Best Cloud Phone Software

RingCentral is a cloud communications platform that combines business phone calling, team messaging, video meetings, and SMS in a single app called RingEX. It supports unlimited domestic calling, auto attendants, IVR menus, call queues, call recording, and integrations with tools like Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, HubSpot, and Zendesk. The platform can be set up quickly without on-premise hardware and works across desktop, web, and mobile devices.

Beyond core business phone plans, RingCentral offers add-on products including RingCX (an AI contact center), an AI Receptionist, RingCentral Events for webinars, and RingCentral Rooms for conference spaces. Plans scale from small teams to large enterprises replacing legacy PBX systems, with AI features like call transcription, meeting summaries, and intelligent call routing built into higher tiers.

Google Voice provides business phone numbers and calling within Google Workspace, with calls handled in the browser and on mobile, voicemail transcription, ring groups and administrative controls, licensed separately from the base Workspace subscription.

Being licensed separately is the detail most people get wrong about Google Voice, and it matters for budgeting. Gmail, Chat and Meet arrive with a Workspace plan while Voice is an additional per-user licence on top, so a company comparing it against a hosted phone system should compare the added cost rather than assume it is included.

Simplicity is the honest positioning against a full telephony platform, since Voice does numbers, calling, voicemail and basic ring groups well and does not attempt the call queues, wallboards and workforce management a contact centre needs. For a professional services firm that is exactly right and for a support operation it is not.

The administrative story is where it wins in a Workspace organisation, because numbers are assigned and revoked from the same console that manages the accounts, and a departing employee's number moves without a call to a telephony provider. Google publishes Workspace plans separately from Voice licences.

OpenPhone now trades as Quo, a shared business phone and inbox giving a team one place for every call, text and customer, including after hours. Customers describe using it to reply to enquiries by text immediately, whether they arrive during the working day or outside it, and pricing is published across three tiers with a credit-based allowance for calls.

Treating the phone number as a shared inbox rather than a personal line is the design decision that matters. A business number answered by whoever is available, with the whole conversation history visible to the team, removes the situation where the only person who knows what a customer was told is on holiday.

Text as a first-class channel is what the customer accounts keep returning to. A missed call produces nothing while an immediate text acknowledges the enquiry, and for a professional services firm that difference decides whether the enquiry becomes a client.

The rename is worth noting for anyone searching. Reviews, comparisons and existing familiarity are filed under OpenPhone while the vendor's current material is entirely Quo, and they describe the same product. Anyone comparing reviews should search both names, since the older ones sit under the previous brand.