Best Hosted PBX Services

To better understand hosted PBX, it’s important to first break down what PBX is. PBX, or private branch exchange, is a private phone network used by companies to communicate with people inside and outside of the company. The system can connect phone networks from separate offices, allowing employees in different office locations to easily communicate internally while still using the network to make and receive external calls. PBX systems come with additional business-grade features such as call transfers, split lines, video conferencing and more.

Traditional or “on-site” PBX systems require a business to install and maintain hardware such as copper phone lines and physical phones. Hosted PBX systems rely on the internet and voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) technology to make and receive calls, and they don’t require any on-site hardware.

Hosted PBX systems are managed and maintained by the phone system provider, so companies save money as investing in hosted PBX systems doesn’t require buying additional equipment or hiring internal IT specialists for maintenance.

Additionally, the online nature of hosted PBX systems allows organizations to more effectively implement hybrid or remote working environments—easily transforming mobile devices or home desktops into office phones.

Searching for the right hosted PBX service can be overwhelming as there are so many services offering different combinations of features and payment plans. Below, we will outline some of the most important considerations you should be thinking about when choosing the best hosted PBX service for your unique needs.

Essential Features

While the full list of hosted PBX features is vast, below we highlight the most essential.

• Video/audio conferencing tools: Some conference calling tools will come with a limit to how many participants can connect to a meeting, so be sure this number meets your needs.
• Unlimited calling: Standard plans tend to offer unlimited domestic calls, whereas upgrading to higher subscription tiers usually provides unlimited calling to a number of other countries. Be sure to research which countries are available if your business makes a lot of international calls.
• Virtual receptionist: A team of live agents receive and direct incoming calls on behalf of your business.
• Mobile app: A necessary feature for any business that has hybrid or remote workers who need to take calls or stay connected with the organization.
• Voicemail/fax to email: Fax machines and voice mail boxes can be programmed to route messages to email in order to expedite access to messages and save money on hardware, ink and paper.
• Call recording: Call recording is an important tool used for analyzing call efficiency, sales techniques and more.
• Call monitoring/intervention: This feature allows managers to listen in on calls and intervene if necessary.
• Auto-attendant: A simple call answering system that focuses on routing callers to a destination with menu options.
• Interactive voice response (IVR): IVR provides callers with multiple layers of menu choices to reach the correct destination. It can also interact with callers via speech, initiate text/emails, store contact information and more.
• Online faxing: Send and receive faxes electronically without needing an expensive piece of hardware.
• Call flipping: Move an active call between different devices, such as from a mobile app to a desktop phone.
• Collaboration tools: Some hosted PBX services will offer intra-company collaboration tools that can replace apps such as Slack or Google Calendar.

Payment Plans and Cost

Most hosted PBX services operate on a subscription tier system in which access to certain features is locked behind more expensive subscription plans. When searching for the right hosted PBX service for your business, be sure of two things:

1. The hosted PBX service subscription costs are within your budget: Some of these costs can add up as they are charged “per user, per month (or year)” so be sure to have a proper head count of how many users in your company. Sometimes you can negotiate bundle prices depending on the size of your company.
2. The features you need are not unexpectedly locked behind upgrades: Some hosted PBX companies might mislead you with marketing beats such as, “Comes with over 60 third-party integrations” when this feature may in fact be locked behind the most expensive enterprise-level subscription plan. Scrutinize each payment plan and what it offers before committing to one.

Scalability

Since hosted PBX services don’t use physical phone lines, they are much easier and more cost efficient to scale than their traditional counterparts. Consider the current size of your business but also your potential growth rate when choosing the right hosted PBX service. If you are a growing medium-sized business, for example, you wouldn’t want to choose a service that caters mostly to small businesses as you might soon outgrow the service.

Consider features with known limits such as how many incoming and outgoing phone calls the service can handle at once or how many attendees can participate in video conferences.

Customer Support

Since hosted PBX services are managed and maintained primarily by the provider, you will want to be sure that they have reliable technical and customer support systems. Many people prefer contacting a human representative over dealing with AI support, for example. Also, depending on your business model, you might need to prioritize access to 24/7 support.

Furthermore, certain types of support may come free from your service provider while others will come at a cost. Clarify what support is included and what is not so you aren’t caught off guard with additional costs down the line.

When researching the best hosted PBX services on the market, we were able to narrow down our choices to 13. We then analyzed and tested each service against five categories and 26 total sub-criteria. Categories that we felt were the most impactful—such as general features and our expert’s hands-on experiences—were weighted higher in our scoring system.

• Pricing (10% of score): The hosted PBX services we analyzed all implemented a tiered, subscription-based pricing system. We looked at each service’s prices across the tiers from the starting tier to the most expensive—along with whether free trials or free versions were available. Pricing accounted for 10% of the total score.
• General features (30%): General features include essential tools and capabilities that should be provided by hosted PBX services of the highest quality, including unlimited domestic calls and SMS, automated attendants, toll-free numbers, video conferencing and more. Since general features make up the bulk of what a hosted PBX will offer its customers, we weighted them highly at 30% of the total score.
• Additional features (20%): While not necessary, we considered additional features to be important in separating mediocre hosted PBX services from great ones. Team messaging, call recording and visual recording make up some of the additional features we were looking for. We valued these features at 20% of the total score.
• Reviews and ratings (10%): While reviews can be seen as largely subjective, they are nonetheless a reflection of the performance of these services out in the wild and the relationship these companies have developed with their customer bases. Reviews and ratings counted for 10% of the total score.
• Expert score (30%): Our experts tested each of these services by hand, paying special attention to small details and standout features that could impact a user experience from a day-to-day perspective. Our experts considered how each service felt to use and whether they were getting adequate value for the cost. The expert score category accounted for 30% of the total score.