Best hotel phone systems to choose

Find the right provider for your hotel business with our in-depth review of the best phone systems available.

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Based on our in-depth research, the best hotel phone system provider for small businesses is bOnline. It offers a feature-filled, small business-centric service that includes an in-depth reporting dashboard and a preset call flows editor – all at a reasonable price compared to other top providers.

But, the important question is, regardless of bOnline’s title as our best hotel phone system provider, is it the right choice for your business? It isn’t the only contender in the ring – RingCentral and Mitel also offer fantastic hotel phone system solutions.

Setting up a hotel phone system costs time and money, and the service you’ve paid for not fitting the needs of your business is the last thing you want – especially after the huge difficulties the hospitality sector has faced during the pandemic.

If you want to carry out further research, read on for our review of the best hotel phone system providers. We’ll also explain the benefits of using a hotel phone system for your business, and offer some top tips for choosing the right hotel phone system to suit your needs.

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The top hotel phone system providers: an overview

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Provider

bOnline

Provider

Mitel

Provider

GoTo

Provider

LilyComms

Provider

RingCentral

Provider

4Com

Best for

Small, boutique hotels wanting affordable phone systems

Best for

Small businesses looking to scale

Best for

Features to help maximise efficiency and productivity

Best for

24/7 customer support and dedicated onboarding

Best for

Unified communications across your staff

Best for

Hotel staff who are always on the go

Pricing from

£6 per month

Pricing from

£13.59 per month

Pricing from

£10.00 per month

Pricing from

Bespoke quotes only

Pricing from

£7.99 per month

Pricing from

Bespoke quotes only

According to our research, the top UK hotel phone system providers are:

  1. bOnline
  2. Mitel
  3. GoTo
  4. LilyComms
  5. RingCentral
  6. 4Com

Whether you’re searching for the best support, pricing, scalability, or more, we’ve profiled each of these best hotel phone providers for small UK businesses to help you find the ideal match for your priorities – highlighting the features, prices, and pros and cons of each. Below is a general overview of each provider:

The best hotel phone systems: a deep dive

bOnline logo

Cost:

Pay as you go = £6 per user/month

Unlimited = £13.95 per user/month

Unlimited calling & video = £15.50 per user/month

bOnline has received countless telecoms business awards in recent years. It champions itself as the UK’s number one small business VoIP provider – and offers a full comms package, which includes broadband, a website and a VoIP telephone system. This VoIP software provider has already helped support over 50,000 small UK businesses and is the perfect provider for boutique hotels that want an affordable VoIP system.

Features

bOnline offers 50+ features – including unlimited calling, a reporting dashboard, a digital phone line, and a mobile app. You’ll also be able to try out the service free for 30 days. The reporting dashboard is a unique bOnline feature that some providers don’t offer, or offer only on a premium plan (which isn’t cost effective for small businesses). It uses infographics and processes real-time data, so you can interpret insights and make business decisions based on call volumes and durations. This is great for predicting how busy certain times of the day will be at your hotel, so you can plan rota’s and make sure you’ve got enough staff working during peak hours.

You can also preset call flows, a function offered only by bOnline. This allows you to customise call flows to your business, directing customers through the appropriate contact channels. This feature is especially handy if you don’t have an existing PBX system, auto-attendant, or receptionist. It’s also perfect for directing guests to the appropriate team, for example, your hotel’s leisure centre, spa, or room service.

You can set up the bOnline VoIP hosted system in just two minutes, with no engineers, installations, or IT buffs required (a piece of cake compared to 4com and Lily, both of which have lengthy onboarding processes that can take weeks).

Verdict

For us, bOnline wins the title of best hotel phone system provider for small businesses because it is built specifically for smaller operations. In the larger picture of telecoms companies, bOnline doesn’t have the operational capacity and technical ability of 8×8 or RingCentral. But we write reviews for startups and small business owners – and bOnline is the best product for our readers.

Pros:
  • Free 30-day trial so you can see what the service has to offer
  • Comprehensive CRM integrations with Salesforce AND Hubspot
  • Insightful, easy-to-interpret reporting dashboard to help you identify call trends
  • Unlimited calling option at £9 per month/per user is a great price for the 50+ features you get
  • Brilliant customer service – it’s the only micro business-focused telecoms company rated ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot
  • Price match guarantee
Cons:
  • Not suitable for medium to large-sized businesses – so be aware of this if planning to scale and grow your hotel exponentially

mitelhotelphonesystem

Cost:

Essentials = £13.59 per user/month

Premier = £17.84 per user/month

Elite = £23.79 per user/month

Features

Mitel provides sophisticated phone systems and specialist packages tailored to different industries, including the hospitality sector. The MiCloud Connect, Mitel’s VoIP package, gives businesses the option to create their own phone system package with a number of integrations, including Outlook and G Suite. The Premier and Elite packages come with useful features like voicemail transcription, on-demand call recording, and archiving. All helpful tools for hotel receptions to utilise.

Verdict

The Mitel 400 Hospitality Package comes with an array of features specifically designed with customer service in mind. It’s the ideal professional solution for communication and administrations in hotels offering guest management services. Even better, its versatility makes it the perfect phone system for hotels that are looking to scale – it provides a solution that can cater for small businesses with as few as four rooms, to those offering a high level of comfort with up to nearly 300 rooms.

Pros:
  • MiVoice Office Mobile Application, which allows users to answer hotel desk phone calls remotely as they work on the go
  • Support for Mitel’s broad phone portfolio (SIP, digital, analog)
  • Audio, web and video conferencing
  • Services including directory integration, building automation, click-to-call and more
Cons:
  • More expensive plans than other providers
  • Features tailored to larger hotel businesses or businesses looking to scale (so if you’re intending to keep operations small, Mitel isn’t the best option)

Cost:

Basic = £10 per user/month

Standard = £21 per user/month

Premium = £44 per user/month

Features

GoToConnect by GoTo is a feature-filled hotel phone system, great for small hotels requiring round-the-clock, 24/7 support. It boasts an abundance of useful features for your hotel to utilise, including HD video conferencing included as standard with every plan. The GoToConnect app allows you to seamlessly switch between your desk phone, mobile, and desktop app to take calls. Whilst the nifty dial plan visual editor is great for quickly and easily, configuring call routing. This is ideal for setting up particular call flows and directing hotel guests and customers to the appropriate team.

Verdict

GoToConnect is a great phone system for hotels that may need to regularly change preset call flows. The HD video conferencing function is great if you’re always on the go and need to catch up remotely with your hotel staff. However, GoToConnect hasn’t been developed specifically with hotels in mind, and so the fact it comes with lots of nifty features that are only available on the standard or premium plan results in it becoming quite an expensive provider, especially for smaller, boutique hotels.

Pros:
  • Create your own custom call routing and dial plans with a drag-and-drop Dial Plan Editor
  • Employees can communicate from anywhere with the GoToConnect app, using mobile, laptop or desk phone
  • HD video conferencing is included with every licence – great for remote working businesses who frequently need to collaborate
Cons:
  • Although a lot more features, many of them are only available on the GoToConnect standard or premium plans, which are more expensive than similar plans offered by other competitors

 

lilycommshotelphone

Cost:

Doesn’t publish set price plans, instead provides personalised quotes after assessing business needs

Lily supplies over 2,500 businesses across the UK with its award-winning VoIP communications system. Its on-premise VoIP solution enables businesses to adopt a hybrid phone system, meaning they can use their analogue system alongside an internet-based cloud phone system – giving them the best of both worlds.

Features

Lily offers a brilliant hosted VoIP system for hotels, with monthly savings of 30-60% if you’re switching from older ISDN or analogue lines. Its VoIP offering comes with a range of features, including call recording, auto-attendant, personalised messages, and the Collaborate platform. Collaborate is an all-in-one unified communications app included free with your VoIP service, and is ideal for teams needing to collaborate frequently – it offers voice calls, video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing and more, all in one place.

Verdict

With a solid five star Trustpilot rating, Lily Communications is a reliable provider that puts a focus on its relationships with its customers. It’s up there as the best provider for customer support, promising a maximum four hour response time for any major fault, and providing a dedicated account manager to support you through, from the setup process to any issues/queries further down the line. It’s ideal for hotel businesses just starting out, who need dedicated support to get their phone system up and running smoothly.

Pros:
  • 24/7 support options
  • Dedicated account manager for great customer relationship management
  • Fairly priced – 86% of Lily customers have saved money
  • Microsoft Outlook integration for email
  • Designed to scale – with specific packages suited for businesses of varying sizes
Cons:
  • Pricing is only available on request
  • Customer reviews say setting the system up can take some time
  • Up to a 16 hour wait time for minor faults

ringcentralhotelphone

 

Cost:

Essentials = £7.99 per user/month

Standard = £14.99 per user/month

Premium = £19.99 per user/month

Ultimate = £24.99 per user/month

Features

RingCentral’s essential plan comes with 100 inclusive outbound minutes per user/per month as standard which is great for communicating with future hotel guests, and at only £7.99 per month, it’s a fairly competitive price for what you get. The service can be integrated with hundreds of apps, including Microsoft 365, Salesforce and Google. Keep in mind that integration with Salesforce and Zendesk is only available with the premium plan.

Features on the standard and premium plans include call management (auto-attendant), high-definition voice, and quality of service reports that are great for measuring employee performance. 24/7 customer support is included with all four plans, and the premium plan even comes with a dedicated account manager.

Verdict

Despite RingCentral boasting 24/7 support on all of its plans, customer satisfaction levels are relatively low on review sites like Trustpilot, as technical support isn’t the best and resolution times are often slow. But this is largely due to RingCentral’s popularity, and if you can grasp the app, with its easy-to-use interface and simple functionality, you won’t need much support anyway.

Pros:
  • Out-of-the-box integrations with Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, and more
  • 50+ features, including, auto-attendant, and call recording
  • Supports a wide range of desktop VoIP phones from vendors such as Cisco, Polycom, and Yealink if you’ve already got handsets
  • Can integrate with some existing PBX systems
Cons:
  • RingCentral Essentials package is very stripped back feature-wise, and doesn’t include unlimited audio and video meetings
  • Customer support isn’t great – long resolution times for some technical issues. This will be a nightmare if the service goes down during holiday season at your hotel

4comhotelphone

Cost:

Doesn’t publish set price plans, instead provides personalised quotes after assessing business needs

4Com offers its own VoIP system through its HiHi series of phones. The HiHi is a tablet phone that slots into a docking station. It offers businesses flexibility by giving employees the option to take their HiHi phone wherever they move to around the hotel, simply by taking the tablet out of its docking station.

Features

Hotels can use the HiHi VoIP phone for calling, video calling, instant messaging, call recording, and reporting. You can also upload social media and customer relationship management (CRM) apps onto the HiHi device – although it’s worth bearing in mind that the device doesn’t have the same level of processing power as popular devices like Samsung or Apple tablets. The HiHi phones also come with ‘HiHi Connect’ and ‘HiHi There’ apps for unified communication across your business (instant messaging).

Verdict

4Com tailors its VoIP package to the unique needs of your business, which is why it doesn’t have any prices advertised. There are no fixed costs or set prices, making it ideal for hotels that may experience fluctuating or lower guest volumes. In other words, you won’t have to pay for something you don’t need. 24-hour fault reporting is included, but 24-hour support is an extra cost.

Pros:
  • Pricing is determined according to needs and usage – making 4Com a very cost-efficient service
  • HiHi phone models are versatile and easily portable – can be used as both a phone and tablet
  • HiHi2 phone system comes with beneficial features including call recording, call reporting, and on-hold marketing
  • Bespoke, personalised training is provided to your employees, so everyone can easily get to grips with your new phones and software
Cons:
  • Unfixed pricing is not so good for a business needing to make lots of calls
  • 24-hour support is available, but not included in the standard cost – you must pay extra for it
  • Tablets aren't designed to support heavy-duty software

Top tips for choosing the best hotel telephone system for you

Overseeing the comings and goings in a busy hotel can be quite a task, with both guests and staff needing some form of management at all times. Basic hotel IP phone systems can do just that, providing up-to-date guest information, LCD screens, and voicemail.

Some questions to consider to help you choose a hotel phone system include:

  • How many calls does your hotel make and receive each day?
  • Do your guests/staff mainly require national or international calls?
  • Which other systems, if any, might your phone system need to be integrated with? E.g. a booking system or restaurant management software
  • How many lines does your hotel need?
  • Where do you intend to use the phone systems?

Consider the type of hotel phone you might need

From full-featured reception consoles to more basic phones for guests’ rooms, there are a variety of hotel phones available, providing varying levels of functionality.

Hotel guest room phones

A guest room phone will usually be durable and easy to use, as well as wall mountable. Typically, it has limited functionality, with features including caller ID, a wake-up call function, and voicemail.

Hotel reception phones

A hotel reception phone is an essential tool for communicating vital information around the hotel.

Therefore, a decent hotel reception phone will usually have HD audio (to ensure there’s no miscommunication), a large touchscreen display for viewing guest information, and mobile integration, alongside all the features you’d expect from a standard internet protocol (IP) phone.

Other hotel phones

When deciding on a phone for the other rooms in your hotel, such as the gym, kitchen, or laundry room, think about what would be suitable for that environment and what kind of functionality you’ll need.

For example, a phone in a busy, noisy, greasy kitchen should be hard-wearing and easy to use, while your laundry room phone should be connected to a system that makes it reachable by all your guests.

What will guests expect?

While guests’ needs are likely to vary, there are some key features that many will expect from telephones for hotels. These include:

  • Wake-up calls
  • Room-to-room calls
  • Front desk connection
  • National/international dialling

How much will hotel phone handsets cost?

Although prices can vary depending on the size and capability of the phone system you require for your small hotel, below we’ve provided a guide as to what you might expect to pay.

Type of phoneNumber of phonesCost per phone
Reception1–2£300
Guest rooms25 or fewer£25–£50
Kitchen 1£50
Gym1£50
Laundry room1£50

In terms of calculating the overall cost of setting up a hotel phone system, the best thing to do is to compare prices from the top UK providers directly using our free comparison tool. You’ll receive bespoke quotes and further information to help you make the right decision for your business.

How we test business telephone (VoIP) systems

We tested eight VoIP systems to evaluate them in terms of functionality, usability, security options, cost, and more so we can make the most useful recommendations to small UK-based businesses.

Our rigorous testing process means these products have been scored and rated in seven main categories of investigation and 16 subcategories – in fact, we covered 78 areas of investigation in total. We then gave each category score a ‘relevance weighting' to ensure the product's final score perfectly reflects the needs of our Startups.co.uk readers.

Our main testing categories for VoIP systems are:

Customer Score: external customer opinion as to their satisfaction; the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular VoIP product. Also, the market position and reputation a VoIP software holds.

Cost: the pricing structure associated with the VoIP service, such as monthly subscription fees, call rates, and setup fees.

Features: the functionalities and capabilities offered by the VoIP service, e.g. call forwarding, voicemail, call waiting, and caller ID.

External Connections: the VoIP service's ability to connect and integrate with external systems or devices, including compatibility with existing phone systems and integration with mobile devices.

Customer Support: the assistance and resources provided by the VoIP service provider to customers, such as technical support, documentation, and online resources.

Security Options: the measures and features implemented by the VoIP service to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and protection of voice communications and data.

Scalability: the ability of the VoIP service to accommodate the growth and changing needs of an organization, such as the capacity to handle a growing number of users or support multiple locations.

The Startups product testing process

The Startups product testing process diagram

Next steps: roundup and comparing the best hotel phone systems

As mentioned earlier, the best hotel phone system provider for small businesses is without a doubt bOnline. Although an underdog in the telecoms industry, this company brushes aside its competition with ease, beating industry veteran Mitel to the top spot.

bOnline is the best provider because it offers the whole package, specifically tailored to small businesses. For starters, you get 50+ features provided as standard, including unlimited calling and an incredibly user-friendly mobile app. The reporting dashboard is an excellent, customisable feature that produces real-time data so you can monitor staff resource, and you don’t have to be signed up to the premium package to access it.

The hotel phone system offered by Lily Comms comes with excellent service, but the reason it doesn’t make the cut as the best overall provider is that it falls short of the technical capacity necessary to offer the software-savvy features specifically helpful to hotel businesses. 4com and GoTo successfully balance the offering of customer support and technical savviness, but don’t offer enough features to compete with bOnline for the best provider title.

Regardless of our opinion, you should always compare hotel phone system providers before signing on the dotted line. The last thing you want is to be stuck in a contract with a service that doesn’t fulfil the needs of your business, even if it is, generally speaking, a great product.

This is where our custom-built comparison tool comes in. We’ve partnered with some of the best hotel phone system suppliers to help you get the best service for your business. Simply fill in a few basic details, and providers will be in touch with bespoke personalised quotes for you to compare, along with further details about why the service they offer would best suit the needs of your business.

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Written by:
Ross has been writing for Startups since 2021, specialising in telephone systems, digital marketing, payroll, and sustainable business. He also runs the successful entrepreneur section of the website. Having graduated with a Masters in Journalism, Ross went on to write for Condé Nast Traveller and the NME, before moving in to the world of business journalism. Ross has been involved in startups from a young age, and has a keen eye for exciting, innovative new businesses. Follow him on his Twitter - @startupsross for helpful business tips.
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