Ooma vs RingCentral: Which Is Better for Small Businesses?
Corey McCraw is a staff writer covering VoIP and Unified Communications. Corey has over a decade of experience in marketing, tech writing, and corporate communications and has even penned content for the former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative.
This article is part of a larger series on VoIP.
RingCentral is a more robust solution for businesses looking to integrate additional software and need a unified communications system that caters to larger teams. However, Ooma is more affordable, especially if you’re regularly calling countries like the U.K. or India—thanks to its unlimited calling in these countries, available through the add-on plans. We compared Ooma vs RingCentral business phone systems more in-depth to help you determine what is best for you.
We found the best use cases for RingCentral vs Ooma are as follows:
- Ooma: Better for businesses with small teams looking for a low-budget communications solution
- RingCentral: Better value for growing businesses looking for scalable features and need access to real-time analytics and integrations
Ooma vs RingCentral at a Glance
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Starting Price | $19.95 per user, per month* | $29.99 per user, per month** |
Free Trial | 30-day | 15-day |
Maximum Video Conferencing Participants | 25 | 200 |
Unlimited International Calling | ✔ | ✕ |
International Numbers | ✕ | ✔ |
Multiple Plan Options | ✔ | ✔ |
Reporting & Analytics | Call logs | Call logs and 30+ preset key performance indicators (KPIs) |
Software Integrations | Minimal below the Enterprise tier | Extensive above the Standard plan |
Video Conferencing Availability | At the Office Pro level and above | At the Standard level and above |
Multilanguage Support | ✔ | ✔ |
For More Information |
*This is for Ooma’s Office plan. For smaller businesses looking for a low-cost calling solution, Ooma’s Telo hardware comes with free calling and texting for the one-time $99 hardware cost.
**RingCentral pricing is based on one to 20 users. Save up to 33% by paying annually.
Best for Pricing: Ooma
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(The plans considered here are Ooma’s business voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) tiers without international add-ons. For residential tiers, which offer free calling and texting, consider Ooma Basic. Ooma doesn’t have annual payment options.) |
(The pricing listed here accounts for RingCentral’s monthly pricing plans. Save up to 33% with annual subscriptions.) |
A major feather in Ooma’s cap is the presence of Ooma Basic and Ooma Premier, designed for residential use. Basic is free with the purchase of the Ooma Telo, and Premier costs $9.99 per month. They allow for basic calling without the need for a small business or a solopreneur to purchase an expensive business VoIP system.
Even when going with Ooma Office’s business communications plans, which start at Office and extend to Enterprise, Ooma comes out ahead of RingCentral’s similar pricing tiers. While Ooma has only three dedicated business plans compared to RingCentral’s four, each is cheaper, even when considering that Ooma doesn’t have annual payment options.
While RingCentral brings some excellent features (more on that later), from a pricing point of view, Ooma comes out ahead when comparing budget-friendliness.
Best for Scalability: Ooma
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Three business phone plans with options to add on unlimited international calling as well as two residential plans that are easily used by small businesses or solopreneurs | Four plans with varying features—ranging from the calling-focused Essentials plan to the unified communications as a service (UCaaS)-friendly Ultimate plan |
Scalability with a VoIP or unified communications as a service (UCaaS) provider allows businesses to choose the plan they want as well as the features that come with it. While both providers are some of the best in this category, we’re giving the edge to Ooma. It has three dedicated tiers for business communications, and smaller companies starting out can easily use some of the residential solutions. This reduces the costs of entry when owning a dedicated communications infrastructure for your business.
For a more in-depth look at Ooma’s plans and features, check out our Ooma review.
With Ooma, there are international plans that add on unlimited calling to up to 70 countries, beneficial for businesses looking to expand. RingCentral does a great job of providing four dedicated tiers of its service with increasing feature loads. However, when it comes to supporting growing businesses as they scale, Ooma has a slightly stronger performance.
Best for International Calling: Ooma
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Unlimited calling in up to 70 countries | Metered international calling to hundreds of countries at very reasonable rates |
Ooma and RingCentral offers metered international calling for calling overseas without the traditionally expensive costs of using a landline. As you can see in our guide to international calling costs, with both, your team members will be able to make calls to territories like France and England for as little as 3 cents per minute. Still, even at these inexpensive rates, consistent calling adds up. This is where Ooma pulls ahead of the competition.
With Ooma, you have the option of two supplementary plans:
- Ooma World Plan: Access to unlimited calling to landlines in over 60 countries. You’re able to call mobile phones in up to 10 countries with unmetered pricing.
- Ooma World Plus Plan: Access to unlimited calling to landlines in over 70 countries. You’re able to call mobile phones in up to 40 countries with unmetered pricing.
It’s important to understand that these are add-on packages, but even with the World Plan’s additional $17.99 per month and the World Plus Plan’s additional $25.99 per month, you’ll save on making regular international calls. There’s no international unlimited calling option available through RingCentral.
Best for Integrations: RingCentral
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200+ at the Premium plan | Minimal options before the Enterprise plan |
When it comes to integrations, RingCentral is a leader in the realm of VoIP and UCaaS. With Ooma, you’re only getting about three integrations until you subscribe to the Enterprise tier, delivering integrations with solutions like Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, ServiceNow, and Salesforce.
While these integrations help, they don’t really compare to what RingCentral offers. With this provider, you’re granted integrations with several of the more popular solutions at the Standard tier and more than 200 more when you scale a single tier upward to Premium.
RingCentral also has an open application programming interface (API) at this tier, so your IT team can include whatever software connections are needed. This makes for a much more maneuverable experience for businesses looking to reduce software bloat and the number of active windows any given agent is required to have open at a time.
Best for Establishing a Global Presence: RingCentral
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RingCentral has international numbers in more than 100 countries | Ooma has unlimited international calling, but it has yet to implement international numbers |
In modern business, it’s all about accessibility. Direct inward dialing (DID) numbers, also called virtual numbers, allow you to create a specific number for customers to use to reach your company. RingCentral and Ooma both have several types of virtual numbers, including:
- Local
- Toll-free
- Vanity
RingCentral is the only provider of the two with international numbers. These numbers are critical when trying to service international customers. Like local numbers, international numbers grant your customers in foreign countries a means to reach your business with little effort. Rather than having to dial internationally, international numbers can be set up to appear to be located in a given country.
In total, RingCentral has about 107 territories where they can provide international numbers, and choices range from Algeria to Vietnam. This availability helps you quickly establish a global presence for your business, which is particularly valuable.
Best for Video Conferencing With a Large Team: RingCentral
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Up to 200 participants | Up to 25 participants |
Both providers deliver features like screen sharing, chat, and integration with calendar apps (like Google Calendar), but RingCentral has a more notably Zoom-like experience. It also includes in-depth analytics and mobile support, so remote users can still meet with colleagues on smartphones as they go about their day. With video conferencing being such an important part of team collaboration now, having the ability to meet with a large number of people is essential. Larger teams will appreciate the 200-participant limit that RingCentral has rather than settling on the much smaller 25-participant limit on video conferencing with Ooma.
Best for Advanced Analytics: RingCentral
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Call logs, prebuilt KPIs, real-time dashboards, and quality of service reports | Call logs, call volume trends, call metrics by day or hour |
Both VoIP solutions deliver key features, including call logs. These provide a record of all inbound and outbound calls and faxes for the sake of recordkeeping. However, Ooma lacks the real-time analytics and reporting dashboards that are often included in the best business phone systems.
RingCentral also offers more than 30 prebuilt key performance indicators (KPIs), including average handle time, abandoned calls, and answered calls. In addition, you can access quality of service (QoS) reports. These allow you to track the quality of calls across your business locations.
Best Alternatives
Ooma and RingCentral aren’t for every user. For example, neither is a perfect solution for companies looking for fully functional international communications. Fortunately, there are excellent options for both Ooma and RingCentral alternatives.
A few alternative small business VoIP services include:
- 8×8: 8×8 is an excellent alternative for businesses that are looking to go more global. Unlike RingCentral and Ooma, 8×8 has both unlimited calling to several countries as well as international phone numbers. This helps businesses branching out to not only make outbound calls to these countries but to make themselves available for inbound calls as well. 8×8 is also very scalable and has three additional tiers that incorporate an impressive collection of call center as a service (CCaaS) features.
- Google Voice: Like Ooma, Google Voice has a free calling plan designed for residential use, but is also perfect for solopreneurs who are just getting off the ground. Once these small businesses grow, Google Voice offers several paid tiers that incorporate some of the calling features that businesses need. This provider is also a strong solution for anyone who utilizes Google Workspace for activities like meetings, email, or chat.
- Grasshopper: Grasshopper is a virtual phone provider that is laser-focused on providing inexpensive calling features for businesses. Unlike Ooma and RingCentral, there’s not much attention given to unified communications (UC), but you can expect powerful call management, virtual faxing, caller ID, and unlimited extensions in the higher plans. Grasshopper also doesn’t charge per user, which helps businesses mitigate costs.
How We Evaluated RingCentral vs Ooma
In the competition between Ooma vs RingCentral, you will see that both of these providers have distinct features that make each useful for specific types of users. With this in mind, we’ve weighed several factors to determine which comes out ahead in a head-to-head battle. We compared factors like price, standard features, functionality in more specialized situations, and ease of use.
Here’s a complete breakdown of these factors:
25%
Pricing
30%
General Features
25%
Niche Features
20%
Expert Score
25% of Overall Score
We weighed pricing as a major factor because this is a prime determinant for a majority of small businesses. When looking at Ooma vs RingCentral, we dug into the pricing structures, the number of available plans, and any discounts offered to companies based on things like annual billing or volume. Effectively, we wanted to see which provider gave the most bang for your buck.
30% of Overall Score
General features on a communication solution include video conferencing, integrations, and analytics. We wanted to weigh the features your business would use every day so that we could determine which comes out ahead in each category.
25% of Overall Score
Not every company needs every feature. Still, there are some features that can become very valuable for specific businesses. These include multilanguage support, international numbers, and multiplatform support for softphones, browsers, and smartphones. We took a look at a series of useful features that some might need to establish how agile these solutions are for their customers.
20% of Overall Score
Factors like customer experience, popularity in the business sector, and overall value for the money are pivotal factors for many businesses looking to find the right provider. For our expert score, we took a look at our own experience with each provider as well as analysis from reputable review sites and customer feedback to determine how each solution performed.
*Percentages of overall score
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How do I connect to customer support with Ooma & RingCentral?
Both of these providers have the option for customers to contact them by phone using a toll-free number. In addition, RingCentral provides live chat and an online ticketing system where customers can communicate with agents to get answers to their queries. Also, get in touch with RingCentral via Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Do Ooma & RingCentral provide both a mobile & a desktop app?
Yes, both of these providers have mobile and desktop apps to communicate with customers or colleagues. The mobile app is available for both iOS and Android devices, so you will be able to communicate with team members easily regardless of your location.
Does Ooma offer annual or volume discounts?
Unlike many of the modern VoIP providers, Ooma’s rates aren’t affected by things like the number of users or whether you opt to pay annually. This keeps the provider’s prices very easy to keep track of.
Bottom Line
Throughout the history of VoIP, many providers have combined scalability with strong feature sets for customers. Ooma and RingCentral are great examples of two providers that deliver for just about any customer, and years of success attest to this. Both services also continually update their capabilities to deliver business features suitable for companies with various needs.
In our head-to-head comparison, both providers performed well, but RingCentral pulled out ahead thanks to its analytics, video conferencing, international numbers, and integrations. For a more thorough accounting of its various features as well as a video walk-through, check out our RingCentral review.
