Low cost VoIP service: what business phone service really costs per user

Almost every business VoIP invoice is built from the same blocks. Knowing them in advance lets you ask the right questions before signing.

• The per-user fee: the monthly price for each person who has a line, a set of apps and a voicemail box. This is usually the largest line.
• Phone numbers: one or more numbers may be included, with a charge for additional local, toll-free numbers or international numbers.
• Toll-free minutes: incoming toll-free calls are paid by you, not the caller, so plans include a pool of minutes and charge for usage above it.
• Features sold as add-ons: call recording, recording storage, advanced analytics, queues, texting or a multi-level auto attendant are sometimes extras.
• Hardware: desk phones, headsets or conference phones, bought once or rented monthly.
• Setup and porting: some providers charge to activate the account or to move your existing numbers.
• Taxes and regulatory fees: federal, state and local charges added to telecom services, which vary by state and by the numbers you hold.

Two quotes with the same per-user fee can end up far apart once these blocks are added.

Most providers offer a lower price if you commit for a year and pay annually, and a higher price for month-to-month billing. The yearly price is cheaper, but it also reduces your flexibility if the team shrinks or the service disappoints. A sensible approach for a new system is to start monthly, confirm that call quality and the apps work for your team, and then switch to yearly billing. Also check what counts as a user. Some services charge the full fee for every extension, including a shared lobby phone or a conference room. Others let you route calls to ring groups and voicemail without paying for a seat that nobody logs into.

The per-user price is often set on a plan that leaves out features a normal business uses every day. Before you compare, list the features you need and find the lowest plan that includes all of them. That plan, not the cheapest one, is your real price. Pay attention to these items in particular:

• Call recording software: included or not, and for how long recordings are stored.
• Call analytics: whether reports on missed calls, answer rates and busy hours are included or sold as a separate package.
• Auto attendant: whether a multi-level menu with business hours and holidays is on the entry plan.
• Business texting: SMS and MMS from company numbers, plus any registration fees charged by carriers.
• Queues and supervisor tools such as whisper, barge and monitor.

When a feature you need is an add-on, add its monthly cost per user to the worksheet below.

Many teams do not need desk phones at all. The business phone app on a mobile or laptop, with a good headset, covers most roles. Keep hardware for people who spend hours on calls at a fixed desk, a front desk or a shared space. If you already own SIP desk phones, check whether the new provider supports them before buying new ones. Treat any setup fee as part of the first year cost by dividing it by twelve and by the number of seats. Number porting should not be an obstacle either: ask whether it is charged per number, and read our guide on how to port a phone number to avoid downtime.

Telecom services in the United States carry taxes and regulatory fees on top of the plan price. The amounts depend on the state and locality of each user, the type of numbers and the provider's own policies, so there is no single percentage to plan with. Ask each provider for an estimate that includes taxes and fees for your locations, and compare that total. If your team works across several states, ask how the provider determines the tax location for each user, since it is usually tied to the registered address.

Fill in one column per provider using written quotes. For items charged per account rather than per user, enter the monthly total and divide it by the number of seats in the last row.

The last row is the only number worth comparing. It is also the number to check again after the first invoice arrives.

Take a team of 10 on the Business plan billed yearly. The per-user fee is $29 per month, so the plan costs $290 per month for the team, or $3,480 per year. On monthly billing the same team would pay $36 per seat, $360 per month. Recording with one year of storage, call analytics dashboards, texting, queues and CRM integrations are part of the plan, so the add-on rows stay empty. The plan includes 500 toll-free minutes per user, so the toll-free row only matters if your inbound toll-free traffic goes beyond that. Porting is at no charge. The remaining items are any extra numbers you choose to add, hardware if you want desk phones, and taxes and fees for your locations. A smaller office that only needs the basics can do the same calculation with Essentials at $19 per user billed yearly or $24 monthly, which still includes the auto attendant, routing, voicemail to email, recording with 90 days of storage and analytics.