Best UK VoIP providers for small businesses

With the switch from traditional landlines to VoIP-based calling due to be complete by 2027, the time to make the move is now. That’s only good news, though, as VoIP is cheaper and more reliable, and provides superior audio quality.

Thanks to industry-based analysis carried out by our dedicated research department, we’ve determined that bOnline is the best VoIP provider for small businesses. Its Unlimited Calling plan provides big features like call queues, ring groups, and custom routing at a small price, making it perfect for small businesses.

As VoIP providers are tier-based, we’ve selected each provider’s best plan for small businesses so you can compare the right options for you straight away, with our choices based on the budgets and needs of SMEs.

You can use our comparison chart below to quickly compare the costs of each provider. If you’re looking to get set up with a full telephone system, including a handset, jump over to our round up of the best VoIP systems.

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BEST ALL ROUND
Provider bOnline	Provider 8×8	Provider RingCentral	Provider Dialpad	Provider GoTo	Provider Google Voice	Provider NBC Cloud Voice
Best for A budget-friendly VoIP provider	Best for Simplifying your communication channels	Best for Improving customer service	Best for Small customer service teams	Best for Multiple locations	Best for Google Workspace users	Best for Call centres who need unlimited minutes
Pricing from £7 per user, per month	Pricing from Bespoke	Pricing from £7.99 per user, per month (paid annually)	Pricing from £12 per user, per month (billed annually)	Pricing from Bespoke	Pricing from $16 per user, per month (Google Voice is only priced in US dollars)	Pricing from £9.99 per user, per month

You can compare leading UK VoIP providers using our free custom built comparison tool Compare Costs

1. bOnline: best budget-friendly VoIP provider for small businesses

Recommended plan: Unlimited Calling

bOnline

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• Starting price from: £7, per user, per month

• Low cost starter plan for micro-businesses
• Big call management features on a small budget
• Salesforce and Hubspot integrations

Summary bOnline is a UK-based telecommunications company that specializes in providing solutions specifically with a small business marketplace in mind. With a focus in low-cost, easy solutions, bOnline make the claim to be "the most awarded business VoIP phone for UK businesses with 1-5 employees".

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How much does it cost?

As far as value for money is concerned, we’d say you’re getting the best deal from bOnline. The Unlimited Calling plan provides exactly what its name promises, and you get some decent call management features included in the price. If you’re looking for a cost-effective VoIP solution, you could do a whole lot worse.

What are the standout features?

bOnline is a strong option for business owners who need a low cost but feature-filled VoIP solution, especially if this is your first VoIP system. It’s fast and easy to set up, taking around two minutes, and needing no engineering or installation fees.

We chose the Unlimited Calling plan as the best option for small businesses because, alongside unlimited UK calls, it comes with over 45 calling features, which can all help to streamline how your business answers calls. With call queues, you can handle multiple calls simultaneously, while ring groups assist in putting customers through to specific teams. Customisable routing will allow you to set parameters over when and how calls are handled, giving you a lot of control over your communications.

One thing to bear in mind, though, is that bOnline lacks the advanced security layers some other providers offer. If your business is particularly security conscious and handles a lot of sensitive data, Google Voice or 8×8 might be a better option for you.

What can it integrate with?

bOnline can integrate with a range of popular software, including MS Dynamics, Salesforce and HubSpot — however, you’ll have to pay an extra £5 per month to integrate this software with your VoIP plan. This might be an issue for smaller businesses that are particularly budget conscious.

What other plans does it offer?

bOnline Unlimited Calling is our recommendation, but bOnline offers two other plans, bOnline Starter, which is better for micro-businesses (ten employees or less), and also bOnline Unlimited Calling Plus. This plan includes everything from the Unlimited Calling plan, but also provides desk phones. This could save you some serious money if you were planning on buying a fleet of VoIP phones separately.

2. 8×8: best for simplifying your communication channels

Recommended plan: X2

8x8

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• Starting price from: Bespoke

• Includes unlimited calling time at no extra cost
• Video calls with up to 500 participants
• Large number of helpdesk and CRM integrations

Summary 8x8 is a California-based provider of VoIP products, and in 2018 they acquired Jitsi and Jitsi Meet. 8x8 brings together, voice, chat, video, API solutions and contact centers into a global could communications platform.

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How much does it cost?

8×8 doesn’t publicly list its pricing — it’ll give you a bespoke quote based on your needs, so you’ll need to contact the sales team directly. You can then compare this against the pricing we’ve shared for other providers to assess whether it’s a good deal.

What are the standout features?

If you want to streamline your internal communications, the X2 plan has you covered with an impressive range of options. You get HD video conferencing that allows for up to 500 participants, as well as team messaging and an SMS function.

The other big feature on the X2 plan is its unlimited voice calling to 14 different countries (if you upgrade to the more expensive X4 package, this gets bumped up to 48 countries). This is ideal if you’re making a tonne of sales calls to international businesses.

The video conferencing and intentional calling make this better suited to slightly larger organisations with well staffed customer service teams, who make a lot of overseas calls. However, if you just need a cheap and cheerful VoIP provider to get started, you’re better off taking a look at bOnline or NBC Cloud Voice instead.

What can it integrate with?

If you’re looking for a provider that can handle a lot of integrations, 8×8 has you covered. It supports a wide ecosystem of software, including HubSpot, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Zendesk and many others.

What other plans does it offer?

X2 is our recommendation for small businesses, but you can upgrade to the more expensive X4 plan to get a wider range of countries in your calling package, plus supervisor analytics and advanced call training features like whisper (which allows for discreet communication between two users during a call, great for live coaching) and barge (which allows you to join a users live call).

3. RingCentral: best for improving customer satisfaction

Recommended plan: Standard

RingCentral

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• Starting price from: £12.99, per user, per month

• Great for streamlining your communications at a large scale
• A range of plans that can suit different business needs
• Impressive number of integrations

Summary Based in California, RingCentral provides cloud-based communication and collaboration products and services, including a cloud-based business phone system. Founded in 1999, it has grown to now serve over 400,000 customers worldwide and is available in 46 countries.

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How much does it cost?

RingCentral’s Standard plan pricing seems reasonable enough, but you need to factor in that it’s one of the few providers on this list that doesn’t provide unlimited calling at this price level. With the Standard plan, you get 750 inclusive minutes per user. If unlimited minutes is a must-have for your business, 8×8 will be a better option.

What are the standout features?

RingCentral helps keep your customer base happy by combining sophisticated call management tools with a wide range of communication methods. You can make sure your VoIP system is as efficient as possible with features like answering rules, call flip, shared lines, and notifications. All this means you can make sure your customers are getting the smoothest call experience possible.

Alongside 8×8, we also consider RingCentral to have some of the strongest user support options available. You get 24/7 unlimited chat and phone support, so if your business needs round the clock reliable support and you can’t risk your phones going on the fritz (if you offer all-hours support to your clients, for example), this will be a valuable feature.

While we do consider RingCentral to provide some good unified communications options (including video conferencing and the more niche e-fax), we would have liked to have seen it include SMS, which Dialpad, GoTo, and 8×8 all have.

What can it integrate with?

RingCentral offers a large ecosystem of integrations, covering everything from analytics to AI. It supports major software such as Microsoft 365, Slack, and more. Just note that the Essentials plan doesn’t cover this — you’ll need to plump for Standard or higher.

What other plans does it offer?

What’s great about RingCentral is that it offers a lot in terms of scalability, with a flexible range of plans. We recommend the Standard plan, but it also has the Premium plan, which comes with more minutes and advanced features like single sign-on to boost efficiency. Its most expensive plan, Ultimate, comes with unlimited storage and the option to upgrade to unlimited business calling within EMEA.

4. Dialpad: best for small customer service teams

Recommended plan: Pro

Dialpad

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• Starting price from: £12, per user, per month

• Adept at managing high call volumes
• Compatibility with four types of desk phone
• Can intregrate with Salesforce, Hubspot, and Zendesk

Summary Dialpad is aimed at both small and large companies, and is using communications AI to provide unified products. They have a global reach, with 11 offices around the world, and serve 30,000 customers including big names like Xero.

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How much does it cost?

Dialpad Pro isn’t the cheapest plan — it’s about average — but we feel it offers the strongest call management features on this list, and was only just edged out by 8×8 for the number of software integrations available. So, you may consider it worth the money if you need to support a large number of calls.

What are the standout features?

If you’ve got a small customer service team trying to answer a high number of calls, they’re going to need all the help they can get. Dialpad Pro offers a full package of call management features to help you do just that. With options for custom call routing, call forwarding and three-way calling, your customer service team should be equipped with everything they need to seamlessly handle incoming calls.

The plan also comes with real-time call transcripts and quality-of-service reports to help your customer service team perform as well as they can. You also get automatic spam call detection, so you can be assured that your staff won’t be slowed down by annoying bogus calls.

It’s not slacking when it comes to communication channels either, offering team messaging, audio chat rooms, and even SMS (8×8 and GoTo are the only other providers to offer this). The only thing to keep in mind is that the max number of participants that are supported on a video call will be 10. So, if you host video calls with large teams, we’d recommend looking at 8×8 instead.

What can it integrate with?

Dialpad Pro can integrate with a solid range of major software, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zendesk, Slack, Salesforce and others. Just be aware that Single Sign-On software is only supported by Dialpad’s more expensive Enterprise plan. Dialpad mostly caters to big brand name integrations — if you’re using more niche software and you’d like to integrate it with your VoIP system, RingCentral’s list of available integrations is worth a look.

What other plans does it offer?

In addition to the Pro plan, there’s also Standard (which is a more limited service that’s better for micro-businesses), and Enterprise if you need to scale up. Enterprise can be set up across unlimited office locations and comes with ring groups, but just know that there isn’t a publicly listed price for this service. The Enterprise plan is also the only one that offers a 100% uptime guarantee.

5. GoTo Connect: best for companies with multiple locations

Suggested plan: Phone System 

GoTo Connect

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• Starting price from: Bespoke

• Unifies your communication channels
• Makes internal communication between different locations simple
• Compatible with over five brands of desk phone

Summary Based in Boston, Massachusetts, GoTo is a software as a service company that launched its cloud-based phone system and customer engagement software GoTo Connect in 2022.

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How much does it cost?

GoTo Connect doesn’t publicly disclose its costs. You can contact the company directly to arrange a meeting with an account manager, who can provide you with a bespoke quote. Our recommendation would be to contrast this against the pricing we’ve provided for competitors, so you can assess how much you should be paying.

What are the standout features?

GoTo Connect provides an impressive suite of call management features that we think are best suited to a more medium-sized operation. Its smart call routing and ring groups make it a great fit for companies that are spread around in different locations, as these tools make it easy for your employees and customers to quickly find colleagues who are based in separate offices.

We also found that GoTo Connect provides the widest range of communication channels. You get team messaging, video conferencing, SMS, and even e-fax, which gives you a lot of options for contacting your coworkers and customers. Another attention-grabbing feature from GoTo Connect is its international calling: you can make and receive calls from over 50 countries for free.

Small to medium-sized businesses that have an international presence and multiple offices may find GoTo Connect to be an ideal fit. The only major downside to be aware of is that you’re limited to 1,000 free minutes per month, which are shared across all your users. If having unlimited domestic minutes is a must-have for you, jump down to NBC instead.

What can it integrate with?

GoTo MarketPlace is the designated integrations store, where you can find programmes like Zapier, Slack and Salesforce and HubSpot. While you’re limited to the integrations provided on the MarketPlace, for more technically advanced operations, you can use GoTo’s development centre to build your own APIs to integrate with the software.

What other plans does it offer?

Phone System is our recommended small business solution from GoTo Connect, but they also offer Connect CX, which is a slightly more advanced option. With this you get access to enhanced reporting and analytics, and attendant console to streamline call management and more advanced integrations. There’s also an AI-powered Contact Center plan, which includes everything in both Phone System and Connect CX plans.

6. Google Voice: best for Google Workspace users

Recommended plan: Standard

Google Voice

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• Starting price from: $16, per user, per month (Google Voice pricing is only provided in US dollars)

• A low-cost option for Google Workspace users
• Solid spam prevention tools
• Free calls to the US

Summary Google Voice is a VoIP solution provided by Google that was previously only available in the US. Now businesses in the UK can access Google Voice as a paid add-on to Google Workspace.

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How much does it cost?

Google Voice’s pricing is only presented in US dollars.

Google Voice comes as a paid add-on to Google Workspace, so you’ll need to have Google Workspace already to access Google Voice. It’s an easy, low-cost option for Google Workspace users, but we wouldn’t recommend signing your business up to Workspace just to use Google Voice as your VoIP provider.

Here’s Google Workspace’s pricing, so you can work out the total cost:

What are the standout features?

If you’re already using Google Workspace day-to-day, using Google Voice as your VoIP provider is an easy choice. It will be simple to integrate and set up, and you’ll get access to a solid range of features and unlimited domestic minutes at a cost-effective price.

You’ll also get access to some pretty impressive security features. You get multi-factor authentication and user permissions, and you can create password rules, so you can rest easy knowing both your data, and your customers’, is fully secure. It also has some powerful spam filtering technology, so if you’ve been dealing with a lot of nuisance calls that are slowing down your staff, Google Voice can help put a stop to it.

It does lack some features that help handle high volumes of calls (like routing, call queues and call flip). This makes Google Voice less suitable for customer service teams that deal with lots of incoming calls — Dialpad will be a better option if this is your concern.

What can it integrate with?

This is unfortunately a big blindspot for Google Voice. Outside of a forum answer confirming that Salesforce is compatible, there’s little evidence of what software integrations Google Voice can support.

What other plans does it offer?

In addition to the Standard plan, Google Voice has a Starter plan that is limited to a maximum of ten users only. It also has the Premier plan, which is aimed at multi-national companies, and comes with sophisticated features like advanced reporting and automatic call recording.

7. NBC Cloud Voice: best for call centres needing unlimited calls at no extra cost

Recommended plan: Enterprise

NBC Cloud Voice

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• Starting price from: £9.99, per user, per month

• Low cost entry level tier
• Enterprise and Mobility plans provide unlimited calling
• Can help manage large call volumes

Summary National Business Communications is a UK based telecoms company that is specifically geared towards helping small businesses. Cloud Voice is its VoIP technology, and is backed by the BroadSoft solution by Cisco.

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How much does it cost?

NBC Cloud Voice is an expensive VoIP solution. At £17.99 a month, the Enterprise plan represents one of the more costly mid-tier options in this roundup. However, you do get unlimited UK landline and mobile calls built into the package, and the option for a handset starting at an extra £5 per month. So, if you’re looking for a plan with unlimited calls, decent features, and handsets as part of the deal, it could be worth the investment for you.

What are the standout features?

Alongside the unlimited UK calls, NBC Cloud Voice’s Enterprise plan provides a solid suite of call management features. With call queues, out of house management, call flows, multi-site support and more, it offers almost everything you’ll need to stay on top of high call volumes.

In addition to what NBC boasts is over 40 features (including tools like custom ring back groups and call analytics), you do also get the option to pay for additional advanced features, like an AI auto-attendent (from £2.99 per month) or call recording (which is an extra £5 per month). The initial cost is quite high though, so keep in mind that this could really start to add up.

One thing to be aware of is that you only get the Cloud Voice mobile app if you pay for the most expensive plan: Complete Mobility. The Cloud Voice Enterprise plan, which we feel is better suited to small businesses, does only come with a desktop app. So if you’re looking for your staff to take VoIP calls on their mobiles and don’t want to break the bank, we’d recommend bOnline instead.

What can it integrate with?

NBC Cloud Voice is unfortunately limited when it comes to integrations. The Enterprise plan allows for integration with Microsoft and Google, but that’s about it. RingCentral is compatible with a much more varied range of software, so if you’re looking to integrate CRM or helpdesk, it’ll be a better provider for your needs.

What other plans does it offer?

The Basic plan is only recommended for micro-businesses, and doesn’t come with any free calls. The most expensive plan, the Complete Mobility plan, comes with a basic desk phone as part of the plan, so this could be worth considering if you want to fully equip your staff.

Buying guide: how to choose a VoIP provider

By January 2027, all traditional landline phones will be replaced by VoIP telephone lines in the Big Switch Off. But different businesses have different needs. Some smaller businesses might just want a simple app-based virtual landline, for example.

You still need to know what to look for in an overall VoIP provider, though. Here are the main factors to consider:.

Step 1. Assess what your “must-haves” will be

Different providers’ plans will come with different features and tools. These will be suited to different types of businesses with different specific requirements. There are basic call features that every business will need (like voicemail), but here are some more extra options you should keep in mind:

• Desktop and mobile apps: A call centre might not necessarily need all of its staff to have mobile apps, whereas an on-the-go sales team would consider this a non-negotiable.
• Integrations: Businesses that operate helpdesks and customer service outfits will consider CRM software to be a critical part of their infrastructure. Not all VoIP plans include CRM or helpdesk integrations, so make sure your package can support the third-party software you need.
• Training tools: Getting your staff up to speed with your new VoIP system will be crucial for efficiency. Look out for providers that offer training and onboarding support for managers.
• Help and support: VoIP is considerably more reliable than a traditional telephone line, but it’s still a technology, and so not infallible. Keep an eye out for providers that offer a variety of support channels, that ideally operate 24/7.

Step 2. Decide on a budget

While every business wants to keep its overheads down, going for the cheapest option isn’t always the best idea. You might need to splash out on more advanced features, like analytics and reporting. Or it may be worth opting for a more expensive plan that includes unlimited minutes.

Step 3. Think about communication channels

You’ll need to think about both your internal and external communication channels. How do your staff prefer to communicate? Is video conferencing a critical part of your day-to-day communications? How do you want to be able to contact your customers? Will SMS messaging need to be included?

Step 4. Consider contract length

Generally, VoIP providers tend to sell contracts on a 12 or 24-month basis. As running a startup is always a tumultuous prospect, we’d recommend looking for shorter term contracts. You don’t want to be locked into an agreement that you discover isn’t right for you, or that you won’t actually end up using.

Read next: Essential guide to business telephone and mobile numbers UK

Our methodology

Our dedicated research team conducted a detailed survey to give us a more detailed understanding of our readers’ communication needs.

We then used the findings of this survey to refine and update our methodology for evaluating VoIP providers, ensuring we’re able to rate and rank them in the most relevant and helpful way.

Primarily, we’ve achieved this by identifying the eight most important criteria for small businesses, and analysing VoIP providers based on these:

Call management: What tools and features does the provider include for handling calls?

Pricing: Are you getting a good deal?

Hardware integrations: Can you use the provider on a mobile device? Which handsets is it compatible with?

Software integrations: How many third-party applications can be used with the provider? Which CRM and helpdesk solutions are compatible?

Communication channels: Which communication methods does the provider offer? Can you use functions like video conferencing and SMS?

Training features: Does the provider offer assistance with onboarding staff and showing them how to use the system?

Security options: What measures are in place to protect your sensitive data? Is the provider fully compliant?

Help and support: What range of support options are available, and does the provider operate them 24/7?

Do you want more information on taking calls online and how it works? You can head over to our dedicated article on what VoIP actually is.