Are you tired of not being able to hear an urgent conference call, dropping the connection at the worst possible time, or missing out on a call altogether? Business owners need to stay in touch with their customers and vendors at the time that they need to, not several hours later. VoIP technology has allowed them to do this without waiting.
However, the quality of the reception and connection with some phone systems leaves a lot to be desired. Business phone service is essential to the daily operation of your business. You need a system that is reliable and trustworthy. It needs to have the best quality sound without drop-offs in your conversation. You also need something that has all of the essential features that you need to suit your business budget and needs.
Sometimes, you find a business phone service you think will work, only to find that it does not have multiple service plan options. Having numerous options in your service delivery helps you to find the plan that works for you and that will work with the virtual phone systems and contact center systems that you work in today's world.
In addition to getting a business phone service that works with all of your other equipment and other technologies, you need different tools, too such as mobile capabilities and collaboration tools. Some of the most common tools you need are listed below:
These features are essential to the business owner because you never know what situation you'll run into with your daily business. You need to be ready for anything.
If you need to get all of the above features and tools for your business phone service, you may want to look into RingCentral. It features a complete cloud-hosted VoIP phone system that lets you use all of the tools that you need to get the job done, whether you are talking to one person in your hometown or 100 people across the ocean. RingCentral offers all of the above features that we mentioned above, and there is no equipment to install.
Since it is located "in the cloud," you don't have to worry about maintaining the system from your location. All upgrades and maintenance are done from the cloud, and it features virtual services, contact center solutions, and virtual setups.
They also offer four different service plans so you can choose the one you need for your business. This gives business owners many choices when deciding what they can afford, based on the need for their business.
There are plenty of different business VoIP service options out there, but RingCentral seems to shine above the others because they offer some positive features that are hard to find in one service provider. Some of the best qualities of RingCentral are listed below.
RingCentral offers customers a wide variety of service plans that will fit your budget. They offer four different plans that range from $29.99 per month to $59.99 per month to fit the budgets of any business in today's world. Each of these plans offers unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada as well as the following features:
Below is a look at the various plan types offered by RingCentral and the pricing range so you can look over the major options and what you get with each price structure.
Related: Best RingCentral Alternatives
If you decide to sign up with RingCentral for your VoIP phone service, you have the option of paying month-to-month with no contract, or you can use a multiyear contract setup. If you use the contract option, you'll be able to use a per-user discount that is mentioned above. If you pay annually, you will save up to 33% or 1/3 of your bill over the course of a year.
In addition to the other perks, RingCentral also gives you an option to either rent or purchase your phones. You can purchase desk phones from $80 to $400 each or rent them for $5-$21 each per month.
RingCentral has a lot of features that are appealing to business owners. Below are some of the best features we found to be worth it.
In addition to these great tools, there are some other features like integration into popular online cloud services like Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Zendesk.
Collaboration tools like audio and video conferencing, instant messaging, and file-sharing options are also available.
By using the RingCentral mobile app, employees can receive and make calls or receive texts or faxes from their business lines, as well. Other options using the mobile app include joining conference calls, checking voicemail, and receiving notifications.
The Softphone feature allows you to make phone calls from your computer when connected to the internet. You can plug in the headset or use your computer's mic and speakers to make the call on your PC. The Softphone can be used for faxing as well or for listening to voicemail messages and text-to-speech or record call features.
Contact Center Services
In addition to all of these features, RingCentral also offers call center services and features. There are outbound dialing and preview functions, IVR technologies, call distribution features, and outbound dialing and preview. Contact center services are also available under three plans: Basic, Advanced, and Ultimate.
If you need to watch your budget and want a less expensive and less traditional full system, you can use the RingCentral Professional option. This is a virtual system that lets you connect your customers and client call you through the main number to an employee's cell phone or home phone.
RingCentral Meeting is a new service offered by RingCentral. It allows businesses to access your collaboration tools and host online meetings for up to 100 participants. You'll have access to screen sharing, HD video, and other functions like team messaging. It works on mobile devices and computers.
RingCentral has a good reputation for excellent conference calling features and applications, and many businesses use this feature to talk to various clients and customers around the country with ease.
The best part about this system is that each employee who has access can host unlimited conference calls with up to 1,000 participants. This surpasses many of the other business calling systems that we reviewed. The capability of hosting instantaneous meetings is also a big plus.
As mentioned before, there's not a lot you have to do to manage the RingCentral system, as it is all managed in the cloud by the RingCentral tech bots. But you will have access to a convenient online portal (your doorway to the cloud) that will allow you to perform some functions that let you take control of how you use it.
All conferences can also be recorded, and you can see who is on a conference call and how many people are on the call.
There are numerous options and additional functions that allow you to select to join the call later and will enable another host to be present when you are not. Locking features will enable you to lock the call once it has started so that no one else can join the call.
When you get ready to set up a call, you can send invitations through MS Outlook or your email provider. Clicking "Invite with Email tab" will enable this and you'll be able to send an email with the dial-in number and participant access codes. This feature is excellent to use with calls that you want to share with others or audio webinars that you want to set up quickly and easily.
It's a mobile world, and we're all adjusting. Any business phone service system that you use today must be compatible to mobile users so that they can call in from mobile devices. RingCentral makes this easy and allows the host to join by tapping a button on their phone Participants can join by tapping their text message invitation without having to enter the meeting phone number or access code.
One of the downfalls of the RingCentral system is that it does not allow for "operator-assisted" calls. This is a function that some business owners want, but the lack of this feature doesn't seem to detract from the plethora of features offered by the RingCentral business phone system.
One other negative is that they have had a relatively large number of complaints filed with the BBB (Better Business Bureau). This may indicate that the technology needs to continually be "tweaked" to improve the quality and the ease-of-use of the product. However, RingCentral has handled all complaints promptly and their, customer service has improved a great deal from our experience, over the past few months.
RingCentral, despite a few hiccups, is our business phone service choice due to its excellent list of some tools not often found with other business phone systems, as well as a host of service plans to fit every business budget.
The fact that it does not require any special or additional equipment also improves our opinion of RingCentral's business phone system. Access is easy, whether you are from a landline phone system or a mobile phone device. There is support for up to 1,000 callers which far surpasses most standard phone systems today.
RingCentral has a variety of helpful assets that help the user and business owner create a plan that works with their budget as well as their individual business needs.
It is the best plan, in our opinion for the modern business owner who wants low maintenance, reasonable premiums, and dedicated business phone systems that they can depend on to keep the communications going in a positive way within their business environment.
There are plenty of plans to choose from for the business owner who wants to start small and grow as their call conferencing and collaboration options increase.
To set up the RingCentral system, all you need is a high-speed internet connection and plenty of bandwidth to provide for multiple callers. High-speed DSL or cable connections are preferable with 90Kbps for each voice line.
No IT team is needed to man this system, which takes away one of the major headaches business owners usually have regarding their dedicated phone system.
The system is highly reliable which makes it pay for itself quickly, and there is minimal "downtime", so you are going to be able to host a variety of conference calls without the technical problems you often see with other systems.
Number portability is also available with RingCentral, making it a great choice for businesses with an established phone number. Number transfer takes about 2-4 weeks.
The RingCentral site includes a lot of helpful information like video help tutorials, case studies, webinars, and other resources that will help make your business phone system work at its optimal potential. There is plenty of phone support to Professional and Office users who have at least two or more users. The customer service line is available 24/7 for any concerns or problems you may have.
RingCentral will work for any business who wants to start with a standard, inexpensive plan and move up as needed. There are a variety of options, tools, and resources that make the phone system work whether you need to have a reliable phone conference system or the ability to do a variety of other things with this technology.
The ability to control, access, and utilize the system from mobile or business phones is a key element to its value, and we highly recommend this system to anyone needing a business phone system that they can depend on time and time again.
For a prime VoIP provider in our high-tech world, check out the capabilities of RingCentral and we think you'll be impressed. It solves the problem of communications expansion where you can grow your business like never before.
The office is no longer located in one building. It is all over the world, thanks to the excellent VoIP capabilities of dedicated business phone systems like RingCentral. Check out the pricing and features for yourself, and you'll see why so many business owners of all sizes prefer it.
