Finding the Best Hosted Phone Solutions Provider
Businesses continue to shift away from traditional on-premises phone systems as they seek more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective communication tools. In fact, nearly 96% of businesses in North America are expected to adopt mobile PBX systems by the end of 2026.
That may be bad news for traditional phone companies, but there are good reasons why companies are shifting to a business VoIP service provider, including:
- Lower costs by eliminating PBX hardware, maintenance, and upgrade expenses
- Increased flexibility to add users, extensions, or locations without new equipment
- Built-in mobility, allowing teams to work from anywhere with softphones or mobile apps
- Automatic updates and security handled by the provider, reducing IT workload
- Advanced features included, like call recording, auto-attendants, queues, voicemail-to-email, analytics, and integrations
What Hosted Phone Solutions Provide
Hosted phone solutions replace traditional PBX hardware with a cloud-managed platform that delivers voice, collaboration, and call management capabilities. Instead of maintaining physical equipment inside your office, you can now get fully hosted systems that manage all of the core telephony functions and give you access to advanced calling features.
Cloud-Based Call Management
Hosted systems support centralized routing, voicemail, call handling, and extension management, which you can configure in the cloud. This eliminates manual changeovers and maintenance. Your business VoIP service provider handles updates and any major system upgrades.
Support for VoIP and Unified Communication Tools
Hosted phone solutions power VoIP calling and support a wide range of communication and collaboration tools besides just voice, including:
- Video conferencing
- Team messages and chat
- Integration with CRM, help desk, and contact centers
- Screen sharing and real-time collaboration
- Compatible with legacy handsets, IP phones, mobile apps, and laptop or desktop softphones
Simplified Deployment and Administration
When you work with a business VoIP service provider and hosted phone solution, installation and administration are easier. System changes, permission updates, and feature adjustments can be managed centrally, which reduces the burden on your IT or engineering team.
Choosing a Business VoIP Service Provider
When you are evaluating a business VoIP service provider, here are some of the key areas you’ll want to consider to make sure they fit with your needs.
Reliability, Redundancy, and Call Quality
Any solution you choose needs to be reliable to deliver consistent quality. Look for a business VoIP service provider that offers a redundant infrastructure and uptime guarantees. 99.999% uptime (the five nines) is considered the gold standard in the industry, typically meaning the provider has redundancy and automated failover mechanisms in place, along with a direct connection to the internet backbone.
Security and Compliance Capabilities
Your business handles sensitive information every day: customer data, credit card numbers, proprietary data, and more. You want to make sure the security protocols protect that information. So, you’ll want to ask about:
- Encryption for both in-transit and at-rest data
- Data handling practices
- Administrative access control
- Logging and tracking
- Any specific compliance needs you may have
Scalability and Flexibility
Hosted phone solutions should adapt to how your organization evolves, but not all providers work the same way. Consider how easy it is to add or remove users and work across multiple sites or remote locations and how scale impacts your costs.
Depending on your situation, you should explore device options for IP phones, softphones, mobile apps, or analog telephone adapters to allow traditional handsets to work with VoIP systems.
Feature Set and Unified Communication Components
A high-quality hosted phone solution should have a long list of features. Regardless of the size of your business, you can get access to advanced features like voicemail-to-email, call forwarding, simultaneous ringing, auto attendants, music on hold, conferencing tools, and integration with productivity applications.
Support Model and Service Responsiveness
You will find that support options vary greatly at different providers. Some offer connectivity and self-service with minimal support. Others provide a fully managed platform and 24/7 monitoring and troubleshooting.
Customer service after the sale is something often underestimated, but there’s a big difference, when something goes wrong, between waiting in queue for the next available operator or submitting a trouble ticket that takes days to respond and connecting with a local rep who is ready to solve your problem.
Pricing Structure
Hosted phone solutions save money compared to on-site PBX and traditional phone company calling. Most providers offer subscription models so you can get consistent bills each month. However, monthly fees can vary based on the number of users, calling needs, integration, service fees, and other add-ons. Take a close look at the total cost of ownership to avoid any surprise fees.
Ease of Administration and User Experience
The best hosted phone solutions will be intuitive and easy to use and provide documentation and training resources to help you roll out systems initially and help new team members during onboarding.
Xobee delivers high quality and consistent performance, flexibility, and operational efficiency at an affordable price, plus local support when you need it most. Contact our hosted phone solutions experts today.
