Startups need efficient and affordable phone systems to create a great impression among investors and customers, communication management, and customer retention.
How can the best phone system for startups help your business? Statistics indicate that over 90% of startups in the U.S fail, with 10% failing in the first year. Founders face challenges finding capital, projecting confidence, acquiring customers, and managing time and cash flow.
Investors and customers expect quick and seamless interactions, and missing a single call could spell disaster for startups already reeling under the weight of challenges. Phones for startups should ensure the highest reliability, excellent voice quality, and flawless communication to ensure smooth collaborations.
Switch to Community Phone, the best wireless business phone service that offers the reliability of landline access and impressive features of a VoIP phone as a cost-effective solution for your startup.
Learn how Community Phone is the best wireless phone system for startups and small businesses.
What Do Startups Need in a Phone System?
Reliability
To create a professional image and build trust among customers, startups need a phone system that can help with flawless communication without call drops, jitters, latency, and crackled calls. So landline phones are the best bet to earn that professional advantage.
Service providers are shutting down reliable copper wire services nationwide, thanks to the FCC regulation. VoIP phones are not the best solution for a startup, as thousands of businesses have complained of call drops, latency, jitters, and crackled calls. The phones going down during a network or power outage can have dire consequences for your startup.
With its FCC-approved Cellular protocol, Community Phone’s wireless business landline service is the best solution for your startup's communication challenges.
Community Phone: The Most Reliable Business Landline Service
Community Phone’s revolutionary landline base connects to cell towers in your area, eliminating the need for a copper connection or internet. The company boasts strong coverage across 99% of the United States, including rural areas, as they have partnered with nationwide carriers for seamless connectivity.
The landline base amplifies signal strength and improves voice clarity and call quality in poor reception areas. The 12-hour backup battery ensures your business phones keep running even during a blackout.
Talk to Community Phone’s Business Specialists to learn about business features, or Read on!
Scalability
You will need your phone system to scale with your business. Digital phone lines make scalability cumbersome owing to the time and money involved in expensive installations.
VoIP phones may provide some flexibility but at the expense of dependability and a pricey high-speed internet connection, which has a detrimental effect on companies' limited budgets.
The wireless landline service offered by Community Phone is the best choice for a startup. You are not bound by contracts and can grow your phone lines in accordance with your company's needs without worrying about additional charges.
Affordability
Digital phone lines are expensive bundled options disguised as upgrades. VoIP phones may require high-speed internet for good voice clarity and call quality, yet internet unavailability and blind spots will be a concern.
Build trust and credibility, attract and retain customers and investors with Community Phone’s affordable business phone service that offers several calling features best suited for startups.
8 Best Phone Systems For Startups and Small Businesses
1. Community Phone: The Best Phone System for Startups
Here are some features that make Community Phone stand out as the best phone system for startups and small businesses:
Custom Dial Menu
With this feature, you can program a custom greeting for your business to convey a special message to callers and build a great first impression among investors and customers.
Or, you can opt for the auto attendant, which you can program to route calls to different people, answer frequently asked questions, or route calls to voicemails during off-business hours, projecting confidence and making your business appear larger.
Number Choice
Your phone number tells the caller a lot about your business. Show solidarity and a feeling of belonging, and build trust with the local community by getting a local number.
Get a toll-free number from Community Phone to generate goodwill among customers and to build that professional image.
A vanity number can help customers remember your brand and bring in referrals for you, helping you reduce your customer acquisition costs.
You can add your business landline to your existing cell phone or a new cell if you want to be available to prospective customers and investors 24/7. This can help you postpone investing in a landline until you are ready. Once ready, you can use the same business number in your landline base and continue using your business service without interruptions.
Call Routing
Never miss another call from an investor, a customer, or a prospect with Community Phone’s call routing feature. You can program several phones in your business to ring concurrently to ensure an available person can answer the call.
Or, you can program numbers to ring subsequently if the first line is busy. Once you scale up, you can program an automated call distribution system to distribute calls to available representatives.
Call Forwarding
Being a startup founder, you may want to be available for your customers, investors, and prospects 24/7. Get your business calls forwarded to your cell phone when you are away from your office with the call forwarding option to ensure you always are available for your customers.
Voicemail-to-email
Never miss an opportunity to impress your customers or prospects with the voicemail-to-email feature. You can check your voicemails in text format when you are away from your business phone, without logging into your voicemail box, and respond to emergencies.
Live Call Transfer
Several studies on consumer behavior have shown that callers detest being put on hold. Use the live call transfer option to transfer calls to the right person without placing the call on hold. As your business scales, you can use this option to program an infinite number of extensions to connect your multiple locations.
Spam Call Blocking
Never allow spam calls to rob your startup of bandwidth or scam you. Block unwanted robocalls with the robust spam call blocking services from Community Phone before your phone rings, and divert the time and resources to something productive for your startup.
Other Providers
2. Nextiva
Nextiva, a VoIP service provider, enables teams to interact with their clients and work together on projects.
Nextiva also has cognitive analytics, which companies can use to help them make decisions that will improve their customer service. For instance, you can keep tabs on incoming calls, dropped calls, average call and idle times, and much more.
Characteristics:
There are several sales and service tools available.
Decent analytics for customer communications, intelligent reminders to follow up
Pricing:
Essential Plan costs $25.95 per month per user.
Professional Plan: $30.95 per user per month
Enterprise Plan: $40.95 per user per month
3. Ooma
Ooma, a VoIP service provider, offers 2 options—keeping your current phone number or selecting a new one—free of charge.
Joining Ooma's business service gives you access to additional advantages like a free local phone number, a free toll-free number, a native mobile app, and virtual fax. Ooma's plans provide more than 50 calling capabilities for practical cooperation and communication.
Key Features:
50+ features for business calling
There is a free new phone number available.
Supports messaging and a virtual fax system
Pricing:
Office Essentials Plan: $19.95 per user per month.
Office Pro Plan: $24.95 per month per user
Plan Office Pro Plus: $29.95 per user/month
4. Phone.com
Phone.com's VoIP technology lets you make calls over an internet connection. Phone.com provides its customers with cutting-edge, adaptive, and economical communications solutions and U.S-based customer support.
Pricing:
For phone numbers, Phone.com offers volume-based discounts.
The cost per number from 1 to 10 is $4.99.
Each number from 10 to 49 becomes $4.49.
5. RingCentral
For enterprises, RingCentral provides all-inclusive communication solutions. With just one app, it handles everything from voice conversations and messaging to faxing. The RingCentral app enables quick setup of your business phone system for easy customer and team communications and flexible team collaboration.
RingCentral is designed to help you keep your personal and professional contacts separate for effective communication. In addition, you receive real-time system usage statistics and activities for effective decision-making.
Key Elements:
Allows you to combine essential work apps
Provides a 99.9% service availability guarantee
Offers complete message encryption and round-the-clock customer support.
Pricing:
Essentials Plan costs $14.99 per user per month.
Standard Plan: $20.99 per user per month
Premium Plan: $26.24 per user each month
Ultimate Plan: $37.49 per user per month
6. Google Voice
Google Voice for Google Workspace is a phone service that allows you to make and receive business-related calls and messages.
Key features:
Read voicemail transcripts in your inbox and search them like emails.
Personalize voicemail greetings.
Make international calls at low rates.
Get protection from spam calls and messages.
Block unwanted callers.
Pricing:
Starter plan: $10 per user per month
Standard Plan: $20 per user per month
Premier Plan: $30 per user per month
7. Grasshopper
A contemporary option for business communication is Grasshopper. A virtual phone system and a business line are integrated into your phone by its cutting-edge app, enabling flexible conversations from any location.
Although Grasshopper provides a virtual business calling service, all numbers, including toll-free, vanity, and local phone numbers, are still accessible.
Key Elements:
Enables auto-text response for each customer
Call greeting that sounds expert
Provides phony phone numbers
Helps you to keep your private and professional interactions separate.
Pricing:
$26 per month for the solo plan
$44/user/month for the Partner Plan
Small Business Plan: $80 per user per month
8. Vonage
Vonage provides a selection of VoIP business phone plans that enable businesses to get their toll-free number and take advantage of the company's cutting-edge mobile services.
Key features:
Desktop and mobile app
Video conferencing
Online meetings
Multi-level auto-attendant
Call recording and group calling.
Pricing:
Vonage offers three business phone plans ranging from $19.99 to $39.99 per month. There are more features with each level up.
Conclusion
With statistics predicting many startups closing even before they march into their third year, you need all of the resources in your startup to work for you. Position your brand positively in the market by getting a reliable phone system, and be available to investors and customers.
Community Phone can be your startup's best communication partner, helping you build a strong brand reputation, attract and retain clients and investors, and scale your business.
Reach out to Community Phone today!