Cloud VoIP phone service

There are many small business VoIP providers out there out there. How can you choose the right one? If you text and do video meetings as well, then you might need a unified communications platform.

Learn about what features to look for in a VoIP phone service, and how businesses are using Dialpad as an all-in-one communications platform (and not just a phone system).

What is VoIP phone service?

If you’re up to speed with the terminology, feel free to skip ahead. If you need VoIP telephone services 101, keep reading.

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. It’s the technology that lets you make and receive phone calls over the Internet instead of a traditional phone network.

VoIP phone services are offered by dedicated hosted VoIP providers or unified communications platforms like Dialpad. In the latter case, VoIP services are built in as a part of a cloud-based unified communications (UCaaS) platform, which you can use to manage all your phone calls and other communications centrally on different devices. As well as being significantly cheaper than landlines, VoIP lets you connect from anywhere via mobile devices or desktops with a high-speed Internet connection.

Voice over IP also gives you advanced features that aren’t always possible with a standard telephone service—such as call recording, caller ID, real-time transcriptions, easily customizable voicemail greetings, and more.

How does a VoIP phone service work?

VoIP is a broad term for telephony technologies that enable voice calls over the Internet instead of using regular phone lines.

Think of your voice as an analog signal. VoIP converts this into a digital format (called a “packet”) that can be transmitted over an IP network. An IP or Internet protocol address is what computers use to communicate with one another on the Internet.

Once the call is connected, VoIP converts the packets back into analog signals so they can be received by the phone of the person you’ve called (if you want to get technical, the analog signals are encoded and decoded using software called a codec).

With Dialpad, you get more than just a VoIP phone service for business

The benefits of a good cloud VoIP phone service

Quick and easy deployment

Once you decide to switch to VoIP, you need to get up and running with minimum disruption. So, choose something that makes it easy to do things like add and remove users, and add new phone numbers. Make sure your provider has robust support and training materials (like Dialpad's detailed online Help Center) to help everyone onboard quickly.

Number porting: Use your existing number

If you don’t want to make your clients and customers remember a new phone number, why not bring your existing phone numbers from your current enterprise or small business phone system provider to your new communications platform?

With Dialpad, you can port existing numbers, VoIP numbers, and toll-free numbers to your new cloud VoIP platform with no interruption in service—and it’s free to port local phone numbers in the US.

Contact center functionality, fully integrated

Chances are, your business needs to communicate effectively both internally and with customers. So, why would you want your contact center and customer support comms separate to your internal communication channels?

Dialpad's AI-powered customer engagement platform is fully integrated with your other channels and enterprise VoIP telephone service. That means your agents, supervisors, and anyone else besides can use all the cutting-edge cloud contact center features and drop a quick message to a colleague or start a team video call, all from the same platform.

Why a VoIP phone service is what your business needs 

As a VoIP provider, we may be a little biased. But it’s hard not to say yes when you consider all the advantages of a VoIP system:

Drastically reduces costs

With traditional PBX, you’d pay thousands of dollars for on-site hardware, plus the cost of ongoing maintenance. Long distance and international calling would be charged per-minute, while you’d have to pay extra for any business features.

The affordability of VoIP is one of its major selling points. With calls taking place over the Internet, there’s no expensive hardware required­­—all you need is connected devices and a router (which means it’s low-maintenance, too).

VoIP also enables much cheaper calling, whether it’s local or long-distance. For example, Dialpad offers free VoIP calling throughout Canada and the US. One more thing: VoIP makes it easier to transition to a remote or hybrid workforce, which saves on office rent and commuting. (If you’re not ready to invest in dedicated IP phones, you can make VoIP calls by using computers as softphones, or using analog phones with adapters.)

Reliable call quality

Depending on your provider, business VoIP is usually able to deliver very reliable call quality thanks to global voice networks and modern telephony technology. As long as you have a solid Internet connection and choose a provider with uptime SLAs, VoIP will work just fine.

As an example, the minimum amount of bandwidth required to use Dialpad is 100 kbps per voice session. The average bandwidth of most Internet consumers in the United States far exceeds this. Dialpad also boasts an enterprise uptime of 100%, so you won’t lose customers due to outages or dropped calls.

Flexibility and accessibility for users

VoIP gives your team the ability to be in contact wherever they are. Let’s say you’re out in the field and you need to clarify something with a colleague. With VoIP, you can keep in touch on your own device—using your business number to avoid giving out your personal one. And customers can reach you even when you’re away from your desk.

Dialpad’s mobile and desktop app is as flexible as it gets, because it works across iOS, Android, PC, and Mac (and even on web browsers so nobody has to download an app).

Easily scalable

VoIP is way more scalable than traditional phone systems. If you want to hire new staff, you don’t have to install physical phone lines for them. You can set up new phone numbers with just a few clicks. You don’t even have to buy special handsets as workers can use their own devices.

Subscription-based pricing lets you scale up or down as needed when you need to add extra users or features during busy seasonal periods. For example, Dialpad's cloud-based contact center platform is fully integrated into its VoIP phone system, and lets you add new agents and manage phone numbers right from your online dashboard.

Improved security

With cloud-based VoIP, your vendor has most of the responsibility for protecting your data.

With good VoIP providers, Information is stored on multiple servers in geographically-dispersed data centers, so if one has a problem, the others take over. In the unlikely event of a network outage, your data remains secure and accessible across all devices.