Ooma is a small enterprise telephone system that features dozens of ordinary options with each plan. It’s a terrific alternative for smaller in-person workplace environments that choose desk telephones to smartphones or desktop apps.

The draw back? Options that will usually be thought of normal from different suppliers, like texting, video conferencing, and the Ooma desktop app, are solely accessible on larger tiers.

Ooma’s pricing

• Necessities: $19.95 per person per thirty days for voice, faxing, and normal options.
• Professional: $24.95 per person per thirty days for video conferencing, texting, name recording, analytics, and calling by way of the desktop app.
• Professional Plus: $29.95 per person per thirty days for queues, CRM integration, bigger video conferences, workforce chat, auto dialers, and sizzling desking.

Each Ooma Workplace plan comes with 50 normal options and limitless calling within the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Whereas this will sound like loads, most of them are baseline options you’ll anticipate to have, like forwarding, extensions, voicemail, and name transfers.

The Necessities plan is nice if all you want is voice, faxing, and fundamental telephone capabilities. I admire that Ooma provides you the choice of a no-frills, easy telephone system if that’s all you want.

For full enterprise communications, you’ll should be on the Professional Plus plan, which is the one tier that features workforce chat.

Ooma’s key options

Each Ooma Workplace plan comes with a typical set of options. Most of those are pretty fundamental, however we’ll break down among the most helpful choices in better element beneath.

Digital receptionist

Ooma’s digital receptionist simplifies inbound name routing for small companies. Callers can hear essential details about your corporation, resembling your hours and deal with, after which use their dial pad to pick out a division or extension.

This instrument helps you to create totally different ring teams in your workforce and likewise helps dial-by-name extension routing. You may even create a number of menu choices in several languages.

Because the identify implies, this function goals to get rid of the necessity for an in-person receptionist to deal with your incoming calls.

Free toll-free quantity

Whenever you join Ooma, you’ve got the choice to get a toll-free telephone quantity without spending a dime. These are numbers with prefixes like 800, 888, 877, 866, and many others.

With a toll-free quantity, the particular person calling that quantity gained’t need to pay in the event that they’re dialing from a landline — even when it’s not an area name.

That is nice for customer support functions, and may even enable you to monitor the success of particular campaigns tied to that quantity.

By default, you get 500 toll-free minutes included along with your plan each month. It’s positively not the perfect deal we’ve seen available on the market, but it surely ought to be advantageous for smaller companies with principally native clients. Extra toll-free minutes may be bought if needed.

Digital faxing

Each Ooma Workplace plan comes with digital faxing capabilities, serving to corporations ditch the clunky and outdated bodily machine for a extra trendy technique to ship and obtain faxes.

An attention-grabbing element of Ooma’s fax system is that every quantity has its personal line for direct entry that may be linked to a particular person’s extension. When arrange, all incoming faxes will routinely be despatched to the recipient’s e mail as a PDF file. This eliminates bodily faxes from piling up in a shared room with out info privateness.

Cellular app

This can be a actually essential providing for Ooma as a result of their desktop app is just not a typical function and is barely accessible on choose plans.

In the event you’re signing up for Ooma’s entry-level Necessities plan, which means you’ll need to depend on the cell app to entry most options and handle calls whenever you’re away out of your desk telephone.

The cell app is offered for iOS and Android, and you may set it up for simultaneous ringing. Which means your workplace telephone and cell phone will each ring any time you get an incoming name, which helps guarantee you’ve got protection whereas away out of your desk.

Accessing voicemails, dealing with faxes, and dialing extensions are additionally normal in-app options.

Relying on the plan you’ve got, with the higher tiers you’ll additionally be capable of report calls, ship texts, and flip calls from the cell app to the desktop app.

Intercom and overhead paging

These are technically two totally different options, however they go hand-in-hand and each align with Ooma’s potential to accommodate in-person workplace environments.

With the intercom function, somebody in your workplace can dial an inner extension and the receiving telephone will routinely choose up on speakerphone. It may be used to inform a supervisor that somebody is ready for them within the reception space, and will also be used for collaborative work functions with out having to dial and choose up the telephone.

The overhead paging system works for bigger areas and workplaces the place persons are in a number of rooms or totally different components of the constructing. Ooma seamlessly integrates with present overhead paging techniques, so that you simply want to put in an adapter and it’s prepared to make use of.

From there, you may shortly make bulletins for your entire workplace to listen to, share essential information, and even concern emergency alerts. It’s additionally useful for connecting the entrance of a retail area with the again workplace, for one thing like paging a supervisor to talk with a buyer.

Ooma execs

• Straightforward technique to improve to the cloud.
• Trouble-free DIY setup.
• Full implementation information.
• Free quantity porting.
• No contracts.
• Contains faxing on each plan.
• SRTP and end-to-end encryption.
• 24/7 telephone and reside chat assist.

Ooma cons

• No desktop app on the most cost effective plan.
• Costly for what you get.
• Very fundamental video conferencing.
• Restricted integrations.
• Bigger companies will really feel constricted.

Options to Ooma

Nextiva and RingCentral are two of the perfect Ooma options, however for various causes. Nextiva is extra inexpensive, simpler to make use of, and has a greater total worth for small companies — particularly for distant and hybrid workforces.

RingCentral is extra superior than Nextiva and Ooma, making it a bit harder to arrange, but it surely’s a stable total alternative for midsize to bigger organizations.

See how Ooma compares to Nextiva, RingCentral, and different rivals beneath.

Nextiva

Nextiva presents extra worth per greenback than Ooma as a result of its most cost-effective plan contains video conferences, workforce chat, and stronger name routing options. It’s a terrific alternative if you need a well-rounded telephone system that’s simple to arrange and presents loads of room to develop. Learn my Nextiva assessment.

RingCentral

In the event you want a bit extra energy, RingCentral is the best way to go. It’s one of the superior telephone techniques available on the market, making it a terrific match for midsize or massive groups. Learn my RingCentral assessment.

8×8

Ooma helps you to deal with worldwide calls, however you’ll pay per minute. 8×8 presents limitless calling to 14 international locations, a bigger convention name capability, and each communication channel on its most cost-effective plan. You may improve to the following tier for limitless calling to 48 international locations, too. Learn my 8×8 assessment.

Dialpad

Dialpad presents among the finest AI options we’ve seen, together with real-time name and voicemail transcriptions. On larger tiers, you’ll additionally get a variety of AI capabilities for gross sales groups and call facilities, like AI scorecards, CSAT scores, and in-call agent help. Learn my Dialpad assessment.

Methodology

I’ve examined and reviewed nearly each enterprise telephone system on the market and have bought a number of of them for my groups over time. I thought of my expertise and the next set of things when placing this assessment collectively:

Customary vs superior options

I checked out key options together with video conferencing, voicemail, SMS messaging, digital receptionist, name transfers between gadgets, name forwarding, desktop apps, and cell apps and in contrast their availability at totally different plan tiers.

Buyer assist

I researched the hours of availability for buyer assist, every service’s assist channels, and any buyer opinions associated to the supplier’s degree and pace of service.

Third-party integrations

In an effort to evaluate performance at an enterprise degree, I checked every platform’s potential to sync with frequently-used enterprise software program, like CRM, cloud storage, fax, ERP, SMS, and extra.

Safety and privateness

Encryption, account administration, redundancy structure, knowledge middle audits, multi-factor authentication, and a number of servers and knowledge facilities in varied areas had been all thought of.

Uptime share

I checked for any stories of unplanned outages, infrastructure issues, or technical points that would result in uptime issues, delays, or service interruptions.

Demo or free trial

This metric contains each the power to check the service utilizing a trial or demo earlier than committing to a subscription in addition to the size of time offered for that free trial.

General value

This contains the entire associated charges, together with free trials, reductions, month-to-month pricing versus annual pricing, value per set up, and worth per person. It additionally components in whether or not present or new tools is required to make use of the decision middle telephone system.