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When To Upgrade Your Legacy On-Premise Phones To A Cloud-Based Phone System
On-Premise Phone Systems vs. Cloud-Based Phone Systems
On-premise phone systems have become a thing of the past. Yet, many businesses are delaying the upgrade to cloud-based phone systems. If your business is still using an on-premise phone system, you will find it struggling in many ways.
There are many signs that tell you when to upgrade your legacy on-premise phone to a cloud-based phone system.
Some of these signs can include too much time spent maintaining your PBX phones from different vendors and across different locations. PBX phones usually take days or weeks to repair their issues or have minor changes done.
Having repairs done can also be quite costly as you will be paying the IT experts from your vendors for each visit. Cloud-based phone systems like VoIP phones fix all these issues for you while providing you with so much more capabilities and agility than your on-premise phone system.
A cloud-based phone system can also cut down your hiring costs, as you might no longer need an assistant to transfer calls and route them. VoIP phone systems come with a virtual attendant that will do just that for you without any extra costs.
Moreover, suppose your business is growing and expanding. In that case, the need to purchase and integrate more on-premise phones can be very costly and time and space consuming as you will need physical office space to set them up. Unlike cloud-based phone systems, they allow you to easily add extra lines and provide your clients with virtual local business phone numbers without the need for any hardware as long as you have its system application and a stable internet connection.
Another sign that you should look out for is your business's need for extra functionality and services, like the ability to make video calls and conferences, in addition to providing your customers with email, voicemail, and text messaging.
Cloud-based phone systems offer more than just traditional calling. Not only do you get to make free international calls over the internet, but you could also have video conferences and meetings with your team or clients and have the ability to share documents during meetings. Such capabilities provide greater customer satisfaction and limit any frustrations as cloud-based phone systems can also automatically route calls to the right department.
Furthermore, any growing business will require more flexibility in its calls and operations. On-premise phone systems limit your team to their desks and any calls to the office phones. On the other hand, a cloud-based phone system will cut the cord that ties, literally and metaphorically, as they allow you to make and receive calls from anywhere using your smartphone or any compatible device.
This provides greater mobility for your remote and at-home workers, as they will not need any extra hardware set up to communicate with their team and clients. More streamlined communications between business parties is an important sign, so you take action and upgrade your on-premise phone system to a cloud-based one.
Cloud-Based Phone System Benefits
Now that we have discussed the signs to when you need to upgrade your legacy on-premise phone system to a cloud-based phone system; let us present you briefly with some benefits of VoIP cloud-based phone systems:
- Unified communications platform
- Simplified multi-location management
- Greater flexibility for remote workers
- Reduces call & office space costs
- Advanced calling features
- More control
- Lower maintenance costs
Top Business VoIP Phone Systems
1. Ooma
Ooma is our favorite business VoIP phone system. It's a cloud-based system that promises 99.99% uptime and provides a wide range of great features all businesses can make great use of. Ooma offers four plans, each with a set of features and scalability.
Here is a brief summary of its plans and features:
Ooma Office: $19.95/month per user
The Ooma office plan is great for small businesses; it offers all the necessities that a business would need, such as:
- Call forwarding
- Call waiting
- Virtual faxes
- Text messages
- Virtual receptionist
- 3-click provisioning
- Forward calls during device outages
- One virtual fax per user
- Intercom
- Multi-device ring
- SMS messaging
- Overhead paging
Ooma Office Pro: $24.95/month per user
The Ooma Office Pro plan is an upgraded version of the Ooma Office plan, and it packs some extra functionalities such as:
- Video conferencing
- Call recording
- Voicemail transcription
- Caller info match
- Call analytics
- Call through Ooma's desktop app
- LTE Primary and Failover connectivity
- Advanced business phone features
Ooma Enterprise: $27.99/month per user
The Enterprise plan holds more advanced features and capabilities in addition to everything the previous plans offer. Such advanced features include:
- Hybrid deployments
- Easy SaaS integration
- Dedicated customer success tea
- Customizable solution options
- Call parking
- Analytics dashboard
- Call conferencing
Ooma Enterprise Call Center: $49.99/month per user
The Enterprise Call Center plan is the fully-featured package you get from Ooma. It offers all the advanced features from previous plans in addition to unlimited storage, intelligent call routing, and graphic interactive voice response.
Try Ooma today!
2. Dialpad
Dialpad is our second recommendation for the best business VoIP phone systems. It offers inclusive features and capabilities, which include:
- Unlimited calling
- Unlimited SMS & MMS
- Call controls (call forwarding, transfer, hold, mute)
- Custom voicemail greeting
- Voicemail transcription
- G Suite & Office 365 integrations
- CRM integrations (Salesforce, Hubspot)
- 24/7 phone support
- Unlimited meetings
- 5-hour meeting duration
- API & webhooks
- 10 offices
- 25 ring groups (departments)
- Hold queues
- International SMS
- Unlimited office locations
- Enhanced 24/7 Phone Support
- Unlimited ring groups (departments)
- Azure Integration
Dialpad offers three subscription plans to its VoIP phone system:
Standard: $15/user/month
Pro: $25/user/month
Enterprise: Quote-based
In addition to its VoIP phone system, Dialpad offers extra products to provide further capabilities, these include:
UberConference: $15
Contact Center: $75 – 3 licenses
Sales Dialer: $95 – 3 licenses
Get Your Free Trial Now!
3. RingCentral
Click Here for a Free Demo!Call Now: 888-520-8463
RingCentral is our third pick for the best business VoIP phone system. RingCentral is loved and trusted by countless customers, as it offers thorough features that any business type and size can make good use of.
Some of RingCentral's features include the following:
- High-definition video quality
- Google Workspace, Slack, and Microsoft 365 Integrations
- Up to 24-hour meetings
- Video meetings with up to 100 participants
- Automatic call recording
- Single sign-on
- Hot desking
- Admin and management for multiple sites
- Advanced call handling
- Video meetings with up to 200 participants
- CRM integrations like Salesforce, Canvas, and Zendesk
It offers four subscription plans, each scalable and tailored to business's needs:
Essentials: $19.99 per month, billed annually
Standard: $27.99 per month, billed annually
Premium: $34.99 per month, billed annually
Ultimate: $49.99 per month, billed annually