a screen reader by yourself, especially when you build a new custom interactive element from scratch. You’ll discover a new web dimension, and ultimately, it will make you a better web creator.

Things To Keep In Mind For Accessible Fields

Auto Focusing Invalid Inputs

Above, I mentioned one possible pattern of automatically focusing the first invalid field, so the user doesn’t need to manually navigate to it. Depending on the case, this pattern might be useful or not. In doubt, I prefer to keep things simple and not add auto-focus. If not obvious, let the user read the summary error message, understand it and then navigate to the field by themselves.

Wrapping Everything Inside <label>

It might be tempting to wrap everything about a field inside the <label> element. Well, yes, the assistive technologies would then announce everything inside automatically on input focus. But, depending on how ‘extensive’ the input is, it might sound more confusing than helpful:

  • It’s not clear for screen reader users what exactly the label is.
  • If you include interactive elements inside the label, clicking on them might conflict with the automatic input focus behavior.
  • In unit tests (e.g., Testing Library), you can’t target an input by its label.

Overall, keeping the label separate from everything else has more benefits, including having grainier control over how elements are announced and organized.

Disabling The Submit Button

Preventing the user from submitting an invalid form is the most common reason to disable a button. However, the user probably won’t understand why the button is disabled and won’t know how to fix the errors. That’s a big cognitive effort for such a simple task. Whenever possible, avoid disabled buttons. Let people click buttons at any time and show them the error message with instructions. In the last instance, if you really need a disabled button, consider making it an inclusive disabled button, where anyone can understand and interact with it.

Good UX Is Adaptable

Most physical buildings in the world have at least two ways to navigate them: stairs and lifts. Each one has its unique UX with pros and cons suited for different needs. On the web, don’t fall into the trap of forcing the same pattern on all kinds of users and preferences.

Whenever you find an A11Y issue in a given pattern, try to improve it, but also consider looking for an alternative pattern that can be used simultaneously or toggled.

Remember, every person deserves a good experience, but not every experience is good for everyone.

Wrapping Up

Field validations are one of those web concepts without dedicated HTML elements that suit modern web patterns, so we need ARIA to fill in the gaps. In short, this article covered the most common attributes for field validations that make a difference for many people in their web journey:

  • aria-required: To mark a field as required.
  • aria-invalid: To mark the field as invalid.
  • aria-describedby: To connect the description and error message to the input.
  • aria-live: To announce dynamic error messages.

Accessibility is about people, not about ARIA. Besides those attributes, remember to review your colors, icons, field instructions, and, equally important, the validations themselves. Your duty as a web creator is to ensure everyone can enjoy the web, even when a form fails to submit.

Last but not least, I’d like to appreciate the technical review from Ben Mayers, Kitty Giraudel, and Manuel Matuzović. Because sharing is what makes us better. <3

WCAG References

All the practices we explored in this article are covered by WCAG guideline “3.3 Input Assistance”:

The more I learn about web accessibility, the more I realize accessibility goes beyond complying with web standards. Remember, the WCAG are ‘guidelines’ and not ‘rules’ for a reason. They are there to support you, but if you suspect a guideline doesn’t make sense based on your diverse user research, don’t be afraid to question it and think outside the box. Write about it, and ultimately guidelines will evolve too.

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Chocolate, Waffles And Fries: Meet SmashingConf Antwerp 2023 🇧🇪

We’ve been passionate about design & UX for years. We’ve written about design systems and usability, inclusive design and product design, UX research and enterprise UX. And now it’s time to bring it all together. In-person. In a new location. With a new spirit of curiosity and community. And it’s happening this October.

Roll up your sleeves and meet SmashingConf Antwerp 🇧🇪, our shiny new conference for designers & UI engineers who love design, UX and the web. On design systems, usability, product design, accessibility and complex UIs. 1 track, 2 days, 4 full-day-workshops, mysteries and friendly networking. A bright new gem in the heart of Belgium — the land of incredible chocolate, waffles and truly Belgian fries! 🍫 🧇 🍟 🍺

In-Person + Online

€ 499.00 Get your ticket!

Oct 9–11, 2023. Bourla, Antwerp.
Save up to 25% with Smashing Membership.

Online

€ 200.00
Live talks + Behind the scenes

With all video recordings, of course.
Save up to 25% with Smashing Membership.

Ah, perhaps your manager needs a little bit convincing? We’ve got your back! Download the Convince Your Boss PDF to tip the scales in your favor. And we’ve prepared a “letter to the boss” template for you as well. Good luck! 🤞🤞🏼🤞🏾

What Should You Expect?

SmashingConfs have always been about how we work, how we fail and how we succeed. We kindly encourage speakers to share lessons learned and show how they work. Don’t be surprised by speakers sitting down and showing their design process, or setting up a Figma board and designing live with the audience. Check what SmashingConfs are like (+ video).

Don’t expect big picture talks or abstract concepts — Smashing Conferences are always honest, practical and passionate. Speakers are also very approachable and there is enough time for you to ask all your questions and get all the answers, in 1:1-conversations or in round tables.

But it’s also very friendly and inclusive. In fact, we know many attendees by names, and we love friendships emerging as people get together and learn together, during the talks and in the workshops. Plus, we design our side events to help everyone take part in meaningful, respectful conversations.

Everybody is welcome. Not everyone has to speak, but everyone has to feel heard.

We don’t choose venues randomly either. We love the contrast of beautiful historical venues and digital craftsmanship. So for Antwerp, we’ve chosen Bourla Schouwburg, an unforgettable neoclassical theatre in the heart of Antwerp, meticulously designed and built in 1820s and decorated with statues of Apollo and the nine muses (to get your creativity flowing!). The Bourla Theatre will be your home for both conference days.

Finally, we love a good mystery, and we love to have fun! This shows in plenty of side events, morning runs, mysterious riddles, design challenges and walking tours around the chocolate factory and waffle shops.

For Designers and UI Engineers

We’ve designed the conference for UX designers, product designers and interface designers, but it will have plenty of insights for UI engineers and jacks of all trades as well. If you want to boost your design and UX skills, you’ll be in the right place: with insightful talks and practical workshops.

All workshops are hands-on and practical, so you can apply your new skills immediately.

We’ll dive into:

  • design systems,
  • design patterns,
  • usability and UX research,
  • product design and workflow,
  • enterprise UX and complex UIs,
  • inclusive design and accessibility,
  • new design techniques (in Figma, Miro etc.),
  • sustainable and age-friendly design,
  • UX writing.

We will announce the first talks and workshops shortly. The speakers we’ve invited are not just knowledgeable and amongst the best in their fields. They are also excellent speakers and teachers, smart and kind friends, and wonderfully nice and approachable.

Team Tickets? 👫👭

Bring the entire team to SmashingConf, and save some of your training budget along the way as well. With our friendly bundle tickets and team discounts, we’ve got your back! If you want to come with a large team, or are interested in something special, please send us a short email and we’ll get back to you right away!

We Can’t Wait To See You!

As we are getting ready for the event, we couldn’t be more excited to meet you in Antwerp. Let’s boost our design and UX skills, together, and create memorable experiences that will last for a while. ❤️

In-Person + Online

€ 499.00 Get your ticket!

Oct 9–11, 2023. Bourla, Antwerp.
Save up to 25% with Smashing Membership.

Online

€ 200.00
Live talks + Behind the scenes

With all video recordings, of course.
Save up to 25% with Smashing Membership.

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Video Breakout Room Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Most video conferencing platforms can handle large meetings and online events with hundreds of participants. However, just because you can get hundreds of people to a virtual event doesn’t mean you’ll accomplish the meeting’s objective. You need to consider making sure everyone gets heard, engaging attendees who are reluctant to participate and preventing scope creep from a large group with competing agendas. 

Video breakout rooms quickly solve these challenges by creating smaller gatherings hosted simultaneously with the central meeting. The breakout rooms make a more intimate and organized environment that adds value to the main discussion. This guide explores everything you need to know about breakout rooms. 

What is a Video Breakout Room?

Most of the best video conferencing platforms, including popular options like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx, offer virtual breakout rooms. A video breakout room is simply a webinar feature that allows you to divide the main sessions’ participants into smaller groups. It is the same concept as group discussions at school, smaller brainstorming sessions at the office, or private spaces for smaller groups at large conferences. 

The only difference is that a video breakout room is entirely virtual. 

Most popular video conferencing software like Zoom can host up to 500 participants in one video session. However, experts suggest that the most productive meetings have fewer than eight participants. So it’s no wonder most software offer breakout rooms to allow the creation of offshoot sessions from the central meeting. 

Virtual breakout rooms are designed to be smaller, quieter, and more private than the main meeting. Most video conferencing software also offers flexible breakout rooms. For example, the host or co-host can assign participants to specific breakout rooms or allow them to choose the breakout room they’d like to join. 

How Video Breakout Rooms Work 

Creating breakout rooms may be slightly different depending on your chosen platform. However, the concept is the same across platforms. We’ll use the example of Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams for this demonstration. 

Here’s how to create breakout rooms on the most popular webinar platforms: 

Only some people can create a breakout room. Most platforms require special permission to use this feature. For example, you’d need to be a Moderator in Google Meet, a Host or Co-Host in Zoom, or a Meeting Organizer or Presenter in Microsoft Teams. We’ll use these roles interchangeably for the remainder of this section. 

To create a breakout room, open a scheduled meeting or start a meeting on your chosen platform. Next, choose the Breakout Rooms option. You’ll immediately see this option in Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. However, you’ll need to click the shapes icon and navigate to the Activities Menu to find the breakout room feature in Zoom. 

Now select the number of breakout rooms you’d like to create. For example, Google Meet allows up to 100 rooms, while Microsoft Teams and Zoom allow up to 50. 

The three platforms also allow you to set a timer for each breakout room, and the session automatically ends when the timer runs out. The moderator can also close rooms or end sessions at any time on these platforms. 

Most webinar software, including those featured in this example, allow you to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms when scheduling a virtual meeting. This way, you don’t have to add or manage participants during the session.

Five steps to create breakout rooms before a meeting using Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams gives you the option to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms before your virtual meeting begins.

Similarly, these platforms allow the host to automatically or manually add participants. Alternatively, the host may allow participants to choose their preferred breakout session. These breakout sessions occur independently from the central meeting. 

For example, the participants in the central meeting, excluding the presenter, cannot participate in the breakout room unless they’re invited or assigned to the specific room. Similarly, breakout room participants cannot switch between the primary and breakout sessions unless the presenter allows this feature. 

As you can see, the video breakout room is a well-thought-out feature. It has everything you need to create smaller sessions from a larger meeting while ensuring privacy, productivity, and good meeting management. 

Why Use Video Breakout Rooms? 

Breakout rooms have multiple use cases and are relevant for most industries. Some common uses for video conferencing breakout rooms include virtual meetings, conferences, training, and focus groups. Regardless of the application, there are many benefits of using breakout rooms. 

First, breakout rooms are terrific for encouraging participation and boosting engagement. Most conferences and meetings feature multiple speakers and passive participants. Breakout rooms help eliminate the monotony of long sessions, allowing participants an outlet for exchanging information and ideas. 

Lectures, meetings, and training sessions are also more memorable when attendees are actively involved. Therefore, the participants are more likely to retain the information from the primary and off-shoot sessions. Furthermore, attendees are motivated to pay attention since they are required to contribute to the discussions. 

Secondly, breakout rooms are private and personal, the ideal environment for sharing ideas. Participants may feel shy or skeptical about voicing opinions or ideas in front of tens or hundreds of peers. Breakout sessions are typically smaller, creating a more natural and relaxed setting. 

Here, reluctant contributors are free to express their opinions and ideas without the fear of being wrong in front of a large crowd. Additionally, individual ideas tend to hold more weight in smaller groups. The smaller groups also have less information to process, allowing them to focus and stay on track with the topic. 

Breakout rooms also prove helpful for company-wide meetings. These meetings involve various departments and typically have a strict agenda and timeline. Unfortunately, this structure means that most ideas are glossed over or rushed. 

Assigning each department a breakout room allows employees to focus on the agenda and subject matter relevant to their work. It is also an excellent opportunity to host department-specific discussions. For example, the breakout room can help team members drown out the noise by zeroing in on targets or changes relevant to their department. 

The Essential Video Breakout Features to Look For

Most video conferencing platforms, including lesser-known brands, offer some breakout room functionality. While this feature isn’t a deal-breaker for most people, it’s worth weighing when choosing a webinar platform. We also have a terrific in-depth post for the Best Webinar Compared, just in case you’re looking for a reliable platform. 

It might be worth paying attention to the following breakout room features if you plan to use this functionality often: 

Self-selected breakout rooms – This feature is convenient if you regularly host large conferences or seminars. It allows participants to switch between breakout rooms seamlessly. The feature mimics moving back and forth between stations at an event. 

Manual and automated breakout groups – You might want the same type of people in the same group to maximize productivity. For example, you may wish to have people in specific positions or departments in one breakout room. Therefore, the platform should allow you to assign participants to relevant breakout rooms manually. 

Conversely, homogenous groups may not require dedicated breakout rooms. In this case, an automated feature can help randomly put people into smaller groups. This feature can save you time and mental effort in grouping participants. 

Breakout room timer – Breakout rooms help facilitate smaller group discussions or brainstorming sessions on the backdrop of a larger meeting. However, these sessions need structure. This feature displays a countdown timer so participants know how much time is left. 

The timer is handy for moving the conversation along. In addition, participants will be more focused during timed discussions. 

Pre-configuration – Hosting a virtual meeting or event is stressful. The ideal platform lets you set up as much as possible before the meeting. This way, you can focus on moderating or steering the breakout rooms without worrying about adding participants or other non-essential tasks. 

For example, you should be able to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms. Similarly, the software should let you save breakout rooms for future use. 

Microsoft Teams breakout room interface highlighting chat feature
Microsoft Teams provides solid video conferencing features, like the ability to have breakout room chats.

Screenshare – Breakout sessions are independent of the main session. However, sharing information across the central meeting and the smaller breakout sessions might be necessary. So a screen share feature is handy. 

This way, the host can share the screen contents from the main session with the breakout rooms. It also helps if the host can choose what they’d like to share, such as a specific program or the entire screen. Finally, the ideal platform should allow the host to share text messages or other communication with active breakout rooms. 

Activity status – While independent, breakout rooms require some managing and facilitating. The ideal platform allows the host to view activity in each breakout room. For example, the host can monitor which participants share their screens, react to messages, or have their audio and video on. 

7 Tips for Hosting Engaging Video Breakout Room Sessions

Breakout sessions reduce the monotony of long meetings, improve engagement, and boost retention. And since most video conferencing software comes with this capability, there’s no reason not to implement breakout sessions. Below are a few tips to help you host successful breakout sessions. 

1. Prepare For The Breakout Session 

The main thing is to test the technology before creating breakout sessions. Ensure that you know how the technology works. For example, how many breakout rooms can you make on the platform? Similarly, how many participants can you assign to each breakout room?

Furthermore, don’t assume the participants know how to use the platform. Ensure you provide adequate instructions via multiple mediums if possible. For example, you can create a guide in PDF, via slide screen, verbally, and in the chat box. 

2. Set an Agenda 

You should have an objective or designated topic for your breakout rooms. It will help avoid confusion and awkward moments while ensuring that the meeting is productive. An agenda will also prevent the discussion from degenerating into a casual conversation that may exclude the more introverted group members. 

Remember to communicate the agenda or discussion topics beforehand. This allows participants to prepare adequately for the session. It also lets participants know what to expect during the meeting.  

3. Choose the Group Size Carefully 

The main idea behind breakout rooms is to break up big meetings into smaller groups. Therefore, keep the groups small to maximize the value of the breakout sessions. Smaller groups are also less likely to talk over each other, making the meetings more productive. 

The sweet spot for most cases is between 5-10 people per breakout room. However, you can have more people for more important meetings or events. As a rule, you shouldn’t have more than 15 people in a breakout room. 

4. Assign a Moderator 

The best breakout sessions are structured. So consider assigning a moderator for breakout rooms with more than four participants. Additionally, ensure that the moderator is proficient with the technology and is experienced in organizing and managing meetings. 

The moderator should also understand their role. The responsibilities may include watching the clock, ensuring that the group meets all objectives, keeping conversations on track, and answering questions. Alternatively, you can ask the groups to nominate their leaders if you’re afraid of making these sessions too formal. 

5. Allow Sufficient Time for Breakout Sessions

Transitioning to breakout sessions isn’t as seamless as most moderators imagine. For example, attendees may want to take a short break from the main session to get water or coffee. The members might also take time for introductions and small talk before jumping to the main discussion. 

Therefore, account for some extra time on top of the allocated session. It also helps to structure the time, such as designating five minutes for introductions and 20 minutes for discussions. The optimal breakout session may vary depending on the type of meeting or event, but most sessions shouldn’t last more than 30 minutes. 

6. Share Takeaways With the Larger Group 

There’s no reason to confine information to the breakout rooms. These ideas can be helpful in the larger group. So, dedicate sufficient time for the breakout groups to share their ideas with the larger group. 

For example, each breakout room’s moderator or assigned group leader can make a brief presentation to the larger group. Alternatively, the smaller group can share what happened in the session via chat or whiteboard in the central meeting. 

7. Remember to Collect Feedback 

Most meetings end with debriefing and feedback, and a breakout session is no different. The input is crucial for creating more successful sessions in the future. For example, the members may want future meetings to be shorter or less structured. 

It’s worth sending out a post-session questionnaire to gauge their experience. Be sure to include questions that capture the individual’s experience, impact, and comfort of the session. Then, use the feedback to streamline future breakout sessions. 

Final Thoughts About Video Breakout Rooms 

Video breakout rooms help make large meetings or events more engaging. By breaking up a large audience into smaller groups, participants can discuss ideas and opinions in a friendlier environment. Breakout rooms are also versatile and flexible, allowing you to create and manage the rooms as you wish. 

Even so, breakout rooms require structure to work effectively. So be sure to appoint a moderator or group leader. It’s also helpful to allow the breakout rooms to share their insights and discuss results with the larger group. Finally, remember to create breakout sessions with a specific purpose or goal. 

The breakout room feature rarely makes it to the top of the critical considerations when choosing the best video conferencing software. However, it’s a factor to remember even if you don’t think you’ll use the feature soon. You never know when it will come in handy! 

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PBX vs. VoIP: 7 Key Differences

We recommend Nextiva as the best VoIP phone system for most businesses due to its call quality, flexibility, and reliability. Save up to 28% when you sign up today.

Every business needs a phone solution. Historically, most companies just used a traditional landline because there weren’t any alternatives. But today, organizations have more options to choose from, and most are torn between two choices—PBX and VoIP. This in-depth guide will break down the key differences between PBX and VoIP phones so you can determine which one is right for your business.

The 12 Best Phone Systems For PBX vs. VoIP

As you compare the differences between PBX and VoIP, you also need to find a business phone service that aligns with your needs. These are our top recommendations for different business types and use cases:

  • 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

1. Call Quality and Reliability

One of the most significant differences between PBX and VoIP is how each service is delivered. This delivery method directly impacts the quality of the calls and the reliability of the phone service.

PBX (private branch exchange) systems rely on traditional PSTNs (publicly switched telephone networks) to facilitate calls. PBX phone systems are similar to traditional landlines in the sense that they use copper wiring and circuit switching. While traditional landlines are typically used to connect two parties, PBX phones allow businesses to operate a private phone network.

As a result, PBX systems are often highly reliable and provide high-quality calling. 

VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phones rely on stable internet connections to work. When there’s a strong and fast connection, the quality and reliability of the calls are excellent—especially if you’re using a top VoIP phone provider. In most cases, nobody on the call will even be able to tell that VoIP technology is being used.

With that said, if the internet goes down, VoIP phones can have problems. This won’t be an issue for most businesses. But if you’re in a rural or remote location with spotty internet, then PBX might be more reliable.

One quick way to check your connection is by running a VoIP speed test.

Nextiva speed test webpage
Use Nextiva’s speed test to check your internet connection.

This can help you determine if your current internet connection can support the VoIP calling capabilities that you’ll need on a daily basis. 

2. Costs

VoIP phone systems are significantly less expensive than PBX systems. 

While your total costs will depend on your business size, required lines, employees, and other factors, you can almost always expect to pay more for a PBX system than a VoIP service.

A business with around 20 users can expect to pay anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 on hardware and equipment alone. Software licensing fees are an additional $2,000 to $3,000, and you’ll typically pay around $1,500 for installation. Ongoing maintenance for your PBX phone can cost around $3,000 annually. 

Business VoIP services typically start around $20 per user per month. 

Nextiva VoIP pricing for Essential, Professional, and Enterprise plans
Nextiva VoIP is an affordable alternative to PBX phone systems.

Your dollar also goes much further when you use a VoIP phone. That’s because many of the best VoIP phone providers include features that go beyond basic telephone calling. 

Depending on your provider and plan, you can access features like internet faxing, SMS messaging, video calling, and more, all included with your flat monthly rate.

For smaller businesses on a limited budget, VoIP systems are a no-brainer. They also work well for larger organizations, as you typically get better per-user rates based on volume and contract length. 

3. Installation and Setup

Cost aside, setting up a PBX network for your business can be complex. This is not something that most businesses will handle on their own, and it typically requires IT assistance and installation from your PBX provider. 

The process involves lengthy steps for KSU wall attachments, circuit cards, and connecting your private branch to a telephone network. PBX vendors provide the cables and cords that are required for the private branch, and these act as the main line for your PBX system. All of the individual phones need to be connected to the system as well. 

Deploying a PBX system for your business may include drilling some holes in your walls and running new wires through the ceilings. It’s definitely not a DIY job.

Conversely, VoIP phones are ultra-easy to set up and deploy. There’s virtually no installation process, and you likely already have many of the prerequisites handled. 

Nextiva VoIP webpage with headline that says "Set up your business phone system in minutes" and an example call flow diagram
VoIP phone systems can be deployed in minutes.

In some cases, setting up your VoIP phone system can be done on the same day. This is especially true if you don’t need any additional hardware and your calls are being made from existing laptops, smartphones, and VoIP phones. 

The only thing that may need to be installed is a piece of software for each device. Beyond that, all you need to do is get your users onboarded to the system, which is not something that requires any IT assistance. 

So for those of you who don’t have dedicated in-house IT support, a VoIP phone system will make your life much easier. 

4. Scalability and Flexibility

Since PBX systems rely on on-premises hardware and connectivity, scaling them is not easy. For example, if your company is opening a second office in a different location, you need to build a PBX infrastructure there as well.

Even if you’re adding new devices and users at an existing location, you may need to replace certain modules with something that can handle the increased capacity. 

Scaling your VoIP system is much easier. Whether you’re adding new employees to one location, opening completely new locations, or wanting to onboard remote staff, scalability is achieved with just one or two clicks. 

Nextiva user management webpage with headline that says "Add or manage users in seconds - on one screen"
You can add new users to your Nextiva plan in seconds.

You can manage all of your users, phones, lines, extensions, and features from a simple admin portal. You won’t have to send a technician out to an employee’s home if you want to add a new remote user. Everything is handled from the cloud. 

You can only go so far with a PBX. The ability to add more features is much more limited compared to a VoIP system. 

VoIP phone providers typically don’t lock you into strict contracts either. So if you want to upgrade your plan to support new features or new users, you can do so without having to jump through hoops. The only thing that might change is your monthly subscription rate.

PBX systems typically tie users to specific desk phones. An employee couldn’t take calls on the road or answer calls from home. The calls must be made from the phone associated with their extension. 

VoIP systems are highly flexible—allowing users to make and receive calls from virtually anywhere. Someone could start a call on their computer at work, then transfer it to the mobile app while they’re leaving the office, and transfer it again to a laptop when they get home. 

5. Hardware Requirements

VoIP phone systems have minimal hardware requirements. 

You really only need to have internet access and a router. Beyond that, calls can be made using existing smartphones and computers. You don’t have to purchase any actual phones to use a VoIP system.

However, you do have the option to use traditional-style phones with a VoIP subscription. You just need to make sure the phones are VoIP-enabled, so it’s best to get them directly from your VoIP provider.

Nextiva VoIP desk phone options
Nextiva has a wide range of VoIP phones to choose from.

You can also get VoIP cordless phones, conference calling phones, headsets, and more. There are even VoIP adapters that transform traditional analog phones into VoIP phones. This will help keep your costs low if you don’t want to purchase more hardware.

PBX hardware is more involved.

You need to get desk phones, cables, splitters, modems, circuits, and wall jacks. These systems also require on-site PBX servers; most businesses need backup power sources.

6. Advanced Features

PBX phones don’t really come with any advanced features. A PBX is a phone system that comes with everything you’d expect in a high-quality business phone system, but it ends there. 

VoIP systems take basic business calling to the next level. Depending on the provider and plan you select, your VoIP phone system is included with an entire business communication suite. 

Nextiva webpage highlighting its all-in-one solution for talk, text, chat, and video
Nextiva is an all-in-one solution for voice, video, and live chat.

Some examples of advanced VoIP features beyond call capabilities include:

  • Unified communications
  • Video calling and conference calling
  • Team chat
  • Helpdesk software
  • Sales CRMs
  • Screen sharing
  • File sharing
  • Call analytics and live data
  • Automated workflows
  • Customer journey management
  • Third-party software integrations

You won’t find these in a PBX solution.

7. International Calling

PBX phones typically charge high rates for international calls. But with a VoIP phone system, you can make international calls for just a few cents per minute.

These rates vary by location, but they’re often extremely flexible. This means that you won’t necessarily have to get an international calling plan that’s separate from your monthly subscription. Any international calls will just be added to your bill. 

Nextiva international calling webpage
Nextiva offers built-in international calling capabilities.

For businesses with global branches, VoIP phone systems make it possible to communicate with users on the same network at no additional cost. For example, your New York office can communicate with your London team if the calls are made directly through the same VoIP platform. 

The Similarities Between PBX and VoIP

While PBX and VoIP phone systems have several differences, the two also share some common ground. 

First and foremost, these are the two top options to consider for business phones. Both VoIP and PBX systems have options for basic local calls and domestic calling. You’ll have the ability to keep your existing phone number, add new phone numbers, and set up custom extensions and new lines for your staff. 

Both systems come with basic business phone features. This includes voicemail, call holding, call transfers, overhead paging, conference calling, and more.

It’s also worth noting that both PBX and VoIP phones are both highly secure. There’s sometimes a misconception that VoIP systems can have security problems because it uses the internet for calling. But this is a non-issue if you’re using a reputable VoIP phone service.

Nextiva security and reliability webpage
Nextiva handles security on your behalf, so you won’t have to worry about it.

For example, Nextiva offers 24/7 monitoring, call encryption, and biometric checkpoints to access their servers. The network also has HIPAA-compliant and PCI-compliant solutions, meaning businesses in every industry can rely on Nextiva for security. 

Final Thoughts About PBX vs. VoIP

PBX and VoIP phone systems are very different. PBX solutions are better for businesses in rural locations that can’t rely on internet connectivity for calls. They also work well for organizations with on-site IT teams and offices that won’t be scaling beyond a single location.

VoIP phone systems are much more cost-effective than PBX phones. They’re easy to use, highly flexible, mobile, and can be deployed anywhere. A VoIP system will be much easier for you to scale and maintain if your business has multiple offices or remote workers. 

Another standout of using a VoIP phone system is that you can often get an entire suite of communication tools with your subscription. This includes video calling capabilities, team chat, collaboration features, SMS messaging, and so much more. 

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7 Best Business Voicemail Transcription Services (Text and Email)

Are you looking for a service to transcribe your voicemails?

Voicemail transcription helps convert your voicemails to text, so you can read them later on your phone or computer. It saves time, as you don’t have to listen to recordings and quickly view the message in text form.

In this article, we’ll show you the best business voicemail transcription services.

Best business voicemail transcription services

Why Use a Business Voicemail Transcription Service?

Voicemail transcription means converting your audio messages into text format. However, manually transcribing each voicemail is a time-consuming task. Instead, you can use a business voicemail transcription service.

There are a lot of software available that will automatically convert voicemail speech to text. The transcriptions can be sent to you by email or text.

This is more convenient especially when you can’t listen to voicemails. You can quickly read the message anywhere instead of listening to the voice recording.

It also helps streamline your customer support process. Your support staff can search for voicemails from a user and look at previous messages, so they can provide a better customer experience. You can also keep records of your voicemails and connect them to customer relationship management (CRM) software.

That being said, let’s look at the best business voicemail transcription services.

1. Nextiva

The Nextiva coupon code has been automatically applied

Nextiva is the best virtual phone service in the market that offers powerful features, including voicemail transcriptions. The cloud phone system is easy to use and set up.

It brings multiple communication channels under one roof. For example, you can make HD video calls, send text messages, live chat, voicemails, phone calls, and more from a single place.

Nextiva offers a voicemail to email and text option, where you can receive voicemails inside your inbox. This allows you to respond to customers quickly, even when calls are missed. Once this feature is active, it will automatically transcribe the voicemail.

Besides that, you also get other features like call recording, unlimited calls and texts in North America, toll-free numbers, team chat, auto attendant, call transfer and forwarding, and more.

They also business phone apps for iOS and Android smartphones, so it lets you stay connected with customers anywhere in the world.

At WPBeginner, we use Nextiva for all our business phone needs. We’re huge fans of their platform and the features it offers.

Pricing: You will need the Nextiva Enterprise plan to use the voicemail transcription features, which will cost you $32.95 per user per month.

2. RingCentral

RingCentral

RingCentral is another top business voicemail transcription service. Their business VoIP phone service offers lots of powerful features and is a perfect solution for remote teams.

With its Voicemail for Business feature, you get to choose how to receive voicemails. For instance, you can access voice messages from the RingCentral online account, desktop app, mobile device, email, and desk phone.

RingCentral offers an option to send voicemails to your email address. You’ll receive an audio attachment and transcription, so you can quickly scan through the message without listening to the voicemail.

Other than that, RingCentral offers features like video conference calls, unlimited calling in the US and Canada, voice-to-text features, toll-free numbers, and other call-handling features.

Pricing: The voicemail-to-text feature is available in the Essentials plan and will cost you $19.99 per user per month.

3. Ooma

Ooma

Ooma is a popular VoIP phone service for businesses of all sizes. It is loaded with features, including voicemail transcription and voicemail-to-email options.

You can configure your voicemails to be automatically sent to an email address when they’re left in your Ooma Office app. You will get an audio recording as an attachment and transcribed text in the body of the email.

Ooma is also easy to use and works out of the box. You get more features like a virtual receptionist, hold music, extension dialing, video conferencing, 1-800 phone numbers, a call center, and more. There are also desktop and mobile apps, so you can call and receive voicemails from anywhere in the world.

Pricing: Ooma prices start from $19.95 per month per user. However, the voicemail transcription feature is available in the Ooma Office Pro and Pro Plus pricing plans.

4. FreshDesk Contact Center

FreshDesk

FreshDesk Contact Center is the next business voicemail transcription service on our list. It was previously known as Freshcaller and is a user-friendly virtual business phone provider.

FreshDesk Contact Center offers an AI-power voicemail transcription feature. Its artificial intelligence engine, called Freddy AI, automatically transcribes voicemails.

You can easily access the transcriptions from the FreshDesk phone system and view key metrics like queue time and IVR time. It also lets you enable voicemail transcription for selected phone numbers and set up voicemail greetings.

Other features offered by FreshDesk Contact Center include a call waiting option, vanity numbers, mobile apps, shared lines, route calls to voicemail, block spam calls, call recording, and more.

Pricing: You will need the Growth plan or higher to use the voicemail transcription feature in FreshDesk Contact Center. This will cost you $15 per agent per month (billed annually). There is also a free version of the software you use to get started, but it doesn’t include voicemail transcriptions.

5. Grasshopper

Grasshopper

Grasshopper is one of the best business phone services, and it is perfect for small businesses and startups. The service offers a voicemail transcription feature and allows you to receive the transcriptions in your email inbox.

It is very easy to set up, and you can add email addresses where you’d like the forwarded messages to go. Then using the Grasshopper desktop app or mobile apps, you can read the voicemail messages.

Aside from voicemail transcription, Grasshopper is filled with robust features. For instance, you get simultaneous call handling, call forwarding, extensions, call transfers, VoIP calling, virtual fax, reporting, and more.

Pricing: Grasshopper pricing plans start from $28 per month (billed annually), and all plans include the voicemail feature. Do note that it is only available in the US and Canada.

6. Google Voice

Google voice

Google Voice is another business voicemail transcription service you can use for your WordPress website. It is part of Google Workspace and easily integrates with other tools like Google Meet and Calendar.

The service uses Google’s AI to turn voicemails into text automatically. The AI is powerful and converts complex words into easy-to-read text.

Besides that, it is very easy to use and offers free calling to US and Canada, spam call blocking, unlimited text messaging in the US, call forwarding, mobile apps, and more.

Pricing: Google Voice prices start from $10 per user per month and includes a voicemail transcription feature.

7. Phone.com

Phone.com

Phone.com is a popular cloud-based virtual phone service offering a voicemail feature. You can listen to audio messages from your online account and set up a voicemail-to-email feature.

Phone.com will automatically transcribe your voicemails and send them to you as email or text messages. This way, you can read the message instead of listening to the voice note or forward the transcription to other team members.

With Phone.com, you also enjoy other powerful features. It is a complete virtual phone solution and offers call forwarding, call transfer, analytics, number porting, audio conferences, fax from phone, text messaging, and more.

Pricing: The voicemail transcription feature is included in the Plus users or higher plan, and its prices start from $15.99 per user per month.

Which is the Best Business Voicemail Transcription Service?

In our expert opinion, the best business voicemail transcription service is Nextiva, and after careful research we chose to use it for our own business.

Nextiva is user-friendly and offers lots of features to help you connect with your customers and team members from anywhere. You can easily receive voicemail transcriptions in your email, handle calls, conduct virtual meetings, create workflows, and more.

Plus, Nextiva has desktop and mobile apps, so you are always connected on the go. It also easily integrates multiple communication channels into a single platform.

If you’re looking for other solutions, then we recommend RingCentral and Ooma as alternatives to Nextiva for voicemail transcriptions.

We hope this article helped you pick the best business voicemail transcription service. You may also want to see our comparison of the best email marketing services and best live chat software for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Business Voicemail Transcription Services (Text and Email) first appeared on WPBeginner.

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How to Embed a Facebook Video in WordPress

Do you want to embed a Facebook video in WordPress?

The videos that you post to Facebook also make great content for your website. By embedding a Facebook video feed, you can keep your site fresh and interesting while also growing your Facebook following.

In this article, we’ll show you an easy way to embed Facebook videos in WordPress.

How to embed a Facebook video in WordPress

Why Add Facebook Videos in WordPress?

Videos are a great way to connect with your audience and keep them engaged. This is true no matter whether you’re running a personal blog or a business website.

However, videos are particularly powerful if you want to make money online blogging with WordPress. In fact, 88% of people have bought a product or service after watching a video according to the latest blogging statistics.

Creating engaging and entertaining videos takes time and effort so if you’re posting videos to Facebook, then it makes sense to re-use them on your WordPress website.

By linking your website to your Facebook account, any new videos that you post to Facebook will appear on your website automatically. In this way, you can keep your website fresh with very little day-to-day effort.

Embedded videos can even help grow your Facebook page. If website visitors see lots of interesting videos and playlists then they’ll want to follow you on Facebook. This can get you some extra followers and more engagement.

With that being said, let’s see how you can easily embed a Facebook video in WordPress.

Installing a Facebook Video Plugin in WordPress

The easiest way to embed a Facebook video in WordPress is by using the Custom Facebook Feed Pro plugin.

It’s the best social media feeds plugin and lets you easily embed Facebook albums, comments, reviews, community posts, videos, and more on your WordPress website.

A Facebook video feed, created using Smash Balloon

In this guide, we’ll be using the pro version of Smash Balloon as it allows you to embed videos in WordPress including HD, 360o, and Facebook Live videos.

Smash Balloon Pro also lets you show photos in a custom Facebook feed, and display the total number of likes, shares, comments, and reactions below each post. However, if you’re just starting out and have a limited budget, then there’s also a free version you can use.

First, install and activate the Custom Facebook Feed Pro plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to Facebook Feed » Settings and enter your license key into the ‘License Key’ field.

Adding your Smash Ballon license in WordPress

You’ll find this information under your account on the Smash Balloon website.

After entering the key, click on the ‘Activate’ button.

Connect Your Facebook Page or Group to WordPress

Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed allows you to embed videos from Facebook pages and groups. You can even show the videos in a lightbox popup so people can watch the full video directly on your WordPress website.

The first step is connecting your Facebook page or group to WordPress, so go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and then click on ‘Add New.’

How to embed Facebook videos in WordPress

Smash Balloon lets you show posts from your Facebook timeline, photo albums, Facebook statuses, events, and more.

Since we want to embed Facebook videos in WordPress, you’ll need to select ‘Videos’ and then click on ‘Next.’

Creating a Facebook video feed using Smash Balloon

Now, you need to select the Facebook page or group where you’ll get the videos from.

To do this, click on ‘Add New.’

Choose a source for your Facebook video embeds

Next, choose whether you want to show videos from a Facebook page or group.

Once you’ve done that, click on ‘Connect to Facebook.’

How to connect Facebook to WordPress

This opens a popup where you can log into your Facebook account and choose the pages or groups that you want to use with Smash Balloon.

After that, click on ‘Next.’

Connecting Facebook accounts to WordPress

Now, Facebook will show all the information that Smash Balloon will have access to, and the actions it can perform.

To restrict Smash Balloon’s access to your Facebook account, simply click to disable any of the switches.

Just be aware that this may affect the videos that you can embed on your WordPress blog or website so we recommend leaving all the switches enabled.

Giving Smash Balloon access to your WordPress website

When you’re happy with how the permissions are set up, click on ‘Done.’

After a few moments, you should see a message confirming that you’ve connected your WordPress website to Facebook.

With that done, you’re ready to click on ‘OK.’

Connecting Facebook pages and groups to WordPress

Smash Balloon will now return you to the WordPress dashboard automatically.

How to Embed Facebook Videos in WordPress

At this point, you’ll see a popup with the Facebook group or page that you just linked to your website. Simply select the radio button next to the page or group you want to use and then click on the ‘Add’ button.

Choosing a Facebook page or group to use with WordPress

If you accidentally closed the popup, don’t worry. You can simply refresh the page to reopen the popup.

Once you’ve done that, WordPress will take you back to the Facebook Feed » All Feeds page automatically. Just like before, click on ‘Add New,’ select ‘Videos’ and then click on the ‘Next’ button.

Now, select your Facebook page or group, and click on ‘Next.’

Selecting the Facebook page or group to use with WordPress

On this screen, you can choose the template that you want to use for the video feed.

All of these templates are fully customizable so you can fine-tune the design depending on how you want to show the Facebook videos on your website.

We’re using the ‘Default’ template, but you can choose any template you want. After making your selection, click on ‘Next.’

Using the WordPress video template

After that, you can choose whether to show all the videos from your Facebook page or group or just the videos from a specific playlist.

If you choose ‘Show from a specific playlist,’ then you’ll need to enter that playlist’s URL.

Adding a Facebook playlist to WordPress

Once you’ve made a decision, go ahead and click on the ‘Next’ button.

Smash Balloon will now create a feed based on your source and the template you’ve chosen. This is a good start, but you may want to fine-tune how the videos appear on your site.

How to Customize Your Embedded Facebook Videos

The Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed plugin gives you lots of ways to customize how the videos appear on your website. That being said, it’s worth taking a look at these settings.

In the WordPress dashboard, go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds. Here, find the video feed you just created and click on the ‘Edit’ button next to it, which looks like a small pencil.

Customizing the Facebook video feed for WordPress

This opens the Smash Balloon feed editor, which shows a preview of your Facebook video feed to the right.

On the left-hand side, you’ll see all the different settings you can use to customize how these videos appear on your WordPress website. Most of these settings are self-explanatory, but we’ll quickly cover the major areas.

The Smash Balloon video feed editor

If you want to change the template, then click on ‘Template.’

Then, select the ‘Change’ button.

Changing the Facebook video feed layout

This opens a popup showing all the different templates you can use for your video feed.

Simply select the design you want to use instead, and then click on ‘Update.’

Changing the video feed layout

The next setting is ‘Feed Type,’ which allows you to show different content in your feed. For example, you might decide to show photos, albums, or events instead of videos.

Since we want to embed Facebook videos, you’ll typically want to ignore this area.

Next, click on ‘Feed Layout.’

Embedding Facebook videos in your WordPress website

Here, you can choose between different layouts, such as masonry and grid, and change the feed height.

As you make changes, the preview will update automatically so you can try different settings to see what looks the best.

Changing the social media feed layout

By default, Smash Balloon will show the same number of videos on desktop computers and mobile devices such as smartphones.

You can preview how your videos will look on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones using the row of buttons in the upper-right corner.

Testing the video feed on smartphones and tablets

Mobile devices usually have smaller screens and may struggle to process lots of large, high-resolution videos. Visitors may also be using their mobile data rather than free Wi-Fi.

With that being said, you may want to show fewer videos on smartphones and tablets. To do this, simply type a different number into the ‘Mobile’ field under ‘Number of Posts.’

Creating a mobile-responsive Facebook video feed

By default, the Facebook feed shows fewer columns on smartphones and tablets, compared to desktop computers. This helps all your videos fit comfortably on smaller screens.

However, after testing the mobile version of your WordPress website, you may be unhappy with how the columns look on tablets and smartphones.

You can change the number of columns that Smash Balloon uses on tablets, mobiles, and desktop computers using the ‘Columns’ settings.

Changing the columns in a mobile responsive layout

The next settings page is ‘Color Scheme.’

Smash Balloon uses the colors inherited from your WordPress theme by default, but on this screen, you can switch to a ‘Light’ or ‘Dark’ color scheme instead.

Another option is to create your own color scheme by selecting ‘Custom’ and then using the controls to change the background color, change the text color in WordPress, and more.

Adding a custom color scheme to a social media feed

Smash Balloon can add a header to your feed, which is your Facebook profile picture and the name of the page or group. This lets visitors know where the embedded videos come from, and where they can find this content on Facebook.

To add this section, click on ‘Header’ in the left-hand menu.

Changing the Smash Balloon header settings

You can then click on the ‘Enable’ toggle.

After adding a header you can change how this area looks, including hiding or adding your Facebook profile picture, changing the size of the bio text, and more.

Removing the Facebook header from a WordPress embed

If you want to remove the header completely, then click to turn off the ‘Enable’ toggle.

By default, Smash Balloon shows the title of each video. If you want to hide the title, then select ‘Posts’ from the main Smash Balloon editor menu.

Then, go ahead and click on ‘Post Style.’

Changing the video post style

On this screen, you can hide the video titles by clicking on the ‘Show Video Title’ slider.

This can be useful if you haven’t added titles to all your videos, or your titles don’t make sense outside of Facebook.

Hiding the Facebook video titles

On this screen, you can also hide or show the video descriptions. For example, you may use these descriptions to provide extra information about the video.

To add the description, simply click to enable the ‘Show Video Description’ switch.

By default, Smash Balloon doesn’t add the Facebook ‘like’ button to your video feed. If visitors like your embedded videos then they may want to follow you on Facebook.

With that being said, you may want to add a ‘like’ button to the feed, by selecting ‘Like Box’ from the editor’s left-hand menu.

After that, simply click on the ‘Enable’ button so that it turns blue.

Adding a Facebook like button to WordPress

Smash Balloon adds this button below your video feed, but you can change this by opening the ‘Position’ dropdown and choosing ‘Top.’

On this screen, you can also change how the ‘like’ section looks including changing its width, showing how many people follow you on Facebook, adding a custom call to action, and more.

How to customize the Facebook like button in WordPress

When you’re happy with how the button looks, you can move on to the next settings page by selecting ‘Load More Button.’

The Load More button encourages visitors to scroll through more of your video feed, so Smash Balloon adds it to your embedded Facebook feed by default.

Adding a Load More button to WordPress

Since it’s such an important button, you may want to customize this button by changing its background color, hover state, label, and more.

Another option is to remove the button completely, by clicking the ‘Enable’ toggle. For example, you might remove this button and then encourage visitors to check out your Facebook page in order to see more of your videos.

Removing the Load More button from WordPress

By default, Smash Balloon allows visitors to watch your Facebook videos without leaving your WordPress website.

They can simply click on any video thumbnail to open it in a lightbox, as you can see in the following image

Smash Balloon's lightbox popup feature

Visitors can scroll through the videos in your feed using the arrows.

If they want to like a photo, leave a comment, or share the video to their page, then they can click on the ‘View on Facebook’ link.

A 'View on Facebook' link created by Smash Balloon

There are a few different ways that you can customize Smash Balloon’s default lightbox.

To see your options, click on ‘Lightbox’ in the left-hand menu.

Customizing the lightbox popup using Smash Balloon

Here, you can change the color of the lightbox’s text, links, and background colors.

The lightbox feature allows visitors to watch your videos in a popup. If you prefer, then you can disable the lightbox so that all your videos play as small thumbnails, embedded inside the page content.

In this way, you can encourage people to visit your Facebook page, to see the full-size video. To disable the lightbox, simply click on the ‘Enable’ toggle to turn it from blue to grey.

Disabling the lightbox popup feature

When you’re happy with how the video feed looks, don’t forget to click on ‘Save.’

You’re now ready to embed the Smash Balloon feed in your website.

How to Add Facebook Videos to WordPress

With Smash Balloon, you can add the video feed to your WordPress website using a block, widget, or shortcode.

If you’ve created more than one feed using Smash Balloon, then you’ll need to know the feed’s code if you’re going to use a widget or block.

To get this code, go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and then look at the feed="" part of the shortcode. You’ll need to add this code to the block or widget, so make a note of it.

In the following image, we’ll need to use feed="6"

Getting the code for a Facebook video feed

If you want to embed your Facebook feed in a page or post, then we recommend using the Custom Facebook Feed block.

Just open the page or post where you want to embed your Facebook videos. Then, click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new block and start typing ‘Custom Facebook Feed.’

When the right block appears, click to add it to the page or post.

The Custom Facebook Feed WordPress block

The block will show one of your Smash Balloon feeds by default. If you want to use a different video feed instead, then find ‘Shortcode Settings’ in the right-hand menu.

Here, simply add the feed="" code and then click on ‘Apply Changes.’

Adding a video feed to WordPress using code

The block will now show the videos from your Facebook page or group. Just publish or update the page to make the video feed live on your website.

Another option is to add the feed to any widget-ready area, such as the sidebar or similar section. This allows visitors to watch your Facebook videos from any page of your site.

Simply go to Appearance » Widgets and then click on the blue ‘+’ button.

Adding videos to Facebook using a widget

After that, find the ‘Custom Facebook Feed’ widget.

Then, just drag it onto the area where you want to show the video feed.

Embedding Facebook videos using a widget

The widget will show one of your Smash Balloon feeds automatically.

To show a different feed instead, type or paste the feed’s code into the ‘Shortcode Settings’ box and then click ‘Apply Changes.’

Adding a Facebook video feed to WordPress using shortcode

You can now make the widget live by clicking on the ‘Update’ button. For more information, please see our step-by-step guide on how to add and use widgets in WordPress.

Finally, you can embed videos on any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode.

Simply go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and copy the code in the ‘Shortcode’ column. You can now add this code to any Shortcode block.

For help placing the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode.

Add a Specific Facebook Video in WordPress

Sometimes you may want to embed a specific Facebook video in a page or post. For example, you might have a Facebook video that talks about the same topics as your latest blog, or a promotional video showing the product you’ve just launched on your online store.

To embed a specific video, you’ll need to buy and install the Featured Posts extension as it allows you to display a particular post or event using its ID.

To start, go to Facebook Feed » Extensions.

Here, find the ‘Featured Posts’ extension and click on its ‘Add’ button.

How to install the Featured Posts WordPress extension

This will open the Smash Balloon website in a new tab, with instructions on how to purchase the extension.

Once you have the extension, you can install it in exactly the same way you install a plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After activating the plugin, go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and click on ‘Add New.’

Under ‘Advanced Feed Types,’ select ‘Single Featured Post’ and then click ‘Next.’

How to show a specific Facebook video in WordPress

You can now choose the page or group that you want to use as your source by following the same process described above.

On the next page, you’ll need to enter the ID of the video that you want to embed.

Adding a Facebook post URL or ID to WordPress

To get this ID, visit Facebook in a new tab and then open the video that you want to embed.

You can now go ahead and copy the URL.

How to get the post ID for a Facebook video

After that, just post the URL into your WordPress dashboard and click on ‘Next.’

Once you’ve done that, you can style the video and then add it to your site following the same process described above.

We hope this article showed you how to embed a Facebook video in WordPress. You may want to check out our guide on how to create an email newsletter and our expert pick of the best YouTube video gallery plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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HelloFax Review

Faxing seems outdated to most people, but many businesses still rely on online faxing even today. Online fax services help receive and send crucial communications from anywhere, allowing users to retrieve old faxes with a simple search. 

HelloFax provides an easy, reliable, and seamless online faxing experience. It is an ideal solution for small businesses with cloud storage needs. HelloFax is one of our top recommendations for online fax services. Read on to find out why.

HelloFax logo

HelloFax Compared

HelloFax did make it to our top list of the best fax services. While it is an excellent option to consider, the best online fax service for the majority of our readers is RingCentral Fax because it is easy to set up and simple to use. 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

For more info, read our in-depth analysis of these platforms.

About HelloFax

HelloFax offers exceptional fax services to businesses in various industries. It has a smooth and easy-to-follow user interface that even beginners can intuitively use. The unique feature that helps it stand out among the other online fax services available in the market is the cloud storage integration feature. Additionally, its teamwork feature makes it especially ideal for small business owners. 

The service works really well with OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, and Evernote. It offers users seamless access to files irrespective of where they are. 

Moreover, it has a built-in editor that makes dealing with extensions or attachments easier. The Free Plan, with five fax pages, several integrations, international coverage, and secure cloud storage, is beneficial for small businesses with limited faxing needs looking for an affordable solution. It offers a few paid plans starting at $8 per month.  

HelloFax Health and Stability

Even though HelloFax was created recently and is one of the newest companies to enter the online fax market, it has made its mark and stacks up really well against its competitors. It was founded in 2010 by Joseph Walla and was launched inside of Y Combinator but received special attention after investment from Google Ventures. The modern design of its website and the backing of Google has made HelloFax a popular and go-to company in the online fax industry. 

Another unique feature of HelloFax that helped it gain significant visibility in a short span of time is the electronic signature process. To expand its e-signature services, HelloFax launched a sister company called HelloSign. 

Previously, it claimed to be HIPAA compliant. However, in 2013 it took the claim off of its benefits pages. So, it’s unclear whether it now complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. 

Since the launch of HelloFax, its user base has continued to grow and is predicted to grow even further. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that HelloFax is here to stay for a long time as a unique online fax service. 

HelloFax Pricing

HelloFax has various pricing plans, each offering slightly different features. Unlike other online fax service providers, HelloFax groups ‘sent’ and ‘received’ faxes count together in the monthly allowance. Many users believe it is better than counting the sent and received faxes separately in a month.

HelloFax provides various payment plans, each with a different number of fax pages per month. All paid plans come with a 30-day free trial and discounted rates for annual contracts. Moreover, all its plans also offer several integrations, international coverage, secure cloud storage, and the freedom to edit and sign faxes. Each paid plan provides an additional feature at a slightly higher cost.   

Contact its sales team and learn about additional plans and features before making your final decision.

HelloFax Pricing Structure

For HelloFax, the pricing of each plan depends upon the number of features or services offered in each package. The company also has regular limited-time offers and discounts, so keep an eye out for them. Some primary services provided in all the plans include integration with Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft Word. Not to mention, users can also edit and sign specific faxes and get cloud storage and security.   

Each pricing plan has a different fee based on the number of fax pages and the number of senders. Moreover, each progressive plan offers a few additional advanced features. Users also offered a free trial of each package before making a paid commitment.

The three paid plans offered by HelloFax include:

  • Home Office Plan costing $9 per month
  • Professional Plan costing $19 a month
  • Small Business Plan costing $39 per month

HelloFax gives a slight discount to users billed annually. If the featured services don’t fulfill the requirements of your business, you can always request a custom plan with additional benefits at a slightly higher cost. The final price quote depends on the number of services you request. Overall, each service can provide more value to your business. You may request a discount for a bundle of services. 

HelloFax also offers a Free Plan, but it is a limited plan and is only beneficial for users planning to send a five-page, one-time fax. You’ll need to invest in a Home Office Plan to access greater fax capacity and some advanced features. 

HelloFax Pricing Comparison

HelloFax offers many services to its clients, individuals or small businesses. However, its pricing plan is mid-tier, and other fax services offer similar features at a lower price or provide more features at a similar cost.

For example, Nextiva is regarded as the best stand-alone online fax service provider. Its most basic Essentials Plan costs only $10 per month on an annual payment and provides 550 fax pages. 

Almost all fax service providers offer a discounted rate on annual payments, and the discount percentage varies from platform to platform. For example, eFax and MetroFax provide a 17% discount on yearly costs for a plan.

FAX.PLUS has one of the most affordable Basic Plans, costing only $6.99 a month and providing 200 monthly fax pages and unlimited secure fax storage. MyFax offers 100 fax pages per month for $10, and it provides unlimited lifetime fax storage and 24/7 dedicated customer support.

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

HelloFax Trials and Guarantees

HelloFax is a strong platform with various integrations and cloud storage options. It has an easy-to-use interface that helps send occasional faxes without any problem. Many businesses trust HelloFax to fulfill their faxing needs, proving that several businesses still actively utilize fax for communication. 

HelloFax offers secure cloud storage and electronic signature in its Free Plan. It gives users the space to get the hang of the platform and helps them decide whether they want to continue using it. 

The company also runs different limited-time discount offers throughout the year. So, keep checking to get a higher discount for trying out their paid plans. Moreover, you can contact the customer support service to understand the purpose and benefits of provided services.

Get started today with a free trial.

HelloFax Online Fax Service Review

There are several better online fax service providers present in the market today. However, HelloFax is only fractionally behind them in terms of services, which it compensates for by offering a Free Plan, a one-of-a-kind electronic signature, and many other advanced features and services.

Our research also suggests that HelloFax is ideal for small teams and businesses. Enterprises can manage teams of users, convert their existing fax numbers, and utilize robust integration with cloud storage services like Dropbox, OneDrive, and similar services. To see how HelloFax’s online fax services stack up against some of its top competitors, read our comparison of the best online fax services.

What Makes HelloFax Online Fax Service Great

Screenshot from HelloFax webpage with header that says "Faxing, evolved" and descriptions of the following features: Confidential and secure, Customizable, Paperless, Access from anywhere
HelloFax provides top-notch security by ensuring your fax transmissions are encrypted and confidential.

Strong security: Technological advancement and hacking has increased the importance of software security more than ever. HelloFax fulfills this demand and provides top-notch security. It offers 256-bit AES encryption on its platform servers. 

Moreover, HelloFax doesn’t collect user data; even if it collects limited information, it doesn’t store it. It also doesn’t store the contents of the fax. It offers transport layer security that secures faxes in transit and allows users to contact customer service anytime to delete all stored data.

User-friendly interface: HelloFax has a simple and easy user interface. Its login displays a simple menu with various options allowing you to see your fax history. It also enables you to invite additional users and create a team from the dashboard in a few clicks.

Cloud storage integration: This unique feature is rarely offered by other fax services. It allows integration with cloud storage services, including Evernote, Google Drive, and DropBox. Moreover, its add-on for Google Docs makes sending a fax from within a document easier.

Where HelloFax Online Fax Service Falls Short

Screenshot from HelloFax webpage with header that says "Send and receive faxes online" with a box showing how you can add a recipient to your faxes
HelloFax’s intuitive interface makes it easy to start sending faxes today.

Limited customer service: HelloFax offers customer support over email but only during specific hours. The company’s website has excellent video guides to help users deal with any problems. However, these resources don’t compensate for the lack of phone and live chat support.

No mobile app: HelloFax doesn’t have a mobile app for either iOS or Android, and most of its competitors have an app that lets users edit, sign, send, or simply view faxes on the go. Keeping modern user expectations, a mobile app is a crucial functionality, and the lack of one can significantly reduce the usability of a company’s services. 

Lack of cover sheet customization: The fax cover sheet is a sheet of paper attached to a fax document for sharing confidential information. This sheet is used for professional purposes and mostly contains the user name, fax number, and a few other details. HelloFax doesn’t allow users to customize or edit these sheets, which is a drawback.

HelloFax Online Fax Service Compared

While HelloFax is an excellent option, 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

Fax continues to be an important communication tool for many businesses today. Online fax service providers offer businesses a more convenient alternative to traditional fax machines. These services allow users to send faxes from phones, desktops, and tablets. There is an ideal fax service for the specific needs of each type of business.

HelloFax has been in the market for a relatively short time but has shown exceptional performance and potential for growth. It stands out from the crowd because of its unique features, user-friendly interface, robust security, and cloud storage integration. Therefore, HelloFax is here to stay for a long time.

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Softphone Starter Guide: Learn the Basics

Nextiva is our top pick for the best cloud-based phone systems because of its enhanced ability to manage high-call volumes and incredible UCaaS offerings. Give Nextiva a try today.

If you’re considering switching to VoIP, chances are you’ve heard of softphones or software telephones. But you may not fully understand what they are or how they work. And that’s totally okay—it’s why we’ve created this guide.

Whether you‘re an SMB owner or an IT manager looking to implement a softphone into your business, we’ll tell you everything you need to know to get started, including how it works, its advantages, and potential drawbacks.

The 15 Best Cloud-Based Phone Systems

If you’re looking for a reliable softphone provider, check out our best cloud-based phone system guide to make the right choice.

  • Nextiva — Best All-Around Cloud-Based Phone System
  • RingCentral — Best for Hybrid or Remote Work
  • Ooma — Easiest Setup for Small Businesses
  • Zoom — Affordable Call Monitoring
  • Dialpad — Most Flexible
  • GoTo Connect — Easiest Call Flow Manager
  • 8×8 — Best for Global Companies
  • Avaya — Best for Toll-Free Phone Calls
  • Google Voice — Best for Solopreneurs
  • Grasshopper — Best for the Basics
  • OpenPhone — Best for Multiple Numbers
  • Aircall — Most Unique Call Management Features
  • 11Sight — Best for Sales and Marketing Teams
  • Net2Phone — Best for Reception Management
  • Webex — Best for Hardware Integration

What is a Softphone?

A softphone is an installable desktop and mobile phone app that lets you communicate over the internet. It functions much the same way as a regular phone app.

Users can dial numbers to make calls and access their VoIP features (do not disturb, voicemail, and auto-attendant) and other traditional features, such as mute, hold, and transfer.

A softphone is similar to a traditional phone in terms of functionality but has a more flexible setup and greater accessibility. Depending on the softphone provider you select, you can have an entirely cloud-based solution that gives you anytime-anywhere access, as long as you have a stable internet connection.

Softphone vs. Hardphone

Softphones and hard phones are the two types of VoIP devices. A hard phone is a physical, dedicated device that resembles old-school telephones but works through VoIP.

Here’s a quick comparison between the two:

Interface

Hard phones have physical buttons to serve as a dial pad, but they may also have a touchscreen with a full GUI. Softphones are software-based and have GUI elements.

Ease of Use

This depends on your personal preference.

If you’re familiar with traditional phone systems, you’ll find hard phones easier to use. If you’re familiar with software programs, softphones will feel more user-friendly. However, the latter typically involves some level of onboarding or training as opposed to a hard phone.

Call Quality

Both hard phones and softphones need a stable internet connection to work. But the former may have a slight edge over the latter when it comes to calling quality, being a dedicated device for handling calls. A softphone may suffer from sharing system resources with other software.

Deployment

Hard phones are slower to implement when done on a company-wide scale. Plus, you’ll have to purchase new physical hardware. Contrarily, softphone deployment and maintenance is quicker and easier, and it doesn’t involve purchasing additional equipment.

Costs

Hard phones are more expensive than softphones. They require physical hardware (for instance, a handset receiver and a base with a display, buttons, and a camera). On the other hand, the fact that no new hardware has to be purchased, except maybe a headset if needed, makes softphones less expensive.

How Does a Softphone Work?

To use a softphone, you’ll need a desktop computer/smartphone/tablet and a VoIP headset or microphone and speaker on your device for superior audio quality.

Generally speaking, a softphone works like any other phone. You open the app, dial a phone number, wait to be connected to the person you want to call, and that’s it. The only difference is that instead of dialing a physical keyboard, you’ll dial on a virtual one provided on the app on your cell phone or computer.

RingCentral webpage for how to use a softphone
Companies like RingCentral make it easy to record calls using your softphone.

Companies like RingCentral make it easy to record calls using your softphone.

During a VoIP call, your voice is converted into digital data through a codec. This data, known as “packets,” is then transmitted as a binary code between devices. The packets are then “decoded” back into the original voice at the receiving end, which the recipient can hear. 

Another technicality to keep in mind includes the endpoints of both your and the recipient’s devices supporting the same VoIP protocol and each having at least one common codec. Otherwise, the softphone won’t be able to communicate.

What are the Benefits of a Softphone?

If you are still wondering whether a softphone would make the right choice for your business, consider the following benefits to understand why they are growing so rapidly:

Cost-effective

For small businesses, making VoIP calls on a softphone is typically (much) cheaper as you don’t have to pay for expensive hardware. You can make international calls at a fraction of the cost of the general fees associated with making an international call.

Versatile

Being a software-based tool, a softphone runs on many types of devices, including iOS and Android smartphones, as well as Mac and Windows desktops. As long as you have a data connection, there’s no place you can’t stay connected with your team. This makes softphones ideal for businesses with multiple office locations, frequent travelers, and telecommuters.

Offers Multiple Integrations

Softphones offer multiple integrations with various business tools, expanding the capabilities of your teams. 

Because they do not require hardware, you have the option to enhance their functionality through integrations. For instance, integrating the softphone with messaging software allows your employees to send instant messages, and integrating with a CRM can provide access to important customer information like contact details and email addresses.

Private

With a softphone, you can answer calls from a mobile device without having to sync your personal contacts and information. Any calls you make on the app will show your business number and not your phone number.

So if you have a BYOD policy (bring your own device) for your organization, you won’t have to worry about compromising staff privacy.

Portable

Softphone apps allow you to take your communication with you, enabling 24/7 employee connectivity.

You and your team can take on calls from any device without being confined to your desk. Further, you can keep tabs on all communications and respond to colleagues quickly through text or video call where ever you go.

What are the Drawbacks of a Softphone?

Like two sides of a coin, you must also deal with certain drawbacks to using a softphone. Here’s a quick list:

Internet Connectivity Mandate

Softphones need an internet connection to function. If your internet connection is weak or drops out, you may experience disruptions in your phone service.

Compatibility Issues

Though versatile, softphones are not compatible with all devices and operating systems. 

Security Concerns

As with any software transmitting data over the internet, a softphone poses a risk of security vulnerabilities. You must ensure to use a reputable softphone provider and regularly update your software to protect your business and team members against potential security threats.

Large Upfront Costs

Softphones are a cost-effective solution for businesses, but they may require substantial upfront costs for purchasing or subscribing to the software. Let’s not forget to account for the ongoing costs of internet service and maintenance.

Overall, while softphones offer many benefits, you should also consider the potential drawbacks against your business needs and budget before deciding if a softphone app is suitable for you.

What are the Key Features of a Softphone?

Softphones provide a variety of features that can be tailored to your needs. Ideally, you will want a mix of basic and advanced features. Some key features to consider in a softphone include:

Instant Messaging

Softphones offer instant team chat messaging to facilitate real-time communication and collaboration, eliminating the need for email. Users can create private and public channels for different teams, departments, or projects and easily transition from chat to audio or video calls with a single click.

File sharing, real-time notifications, and whiteboarding are other collaborative features to improve team communication and productivity.

Call Waiting and Call Holding

Call waiting alerts agents when they have an incoming call while they are already on a call. This can help them prioritize more important calls. If an agent needs to take a second call, they can put the current caller on hold and transfer the call to another available agent. To avoid keeping callers on hold for extended periods, consider additional features like call queuing or customer callbacks.

Audio Conferencing and Call Bridge

Softphone users can participate in conference calls. Typically, 10-40 users can join a single session by clicking a link or dialing a phone number. A call bridge (a phone line that connects all participants) is another way for multiple people to join a conference call, regardless of their location. 

Call Forwarding

Call forwarding allows softphone systems to auto-forward calls to multiple phone numbers if the initial call goes unanswered. This increases the flexibility of the phone system.

For instance, you can get calls forwarded from an agent’s desk phone to their personal cell phone or through their home phone number and then to the department queue to connect them with an available agent.

Call Routing

Call routing directs inbound calls to the ideal agent based on predetermined criteria and calls flow path.

This way, the caller is immediately connected to an agent most suitable to help them out, cutting down on caller wait time. This system also prevents individual agents from being overloaded with calls while other agents hardly attend calls, ensuring an equal division of calls.

Voicemail

Admittedly, voicemail is a standard telephone feature. But modern voicemail offers several amazing features to boost functionality.

For instance, softphones facilitate voicemail audio files, pushing them directly to user emails or as push notifications. You can even request transcriptions, so it’s easier for your team to review and understand content in case making a call isn’t possible.

Contact Sharing

Softphone app users can subscribe to company contact lists and share their own contacts with coworkers. This is a particularly handy feature to boost productivity by allowing employees to find client contact details faster.

Auto-attendant and IVR

IVR (interactive voice response) is a type of interactive call menu that directs calls to the correct agent based on the caller’s answers to pre-recorded questions. Think of “Press 1 to learn more about your current account status. Press 2 to speak to our customer support agent.”

Callers can respond to auto-attendant or IVR prompts via the touchtone dialpad or by simply speaking.

Final Thoughts About Softphones

Softphones are a convenient and cost-effective way for businesses to manage their phone communication. 

By using these apps to make and receive calls, you can save on the cost of traditional hardware-based phones and enjoy advanced features, such as call forwarding and voicemail. That said, don’t forget to consider the potential drawbacks before deciding if it’s the right solution for your business. 

In case you need more help choosing a softphone provider, look at our guides for the best business phone services and the best office phone systems.

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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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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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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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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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Announcing… the WPMU DEV Agency Partner Directory!

The ability to access custom services such as development, design, or marketing is a common request we get, both from our members and audience at large – or should we say, it was a common request.

We’re excited to reveal that not only did we hear you, we did something about it. And today we can announce that solution (of which we’re rather proud).

Introducing… WPMU DEV’s comprehensive new agency directory that allows members to showcase their services, and helps users find trusted experts to hire for their projects.

It’s a win-win!

What’s more, you don’t need to wait for our team to build it. The directory has just launched! And it’s completely free! 😀

As with any new feature, it’s important to understand the ins and outs, so let’s take a closer look at some of the details – both for those who need help, and those who can give it.

Keep reading, or jump ahead to any section:

agency partner search and filters

How it Works

For those looking to enlist help for a project, it’s as easy as heading to the WPMU DEV Agency Partners page and searching for what you need, within the parameters you set.

For Agency Partners, we’ll be sending potential clients in their direction by referring requests we receive that are outside of the scope of WPMU DEV support.

That means FREE promotion! And potential revenue!!

Because we’ll also mention this occasionally in our weekly emails and our social media, that’s a whole lot of free marketing that will be going out to our extended audience.

Plus, by virtue of agencies being added to the directory, they’ll get high authority backlinks to their site, helping to increase their domain authority – which of course leads to higher ranking on search engines for another stellar bonus: SEO gains.

As for the directory itself, search and filtering capabilities allow users to quickly zero in on agencies that provide website maintenance, ecommerce, video production, and more.

It’s easy to use, and has loads of potential.

How to Apply

Agencies using WPMU DEV tools to build quality sites are eligible for inclusion in our Agency Partners Directory.

Such agencies that are interested in being listed in our directory can fill out this form. Every submission will be checked and agencies informed whether or not they qualify for inclusion.

While inclusion in the directory is limited to WPMU DEV members, use of the directory as a resource to access custom services is open to everyone – and it’s 100% free! Simply jump online and start your search.

Giddy Up, Partner

The Agency Partners Directory is our solution to providing those in need of custom services with quality, credible options – vetted by us – while bringing potential business to our top member agencies.

This will help users, WPMU DEV members and non-members alike, find top-ranking and trustworthy agencies.

This great symbiosis is what WPMU DEV is all about, and this launch will enhance all of our existing products and services, putting the varying specialities of our developer audience in closer reach of each other.

Give it a look-see, and tell us what you think!

If you haven’t already, try us out (free, for 7 days!) and see how WPMU DEV’s membership can make a big difference in your professional journey. All of our Memberships, as well as our Hosting, include a fleet of Pro Plugins, 24/7/365 five-star support, and a ton more.

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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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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: