How much do call recording, texting, and AI features add to a business phone plan?
Summary
It depends on whether the provider bundles the feature into a higher tier, sells it as an add-on, or bills it by use. RingCentral lists AI Receptionist from $39 and a Call Queues Booster at $35, while extra numbers run $5 a month at Quo and $9.95 at Ooma. For a team that wants automatic recording and a CRM connection, Quo's step from Starter to Business costs $8 per user per month on annual billing.
Recording and CRM access
This is where plans split most often. Quo records manually on Starter and automatically on Business and Scale, and only Business and Scale connect to HubSpot and Salesforce. Ooma Office starts call recording at Pro ($24.95 per user per month) and keeps CRM integration and call queuing for Pro Plus ($29.95). RingCentral's Core plan includes on-demand recording and saves CRM integrations for Advanced.
Google Voice has on-demand recording on Standard ($20) and automatic recording only on Premier ($30). Zoom Phone includes call recording in all three of its plans. Vonage lists on-demand recording on Advanced with a cap of 15 hours a month. Nextiva marks call recording as an add-on on its Core plan and CRM integrations as an add-on on every plan, with no price shown, and footnotes that some features may carry extra setup, licensing, or usage fees.
Add-ons with a published price
RingCentral's pricing page is the most specific of the group:
- AI Receptionist, starting at $39
- Conversational Intelligence, starting at $60
- Call Queues Booster, $35
- Business SMS Booster, $25
- Additional local or toll-free numbers, $4.99 a month
- High-volume SMS, starting at $0.0119 per message
The four feature cards don't say whether the price is per user or per account. Ooma and Nextiva both sell an AI receptionist as an add-on and list no price for it.
Texting allowances also differ in unit. RingCentral gives 25 texts per user per month on Core and 100 on Advanced. Ooma counts per account, with 250 texts a month on Pro and 1,000 on Pro Plus, then $0.0095 per message. Quo charges one cent per segment for automated texts sent through its API, Zapier, or Make. Carrier registration for business texting is billed on top of any of these plans.
When the higher tier costs less
Quo Starter is $15 per user per month billed annually, and Business is $23 ($19 and $33 billed monthly). The $8 difference adds automatic recording, AI call summaries and transcripts for all calls (Starter gets them only for calls its Sona assistant answers), phone menus, and the HubSpot and Salesforce integrations. At Ooma, $5 more per user moves a team from Pro to Pro Plus and raises the account's text allowance from 250 to 1,000 a month along with adding queues and CRM integration.
Sources
- ringcentral.com/office/plansandpricing.html
- quo.com/pricing
- ooma.com/small-business-phone-systems/plans
- ooma.com/legal/rates
- workspace.google.com/products/voice
- zoom.us/pricing/zoom-phone
- nextiva.com/nextiva-pricing
- vonage.com/unified-communications/pricing
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Written by Kaz (pen name). Figures are copied from providers' published pricing pages on the dates shown. We have not used these products. Corrections: contact form.