Ooma Assessment (2024): Pricing, Options and Options

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

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

Ooma’s pricing

• Necessities: $19.95 per person per 30 days for voice, faxing, and customary options.
• Professional: $24.95 per person per 30 days for video conferencing, texting, name recording, analytics, and calling through the desktop app.
• Professional Plus: $29.95 per person per 30 days for queues, CRM integration, bigger video conferences, staff chat, auto dialers, and scorching desking.

Each Ooma Workplace plan comes with 50 customary options and limitless calling within the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Whereas this may occasionally sound like quite a bit, most of them are baseline options you’ll count on to have, like forwarding, extensions, voicemail, and name transfers.

The Necessities plan is nice if all you want is voice, faxing, and primary cellphone capabilities. I respect that Ooma offers you the choice of a no-frills, easy cellphone system if that’s all you want.

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

Ooma’s key options

Each Ooma Workplace plan comes with a regular set of options. Most of those are pretty primary, however we’ll break down a few of the most helpful choices in larger element under.

Digital receptionist

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

This device allows you to create totally different ring teams in your staff and in addition helps dial-by-name extension routing. You’ll be able to even create a number of menu choices in numerous languages.

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

Free toll-free quantity

Whenever you join Ooma, you may have the choice to get a toll-free cellphone quantity at no cost. These are numbers with prefixes like 800, 888, 877, 866, and so forth.

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

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

By default, you get 500 toll-free minutes included together with your plan each month. It’s undoubtedly not the most effective deal we’ve seen available on the market, however it must be superb for smaller companies with principally native prospects. Further 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 fashionable approach to ship and obtain faxes.

An attention-grabbing part 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 data privateness.

Cell app

This can be a actually essential providing for Ooma as a result of their desktop app shouldn’t be a regular function and is just accessible on choose plans.

If you happen to’re signing up for Ooma’s entry-level Necessities plan, meaning you’ll should depend on the cell app to entry most options and handle calls if you’re away out of your desk cellphone.

The cell app is on the market for iOS and Android, and you may set it up for simultaneous ringing. Because of this your workplace cellphone and cell phone will each ring any time you get an incoming name, which helps guarantee you may have protection whereas away out of your desk.

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

Relying on the plan you may have, with the higher tiers you’ll additionally be capable of file 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 inside extension and the receiving cellphone will routinely decide up on speakerphone. It may be used to inform a supervisor that somebody is ready for them within the reception space, and may also be used for collaborative work functions with out having to dial and decide up the cellphone.

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

From there, you possibly can shortly make bulletins for all the workplace to listen to, share essential information, and even problem emergency alerts. It’s additionally useful for connecting the entrance of a retail house with the again workplace, for one thing like paging a supervisor to talk with a buyer.

Ooma execs

• Simple approach to improve to the cloud.
• Trouble-free DIY setup.
• Full implementation information.
• Free quantity porting.
• No contracts.
• Consists of faxing on each plan.
• SRTP and end-to-end encryption.
• 24/7 cellphone and reside chat help.

Ooma cons

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

Options to Ooma

Nextiva and RingCentral are two of the most effective Ooma options, however for various causes. Nextiva is extra reasonably priced, 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, however it’s a strong total alternative for midsize to bigger organizations.

See how Ooma compares to Nextiva, RingCentral, and different opponents under.

Nextiva

Nextiva affords extra worth per greenback than Ooma as a result of its most cost-effective plan consists of video conferences, staff chat, and stronger name routing options. It’s an awesome alternative if you’d like a well-rounded cellphone system that’s straightforward to arrange and affords loads of room to develop. Learn my Nextiva overview.

RingCentral

If you happen to want a bit extra energy, RingCentral is the way in which to go. It’s one of the superior cellphone techniques available on the market, making it an awesome match for midsize or massive groups. Learn my RingCentral overview.

8×8

Ooma allows you to deal with worldwide calls, however you’ll pay per minute. 8×8 affords limitless calling to 14 nations, a bigger convention name capability, and each communication channel on its most cost-effective plan. You’ll be able to improve to the following tier for limitless calling to 48 nations, too. Learn my 8×8 overview.

Dialpad

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

Methodology

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

Customary vs superior options

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

Buyer help

I researched the hours of availability for buyer help, every service’s help channels, and any buyer opinions associated to the supplier’s stage and velocity of service.

Third-party integrations

As a way to evaluate performance at an enterprise stage, 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 heart audits, multi-factor authentication, and a number of servers and knowledge facilities in varied areas have been all thought of.

Uptime share

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

Demo or free trial

This metric consists of 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 price

This consists of all the associated charges, together with free trials, reductions, month-to-month pricing versus annual pricing, price per set up, and value per person. It additionally components in whether or not current or new gear is required to make use of the decision heart cellphone system.