Which is the Best Virtual Phone for Toronto Businesses?
RingCentral vs. Goto
With all the choices in business phones, it’s hard to know what setup will work best for your company communications. Luckily, you have an expert consultant in TekTonic. We can help determine the best virtual phone for Toronto businesses like yours.
Two of the best virtual phone systems currently available are RingCentral and Goto (which is why we offer both as part of our hosted VoIP services).
So, let’s break down the RingCentral vs. Goto contest and discuss the various features of the two virtual business phone services, shall we?
RingCentral vs. Goto: The Features
These two hosted VoIP phone systems share many admirable features. RingCentral and Goto come with value-added features the average business owner will appreciate. For instance, RingCentral offers a free mobile app available for Android and iOS.
Jive’s smartphone app, Goto Mobile, has a one-time $20 fee per user. The license can be applied to up to five devices. It’s a little unusual in this market to have a paid app that isn’t an independent service, but some companies, like Jive, elect to go that route. Their Mobility software is compatible with Windows, Android, OSX, and iOS, so it is also Jive’s softphone.
RingCentral calls their desktop software “Softphone,” which is also free to use. Another feature that RingCentral does for free (but Jive charges for) is number porting. If you want to switch your number with Jive, it will cost $15.00.
RingCentral also offers call recording for Premium and Enterprise subscribers. The recordings are kept for 90 days, and there is no limit to the file size. Jive call recording is two cents per recorded minute. Jive uses Amazon S3 storage, which gives you 5GB per year free, and you can purchase more if you like. It may sound a little unusual to store recordings in the cloud from the same company that sells you books, but if Amazon S3 is good enough for Netflix and Pinterest, it’s good enough for Jive.
Both RingCentral and Jive offer the standard features we’ve come to expect from VoIP phone providers, such as:
- Unlimited Calling
- Auto Attendant
- Find Me/Follow Me
- Call Rules/Office Hours
- Dial by name directory
- Extension Dialing
- Music on Hold
- Call Park
One more cool feature is Goto Web, where you can have “your cloud phone system on your web browser”.
Jive Web is a unified interface for managing your cloud phone system and communicating internally and externally via your web browser. You can monitor your contacts’ availability, place web-based calls, send text messages, and make real-time changes to your phone system.
More Benefits of the RingCentral vs. Goto Contest
Both RingCentral and Jive offer toll-free calling. RingCentral has free minutes, which vary by tier: Standard subscribers get 1,000 minutes, Premium subscribers get 2,500 minutes, and Enterprise subscribers get 10,000 minutes. To use those minutes, you must purchase a toll-free number of $4.95/mo. Goto charges 1.9 cents/minute, and you must purchase an additional number.
One of the biggest obstacles to VoIP phone adoption is the cost of IP phones, but both RingCentral and Jive have options to lower the capital investment. In RingCentral’s case, you can rent a phone monthly, and with Jive, if a company with 25 users is willing to lock in a three-year contract, they get a steep discount on their virtual business phones, and the most basic phone is free after the discount.
One of the ways that Jive stands out is that they still have legacy support for fax machines. You do have to purchase a fax adapter, which is billed as a separate user. RingCentral and Jive offer similar paperless fax services that can be accessed and configured on your computer or mobile device. RingCentral includes their fax service, which is available separately, as part of their Office packages.
Ready for an upgrade to your virtual phones in Toronto? Contact us at sales@tek-help.com or (416) 256-9928 for more information on our virtual phones for Toronto businesses that include cost-effective, fully-supported Jive and RingCentral business phone plans.
UC, Uptime & Support
RingCentral’s biggest feature is the video conference software. Available only to Enterprise subscribers, RingCentral subscribers can video conference with 24 other participants on an Android or iOS device. Jive, unfortunately, does not offer a similar service, at least not yet. But, on the other hand, Jive offers one thing that RingCentral does not: A service level agreement (SLA).
With it, Jive guarantees that you will have 99.99% uptime or get part of your bill refunded. While RingCentral may be willing to give a subscriber a refund for the service being down, they are not obligated to do so, nor do they outline ahead of time what money they’d be willing to refund.
RingCentral offers 24-7 support for office subscribers with two or more users. Smaller accounts, including RingCentral Professional and RingCentral Fax, have access from 5am to 6pm Eastern Time from their headquarters in California. Jive offers 24/7 support from its headquarters in Utah.
The RingCentral vs. Jive Verdict
The difference between RingCentral and Jive reflects how they nudge their target audience. Any industry can benefit from VoIP, so the differences are slight. RingCentral is after the SMB market, crowded with many competitors, so each one has to be a little louder or shinier to stand out. RingCentral meets that challenge with features like its Enterprise conferencing system.
Jive is, as the name suggests, cool and collected. Jive puts a little more emphasis on things like Government and Education, which plan budgets years in advance. Jive wants a little more commitment from you. For example, it will take a three-year contract, not just one or two, to get those free phones, and paying for an app or number porting may sting a little. But once you are committed, you get a service that an SLA guarantees to be reliable and trouble-free.
So, one question to ask yourself when you choose between the two is, will there be some new feature, some new hardware, or some change in price that will make me want to switch virtual phone providers in a year or two? If there is, RingCentral is the better choice. If not, either provider will do.
The point is – no matter which virtual phone system your Toronto business chooses, we can facilitate it for you!
TekTonic, RingCentral and Jive: Your Virtual Phone Solution
Those businesses looking for all the savings of VoIP virtual phone systems and all the advanced-technology features they can get should choose a UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) cloud phone setup from RingCentral or Jive. With it, you get a cloud-based phone system (hosted PBX) with all the integrative features to update and optimize your office phone systems in the cloud.
Let us run you a quick analysis of your current business phone systems towards being your virtual phone providers in Toronto. We can virtually guarantee you’ll be happy you called us!
Get a Virtual Phone System Toronto Businesses Trust
Whether you need mobile phone integration or the other advanced features Unified Communications provides, like a hosted VoIP phone system arrangement – TekTonic Managed Services will get you to the business communications level you need.
Contact us at sales@tek-help.com or (416) 256-9928 for more information on our virtual phones for Toronto businesses that include Jive and RingCentral virtual business phone plans – and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter as well!
