Top 10 Phone Call, SMS, and Voicemail software for a Startup
A phone call, SMS, and Voicemail software are the tools for businesses to enhance communications with different stakeholders.
These applications for businesses have come a long way.
These services have become much more popular than traditional communication tools.
They’re easier to set up, simple to manage and are significantly cheaper.
Business phone systems no longer serve as a tool for simply making and receiving calls.
Today’s unified communications systems allow employees to communicate by phone, video, and text, which is giving businesses the flexibility to connect with customers and clients in any way they prefer.
The business phone system market has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, with dozens of options to choose from, which makes finding the solution that’s right for your business a difficult task.
So, without further ado, here are the Top 10 Phone Call, SMS, and Voicemail software for a startup:
- Sakari
Sakari is a Cloud-based business text messaging service that allows businesses to send SMS reminders, alerts, confirmations, and marketing campaigns.
You can not only send customized messages to hundreds of users but also use it for a variety of other services like surveys and engagements.
Its key features include business messaging, reminders, team mobile app, SMS API, online SMS, rich text messaging, and Mass messaging.
The tool also offers business messaging functionality which features contact imports and group texting, templates, and bulk tools.
Teams using Sakari can send personalized text messages to streamline conversations with clients in real-time.
Using custom templates, enterprises can share discounts and marketing offers with new and existing customers.
Additionally, the solution provides a dedicated phone number to facilitate communication across stakeholders.
The platform allows real-time conversation with customers for instant redressal.
Sakari’s API interface enables integration with various third-party platforms including Connect HubSpot, Intercom, Google, and Salesforce.
Mobile applications for Android and iOS devices are also offered, allowing users to remotely manage business activities.
They offer a Free Trial and their subscription starts at $16/Month.
- Justcall.io
JustCall is a cloud phone system for sales, support, and report teams.
It allows you to create a call center for your sales teams and a contact center for your support teams.
Along with business phone system features, JustCall also comes with a number of workflow automation features around SMS and Phone Calls.
All calls get logged and recorded.
JustCall also provides all the call center related features like call forwarding, call distribution, round-robin, call analytics, real-time call monitoring, call transfer for both outgoing and incoming calls, and more.
Its important features include virtual phone numbers, team collaboration, voicemail by email, call management, text messaging, conference calls, interactive voice response (IVR).
This tool has the ability to launch and sync SMS messaging from within the 3rd party apps that add another touchpoint to the sales cycle with ease.
JustCall.io integrates with various third-party software such as Salesforce, Slack, Zoho, Freshsales, Groove, and Agile CRM.
They offer a Free Trial and their subscription starts at $25/Month/User.
- Google Voice Assistant
Available on mobile and smart home devices used by millions of people all around the world, Google Assistant has brought about a revolution in the virtual Assistant arena.
You can easily schedule calls by using the Assistant as your operator.
Google Assistant allows doing the same with text messages.
All it takes is telling the Assistant “text” followed by your contact’s name and the message itself.
When you stop speaking, the system will confirm that it got everything right and then ask if you want to send the message.
Google Assistant is fully integrated with IFTTT (If This, Then That) to automate tasks and streamline business processes.
Once you set up an account at the IFTTT service, you can activate and configure different functionalities.
Google Assistant can also access some of Google’s G Suite apps.
The voice assistant can manage Google Calendar scheduling, setting, rescheduling, and canceling meetings by voice command.
Google Assistant can also be used to connect to conference calls or send emails to people in a conference call.
These solutions are applicable to businesses of all shapes and sizes regardless of their business models.
As a result, companies can build automated business processes without a single line of code, complex formulas, or help from their IT departments.
- Skype
Skype for Business is part of Microsoft’s 365 suite offering and provides an IP PBX for online messaging and web conferencing.
It includes features such as live streaming meetings, dialing into conference calls, and the ability to make, receive and transfer calls via a computer or mobile device.
It offers a free version of its service with basic features and a licensed version that offers its full suite of tools.
This business software looks very much like consumer Skype, which makes it easy to find everything.
You could invite as many as 250 participants onto a call. You can see the images of the speakers on the screen.
Skype allows you to have unified communications with all the employees of the organization in a secure and reliable way.
It is a non-expensive tool that is easy to install on any of the devices like smartphones, Mac books, Laptops, or other personal desktop computers.
It is a user-friendly interface that requires no training and allows the user to make video calls and call conferencing.
A basic Office 365 account including Skype for Business Online is available as Office 365 Business Essentials at $5 per user per month.
- Phone.com
Phone.com is the modern, work-from-anywhere solution for today’s agile, mobile, and always-on entrepreneurs and growing businesses.
It provides you with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to connect your phone to an existing internet connection to make phone calls.
Phone.com is the leading cloud-based phone company focused on the needs of small businesses and entrepreneurs.
The system includes more than 40 standard features and tools, as well as another 10 premium options.
The platform packages a wide variety of phone, call center, and management features into a simple user interface.
Its features include call queues, voicemail-to-email, auto-attendant call screening and blocking, and access to conferencing and the softphone.
Phone.com provides free adapters so you can use your own phones, though it also gives you the option of leasing IP phones.
The system, which integrates with popular CRM programs, is available in both unlimited and pay-per-minute plans.
The application’s base price starts from $9.99 per month.
- UniTel Voice
UniTel Voice is a powerful and robust virtual phone system & toll-free number service provider, designed to help entrepreneurs and freelancers to start, run & grow their businesses from anywhere.
Its main features include call recording, call blasting, SIP trunks, audio conference bridge, unlimited call handling, Virtual auto attendant, call announcement, on-hold music, call transferring, call logs, and call blocking.
You could also record or upload a Greeting or use their Free Voice Talent Studio to create professional voice recording to greet callers.
Through its Voicemail Transcription feature, you can quickly and conveniently get a voicemail message when you can’t listen to the Voicemail.
All these features can be accessed online in a highly secured and password-protected platform that can be customized and changed without the need for hardware or software updates.
Unitel uses an industry-leading network provider to offer top-notch reliability for users to stay connected at a very reasonable price. Its basic plan starts from $9.99 per month.
- RingCentral
RingCentral is a cloud-based VoIP solution available via a computer mobile application.
It features video and audio conferencing, desktop phone rentals, collaboration tools, and integrations with other business applications.
RingCentral provides a platform specifically for small businesses who need an easy-to-use phone system.
It is also designed to scale for larger, global businesses.
Built on secure and reliable cloud communication and collaboration platform, RingCentral goes beyond cloud PBX, combining voice, team messaging, collaboration, video conferencing, online meetings, and contact center capabilities.
It is available across multiple devices — from smartphones, tablets, and computers to desk phones.
RingCentral’s unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution scales globally, making it easy to administrate across countries from a single platform.
With a robust set of open APIs, RingCentral enables businesses to seamlessly embed communications into a custom or everyday business applications, improving workflow productivity.
Its flagship product, RingCentral Office, encompasses all of the core features customers expect from such a solution, and the company has expanded the platform over the years and it’s now truly a Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) provider. They offer a Free Trial and their subscription starts at $29/Month.
- SendHub
SendHub is a business SMS and voice platform that offers convenience, flexibility, and all the features that today’s modern businesses and organizations need to manage SMS marketing campaigns, customer support, dispatch and delivery, and a wide range of other use cases, all within an easy-to-use web dashboard and mobile app.
There’s no hardware to install or configure, everything you need is included in your SendHub account.
Integrated applications for PBX, Auto Dialler, ACD, CTI, workforce scheduling, softphone, SMS marketing and more are available within the system.
This solution is suitable for businesses of all sizes. SendHub turns cell phones into business telephone lines, with call routing, custom greetings, and even office hour information provided to callers.
Essentially, professionals who use SendHub can put their desktop phones in their pockets, and they can receive calls whether they’re inside or outside the office.
They offer a free 14-day trial on all of their plans and their basic plan starts from $5.95 per month.
- Zipwhip
Zipwhip provides Texting for Business to help companies of all sizes engage with their customers faster and more effectively.
With Zipwhip, a business can text (SMS) enable their existing landline, VoIP, or toll-free number, and text customers using convenient desktop, web, and mobile apps.
Additionally, Zipwhip’s texting solution integrates with many of the top software applications, making it easy to add texting to existing workflows.
It empowers companies to communicate with their customers in an effective way – through text messaging.
As one of the pioneers of texting for business, Zipwhip first enabled text messaging to and from existing landlines, VoIP, and toll-free phone numbers.
Zipwhip offers a carrier-grade texting platform to help mobile and landline operators modernize the text messaging medium.
Its Auto-Replies feature ensures that your customers always get a response.
You could assign a message to be sent outside business hours, or during lunch breaks, and at other times when your team can’t respond immediately.
They offer a Free Trial and their subscription starts at $19/Month.
- Sendinblue
Sendinblue is an all-in-one marketing platform for engaging with your contacts and building better customer relationships through targeted and meaningful communication.
Cover your entire marketing funnel with our all-in-one solution for marketing automation, email marketing, SMS marketing, chat, Facebook Ads, CRM, and for sending transactional messages via email and SMS.
Sendinblue is evolving from email marketing to a more comprehensive solutions hub with expanded automation and built-in CRM functionality suitable for most small businesses.
You could promote time-sensitive and special events by sending bulk SMS marketing campaigns to a contact list from your database.
Simply write your message, choose a list, and schedule it to be sent when you want. You could get started for Free on Sendinblue to get a hang of it.
And as far as the pricing of SMS is concerned, if you want to send SMS, those are more of a pay-as-you-go deal. For instance, sending 100 SMS would cost you around $1.34.