RingCentral vs. Vonage: Price, Features, & What’s Best in 2018

RingCentral and Vonage are VoIP providers that offer plans with unlimited calling, an auto attendant as well as other features. Vonage offers three plans starting as low as $14.99 while RingCentral has four plans starting as low as $19.99. However, RingCentral is generally more robust while Vonage is customizable to meet specific needs.

When to Use RingCentral

RingCentral is more powerful out of the box, and its conferencing options are superior to Vonage, making it best to use if you want to make a lot of conference calls, operate a call center or make or receive calls from anywhere in the world. With a built-in conferencing system, video and audio conferencing is unlimited with all plans and supports as many as 200 callers, benefitting companies that hold virtual meetings.

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When to Use Vonage

Vonage provides a phone system that can be customized with added features and should be used if you have specific calling needs that aren’t supported by prepackaged calling plans. Unlike RingCentral, you can customize your plan with add-on functions like call recording, visual voicemail and other premium features. This proves to be a benefit for businesses that need a specialized business phone system.

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When to Use an Alternative

If either of these two options are robust for your needs, we recommend Grasshopper if you’re a solopreneur or a smaller business. The pricing is relatively similar, and it’s our best virtual phone number provider, making it the best to use if you need a business number on your personal cellphone as well as things like access to an auto attendant to help you look more professional.

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RingCentral vs. Vonage at a Glance

How We Evaluated RingCentral & Vonage

When choosing phone systems for your business, it’s important to select a provider that has everything you need out-of-the-box, hassle-free setup and can support your business whether you’re in or out of your office. We evaluated the RingCentral and Vonage on key features like the number of phone lines, access to an auto attendant as well as nationwide calling and short message service (SMS).

The specific criteria we used to compare RingCentral vs. Vonage include:

• Price: The price of each service, including any tiers or a la carte services
• Plans/number of phone lines: Each of the two services tiered plans and the features offered in each of those plans, including the number of phone lines and calling
• Collaboration tools: Conferencing tools that will help you stay connected with your team and collaborate on projects
• Mobility: What options are available for remote teams and those on the go
• Integration options: What other productivity tools, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool are integrated with the service to help you better manage your business
• Customer service: What help is available, how can you get support when you need it
• Ease of Use: How easy is it to set up, manage your users and administer the system

We recommend RingCentral as the best solution for your business. It is the best choice if you need a comprehensive system from the start that includes calling, voicemail to email transcription, collaboration tools and a built-in messaging platform. With its simple pricing, it’s a robust out of the box solution that offers four tiers of features for businesses of all sizes.

RingCentral vs. Vonage: Pricing & Features

RingCentral and Vonage both have pricing that is dependent on the tier and features selected as well as on things like annual or monthly billing and number of users. RingCentral can start as low as $19.99 while Vonage can start as low as $14.99.

However, this is for a larger number of users billed annually, and the prices below reflect monthly billing for up to four to five users. For specific billing and discounts based on annual billing and number of users, contact either RingCentral or Vonage.

RingCentral Pricing

RingCentral offers four pricing plans from $29.99 to $59.99 and is very transparent about the features of each tier, including volume discounts. While RingCentral has a higher starting price than Vonage, it’s a complete system that doesn’t have additional fees for the premium features you might want to use out of the box.

RingCentral Tiered Features

Essentials

With RingCentral’s Essentials package, you get 100 toll-free minutes, unlimited calling and SMS messages, voicemail to email, conference calling for up to four attendees, collaboration tools and 24/7 customer support. This is the starter package and starts at $29.99 with no volume discounts.

This plan is best suited for the small business with that has a smaller team and needs a simple calling solution. Unlike the other plans, the features and benefits are only available if your business has 10 users or less. So, if your business expands and gains more employees, you’ll need to upgrade to the Standard plan.

Standard

The Standard package starts at $34.99 and has everything in the essentials package, but it supports unlimited users with internet faxing and reports. Unlike the Essentials package, a volume discount is available for this tier. The price drops to $32 monthly per user if you have 100 to 999 users and $29.99 monthly per user if you have between 1,000 and 10,000 users.

This plan also provides 1,000 toll-free minutes and is best for businesses with a larger team, whether in the office or remote, who still want simplicity with the added benefits of faxing and the professional appearance of having a multilevel attendant.

Premium

The Premium package is RingCentral’s most popular package and is where the conference features truly shine. The plan starts at $44.99 per month and supports unlimited conferencing for up to 100 attendees, much more than either the Essentials or the Standard. The volume discount drops the price to $42 monthly per user for 100 to 999 users, and $39.99 per user for 1,000 to 10,000 users.

If your business has a large remote team, or if you make a lot of calls and hold a lot of audio and video conferences, this is the best choice for you. This tier also includes integration with CRMs, which are helpful for tracking your customer data and sales processes.

Ultimate

There are no real differences in regards to available features between this plan and the Premium. The Ultimate plan does support an additional 100 users in conference calls. The price starts at $59.99 and drops to $52.99 if you have 100 to 999 users, and $49.99 if you have more than 1,000 users.

The plan also provides a total of 10,000 toll-free minutes, significantly more than the Premium plan. So, this is the best for large corporations, call centers with high call volumes or businesses that spend a lot of time on the phone with customers.

Collaboration Tools

RingCentral has the advantage over Vonage when it comes to collaboration tools because of its inclusion of Glip. Available at all price plans, Glip is the video chat conferencing tool that is built-in to the RingCentral system, meaning that you and your team can hold video conferences without having to use another application. It also provides video to chat, file sharing and group collaboration on documents, allowing you to eliminate multiple apps and get it all done with one.

Mobility

RingCentral and Vonage both provide a mobile app for both Android and iOS phones. Both providers offer the capability to integrate your other smart devices and tablets to the system, so there isn’t much to differentiate the two providers when it comes to mobile apps and therefore no need to look for a RingCentral alternative if this is your main focus.

Integration

RingCentral integrates with Salesforce, Zendesk and Desk.com for tracking all activities within your business. An advantage over Vonage is that RingCentral also integrates with Dropbox allowing you to fax directly from your Dropbox. Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive for file storage are also available at no additional cost.

If you need a CRM to keep track of your sales process or any interactions with your customers, check out Insightly. It offers a highly customizable CRM that can be used as anything from a contact management software to a project management tool. Check it out today for more information and to see how to integrate with RingCentral.

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Vonage Pricing

Vonage offers only three pricing plans to choose from ranging from $19.99 to $39.99. The plans are a much lower starting point than RingCentral, and you can add additional features to customize your plan as needed for your business. Volume discounts are also offered that bring the price down if you have more users within your business.

Vonage Tiered Features

Mobile

Vonage’s Mobile plan costs $19.99 and includes unlimited calling and SMS, auto attendant — called virtual receptionist — access to the mobile app and a call logging system. The price drops to $17.99 if your business has between five and 20 users and $14.99 for 20 to 100 users.

The downside to this plan is that there is no support for video conferencing, chat or file sharing like the Premium or Advanced plans. So, this plan is best for the smaller team that needs a simple calling system with a mobile app to manage calls while out of the office. If you have a need for video conferencing in your business, you’ll need to upgrade to the Premium plan.

Premium

The Premium plan starts at $29.99 and has everything in the mobile plan. It also includes access to a multilevel auto attendant or virtual receptionist as Vonage calls it. Video conferencing for up to 100 people using the Amazon Chime app, and integrations with Salesforce, Zoho and other CRMs.

The price drops to $27.99 if you have anywhere from five to 20 users and $24.99 if you have between 20 and 100 users. If your team needs a CRM to keep track of all activities along with conference calling support, see our comparison of Zoho vs. Salesforce, and this plan will be the best for you regardless of which CRM you choose.

Advanced

The Advanced plan starts at $39.99 and has everything in the Premium plan. Unlike the Mobile or Premium plan, this plan features what Vonage calls Orange Glove Setup, which provides you with a dedicated team of experts that will guide you through the setup and onboarding. The price drops to $37.99 if you have between five and 20 users and $34.99 if you have between 20 and 100 users.

This plan also provides access to call groups and on-demand call recording. However, a drawback to this plan is that it doesn’t provide any more users than 100 attendee limit for conferencing seen in the Premium plan. So, it’s the ideal plan for larger businesses that need to leverage all the calling, CRM features that Vonage has to offer and needs hands-on setup support from Vonage.

Collaboration Tools

Vonage offers collaboration through a partnership with Amazon Chime. Chime is a third-party video conferencing tool is best for enterprises in the health care and finance industries that need to follow more strict security protocols. This additional layer of security does prove to be an advantage over RingCentral’s built-in conferencing system, although your users will have to manage multiple tools in order to get their work done.

Mobility

Vonage also has a free mobile app for iOS and Android devices that allows you to access your phone system anywhere. Just like RingCentral, Vonage allows you to create virtual extensions, connecting your mobile devices directly to the system, so there isn’t much that sets Vonage’s mobility features apart.

Integration

Vonage integrates with Salesforce, Zoho, Zendesk and many more CRM platforms than RingCentral. Also integrated with the system is Vee, a virtual assistant chatbot that allows you and your team to use Facebook’s chat features to communicate with your teams.

If you don’t already use a CRM, you might want to check out Insightly. It offers a customizable CRM that can be used as a contact management system, sales pipeline tool or a full-fledged project management system. Check it out today to learn more.

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RingCentral vs. Vonage: Ease of Use

Both RingCentral and Vonage provide simple and easy systems to install and use. With everything hosted in the cloud, you won’t need to worry about hardware, installation and maintenance of the system. Everything can be configured through each provider’s portal, and the platforms allow you to scale up or down easily, depending on your business’ need.

RingCentral Ease of Use

Setting up RingCentral is straightforward. Installation of the mobile and desktop apps is as easy as downloading the app from an app store or RingCentral.com, signing up for your free trial or log into your account, and then start using the app and the service. This is similar to other VoIP providers like 8×8, which we outline in the article on RingCentral vs. 8×8.

The online management interface allows for management of user extensions, configuration of auto attendant, company information, phones and devices. Wizards are available to guide you through every setup process, and the dashboard report tools provide a comprehensive view of all phone system activity with details on all calls placed. With the desktop apps, you can place calls directly from your PC and start conference calls.

Vonage Ease of Use

Vonage’s installation is also a pretty simple VoIP setup. If you order a device during the registration, you’ll have to wait for it to be delivered to be set up in your office, but you can start using the mobile and desktop apps immediately to make calls after your account is set up.

An automated wizard guides you through the initial setup process, and a dedicated team can also help. The dashboard lists users, extensions, private branch exchange (PBX) settings, billing and access to the features store where you can customize your account with additional features.

RingCentral vs. Vonage: Customer Service

Knowing that your business phone provider will be there when you need them is important. There isn’t much to differentiate between these providers in regards to customer service. Both providers’ customer service teams are able to help with initial setup, provide training and troubleshoot issues.

RingCentral’s Customer Service

RingCentral prides itself on its customer service. An online learning center is available, and live United States-based phone support is provided 24/7 for businesses with two or more users. If your business has less, you can get regular phone support anytime from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, and you can always schedule a personalized demonstration of the service.

Vonage’s Customer Service

Vonage’s customer service is also very impressive. You can get in touch with its support team by email, phone or the help desk ticket system. Although it doesn’t offer 24/7 support, its staff are available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays with emergency support available on the weekends when needed.

RingCentral vs. Vonage: Customer Reviews

RingCentral and Vonage both offer great customer service and a wealth of information about how to use the service and different methods of getting help when needed. However, users have both positive and negative experiences using the two phone providers.

RingCentral Customer Reviews

Users who provided positive reviews of RingCentral were satisfied with the wide range of features offered while negative reviewers were disappointed with the inflexibility of the plan structure. For a more in-depth summary of user reviews, check out our user reviews of RingCentral.

Vonage Customer Reviews

Customers who provided positive feedback of Vonage were satisfied with the call quality and flexible plans. Negative feedback was provided by customers who were disappointed with how expensive the flexible plans can become as more features are added. For a more in-depth summary of user reviews, check out our user reviews of Vonage.

The Bottom Line

RingCentral and Vonage both deliver excellent phone services at different prices to meet your needs. While Vonage offers customizable plans that allow you to pick and choose the features you’d like to have, RingCentral comes out ahead because it offers strong built-in conferencing features, an easy out-of-the-box setup and 24/7 support. If neither are right, check out Grasshopper, our best virtual phone number provider.

If your business has a strong international presence, needs the ability to collaborate without limitations and wants a simple pricing structure without additional fees, then we recommend RingCentral. With a 15-day free trial, you can try the service at any tier to make sure it’s right for you with no upfront commitment required.

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