Business Choice Awards 2022: Voice over IP (VoIP) Systems

Despite the myriad means to interact, vocalism communication continues to exist a common and powerful way for humans to bear business (less so for other species). It's normally easier to send an email or an instant message, just voice allows a faster back and forth, and for all parties to impart and read emotion, making it a disquisitional tool for sales discussions. Voice over IP is now the dominant technology for making and receiving voice calls, and there'southward no shortage of options.

There are so many VoIP choices that it's hard for a concern to know which one to select, so it's a expert thing y'all can turn to the PCMag Business Choice Awards for guidance. For more than 25 years, we have been augmenting our hands-on, labs-based product reviews with our Readers' Choice Awards, in which PCMag readers rate the products and services they use the most. The Business Option Awards extend the Readers' Choice Awards by garnering feedback about the hardware, software, and services our readers deploy, administer, maintain, and utilize in a concern environment.

We follow a consistent methodology to bring yous the info you need to brand the all-time choices for your concern, no thing the tech involved. Our survey asked respondents to charge per unit their overall satisfaction, reliability, and tech back up feel with the VoIP service they employ, plus the likelihood they would recommend it to others.

If you lot select, deploy, or administer the products in our Business Option Awards, or if you advise or manage people in these roles, then you know how disquisitional it is to choose the right products. The results of the PCMag Business organization Choice Awards survey are invaluable when doing then.

You can be part of Business Choice! Sign upwardly for the Readers' Pick Survey mailing list to receive invitations in the future.

Want a professional person stance? Read The Best VoIP Providers and Telephone Services of 2022.

Voice over IP (VoIP) for Work

At that place are a wide range of VoIP solutions available to businesses today, from free solutions that are basically worth what you're paying (if yous don't believe me, I'll connect you with my friend who lost a $100,000 sale because his software startup insisted on using free Skype for all voice communications) all the way up to digital PBXs (private branch exchanges) that serve the largest companies in the world.

In this twelvemonth's survey, PCMag readers nominated over 200 VoIP services, of which 14 received enough responses to be included as finalists. Charter and ShoreTel, finalists in 2022, didn't receive enough responses to exist included; the rest of our core group has remained roughly the same for several years.

Our winner—and end me if y'all've heard this before—for the 5th year in a row, is ooma . It earned stellar scores (again): an overall satisfaction of 9.2, a reliability of nine.3, a likelihood to recommend of ix.3, and 1 of the highest Net Promoter Scores I've seen at 89 pct.

Business Choice 2022 - VoIP - Overall

While ooma continues to dominate, the company is facing always-increasing competition from PhonePower with an overall satisfaction of nine.2 and Google Phonation with an overall satisfaction of 9.1. Both came shut or equaled ooma for overall score, but they didn't win since their other numbers were just a tad under what ooma offers users. Every bit usual, Avaya and Comcast continue to fight for last identify, with the somewhat practiced news existence that Comcast isn't terminal for the start time in the history of our surveys.

Reliability is an important measure for VoIP equally it is an indication of the service's ability to maintain high-quality phonation calls. Ooma continues to dominate reliability scores for the fourth yr in a row with a 9.2 (showing a steady increase of last year's ix.1 and the previous year's 8.8). Google Voice had a stiff showing with a 9.1 (up from last year's ix.0) as did PhonePower (ix.0) and RingCentral (9.0). On the other side of the spectrum, Skype had the worst score for reliability at 7.4, closely followed by AT&T (7.6), Avaya (vii.six), Comcast (7.6), and Verizon (7.7).

A very of import measure of any software or service is the response to the critical question "How likely are you to recommend your VoIP service to a colleague?" It's no surprise that ooma is in the lead with a 9.three (up from concluding year's ix.1), tied with Google Vocalism (up from last yr's 8.8).

That same question is used to calculate the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which really separates the VoIP tools from the VoIP toys. Ooma, in one case once more, stands alone at the superlative of the pack with a killer 89 percent, getting stronger and stronger (from seventy percent to 68 percent to 72 per centum to 89 percent), followed past Google Vocalisation at 81 pct (a huge leap frontward from 56 per centum last year) and PhonePower at 74 percentage (another big spring from 59 per centum).

Bringing up the rear are the usual suspects: Avaya, AT&T, Skype, and Verizon. This is a breakthrough twelvemonth for Comcast. Afterwards being the but VoIP provider with a negative NPS for the past 4 years, this yr Comcast is just the fifth worst recommended VoIP provider in our survey.

Skype had the lowest percentage of respondents requiring technical support (2.vi percent, an comeback over last year's x percent), closely followed by Google Vocalisation (3.8 percentage, an improvement over last yr'south 5 percentage). Otherwise stellar ooma had 7.3 percent of respondents requiring aid, a continuing improvement from last year's 15 percent, the previous year'south 26 pct, and the 21 per centum the year earlier.

In terms of satisfaction with the tech support received, Vonage sits on top with an 8.1, followed by RCN (8.0, downwards from last year's best of 8.9) and ooma (7.6, up from 7.5). It'south a skillful thing RCN has good tech back up, considering a whopping 44.7 percent of respondents need to employ it; you probably want to think twice before signing up for a service where almost half the users crave that much hand-holding to get in work. MagicJack users continue to report poor tech support experiences, although this year'south 5.7 represents an improvement over last yr'southward five.4 and the previous twelvemonth'due south 5.3.

Related Story Encounter all of our survey results for Voice over IP (VoIP) Services.

WINNERS: VOIP SERVICES

Business Choice seal

ooma
Five years on summit! For half a decade of doing the Business Choice survey for VoIP, one name has consistently stood out with PCMag readers. Ooma is the perennial favorite in this category.

Methodology

Nosotros e-mail survey invitations to PCMag.com community members, specifically subscribers to our Readers' Choice Survey mailing list. The surveys are hosted by SurveyMonkey, which also performs our information collection. This survey was in the field from Jan 29, 2022 to February nineteen, 2022.

Respondents were asked to rate their VoIP Service using multiple questions about their overall satisfaction with the solution, every bit well as experiences with technical support within the by 12 months.

Because the goal of the survey is to understand how the email marketing solutions compare to one another and not how one respondent'due south experience compares to another'south, we use the boilerplate of the email marketing solutions' rating, non the average of every respondent'southward rating. In all cases, the overall ratings are non based on averages of other scores in the tabular array; they are based on answers to the question, "Overall, how satisfied are yous with your VoIP provider?"

Scores not represented as a percentage are on a calibration of 0 to 10 where ten is the best.

Net Promoter Scores are based on the concept introduced past Fred Reichheld in his 2006 best seller, The Ultimate Question, that no other question can better define the loyalty of a visitor'south customers than "how likely is it that you lot would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" This measure out of brand loyalty is calculated by taking the pct of respondents who answered 9 or 10 (promoters) and subtracting the percentage who answered 0 through 6 (detractors). (For more, read PCMag's Pinnacle Consumer Recommended Companies for 2022.)

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