The Ultimate Guide to Small Business VoIP In Australia

An increasing number of small businesses throughout Australia are now using VoIP (Voice over IP) systems. And it’s not surprising, considering it comes with a long list of benefits that make its slightly higher price point worthwhile compared to traditional systems.

However, some business owners are still not familiar with what it is exactly and whether small business VoIP is fit for their company’s needs. If you’ve heard of it before, then this article will help you further understand the functions, benefits, advantages, and disadvantages of VoIP.

What are the Basic Features You Get with a VoIP Service?

One of the biggest advantages of VoIP systems over landlines is their wide range of features. They’re as follows:

• Advanced Call Management – One of the best basic features that many VoIP providers in Australia offer is advanced call management. It allows you to hold, route, block, or prioritize incoming calls with little to no effort.

• Anonymous Call Rejection – Most of the time, anonymous calls are time-consuming and not worth taking. Luckily, some VoIP solutions include anonymous call rejection on their basic packages. This prevents unwanted calls from reaching your business lines.

• Call Analytics – Another common basic VoIP business phone feature that you will get is call analytics. This will provide you with customer insight that you can utilize to improve your customer service and lead it in the right direction.

• Call Queuing – Many small business VoIP providers offer call queueing features as a standard in their basic services. It is what most businesses need, especially those who receive plenty of calls daily. With call queueing, your business can handle any incoming call and put them in a queue, waiting to be answered by your team as soon as you finished handling the others.

• Call Screening – This basic business VoIP feature enables you to make smarter decisions in terms of whether you will answer the incoming call or not. This feature can filter caller IDs so that it will either be automatically sent to voicemail, escalated, accepted, or rejected. You will never have to worry about receiving prank calls ever again.

• Auto Attendant – This feature is designed to help your customer support staff answer, escalate, and route incoming calls to the right department. With this feature, callers will be able to receive the right help as their calls are being forwarded to the right team.

Take note that the basic small business VoIP features are highly dependent on what’s offered by the provider of your choice. The good thing is that there are plenty of choices out there, so you can shop around until you find the best fit for your company’s needs.

What are the Best VoIP Services for Small Businesses?

The efficiency of small Business VoIP depends not only on your internet speed but also on the quality of service providers. With this in mind, here are what we believe to be currently the best VoIP services in Australia – note this post is current to January 2021.

1. OnSIP

OnSIP has been providing on-demand phone system services to over 100,000 customer accounts. Their system is compatible with Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android devices.

In addtion, their standard features are bundled with unlimited calling. The price starts at $18.95. Their business VoIP package’s basic features include SIP trunking, contact management, encryption, call recording, contact management, and many more.

What makes it special? – Unified communications, call routing, SIP trunking, contact management, call recording

Pricing – $18.95 per month

2. VirtualPBX

VirtualPBX is an award-winning VoIP service provider that holds an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.

In addition, they also provide excellent customer service quality.They have 24/7 support and a 30-day money-back guarantee on their unlimited minute and unlimited user plan to showcase their service confidence.

What makes it special? – Dash plan, unlimited VoIP minutes, voicemail transcription, online voice transmission, call recording

Pricing – starts at $9.99 per month

3. CloudTalk

At $20/month, you can avail of Cloudtalk business VoIP services that include features such as ring groups, encryptions, and voice recognition.

Also, if you do not want to commit yet to their memberships, you can avail of their 14 days free trial with no credit card registration needed.

What makes it special? – Intelligent call routing, integrations with CRM tools and e-Commerce solutions, detailed statistics and call monitoring, utilities

Pricing – starts at $20 per month

4. 3CX

3CX is an excellent service if you are a fan of doing things in a DIY style. You can easily install, manage, and maintain it yourself, whether it’s on a service or an appliance. If you want a hassle-free solution, you can have it hosted by 3CX.

Moreover, their business VoIP plans include employee directory, call monitoring, virtual call center, and web conferencing. This is on top of the basic features you’d expect from VoIP services.

What makes it special? – Free video conferencing, easy management, live chat and call, advanced reporting

Pricing – starts at $20.83 per month for the PRO plan with a one-year FREE trial for the STANDARD plan

5. Yeastar Cloud PBX

Yeastar Cloud PBX offers a fully featured phone system ideal for SMBS. You can avail of their call parking, contact management, call recording, and voice recognition features. Furthermore, they also offer a free trial period so that you can check whether it’s the right fit for your company or not.

What makes it special? – On-premises and cloud-based solutions, Microsoft Teams integration, unified communications,

Pricing – not specified by the provider, but a free trial is offered

6. Yodel.io

Yodel.io offers basic Business VoIP features such as call recordings, contact management, voice recognition, and unified communications at a very affordable rate of only $25 a year.

What makes it special? – Voice IVR, speech recognition, canned responses, Windows and Mac desktop apps, browser extensions

Pricing – starts at $25.00 per month

Check out this infographic we created summarising above – share it with anyone you feel may benefit!

How Do You Choose a VoIP Provider?

VoIP services can be very helpful for small businesses. However, it is important to pick the right service provider to get the best out of it. Here are some of the considerations that you should look at when choosing a VoIP provider:

1. The Core Features Your Business Needs

The biggest factor to consider when choosing a VoIP provider is their list of features. You can easily identify which one is suitable for your business by cross-checking the features you require. Some of these important features are as follows:

• Call management
• Call routing
• Analytics
• Auto attendant
• Call forwarding
• Call notifications
• Conference calling
• Caller ID
• Video conferencing
• Call queueing
• Anonymous call rejection

2. Your Budget

VoIP for small businesses are typically affordable despite being slightly more expensive than landline systems. However, the more features that you need, the higher the cost will be.

Also, you will notice that you can save more by availing of longer plan subscriptions. However, to avoid wasting money on a long-term commitment that you might regret later on, it is also a good idea to avail of free trial offers.

3. Customer Service

It is also important to consider the quality of customer service offered by the provider. It would be nice if you opt for those that offer 24/7 support.

However, make sure that their support services are responsive. You can check out the provider’s review pages about this for more insight.

How do You Set Up a VoIP Phone System for Small Business?

You don’t have to be a tech expert to set up a VoIP phone system for your small business. Here are the general steps on how to do that:

1. Select a new phone number. You can activate your VoIP by simply browsing phone numbers by city or area code and registering it. There are typically plenty of numbers to choose from depending on what’s offered to you by the provider.
2. Input users to your phone system. Subsequently, this step will enable employees to access the VoIP phone system and manage their messages, voicemail greetings, and other features.
3. Setup IP phones. The following step is to set up IP phones which are similar to traditional office phones. The main difference is that it’s connected to the internet.
4. Integrate other apps. You can maximize the efficiency of your business VoIP system by integrating with other productivity apps. However, this depends on whether the app you want to integrate is compatible with the service provider you picked.

What are the Advantages of Using VoIP?

Undoubtedly, there are plenty of advantages to using VoIP for small businesses. Here are some examples of that:

• Portability – Since VoIP are virtual numbers and rely on cloud databases, you can use them anywhere you are worldwide as long as you have access to a reliable internet connection. This makes it ideal if you are always on the move.
• Lower Cost – The average cost of landline phone systems for business is around $50 per month. Meanwhile, decent VoIP services cost on average about $20 per month. In addition you can even find other VoIP service providers that offer plans that are less than that amount. Furthermore, according to statistics, businesses can save up to 75% by opting for VoIP systems instead of traditional landlines. This is because they can save not only on the monthly recurring expenses but also in terms of installation expenses.
• Increased Accessibility – Aside from being cost-efficient, VoIP can also make your business more accessible. Customers from other areas can reach you, and in return, you can easily tend to their concerns resulting in better customer relationships.
• Wide Range of Features – Unlike traditional landline phone systems, VoIP has a wide range of features. This helps your employees become more efficient with their job and increase their productivity.

FAQs

1 – When does it make sense to invest in business VoIP phone services?

It makes sense for you to invest in VoIP phone services if your business requires frequent voicemail, conference calling, call screening, call forwarding, and video conferencing.

2 – Is VoIP reliable for Business?

Yes, VoIP is reliable for businesses as long as you have a reliable high-speed internet connection.

3 – What are the disadvantages of VoIP?

Just like other systems, VoIP also has its fair share of disadvantages. Some examples of this are latency and jitter in the quality of calls, highly dependent reliability on internet connections, lack of location tracking for emergency calls.

4 – What’s better, VoIP or landline?

VoIP solutions are better compared to landlines since they can include features such as anonymous call rejection, voicemail-to-text transcriptions, call analytics, voicemails, and many more. Apart from this, the bottomline cost of VoIP is more affordable than landline systems without question.