Google Voice Review and Pricing: Best for Security Features

We’ve compared 12 of the best business phone systems in the US, and our research hails Google Voice as the best for security features. This is because Google Voice offers robust security measures so you can enjoy its services without worrying about your privacy. 

We measured Google Voice’s functionalities against its competitors using four key factors: inbound and outbound communications features, integrability (external connections), scalability, pricing, and customer support. Find out exactly how we rate it in our full Google Voice review below.

Expert Market’s team of experienced researchers has been reviewing the top business services and products in the market for years. So if you want to find out which business phone system best fits your organization’s needs, try our free quote comparison tool.

Google Voice’s Pros and Cons

✓ Reinforced Security Features

You won’t be disappointed with Google Voice’s security! Of the business phone system providers we tested, we gave Google Voice the highest points for security features: a perfect 5/5.

Having it under Google’s belt, Google Voice doubled down on its security measures, starting with complete compliance certificates to conform to various information security and data privacy laws. This means your phone system won’t be collecting, using, and sharing information without your consent.

Moreover, Google Voice employs multi-factor authentication, strict password rules, and user permissions, protecting your organization’s personal, intellectual, and operational information. Likewise, it provides robust TLS/SRTP (Transport Layer Security/ Secure Real-time Transport Protocol) encryption, securing your calls and protecting you from potential hackers and eavesdropping.

✓ Terrific Customer Satisfaction Rate

Real customer experience and insights help pace your expectations and help reduce your risk when making buying decisions. Earning an overall 4.4/5 score across G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and TrustRadius tells us Google Voice is doing a lot of things right! Scroll down below to see reviews from actual clients.

✓ An Affordable Choice

With a price starting at $10 per user, per month, Google Voice is definitely on the low-cost side of the spectrum. It’s way more affordable than many business phone system providers, hence it receives a pricing score of 4/5 in our research. With the current economic slowdown in the US, businesses are looking for various ways to cut costs, and choosing affordable software is one way.

Read our pricing section below for more information.

✘ Limited Features

That said, there’s a reason why Google Voice is much more affordable than the other providers. Google Voice has limited capabilities when compared with its competitors, earning a low feature score of 2.6/5. For example, it doesn’t have customizable hold music and call queue features.

You can only get localized and toll-free numbers with a Premier price, and Google Voice requires you to have a genuine presence in that location. In comparison, other business phone systems, such as 8×8 and RingCentral, let you set up a number whether you’re based in that location or not.

Google Voice also doesn’t have call flip, barge, and whisper features, but it does have call forwarding across all pricing plans. The only management feature it offers, besides analytics/reporting is customizable call routing, which you can only get on its Standard and Premier plans. 

✘ Few External Connections

Unlike some phone business providers, Google Voice doesn’t come with a desk phone. However, you can still connect third-party handsets from Poly, Cisco, Yealink, and Unify to maximize its services. Likewise, you can access Google Voice on your smartphone using the Google Voice app. 

As for software integrations, Google Voice can’t integrate with chat and analytics platforms outside Google. But the biggest letdown would be Google Voice’s closed API. This means you can’t customize its software to integrate external applications, pulling the score for integrability down to 2.8/5. However, Google Voice has the smoothest integrations with Google’s broad list of products, including Google Meet, Google Chat, and Google Workspace. Moreover, Google Voice has ready-made Zoho Desk integration and various CRM integrations (Zoho CRM, Copper, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Freshsales, Agile CRM, Hubspot, MiniCRM, Apptivo) to help you gain and manage clients. 

✘ Low Scalability

Unfortunately, the absence of advanced features, sees it score an above average 2.9/5 score for scalability in our research. It doesn’t include call queueing, ring groups, local numbers, call barge, call whisper, and major management and collaborative features. This takes a toll on its ability to scale alongside a growing organization.

However, it does offer some inbound and outbound features, management and collaboration capabilities, software integrations, as well as security features. 

How Much Does Google Voice Cost

Before we start discussing the cost, you should note that Google Voice is only available to Google Workspace users. Nonetheless, Google Voice will be a good fit for your business if you want something easy on the budget and gets the job done. Along with Zoom Phone, Google Voice offers the lowest plan at $10 per user, per month, earning a good score of 4/5 in our pricing analysis. Unfortunately, Zoom Phone provides a better list of features at the same price. 

In other words, Google Voice is very affordable but doesn’t offer the best value for money, ranking fourth of the 12 providers in pricing. Zoom Phone, Net2Phone, and GoTo will give you a higher return on investment — with Zoom Phone leading the pack with a 5/5 pricing score. Dialpad also scores 4/5 for pricing. Despite its higher pricing plans, it offers better functionalities than Google Voice. 

If you want more bang for your buck, you should check out Zoom Phone. Like Google Voice, Zoom Phone provides the cheapest plan at $10 per user per month. What makes Zoom Phone more economical is its unlimited user limit on its lowest (Metered) plan, whereas Google Voice only has 10 (Starter plan). 

Likewise, Zoom Phone becomes cheaper as the plans go higher. Zoom Phone’s Unlimited plan is $15 per user per month, while Google Voice’s Standard is $16 — making it $1 cheaper.  Even with a slightly lower price, Zoom Phone offers more functionalities, such as a localized toll-free number. On the plus side, Google Voice provides free calls to the US from any country and free calls to Canada from the US. Whereas, Zoom Phone only offers unlimited minutes within the US. 

Moving on to their highest pricing tiers, Zoom Phone’s Select plan is $20 per user per month, while Google Voice’s Premier plan is $24. With this upgrade, Google Voice users get a localized toll-free number. Meanwhile, Zoom Phone users get unlimited inbound calls to more than 40 countries. That’s a huge difference.

But the biggest point of contention is that Zoom Phone offers a wider variety of features than Google Voice for a lower price. As an example, Zoom Phone provides customizable hold music, call queue, call flip, call barge, and call whisper, whereas Zoom Phone doesn’t. 

If you’d like to find out how much your ideal VoIP system is going to cost, try our free quote matching tool. Simply answer a few questions about what you need, and we’ll match you up with phone systems that can provide what you want. They’ll then be in touch with tailored, no-obligation quotes for you to compare. It’s a quick and easy way to compare prices from the best options for you.

Google Voice’s Standout Features

Although it doesn’t score well for its features in our research, lacking management, conversation, and calling tools, it does offer some redeeming integrations:

Google Optimized 

Google Voice is offered as part of Google Workspace, that’s why it perfectly integrates with its apps and features. Since Google Workspace is one of the most used platforms for cloud computing, productivity, and collaboration tools, you’ll get to make the most of these features to boost your team’s productivity. Connect and collaborate with your team, clients, and suppliers with Gmail and Google Chat. Share important files through Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Spreadsheet. You can even make calls straight from Gmail. It also integrates smoothly with Google Meet, which means you can easily jump into a meeting on the go. 

BigQuery 

Get advanced reporting with BigQuery when you upgrade to Google Voice’s Premium plan. BigQuery is Google’s serverless multi-cloud enterprise data warehouse. With built-in machine learning and business intelligence (BI), BigQuery will analyze your data and make insightful reports in real-time. This includes user information, call logs, and features, making it highly valuable for collecting information from your large number of callers. In other words, BigQuery allows you to manage complex data and run interactive queries quickly. This is most useful for large businesses with high call volume, storing extensive and detailed information about their clients.   

What Kind of Business is Google Voice Best For?

The best part about Google Voice is its top-of-the-line security system, making it the best business phone system for security features. Hence, we recommend Google Voice to businesses that prioritize security, particularly those that deal with a lot of sensitive information. 

Google Voice offers all the basic features you need from a phone system, making it an affordable choice for small start-ups and businesses, especially for those that already use Google’s platforms. With affordable plans and user-friendly features, you’ll get a phone system with limited capital. Because it has the smoothest integration with Google Workspace, it’s the best business phone system for Google users. 

If you have an international presence, Google Voice allows you to make calls from anywhere. In addition to this, Google Voice can route all calls from your team using a single number, making it practical for remote and hybrid teams. If you want to scale internationally, upgrading to the Premier plan for only $24 will allow you to make affordable international calls. This makes reaching out to your global clients and team much easier. 

On the other hand, Google Voice will not be a good fit for organizations that require advanced call features. Its limited call features and software integrations will block your team from incorporating helpful business solutions outside Google. 

How Does Google Voice Compare With Other Phone Systems?

We compared Google Voice with its top competitors: 8×8, RingCentral, Vonage, Zoom Phone, Ooma, Nextiva, Goto Connect, N2P US, Dialpad, and Nuacom. We rated these 12 business phone system providers using four key factors: inbound and outbound communications features, integrability and scalability, pricing, and customer support.

1. Google Voice’s Inbound and Outbound Communication Features

When ranking the inbound and outbound features of business phone systems’, Google Voice takes 11th place of the 12 we looked at, with a low 2.6/5 features score. Google Voice lacks some features that many of its competitors provide, such as 8×8, which scores 4.8/5 in our research. It offers customizable greetings, a virtual receptionist, company hours, and local toll-free numbers across all of its plans, whereas Google Voice only provides these features on its Standard and Premier plans. Moreover, you can only set up localized and toll-free numbers on Google Voice’s highest plan, which also requires you to have a genuine presence in that location. Google Voice does not offer inbound communication features, including customizable hold music and call queue, which is offered by 8×8. These nifty additions will help you manage high call volumes. 

Concerning outbound communication features, Google Voice also lacks 8×8’s power dialer, predictive dialing, auto dialers, and e-fax. Even call conferencing, a highly-useful feature all 11 competitors offer, is missing across all Google Voice plans.  

 2. Google Voice Integrability and Scalability

Another drawback is Google Voice’s inability to integrate software and scale, seeing it score a low 2.8/5 for integrability in our research. Google Voice relies solely on Google Workspace for most of its features. While Google Workspace offers a wide variety of functionalities, most companies still use other collaborative and management applications to work.

Having a closed API makes it difficult for Google Voice to integrate with other software. It’s a good thing it has ready-made integrations with CRM systems Salesforce, Hubspot, Zendesk, MS Dynamics, Oracle Salescloud, Sugar CRM, Act!, Goldmine, and Workbooks. 

If you run your business with various apps and software, consider RingCentral because it has the most ready-made integrations of all 12 providers, with up to 97 CRM and 57 analytics platform integrations. Like Google Voice, RingCentral also connects with your helpdesk software, such as SalesForce, Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Hubspot. For team collaborations, 8×8 is another great option as it integrates with Microsoft Teams, Whatsapp, and Facebook.

Although Google Voice offers the best security out of all 12 competitors, its scalability score is only 2.9/5, ranking ninth against 12 competitors. Its low scores for -insert the areas that these fall into – affects its ability to scale.. If you want scalability in your phone system, 8×8 and RingCentral score the highest, with 4.9/5, respectively. Both providers have an extensive list of features, allowing them to handle high call volumes, manage a team, and foster collaborations. 

 3. Google Voice’s Customer Support Channel 

When it comes to customer support channels, Google Voice earns an above average score of 3.1/5. While it has 24/7 live support, a user forum and knowledge-base, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee, it doesn’t have email and live chat functions. This means you can only reach its customer support team through a phone line. It also lacks onboarding support, making it quite tricky to configure Google Voice’s system to match your business processes.

If you’re looking for better customer support, 8×8 and RingCentral both provide top-notch customer service, scoring 5/5 in our research. Both provide 24/7 customer support through various channels, such as live chat, email, and phone. Like Google Voice, 8×8 and RingCentral have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, so you know you’ll be using a reliable system. Best of all, they can provide onboarding support to help you go live with your phone system. 

Does Google Voice Have Good Customer Reviews?

Customer reviews help you hear honest insights from real world users. Earning an overall score of 4.4/5 across G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and TrustRadius, shows that its customers have had great experiences with Google Voice.