Both Ooma and RingCentral are popular options for businesses in need of a business phone system, but which is better? While both offer powerful VoIP solutions that make communication more efficient, choosing between Ooma vs RingCentral can be difficult. The right provider can make a huge difference in how smoothly your business runs.
In our RingCentral vs Ooma comparison, we’ll cover pros and cons, features, integrations, pricing, and customer support. By the end, you should have a good idea which provider best fits your business needs.
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Ooma Reviews
Here’s how Ooma performed in reviews from real customers:
G2: 4.6 out of 5 stars
TrustRadius: 7.9 out of 10 stars
Capterra: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Customers consider Ooma a cost-effective solution with just the right features to run their small businesses. They appreciate how easy it is to set up and change settings to fit the needs of their organization. However, some customers noted issues with lag and glitchiness on the mobile app.
RingCentral Reviews
Here’s how RingCentral performed in reviews from real customers:
G2: 4.1 out of 5 stars
TrustRadius: 8.3 out of 10 stars
Capterra: 4.2 out of 5 stars
Customers consider RingCentral a reliable business phone system that’s highly customizable. They appreciate the unified communications features that allow them to collaborate, even when teams are remote. However, some customers have noted issues with reaching customer service and feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of features.
Pros and Cons of Ooma
Before deciding between Ooma vs RingCentral, here’s a look at the advantages and disadvantages.
Pros of Ooma:
- Affordable: Ooma offers affordable pricing that’s especially appealing to smaller teams. Even entry-level plans include a lot of features.
- Easy setup and usability: With a user-friendly interface, Ooma is easy to set up and learn. You don’t need a ton of IT experience to get started.
- No long-term contracts: With Ooma, you’re not locked into a long-term contract, so you can try the platform with no pressure to commit.
- Many core features without upgrading: Even in lower-tier plans, you get core features like virtual receptionists, ring groups, call forwarding, mobile apps, voicemail, and more.
- Customer support: Ooma offers 24/7 phone, chat, and email support. Plus, it has a knowledge base with tutorials and how-tos, which is great if your business lacks an in-house IT department.
Cons of Ooma:
- Upgrades required: You’ll need to upgrade to access features needed by larger or more complex organizations (such as advanced reporting, AI features, or high-capacity video conferencing).
- Limited integrations: If you rely on many third-party integrations, you may be disappointed by Ooma’s limited selection.
- Lacks advanced security features: While Ooma does offer end-to-end encryption on Ooma to Ooma calls, it lacks features like single sign-on and only offers HIPAA compliance with upgrades.
Pros and Cons of RingCentral
Pros of RingCentral:
- Comprehensive feature set: When it comes to features, RingCentral has one of the widest ranges of features available. It comes with voice, messaging, video conferencing, team chat, collaboration, file-sharing, and many more in a single platform.
- Strong integration ecosystem: RingCentral integrates with over 500 popular apps, which helps workflows stay seamless for businesses using multiple tools.
- Flexibility: Because it’s cloud-based, has desktop and mobile apps, and supports collaboration across locations, RingCentral is perfect for remote and hybrid teams that need flexibility.
- High reliability: RingCentral is dependable, with a guaranteed uptime of 99.999%, which equals out to less than 6 minutes of downtime per year.
Cons of RingCentral:
- Cost: RingCentral is pricey compared to many providers, especially when it comes to accessing advanced features.
- Complexity: Because it has so many features, RingCentral has a steep learning curve, especially when setting it up.
- Customer service: Some users have noted difficulty in reaching customer support as well as issues with canceling service.
Ooma Features
Ooma is an easy-to-use VoIP business phone system that comes with all the core features you need to handle incoming and outgoing phone calls. While it doesn’t offer a full slate of unified communications features, Ooma does do more than just voice calling. In upgraded plans, you also get video meetings, business texting, and team chat.
Here are some of the core features offered by Ooma:
- Virtual receptionist: Ooma’s virtual receptionist automatically directs incoming calls, plays business announcements, handles menus, and routes callers to the right department.
- Unlimited domestic calling: All plans come with unlimited domestic calling to the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.
- Call management and call routing: Rings Groups allow teams to share incoming calls. Call forwarding, extension dialing, virtual extensions, intercom, and call park help you manage calls. Call queuing places incoming calls into a queue so they can be answered in the order they were received.
- Multi-site support: Multi-site support keeps businesses connected even when working from multiple offices.
- Video conferencing: Upgraded plans come with video conferencing features, with screen sharing, online whiteboard, and more.
- Voicemail: Voicemails can be forwarded, accessed on mobile, and transcribed so that you can read the message rather than listen.
- CRM integrations: Ooma integrates with CRM systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho, Freshdesk, and more.
- Call screening: Features like call screening, call deflection to text, and enhanced call blocking are included in many plans.
- Number porting: You can port your existing phone numbers into Ooma free of charge.
- Analytics: Basic analytics and reporting lets you analyze KPIs to make data-driven improvements.
RingCentral Features
RingCentral is a VoIP and unified communications provider, offering voice, video meetings, team chat, file sharing, and business texting. When comparing Ooma vs RingCentral, RingCentral offers many more features.
Some of RingCentral’s top features include:
- Unified communications: RingCentral is a unified communications platform, offering phone calls, SMS/MMS, video conferencing, and team collaboration in a single platform.
- Video meetings: Features include HD video meetings, screen sharing, breakout rooms, whiteboard, collaborative note taking, and more.
- AI-powered features: RingCentral comes with live transcription and closed captions of meetings/calls, meeting summaries, highlight reels, keyword extraction, noise reduction, and more.
- Powerful call management: Features like multilevel IVR, call queues, shared lines, call forwarding, call flip, call recording, logging, and analytics help you manage all calls to your organization.
- Security: RingCentral offers encryption (TLS, SRTP of voice/data), robust spam/robocall mitigation using STIR/SHAKEN, AI/ML filters, and HIPAA compliance.
- Integrations: RingCentral integrates with over 500 third-party apps. It also offers API support for customizations.
- Flexible number options: Choose from local, toll-free, and vanity numbers, or port your existing number.
- Advanced analytics: With advanced analytics, detailed usage, and live queue monitoring, you can make improvements and handle issues quickly.
Integrations
When comparing RingCentral vs Ooma, one major difference is the number of integrations offered. Integrations allow your phone system to connect with other business apps you already use, such as CRM software, email platforms, or collaboration apps to save you time and effort.
Ooma offers a limited set of built-in integrations, including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zoho CRM, Freshdesk, Zendesk, Square, QuickBooks, AgencyZoom, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Zapier.
On the other hand, RingCentral has over 500 pre-built integrations with business tools, CRMs, productivity suites, helpdesk software, automation tools, and niche software for industries like education, healthcare, and more. Additionally, RingCentral comes with developer tools like open APIs, add-ins, custom bots, dialogs, and the ability to embed RingCentral workflows into other apps.
In the comparison of integrations in Ooma vs RingCentral, RingCentral blows Ooma out of the water.
Pricing
Both Ooma and RingCentral work on a subscription-based pricing model, with three tiers of service. Ooma pricing starts at $19.95/user/month and goes up to $29.95/user/month. The base tier comes with basic phone system features, but if you want video conferencing, call recording, voicemail transcription, CRM integrations, team chat, or business texting, you’ll need to upgrade.
In comparison, RingCentral pricing starts at $30/user/month and goes $45/user/month if you pay monthly. You can save money by paying annually, which drops prices down to between $20 to $35/user/month. The base tier comes with unlimited phone calls, team messaging, SMS/MMS, basic call management, video meetings, API and integrations with Google/Microsoft. You’ll need to upgrade for automatic call recording, call queue management, more SMS allotment, and more video features.
For small teams or lean startups wanting basic business calling and features, Ooma Essentials ($19.95/user/month) is competitive and less expensive than RingCentral’s monthly-billed Core plan ($30/user/month). However, as you move up and want more features, RingCentral tends to pull ahead in capability, though it comes at a higher cost.
Customer Support
Ooma offers 24/7 live support for all customers that includes phone and chat. Additionally, they offer support by email for Pro Plus customers and a knowledge base so you can handle some issues on your own.
RingCentral also has a knowledge base, but reaching live support can be difficult. While they advertise 24/7 support by phone and chat, it’s difficult to reach an actual human as support is initially handled by AI. Users have noted trouble in getting the AI to understand their concerns, and many steps are required to reach a person for help.
When it comes to RingCentral vs Ooma, Ooma has the better support as it’s easier to get help from a real person. For both, users on higher-cost plans tend to get better, faster, more attentive support than base plan users.
When RingCentral Is the Best Fit
RingCentral might be the right platform for you if:
- You need more than just a phone system. RingCentral offers a more robust, integrated UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) solution than Ooma.
- You’re expecting growth. RingCentral has better infrastructure, more scalability, and a wider set of enterprise features.
- You rely heavily on CRMs, help desk systems, and productivity suites and want calls/texts/video to connect deeply into those tools. RingCentral offers more than 500 pre-built integrations.
- You have a global presence or multi-region requirements. RingCentral offers robust international and multi-region capabilities.
When Ooma is the Best Fit
Ooma might be the right platform for you if:
- You’re a small business with a tight budget. Ooma’s pricing starts at $19.95/user/month, with no long-term contracts required.
- You need a simple, easy-to-use system. Ooma is easy to set up and use, with no need for a dedicated IT department.
- You value excellent customer support. Ooma has received positive feedback for its customer service, with excellent helpfulness and responsiveness from the support team.
Ooma vs RingCentral: Which One Is Right for You?
Both Ooma and RingCentral are popular options for businesses in need of a VoIP-based business phone system. But which one is right for you?
In the end, it comes down to what your business needs. Customers love Ooma for its user-friendly interface, simplicity, and affordability. Organizations in need of a more complex phone system with robust features tend to prefer RingCentral.
If you need help deciding between Ooma vs RingCentral, or if you want to look at other VoIP providers, OneStop Communications is here. We’ll help you compare plans and pricing to find a business phone system that checks all your boxes. Contact us today to get started!
