5 Main Grasshopper Alternatives for Your Business Phone System in 2021
Today, many companies use cloud phone services like Grasshopper to meet their growing communication needs and to be able to handle business calls effectively. Using virtual PBXs, businesses can improve communication efficiency and, in turn, increase customer trust. However, not all phone services are created equal. In this blog post, we will look at the main alternatives to Grasshopper’s solution if you have realized that it is not exactly in line with your business needs.
9 min read
Elizaveta Komarova
Aug 26, 2021
What Is Grasshopper?
Grasshopper is one of the most popular VoIP platforms for small and mid-sized organizations. As the company has many years of industry experience, affordable plans, and easy-to-use functions, Grasshopper has become a popular choice for individuals, small businesses, and startups. Providing them with basic functionality and a number of key business features such as calls routing, SMS, and voicemail capabilities.
Pricing Options
Like many cloud phone providers, Grasshopper offers different price packages so that each business can meet the budget:
Solo: $29 per month (billed monthly) / $26 per month (billed annually), 1 included phone number, 3 extensions;
Partner: $49 per month (billed monthly) / $44 per month (billed annually), 3 included phone numbers and 6 extensions;
Small Business: $89 per month (billed monthly) / $80 per month (billed annually), 5 included phone numbers and unlimited extensions.
Extra phone numbers cost $10 per month each.
*Indicated prices here and henceforward are valid for the time of writing this text. To see the exact price, visit the website.
With its set of features and pricing for included numbers and extension options, Grasshopper primarily focuses on solopreneurs and smaller organizations that need one or just a few phone lines and only the basic functionality. If your business needs something more powerful feature-wise – Grasshopper may not be your optimal choice.
Key Features:
The variety of features that the Grasshopper VoIP system has will depend on the plan; however, all Grasshopper plans come standard with the following features:
- Virtual business phone number;
- Conference calling;
- Call forwarding, transferring, and blocking;
- Virtual receptionist and virtual fax support;
- Custom greetings;
- Voicemail.
While Grasshopper comes with the basic features for an SMB to communicate with their customers, as your company grows, you will probably need additional features, such as international phone numbers, customizable call queues, and integrations with other applications. If this is the case, you will need to look at some of Grasshoppers reliable alternatives:
- Inperium Talk
- Vonage Business
- 8x8
- Mighty Call
- Go To Connect
Inperium Talk
Inperium Talk is an easy-to-use AI-based business telephone platform that is flexible, affordable, and offers everything needed to handle business calls professionally. Thanks to its affordable pricing and broad feature set included in multiple base plans that flex easily with extra call minute packs, Inperium Talk works equally well for small and mid-sized organizations and helps to grow your business faster.
Pricing Options
Depending on your business needs, Inperium Talk offers different pricing plans with monthly or annual billing options:
Essential: $25 per month (billed monthly) / $20 per month (billed annually), 1 included phone number, 1,000 included call minutes per month (for domestic calls);
Professional: $99 per month (billed monthly) / $79.20 per month (billed annually), 1 included the phone number, 2,000 included call minutes per month (for domestic calls);
Enterprise: $199 per month (billed monthly) / per month $159.20 (billed annually), 1 included the phone number, 3,000 included call minutes per month (for domestic calls).
Each additional user costs $5 per month on all plans. Each extra phone number costs $5 per month on all plans, regardless of the type of number or billing cycle.
You can add more call minutes to your plan and make price-per-call-minute lower with extra minutes’ packages:
- Small, 500 min: $19.50;
- Medium, 1,000 min: $39;
- Large, 2,500 min: $75;
- X-Large, 5,000 min: $139.
These pricing schemes allow you to choose personalized payment plans without paying for features or minutes your business doesn’t use.
Key Features
Inperium Talk comes with features that allow making and receiving calls from anywhere, ensuring that they are handled professionally, save time with AI-generated voices that genuinely sound human, as well as the ability to access valuable insight into call activity. Moreover, it comes with access to international phone numbers so that you can set up numbers with any area code, giving you the flexibility to set up offices in other regions or countries.
The Inperium Talk’s key features include:
- Auto-receptionists and multi-level IVR menus;
- Local and international phone numbers;
- SMS;
- Call forwarding and call transfers;
- Conference calling;
- Call queues and automated queue callback;
- Custom voice greetings;
- Ai-based speech-to-text and text-to-speech transcriptions;
- Integration with CRM systems and other third-party applications.
Although Inperium Talk provides an extensive set of business phone features and affordable prices for small and medium companies, it does not provide video conferencing and team messaging. With that, Inperium Talk is a good solution for companies that are looking for a reliable and easy-to-use VoIP platform with a wide range of options for different business communication needs for fair prices.
Vonage Business
Vonage, founded in 2001, is a long-time market leader among virtual phone systems that is good for small and medium-sized businesses due to its easy-to-use setup and affordable international calling rates. It is scalable and provides a standard feature set, good voice quality as well as mobile and desktop calling apps without breaking the bank.
Pricing Options
- Mobile, $19.99 per line, billed monthly, including unlimited calls and SMS;
- Premium, $29.99 per line, billed monthly, including unlimited meetings up to 100 participants;
- Advanced $39.99 per line, billed monthly, including call recording.
Key Features:
Vonage Mobile plan comes with common options that should be enough for a small company that doesn’t need advanced features:
- Unlimited calls & SMS;
- Team messaging system;
- Call group (forward calls to multiple extensions at once);
- Desktop and mobile apps;
While Vonage offers advanced plans for larger companies, including video, conferencing functionality, call recording, speech recognition, toll-free numbers, some key features that are standard among other VoIP providers require upgrading. For example, call recording and CRM integrations are available only on the Premium plan, and toll-free numbers are for extra costs.
8x8
Another good alternative to Grasshopper if you are looking for basic functionality is 8x8. 8x8 is a cloud-based VoIP system that can be slightly cheaper than Vonage. The main advantage is that 8×8 provides a vast set of features such as video conferencing, an all-in-one customer support solution (voicemail and remote team services), and some advanced business phone options such as intelligent call routing and auto-attendant.
Pricing Options
Express: $12 per user per month, including unlimited calling in the US and Canada
Х2: $24 per user per month (billed annually) / $32 per user per month (billed monthly) including unlimited calling o 14 countries
Х4: $44 per user per month (billed annually)/ $57 per user per month (billed monthly) including unlimited calling to 47 countries
Key Features
- Unlimited calls in the US and Canada;
- Auto-attendant;
- Voice-to-email notification;
- SMS and instant messaging;
- Call group;
- Mobile apps for iPhone and Android.
More advanced features such as call quality reporting, unlimited calls to 47 countries, Internet faxing, and web conferencing are available on advanced plans (X2 and X4 packages). However, 8x8 doesn’t have open APIs (although they offer some specific API support programs), so integrating other services and apps can be an issue.
Mighty Call
Mighty Call is another easy-to-use virtual phone solution for small businesses that give companies a good value for an affordable price. It was founded in 1999 and has a good reputation as well as many years of experience in phone solutions. It is worth mentioning that Mighty Call has been improving their system for years without raising prices, and today they have a pretty good set of features for business communications.
Pricing Options
- Basic: $29.99 per month, including 2 toll-free or local numbers and 1000 minutes;
- Standard: $49.99 per month 5 toll-free or local numbers and unlimited minutes;
- Ultimate: $99.99 per month, 10 toll-free or local numbers, and unlimited minutes;
Key Features
One of Mighty Call’s strong points is that it can handle a complete call routing functionality into one service via its mobile apps. The basic features are:
- Call forwarding;
- Unlimited users;
- CRM functionality;
- Text messaging;
- Conference calling;
- Mobile apps;
- Interactive automated attendant.
In addition to standard cloud phone options, they have such features as a task management option to plan calls and messages, 24/7 auto attendant, and the ability to integrate with other apps and services. Although Mighty Call is a pretty good alternative to Grasshopper, its weak point is that it provides international numbers for extra costs, and a number of features, such as call recording, are only available on the Standard or Ultimate plan.
Go To Connect
Go To Connect is another virtual phone system provider that is suitable for small and medium businesses, but it also caters to larger organizations. Its features cover audio and video communications aspects such as call management, call center options, phone services, video conferencing. Go To Connect solution has an easy setup without needing any hardware. They offer video tutorials on YouTube and 24/7 customer support. However, the weak point is that the maximum meeting time is 40 minutes, and participants’ quantities are limited to 4 people. Customer service is carried out in a self-service manner, and all international calls are billed by the minute.
Pricing Options
Go To Connect pricing is based on the number of users, and the most cost-effective plan is provided for medium or large organizations:
- Basic: $24 per user per month, including unlimited extensions’;
- Standard: $29 per user per month including unlimited extensions, 1000 toll-free minutes per account;
- Premium: $39 per user per month, including unlimited extensions, 5000 toll-free minutes per account.
Key Features
- Unlimited extensions;
- Call forwarding;
- Local, toll-free, and vanity numbers;
- Auto-attendance;
- Ring groups (answering calls by configuring multiple devices);
- Team messaging;
- Audio conferencing.
Go To Connect is an affordable vendor with extensive audio and video features. It can be used by small businesses to encourage communication. However, it has much more value for larger organizations: such functions as call recording, voicemail to Email, eFax, international calling, and call analytics are provided only on Standard and Premium plans and are not available on the Basic plan.
Bottom Line of Grasshopper Alternatives
The market for cloud-based phone systems is growing rapidly, and it can often be difficult to decide which vendor to choose. Your company’s needs are unique, so before choosing a virtual business phone service vendor, we recommend you determine what features are essential for your business and prioritize vendors who cater to these needs. Try to understand what is crucial for your success verse what is desirable and always take into account your budget. You may answer additional questions which will help you to make the right choice:
Do we need any equipment and if yes what kind of it?
Do we want to use mobile devices, or are computers enough?
Do we need integrations with CRMs and other applications?
Do we need unlimited calling or not?
Do we need call center functions or not?
Often vendors offer a free trial. If this is the case, you can try before you buy, evaluating the ease of use, the quality of service, and customer support.
