Google Voice is a great option for people who already use and love Google goods, which is why it made our list of the best business VoIP phone services. It’s also a great way to combine your work and personal life. So, Nextiva and Ooma are our top choices for VoIP companies because they have a lot of tools that are useful for businesses of all kinds.
Nextiva is an all-in-one communications tool that helps you and your team stay in touch. It has the best customer service in the industry, a 99.999% uptime guarantee, endless online texts, free phone numbers, an auto-attendant, video chatting, call pops, and more. And for most businesses, it’s our top choice.
Nextiva is a messaging tool for businesses that includes video chat, business SMS, online copying, and a lot more. It’s a complete VoIP option for businesses of all kinds, from brand-new starts to Fortune 500 companies. It’s also one of the best managed phone systems that works well with VoIP technology.
Ooma has a lot of great call management features, such as virtual lines for your team members, a virtual receptionist for directing calls, and transfer and hold music. These are some of the more than 50 features that come with Ooma’s Office Essentials plan right out of the box.
Nextiva and Ooma are our top choices because of how reliable they are, how many features they have, and how much they cost. However, that doesn’t mean they’re right for everyone, especially if you don’t need all of those extra features.
If you’re nodding your head yes, Google Voice is a great option to VoIP that’s easy to use. Read on to find out who should use it, what you need to get started, how it works, and how to get going in the next 30 minutes.
What are the best tools for phone services that use VoIP?
If you need more features than what Google Voice offers, our list of the best VoIP phone services and companies has some strong options that may work better for you. We looked at more than a dozen VoIP service companies before deciding on the best ones for most users. These competitors to Google Voice have a lot going for them.
Nextiva is our top choice for a VoIP service because it has great call quality for both receiving and outgoing calls, and its basic plan is a great deal. When you sign up for Nextiva, you can change the features of your monthly plan to meet your changing needs.
If you choose Ooma as your VoIP service, you can often use the tools you already have. This saves you money and makes the setup process easier. Get in touch with Ooma right away to get a free price for the services and features you want.
Google Voice: Why You Should Use It
Google Voice is a great add-on if you already do a lot of work in Google Workspace. It makes it easier to handle various phone numbers.
Most folks have a cell phone number at the very least.
Some people may have a landline phone at their home or job. Some people even have a second cell phone number that they use for work. Other people have a mix of these things.
You can forward all of these lines to a single number with Google Voice. This lets you take calls from different numbers on a single device.
It’s a simple way to handle work calls, personal calls, and home talks. People who own their own businesses, run small businesses, or work for big companies all believe the answer.
Google Voice makes everything easier if you have more than one phone line, no matter what.
Some of you might think that the last thing you need is another phone number.
But a Google Voice number might be the last number you ever need. It’s great for bringing together different ways to talk into one place.
Here are some reasons why you shouldn’t carry around multiple phones and should instead use this VoIP.
- You can make and receive phone calls through Gmail
If you have a free Gmail account, you can call the U.S. and Canada for free right from your email. The trouble is that every time you call, you get a random phone number that the person you’re calling won’t know, and most people just don’t answer calls from strange numbers.
With Google Voice, you can solve that problem right away. After you choose your Google Voice number, all Gmail calls you make will come from that number. So, the person you’re calling will know when you’re calling and be more likely to answer.
To make the deal even better, you can take calls right from your computer while using Gmail or Google Hangouts.
2. You can send as many texts as you want for free.
The Google Voice service lets you chat for free. That’s a great perk if you’re like most people and prefer to send a quick text message because it’s fast and easy.
With the Google Voice app on your phone, you can chat through the service. This can help you keep your business texts sent through Google Voice separate from your personal messages.
Plus, you can text from any device or app when you need to. You can use Google Voice from your web browser or install its Chrome application to get alerts and send and receive texts from within that browser.
The summary for Google Voice shows people in the web experience.
This has the added benefit of making it easy to sync across all devices. Not only are your messages always up-to-date no matter where you check them, but you won’t lose them if you have to restart your phone or get a new one. You can always look through the online record of your letters to find the information you need.
3. All of your calls can be sent to one number.
You can send calls from your Google Voice number to another number. This helps when it’s time to get a new phone or move cell phone service providers. All you have to do is get a new cell phone number and forward your Google Voice number to it, or forward it to your old phone number.
The Google Voice mobile interface shows two screens. One shows the devices you can forward calls to, and the other shows texts that have been screened for trash.
Google also lets you move your current phone number to Google Voice. This way, you don’t have to give everyone your Google Voice number. Even though this function costs extra, it may be worth it for you if it’s important to keep your work and personal phone numbers separate.
4. Your voice mails are written down.
Google Voice not only has voicemail, but it also uses its powerful speech recognition technology to turn your message into text.
This is a great tool for people who need to decide if a message is important enough to leave a meeting for or who just hate listening to voicemails. Also, if you get a lot of voicemails, it’s just as easy to look through them for important information as it is to do the same with emails.
5. You can listen to voicemails right away
You can listen to voicemails as they are being left with Google Voice. This is a pretty special trait that not all phone companies give.
It’s a great way to check calls and texts fast without having to wait for them to finish.
Even better, you can pick up the phone while someone is leaving you a message. All you have to do is press the * key, and the caller will be put through to you.
6. You can make rules for call forwarding
With this service, you can send all your calls and lines to a single Google Voice number. But that’s not everything. You can tell the calls where to go and when to come in by setting up rules.
Say you want to spend the day playing golf and don’t want to be bothered. During the time you’ll be playing, you can set up rules so that any calls to your cell phone will go to your office phone system.
screen shot of how to set up call transfer rules on Google Voice
If you need to make sure you get a call, you can also set the order of importance for your phones. This means that someone trying to reach you could call your Google Voice number, which is set up to go to your home phone first, then your work phone if you don’t answer at home, and finally your cell phone if you don’t answer either of the first two. Or, you can make all the numbers ring at the same time, which is a great option for small business owners or freelancers.
7. Calls can be recorded
Google Voice makes it easy to record talks, and all you have to do is press a button to start or stop recording. The recordings are easy to get to online at any time.
This is a great tool for talks and interviews over the phone that are important. You can save them and use them whenever you need to.
Call recordings can be very helpful when you need to take careful notes. You don’t have to try to take notes during the call. Instead, you can focus on the call itself and listen to the recording afterward.
8. It’s easy to change phones
This service is different because you can switch phones in the middle of a call. You just press the star key, and the other phones you’ve tied to your Google Voice will ring. You can pick up any of them.
You can actually pick up where you left off, and the person on the other end of the line might not even realize anything has changed.
This isn’t something you might use every day, but it works great if you’re on the phone at home or at work and need to go somewhere. It’s also helpful if you’re running a little late to a meeting and want to switch to your favorite device when you get there.
9. It can be used for conference calls.
One of Google Voice’s open secrets is that you can hold a conference talk. The service can be used for both work and personal group calls. We have a full guide that tells you everything you need to know about making group calls with Google Voice. To be clear, this is not the same as using Google Meet to call into a meeting. Even though the two are a lot alike, Google Voice is a different offering.
10. It’s easy to block certain numbers
When you get spam or sales calls on your phone, you can stop them with Google Voice. Google Voice won’t let voice calls or text messages that you’ve stopped reach you.
Also, the person making the call or dialing the number will get a message saying “Number not in service.” The number that called you may then take you off its list of people to call.
Google Voice will keep a record of the number you blocked in your texts and calls logs. If you want to, you can go back to the log of past calls or texts and choose to unblock that number if you want to.
Google Voice: How It Works
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) makes it possible for all of these things to work. With this technology, you can use a high-speed internet link instead of a phone line to make calls.
When you use your Google Voice number to make a call, your voice is turned into a computer code that goes over the internet. With a VoIP tool like Google Voice, you can make calls right from your computer.
Google Voice: What You Need to Know
To set up Google Voice, all you need is a legal Google account and a mobile or home phone number in the U.S. or Canada. Google uses that phone number to make sure you are who you say you are and as the return number.
When used by one person in the United States, almost all Google Voice calls to U.S. and Canadian lines are free. If all you want to do is make and receive calls, you can probably get by with just Google Voice for personal use.
But if you want to use Google Workspace for work, you’ll have to choose a paid plan. You can choose from three choices, and each one is easy to add to your Workspace account.
