Zoom Phone Review 2023

Zoom Phone scored 4.4/5 on our latest round of testing, which is the third-highest score that any VoIP provider we tested was awarded. It's very affordable, with a low $10 per user, per month starting price that undercuts providers like RingCentral and Vonage, as well as most of the rest of the market. In fact, our research found that Zoom Phone was the best value across the VoIP industry.

Areas of improvement for Zoom include security (we rate it just 2/5) and customer support (3.3/5) — two areas where competitor 8×8 scores 5/5 and other providers excel too. If pricing is your main priority, consider Zoom a serious contender to be your VoIP of choice. But it's important you choose a phon system that meets your core requirements as a business.

You can visit our Zoom Pricing guide to see its costs compared directly with other leading VoIP providers, which including our top three picks below.

Before we get into this Zoom Phone review, we'd like to clarify that this article is a detailed look at Zoom's VoIP/Softphone offering, Zoom Phone, rather than the company's world-famous video conferencing software which had a 48.7% share of the video conferencing market in 2021, after becoming a near-universal fixture of remote working during the pandemic.

Zoom Phone is a much more recently-launched product, but similarly to Zoom's video conferencing software, it's quickly become one of the best offerings on the market, coming third out of 12 providers on our last round of VoIP research.

Excitingly, Zoom has now consolidated its Meetings, Team Chat, Whiteboard, and VoIP phone products into a line of plans called Zoom One, so you can get all of Zoom's top products in one package, if you wish. However, Zoom Phone is only available on the Zoom One Business Plus and Enterprise plans, with the latter providing a fully-featured PBX. It's still possible – and cheaper – to buy Zoom Phone as a standalone product, and that's what we'll be discussing throughout this article.

In this guide:

• Zoom Phone Pricing
• Zoom Phone Features
• Customer Support
• How Does Zoom Phone Compare to Other Providers?
• How Did We Evaluate Zoom Phone?
• Zoom Phone Final Verdict
• Frequently Asked Questions

Zoom Phone Review: Zoom Phone Pricing

Zoom Phone has three pricing plans: the Metered plan ($10 per user, per month), the Unlimited plan ($15 per user, per month), and the Select plan ($20 per user, per month).

Zoom's Metered plan is the joint-cheapest VoIP provider plan we tested, tied with Google Voice's starter plan. Interestingly, they're pretty much polar opposites — Google Voice excels when it comes to security (5/5) but not much else, and was awarded an overall score of just 3.4/5, whereas Zoom Phone is let down by its poor security score (2/5) but does well in other areas, such as customer score and overall feature offering, especially when compared to other providers like MagicJack.

If you want one of the Zoom One packages that include Zoom Phone, as well as Meetings, Team Chat, and more video conferencing features, you'll have to opt for the $25 per user, per month Zoom One Business Plus plan, or the Zoom One Enterprise plan, which has no public pricing at present.

Zoom Phone Review: Zoom Phone Features

Overall, Zoom Phone has a pretty comprehensive range of inbound and outbound communication features, plus a number of useful integrations – although it's not quite as good from a security standpoint as some of its competitors. We'll discuss the key ones here.

Zoom scores 4.2/5 for features, meaning it has one of the better sets out of the systems we tested. Inbound comms features include voicemail, virtual receptionist, spam prevention, call queue, and customizable hold music. Outbound comms features include external video calling (Zoom Meeting subscription required), Set Caller ID, and Call Conferencing.

Zoom has conversation features like call forwarding, call flip, call whisper, and call barge on all of its plans, which is quite unusual for a VoIP provider, not least one as cheap as Zoom. Neither 8×8 or RingCentral offer call whisper or call flip on their first two plans, while Net2Phone, another VoIP provider we tested, does not offer this at all.

Zoom doesn't have as many collaboration features as you may expect, but it does have video conferencing with Zoom Meeting, and a team messaging function. There's also an omission of some security features offered by other providers, including multi-factor authentication or enforceable password rules. Considering Zoom's patchy security history, you'd have hoped they'd have upped their game by now.

If you feel like Zoom fits your budget and has the features you need, fill in this 60-second survey and make sure you get matched to the right plan.

Zoom Integrations

Zoom integrates with a fair few other software tools, which might make it a more attractive proposition if you're already using them (or a reason to invest in a Zoom-friendly CRM or workspace solution if you're not):

• Salesforce CRM
• Zendesk Helpdesk CRM
• Zoom's video conferencing service
• Gmail 
• Microsoft Outlook
• Google Workspace

This is a pretty decent set of some of the most widely-used software solutions out there, but Zoom only scored 3.7/5 for external connections, which wasn't as good as 8×8 (4.2/5) and RingCentral (4.3/5). RingCentral, for example, has a huge 96 CRM-related integrations, as well as at least 57 analytics integrations plus external live chat options in the form of WhatsApp and Facebook. But remember RingCentral's pricing plans aren't nearly as affordable as Zoom's.

Zoom Phone Customer Support

As with any software, if it's hard to acquire support when things go wrong, you can end up with some serious periods of downtime which can affect your bottom line significantly.

Overall, Zoom scores a pretty respectable 3.3/5 for customer support – a score which is largely down to the fact some of Zoom's customer support options on offer are only available for an additional cost.

Zoom has a user forum and an extensive online knowledge base for customers to refer to if they'd like to attempt to troubleshoot a problem themselves. However, live chat, email, and phone support are only available if you pay extra. There's also no onboarding support on any of Zoom's plans.

8×8 and RingCentral both score 5/5 for customer support, which is a far sight better than Zoom. See if one of their plans (or indeed Zoom's) is the best fit for your business with a free quote.

How Zoom Phone Compares to Other VoIP Providers

Zoom is in our top three best VoIP providers and considering it's so cheap, is an excellent investment compared to other VoIP options. Among Zoom Phone customers, there seem to be very few who regret their choice, which is always a good sign.

Zoom Phone has a high average customer satisfaction score (4.4/5) which is a testament to the quality of the platform, and its impressive range of inbound and outbound communication features for as little as $10 per user, per month.

However, Zoom phone is not the best provider when it comes to features, and there are better (albeit pricier) options out there. Here are our top Zoom alternatives:

Methodology: How Did We Evaluate Zoom Phone?

Here at Tech.co, we have an in-house research team that conducts detailed analysis into the products, software, and services we talk about, on a full-time basis.

Our Tech.co researchers create testing frameworks and help us to put products through their paces on the factors which you tell us are most important. We review and re-run this research regularly to ensure we're always providing accurate and up-to-date information and user experiences, and help you make the right decision on your purchase.

For Zoom Phone and 11 other market-leading VoIP providers, our team focused on six core areas of assessment to test and review: features, customer support, security, scalability, customer score, and pricing. After reviewing each area, we totted up the results to create overall scores for each VoIP provider and a ranking of the best options for 2023.

Tech.co has commercial partnerships with some of the providers that we feature on our site, including several VoIP providers. However, all of our rankings of providers are based solely on our independent research, which allows us to be completely editorially impartial. That's how it's always been, and how it'll always stay!

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