Top 10 VoIP business phone systems in 2026: honestly ranked

The best VoIP business phone system in 2026 for most small businesses is RingCentral MVP or Nextiva, both run around $20 to $25 per user per month at the entry tier, both ship with auto-attendants, voicemail-to-email, and mobile apps that actually work. Which one wins depends on whether you prefer a deeper feature surface (RingCentral) or stronger live support (Nextiva). The rest of this guide ranks eight more options that fit specific cases, CRM-anchored sales teams, Teams or Zoom shops, AI-native call coaching, and developer-built dialers where the carrier is the platform.

This is part of a Helix Stax software-listicle series for SMB owners and COOs. We do not resell VoIP, we do not take vendor commissions, and we set up phone systems as part of operations advisory engagements. We also run a production Telnyx-based dialer for a client right now, so the bottom end of this list comes from operating experience, not vendor pages. The ranking below is what we would tell a client across a kitchen table.

How we picked these

The ranking is for small businesses, not call centers with 200 agents and not solo founders forwarding calls to a cell phone. The pool is 5 to 150 employees, the buyer is the owner-operator or the COO, and the budget is real. We weighted eight criteria.

• SMB-focused pricing, with transparent per-user rates and no “contact sales” gates for fewer than 50 seats
• Auto-attendant, voicemail-to-email, and call routing out of the box, not as upsells
• Mobile, desktop, and web softphone apps that work without a separate license
• CRM integration with the major SMB CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Pipedrive) at the mid tier or lower
• Compliance posture for the relevant verticals, HIPAA BAAs, PCI-aware call recording, STIR/SHAKEN attestation
• Call recording, transcription, and analytics at a tier most SMBs can actually afford
• Number portability in and out, including toll-free, without per-port fees that punish you for leaving
• Vendor stability: has been in business long enough to bet five years on it

Two of the ten entries below are not turnkey VoIP services at all, they are programmable telecom platforms (Telnyx and Twilio). We included them because SMB buyers shopping at the high end often discover the hosted options leave money on the table once a developer is in the room. We flag the trade-off explicitly when we get to them.

Quick comparison table

Use this as a fast-scan reference; the per-service sections below cover the nuance.

Rank	Logo	Service	Best for	Price (USD/user/mo)	Notable feature
1	RingCentral	RingCentral MVP	Most SMBs that want the full feature set	$20 to $45	Industry-standard hosted PBX, deep ecosystem
2	Nextiva	Nextiva	SMBs that prioritize human support	$18.95 to $32.95	Strongest customer service in the category
3	Aircall	Aircall	Sales teams anchored on a CRM	$30 to $50	Best CRM integration surface in hosted VoIP
4	Dialpad	Dialpad	Teams that want AI transcription native	$15 to $25	Real-time transcription and coaching built in
5	Vonage	Vonage Business Communications	Solid all-rounder	$19.99 to $39.99	Mature platform, broad integration catalog
6	GoTo Connect	GoTo Connect	Flexible plans, smaller teams	$27 to $43	Visual dial-plan editor, no add-on for SMS
7	Zoom Phone	Zoom Phone	Shops already standardized on Zoom	$10 to $20	Cheapest credible option if Zoom is your hub
8	Teams Phone	Microsoft Teams Phone	Microsoft 365 shops	$8 to $15.50	Lowest sticker price if you already pay for M365
9	Telnyx	Telnyx	Programmable telecom, dev-friendly	$0.0035 to $0.007/min + DID fees	Carrier-grade pricing, build your own dialer
10	Twilio	Twilio Programmable Voice	Maximum flexibility, dev-required	$0.014/min inbound, $0.013/min outbound	The most flexible voice platform on the market

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RingCentral

1. RingCentral MVP: the default for most SMBs

RingCentral MVP is the safest pick for a typical small business in 2026. You get a full hosted PBX, auto-attendant, IVR menus, call queues, voicemail-to-email, business SMS, video meetings, and mobile and desktop softphones, at a price the SMB market has settled on as the going rate. It is the option no procurement committee gets fired for choosing.

• Price: $20 (Core), $25 (Advanced), $35 (Ultra) per user per month, annual commitment. Verified May 2026 on ringcentral.com.
• Best for: Any small business that wants a complete phone system on day one without picking apart feature menus.

Pros

• Most feature-complete hosted PBX in the SMB tier, auto-attendant, IVR, queues, SMS, video, and analytics ship together
• Mature integration catalog covers Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace at the mid tier
• Reliable mobile and desktop apps; the Windows softphone is one of the better ones in the category
• STIR/SHAKEN attestation handled at the carrier, so your outbound calls show up as verified

Cons

• The price is what the market will bear, not what the costs justify, at scale, programmable telecom undercuts it by 60 to 80 percent
• Feature creep on the higher tiers (analytics dashboards, AI summaries) costs real money and most SMBs do not use it
• Support is functional but not the standout reason to pick RingCentral; Nextiva wins that fight

Who should pick this? Owner-operators and COOs who want a working phone system in a week, a brand the rest of the org has heard of, and a feature surface they can grow into without changing vendors.

Nextiva

2. Nextiva: the support-led alternative

Nextiva is the right pick when you value human support over feature depth. The phone system itself is comparable to RingCentral on the things SMBs actually use, and Nextiva consistently rates as the best customer-service experience in the hosted-VoIP category. If your phone system is going down on a Friday afternoon, this is the vendor whose tech actually answers.

• Price: $18.95 (Essential), $22.95 (Professional), $32.95 (Enterprise) per user per month, annual.
• Best for: SMBs where “the phone has to work” matters more than “the dashboard has every metric.”

Pros

• Genuinely strong US-based support, the differentiator
• Solid hosted PBX feature set: auto-attendant, call routing, voicemail-to-email, mobile apps
• HIPAA-eligible with a signed BAA on the Professional tier and up
• Unified workspace (NextivaONE) combines calling, video, and chat in one app, fewer windows for non-technical users

Cons

• Smaller integration catalog than RingCentral; HubSpot and Salesforce work, but the long tail is thinner
• Analytics on the entry tier are basic, you climb to Enterprise for the dashboards SMBs typically expect
• Annual contracts are the norm; month-to-month pricing is meaningfully higher

Who should pick this? Service businesses, healthcare practices, and any team where the COO would rather call a human on a problem than open a support portal.

Aircall

3. Aircall: the CRM-integrated sales dialer

Aircall is the right pick when your phone system has to live inside your CRM. Aircall is purpose-built as a sales dialer that hangs off HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Intercom, or Zendesk, call logs, recordings, and outcomes write back to the contact record automatically. For an SMB sales team where the CRM is the source of truth, this is the difference between a phone system and a phone-shaped friction tax.

• Price: $30 (Essentials), $50 (Professional) per user per month, annual. Three-user minimum.
• Best for: Sales teams anchored on HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive who care about call data ending up in the CRM without manual logging.

Pros

• Strongest CRM integration surface in hosted VoIP, automatic call logging, click-to-dial from contact records, outcome capture
• Power Dialer and Click-to-Dial on Professional reduce dial fatigue meaningfully
• Real-time analytics and call monitoring (live listen, whisper, barge) at the mid tier
• Clean API for custom integrations, if your CRM is non-standard, you can still wire it up

Cons

• Three-user minimum prices out solo founders
• No video, no team chat, it is a phone system, not a unified workspace
• Per-user pricing climbs faster than the hosted PBX leaders at scale

Who should pick this? SMB sales orgs of 5 to 30 reps where the daily question is “what happened on that call?” Helix Stax has done CRM-integrated dialer work in production. One client runs a CRM with a backend-for-frontend dialer that proxies WebRTC, with sticky-per-rep number assignment and call logs writing back to the contact record. Aircall solves the same problem off the shelf for the major hosted CRMs. The pattern is what matters: phone calls have to write back to the customer record, or the calls did not happen as far as the business is concerned.

Dialpad

4. Dialpad: AI transcription native

Dialpad is the pick when you want real-time transcription, call summaries, and AI coaching built into the phone system, not bolted on. Dialpad’s AI surface (transcription, sentiment, action items, post-call summaries) ships with the base product and is the reason people pick it. It is also one of the cheaper hosted PBXes at the entry tier.

• Price: $15 (Standard), $25 (Pro), Enterprise (quote) per user per month, annual.
• Best for: Sales and customer-success teams that want every call transcribed and summarized without a separate transcription vendor.

Pros

• AI transcription on every call, on every plan, the differentiator
• Real-time sentiment analysis and post-call summaries that are surprisingly usable
• Clean mobile and desktop apps, modern UI
• Standard hosted PBX features (auto-attendant, voicemail-to-email, call routing) included

Cons

• CRM integrations exist but are shallower than Aircall’s; HubSpot and Salesforce work, Pipedrive support lags
• AI transcription quality is excellent on clean lines and noticeably degrades on poor cell connections
• International calling pricing is higher than RingCentral and Nextiva

Who should pick this? SMBs whose digital strategy leans on AI, call coaching, sales-call analytics, and meeting summaries are part of the operating model, not a side project.

Vonage

5. Vonage Business Communications: the solid all-rounder

Vonage is the pick when you want a mature platform with a wide integration catalog and you do not need a standout differentiator. Hosted PBX, video meetings, team messaging, SMS, and a long list of integrations covering most SMB business tools. Nothing about Vonage will surprise you, in either direction.

• Price: $19.99 (Mobile), $29.99 (Premium), $39.99 (Advanced) per user per month, annual. Pricing varies with seat count.
• Best for: SMBs that want a working phone system from a known telecom brand without being on the bleeding edge.

Pros

• Mature platform, Vonage has been doing business VoIP since before “VoIP” was a marketing term
• Broad integration catalog covers the major CRMs, helpdesks, and productivity suites
• Video meetings included on Premium and Advanced
• Reasonable per-user pricing at smaller seat counts

Cons

• The product is not best-in-class at anything specific; it loses head-to-heads against RingCentral on features and Nextiva on support
• The admin console is showing its age compared to the more modern competitors
• Pricing structure is more complex than it needs to be, talk to a rep, get a custom quote

Who should pick this? SMBs that already use a Vonage product (SMS API, video), or any business where “no one ever got fired for picking Vonage” is the operating heuristic.

GoTo Connect

6. GoTo Connect: the flexible plan-builder

GoTo Connect is the pick when you want a hosted PBX with a friendly admin experience and a flexible plan structure. GoTo’s visual dial-plan editor is one of the better tools in the category for non-technical administrators, and SMS is included rather than an add-on. The product is solid; the brand is a moving target after several rebrands.

• Price: $27 (Basic), $32 (Standard), $43 (Premium) per user per month, annual. SMB pricing scales with seat count.
• Best for: SMBs with a non-technical office manager running the phone system who needs a clear UI for routing rules.

Pros

• Visual dial-plan editor is genuinely good, drag-and-drop call flows that anyone can edit
• SMS, video meetings, and team chat included on Standard and Premium
• Solid mobile and desktop apps
• Number porting is straightforward; GoTo has not been one of the providers that drags this out

Cons

• Brand confusion, GoTo Connect was previously Jive, then LogMeIn, then GoTo; the marketing assets have lived under multiple identities
• Integration catalog is narrower than RingCentral or Vonage
• Higher entry price than Zoom Phone or Teams Phone for shops that have those platforms already

Who should pick this? Small offices where the phone system has to be administered by a non-technical operator, and where the admin friction is the actual cost.

Zoom Phone

7. Zoom Phone: the cheapest credible Zoom-shop pick

If your team already runs every meeting in Zoom, Zoom Phone is the cheapest credible way to add business calling. Zoom Phone bolts onto your existing Zoom workspace, unified inside the Zoom client, with a base tier that is the lowest sticker price in this list.

• Price: $10 (US/Canada Metered), $15 (US/Canada Unlimited), $20 (Pro Global Select) per user per month, annual.
• Best for: SMBs already paying for Zoom Workplace where calls are an extension of the meeting practice.

Pros

• Cheapest entry tier in the credible hosted-VoIP set
• Unified experience inside the Zoom client, calls, meetings, chat, and webinars in one app
• Strong audio quality, leveraging Zoom’s mature media stack
• Number porting and basic auto-attendant included on the cheapest tier

Cons

• Requires a paid Zoom Workplace license alongside Zoom Phone; not standalone-priced
• Integration catalog outside the major CRMs is thinner than RingCentral or Vonage
• The phone-system feature set is intentionally narrower than the hosted-PBX leaders, IVR, call queues, and analytics are basic until you climb tiers

Who should pick this? SMBs that already pay for Zoom Workplace, run their meeting culture inside Zoom, and want calling that does not require another tab.

Teams Phone

8. Microsoft Teams Phone: the cheapest M365-shop pick

If you already pay for Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Teams Phone is the cheapest credible way to add a business phone system. Calling lives inside Teams alongside chat, meetings, and SharePoint. The licensing math gets attractive fast because much of the infrastructure is already paid for.

• Price: $8 (Teams Phone with Calling Plan), $15.50 (Phone Standard) per user per month. Calling plan minutes priced separately.
• Best for: Microsoft 365 shops where Teams is already the daily-driver app and adding phone is a license decision, not a platform decision.

Pros

• Lowest sticker price in this list if you already pay for M365
• Calls live inside Teams next to chat and meetings, no extra app for users to learn
• Calling Plan, Operator Connect, and Direct Routing options give flexibility on the carrier layer
• Enterprise-grade compliance posture (the same one you already vetted for M365)

Cons

• Calling Plan minutes are charged separately and the math can surprise you for high-volume teams
• Auto-attendant and call queue tooling exists but the admin UX inside Teams Admin Center is rough
• Teams as a softphone is functional but not the best in the category, audio quality lags Zoom Phone on poor connections
• For shops that do not already use M365, the all-in cost is no cheaper than RingCentral

Who should pick this? Any business already standardized on Microsoft 365 Business Premium where the phone bill is the last vendor to consolidate.

Telnyx

9. Telnyx: the programmable carrier

Telnyx is a programmable telecom platform, not a hosted phone system, and that is the entire point. Telnyx is the carrier underneath, with an API, a WebRTC SDK, a number marketplace, and per-minute pricing that is a fraction of the hosted PBX tier. You bring the application. We are not speculating: Helix Stax runs a production dialer on Telnyx for a multi-location client today. Dozens of direct numbers across several area codes, sticky-per-rep number assignment via the BFF, A2P 10DLC registered, STIR/SHAKEN A-attestation, branded caller ID, and Free Caller Registry submissions in flight. All of it on Telnyx. The runbook for spam-label mitigation lives in our knowledge base. The math at scale is genuinely different from the hosted tier.

• Price: $0.0035 to $0.007 per minute outbound (varies by destination and volume), $1 to $2 per DID per month, no per-seat fee. SIP trunking pricing similar.
• Best for: SMBs with engineering capacity, sales teams large enough that $30 per seat per month is real money, or any business where the phone system is a product, not a utility.

Pros

• Carrier-grade pricing, at meaningful volume, costs are 60 to 80 percent below hosted PBX equivalents
• Modern API, WebRTC SDK, and SIP trunking with documentation that engineers do not complain about
• STIR/SHAKEN A-attestation, branded caller ID, and A2P 10DLC handled at the platform level
• 24/7 support that includes engineers, not only sales, relevant when your dialer is your business

Cons

• You have to build or buy the application layer, Telnyx is not a hosted PBX
• Compliance work (TCPA, call recording consent, DNC scrubbing) lives in your app, not at the vendor
• The benefits compound for teams with developer access; for everyone else, hosted PBX is still the right answer

Who should pick this? SMBs that have a developer on staff (or a partner like Helix Stax), have outgrown the seat-based pricing model, or are building a phone product where Telnyx is the carrier and your application is the differentiator. Sales orgs above 20 reps making meaningful outbound volume should at least price it out before resigning the RingCentral contract.

Twilio

10. Twilio Programmable Voice: the flexibility play

Twilio is the most flexible voice platform on the market, and the most demanding to build on. Twilio invented the programmable-telecom category and remains the broadest in API surface area, voice, SMS, video, email, WhatsApp, verification, Flex (their contact center). The flexibility comes at a per-minute price point higher than Telnyx, and an integration burden no SMB owner should take on without a developer.

• Price: $0.014 per minute inbound (local), $0.013 per minute outbound (local US), $1.15 per US local DID per month. International pricing varies widely.
• Best for: Engineering teams building voice products, SaaS apps that need a voice channel, and SMBs whose product is the phone interaction.

Pros

• Largest API surface in programmable telecom, voice, SMS, video, email, verification, contact center
• Excellent documentation, mature SDKs across every common language
• Twilio Flex offers a contact-center surface for teams that need agent workflows
• Enterprise compliance posture (HIPAA-eligible, SOC 2, GDPR, PCI) with the right configuration

Cons

• Per-minute pricing is meaningfully higher than Telnyx; at scale, the cost delta matters
• Like Telnyx, this is a build-it platform, you need engineering capacity
• Flex contact center is powerful but priced as enterprise software, not SMB
• Account suspensions for A2P 10DLC compliance happen and the support process can be slow

Who should pick this? SMBs that have a product team, are building a voice-enabled application (not just an internal phone system), or have outgrown both hosted PBX and Telnyx. For pure outbound dialer use cases, Telnyx is usually the better economic answer; for richer multi-channel voice products, Twilio’s breadth earns its premium.

How to actually choose: a four-question framework

The single most useful filter is asking how the phone system has to interact with the rest of your stack. If you spend more than ten minutes deciding, the framework below is what we use on Helix Pulse calls.

1. Do you already pay for Microsoft 365 or Zoom? If yes, Teams Phone or Zoom Phone is almost certainly the cheapest correct answer. The integration is already paid for.
2. Is your phone system anchored to a CRM? Go to Aircall. If the CRM is not a Salesforce or HubSpot, ask whether RingCentral or Dialpad supports the specific integration first. Manual call logging is a productivity tax you do not want.
3. Are you a service business that just needs the phone to work? RingCentral MVP for features, Nextiva for support. Both are correct; pick on the support question.
4. Are you running enough outbound volume that per-seat pricing hurts? Price out Telnyx or Twilio. Above roughly 20 reps making real outbound calls, the carrier-grade economics start to compound into meaningful budget.

One filter that should not drive the choice: the feature checklist on the vendor’s marketing page. Every hosted PBX in the top eight handles auto-attendant, voicemail-to-email, mobile apps, and basic IVR. The differences live in support quality, CRM integration depth, AI surface, and how the per-minute math works at your actual volume.

Common phone-system mistakes Helix Stax sees in SMB setups

Most of the phone-system problems we fix in operations engagements are not vendor problems, they are setup problems. Here are the six failure modes we audit on day one.

• No STIR/SHAKEN attestation, or the wrong level. Carriers issue STIR/SHAKEN attestations A, B, or C. A is the strongest and the one your outbound calls need to clear major carrier spam filters in 2026. Many SMBs are on B by default and never learn why their outbound answer rate dropped. Audit your carrier’s attestation level once a quarter.
• No Free Caller Registry submission. T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon each maintain spam-label registries. Free Caller Registry is the single submission that hits all three. SMBs running cold outbound and skipping this step end up labeled “Scam Likely” on the major US carriers within weeks. Submission takes 20 minutes and takes 24 to 72 hours to propagate.
• No A2P 10DLC registration for business SMS. Sending SMS from a business number without 10DLC registration leads to throttling, then blocking. Registration is a one-time setup with the carrier and your messaging provider. We have seen SMBs lose their entire SMS channel because they never registered.
• Call recording without consent compliance. Federal law (FCC) requires one-party consent for call recording. Twelve states (CA, CT, FL, IL, MD, MA, MT, NV, NH, PA, WA, and DE in some cases) require two-party consent. Recording calls into those states without a disclosure tone, prompt, or DTMF acknowledgment is legally exposed. Telnyx and Twilio let you build the disclosure layer; hosted PBXes ship it with various levels of configurability.
• One main domain hosting both phone and email reputation. Sending bulk marketing email and outbound cold calls from the same domain conflates two reputation systems. When the email reputation tanks, the brand suffers. When the calling reputation tanks, the answer rate suffers. Separate the marketing channels onto subdomains and let your main domain stay clean for human-to-human conversation.
• No HIPAA BAA on file when handling protected health information. Healthcare practices using a phone system without a signed Business Associate Agreement are non-compliant. Nextiva, RingCentral, Microsoft, Zoom, and Dialpad all sign BAAs on the appropriate tiers, but the BAA has to be signed and on file before PHI flows through the system. We see this gap on roughly half of healthcare-adjacent practices we audit.

Helix Stax sets all of this up as part of operations advisory engagements. Phone systems live inside the Technology pillar of the CTGA Framework; spam-label mitigation, STIR/SHAKEN, and 10DLC live inside the Controls pillar. Book a free Helix Pulse and we will tell you what is broken in your current setup, in plain English.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best VoIP for small business in 2026? For most small businesses, RingCentral MVP ($20 per user per month) or Nextiva ($18.95 per user per month) is the right pick. Choose RingCentral if you want the deepest feature surface and integration catalog; choose Nextiva if support quality is the priority. Both handle auto-attendants, voicemail-to-email, mobile apps, and STIR/SHAKEN attestation out of the box.

Is RingCentral worth the price? For SMBs that want a complete phone system on day one with a known brand and a wide integration catalog, yes. At scale (above 20 reps doing meaningful outbound), per-seat pricing starts to lose to programmable telecom like Telnyx by a wide margin. For most SMBs at 5 to 25 seats, RingCentral is priced fairly for what it ships.

Can I run a business on Teams Phone alone? If you already pay for Microsoft 365 Business Premium and your team lives in Teams, yes, for a wide range of SMBs Teams Phone is sufficient. The limits are admin UX (Teams Admin Center for phone is rough), softphone quality on poor connections, and the fact that Calling Plan minutes are priced separately. For shops that do not already use M365, the all-in cost is not cheaper than RingCentral.

What is the difference between hosted VoIP and SIP trunking? Hosted VoIP (RingCentral, Nextiva, Vonage) bundles the carrier, the PBX features, and the softphone apps into one per-user subscription. SIP trunking (Telnyx, Twilio, Bandwidth) gives you the carrier connection only, you bring or build the PBX layer (3CX, FreePBX, your own application). Hosted is the right answer for most SMBs; SIP trunking pays off when you have engineering capacity or have outgrown the per-seat pricing.

Is VoIP HIPAA-compliant? VoIP can be HIPAA-compliant when the provider signs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and the covered entity configures access controls, retention, and audit logs correctly. RingCentral, Nextiva, Microsoft Teams, Zoom Phone, and Dialpad all sign BAAs on appropriate tiers. The BAA must be signed and on file before protected health information flows through the system. Programmable platforms like Telnyx and Twilio also support HIPAA-aligned configurations, but the compliance work lives in your application.

How do you handle call recording legally? Federal law requires one-party consent for call recording (the recorder is one party, so consent is implicit). Twelve US states require two-party (all-party) consent, meaning the other party must be informed before recording begins. Compliant practice is to play a disclosure tone or prompt at call start, capture acknowledgment (verbal, DTMF, or beep-tone), and store the acknowledgment with the recording in tamper-evident storage. Hosted VoIP providers offer varying levels of configurability for this; programmable platforms let you build the disclosure layer exactly to spec.

What about spam labels, how do I keep my outbound calls answered? Three layers compound. First, STIR/SHAKEN attestation: confirm your carrier issues A-level attestation on your outbound calls, not B or C. Second, register with Free Caller Registry, one submission hits T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon spam-label systems and propagates in 24 to 72 hours. Third, set up branded calling (Telnyx Branded Calling, RingCentral Number Verification, equivalent vendor offerings) so your business name shows on the recipient’s screen. CNAM registration on every DID is the baseline. Spam labels are reversible but they take weeks to recover from, so prevention is cheaper than cure.

Can VoIP integrate with my CRM? Yes, and the depth of integration is one of the main differentiators between vendors. Aircall has the deepest CRM integration surface among hosted VoIPs (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Intercom, Zendesk) with automatic call logging, click-to-dial, and outcome capture. RingCentral, Dialpad, and Nextiva also integrate with the major CRMs, with shallower automation. For non-standard CRMs, programmable platforms (Telnyx, Twilio) let you build the integration exactly. See our top CRMs for small business ranking for the other side of this pairing.

What’s the cheapest business phone system? For shops already paying for Microsoft 365, Teams Phone at $8 per user per month is the lowest sticker price. For Zoom Workplace shops, Zoom Phone at $10 per user per month is the cheapest credible option. Standalone (not bundled with an existing license), Dialpad Standard at $15 per user per month is the cheapest full hosted PBX with AI transcription included. At scale with engineering capacity, Telnyx per-minute pricing beats every hosted option by a wide margin.

Do you help businesses set up phone systems? Yes. Helix Stax sets up business phone systems as part of operations advisory engagements, vendor selection, number porting, STIR/SHAKEN and 10DLC registration, CRM integration, call recording compliance, and spam-label mitigation. We run a production Telnyx-based dialer for one of our clients today, so the programmable side of the stack is not theoretical for us. Book a free Helix Pulse and we will scope the work.

What is STIR/SHAKEN and do I need it? STIR/SHAKEN is a US carrier framework for verifying that the caller ID on an outbound call has not been spoofed. Carriers issue an attestation level (A, B, or C) on every call you make. A is the strongest, the carrier vouches for both your identity and your authorization to use the number. As of 2024, calls without A-level attestation are increasingly flagged as “Spam Likely” or sent straight to voicemail by major carriers. If you make outbound business calls in the US, you need your carrier on A-level attestation. Most hosted VoIPs handle this; some programmable platforms (Telnyx, Twilio) require you to confirm your account is configured for A.

Can I keep my phone number if I switch VoIP providers? Yes, US number portability is a regulated right. Your new provider files a port request with the old provider; the old provider cannot legally block it, though they can drag the process out. Toll-free numbers port the same way through the RespOrg system. Practical advice: never let a vendor’s billing dispute hold your number hostage. Initiate the port request early, do not cancel the old service until the port completes, and confirm in writing that the old vendor will not terminate the number mid-port.

Need help choosing?

The right phone system depends on the rest of your stack, your outbound volume, and how the phone system has to interact with your CRM. Book a free Helix Pulse, 60 minutes with the founder, your top three operational gaps named in plain English, and an estimated Helix Score from the CTGA Framework. No pitch deck, no follow-up cadence.