If the trends in the global economy for the past decade have told us anything, it’s that we’re in the age of the customer.

No matter which industry you’re in, it matters a lot what kind of experience you provide to your users. In fact, one in every three customers could leave a brand they like after only one bad experience. Not to mention the damage that a single social media post can have on your reputation.

That’s why it’s important to give your customers support throughout the whole journey – from visiting your website to giving feedback about the product.

One tool that can help streamline this process is a VoIP business phone system. Equipping your business with a VoIP number can help your entire customer service team while providing your users with a better experience.

Since RingCentral and Vonage are some of the most popular VoIP services out there, we’ll be comparing them in this article to tell you how each of them can benefit your business.

What is RingCentral?

One of the most popular cloud-based communication solutions for enterprises, RingCentral has been in the communication game since 1999.

Since then, they went through various changes and investment rounds, adding features along the way. In 2015, they acquired Glip – a team collaboration provider that helped RingCentral infuse its VoIP tool with much-needed collaboration features.

RingCentral’s Premium plan is one of the most popular options on the VoIP market and it packs such features as call forwarding, call logs, video conferencing, and a multi-level attendant.

What is Vonage?

With more than 1.1 million line subscribers, Vonage was started primarily as a consumer-centered VoIP service. They still keep this service through their Vonage for Home product.

However, much like many other VoIP companies, Vonage focused on the enterprise marketplace, providing companies with business phone solutions for their customer service teams. This shift started back in 2013 when Vonage acquired several companies from the SaaS industry to make the switch towards cloud-based technology.

As a result, Ringcentral and Vonage are now fiercely competing to serve virtually the same target audience.

See also: Vonage vs Broadvoice

How did we compare them?

To get a good look at their features and give both services a fair chance, we used each of them for at least two weeks. During this period, we took notes and compared them while keeping these seven things in mind:

  • Interface and ease of use – setting up a VoIP service shouldn’t be too difficult but not all providers pay the same amount of attention to these details. The setup process is just the beginning, since the overall interface, design, and ease of use are even more important.
  • Features – not all providers offer the same amount of minutes and the same basic options for call management.
  • Advanced features – if you need more than call forwarding, extensions, and call logs, that counts as an advanced feature. Some of these features can make it easier for your team to manage calls or even collaborate as a unit.
  • Integrations – a VoIP phone system is usually a part of a bigger picture – CRM, Sales, Customer Service, you name it. Some of these fields have their own tools, so it can be useful if your VoIP system can integrate with those tools.
  • Customer service – if you have a problem with the service or if you would like to upgrade, it’s important to have a quick and easy way of contacting the provider or researching the issue on your own.
  • Pricing – different pricing plans include different features, advanced options, or even the number of extensions. Depending on the size of your company and your business needs, you might prefer one plan over the others.
  • User reviews – finally, we’ve taken a look at user reviews and highlighted some things that have been repeated several times.

So, let’s start comparing RingCentral and Vonage!

RingCentral Vs Vonage: Interface and ease of use

When installing new software for your company, you want to make sure the installation and setup process is as easy as possible. If you have an IT department in your company, they won’t find it hard to set up almost any software/hardware. If you don’t, you should choose a tool whose installation process is well explained right from the start.

Fortunately, both of these tools have straightforward setup processes.

When you sign up for their services, you’ll get a welcome email with all the explanations you need. Vonage has great installation support, where you can schedule an appointment with their Installation Team if you need assistance. Both Vonage and RingCentral have a guided installation process that is transparent and easily understandable.

The interface of these two tools is similar as well – they even use similar colors. On the left, you have a navigation bar, while most of the screen is taken up by the big window on the right of the menu.

RingCentral vs Vonage: Vonage
Source: PCMag

This is a popular interface solution used by VoIP phone systems, especially those that have team collaboration options. RingCentral uses a similar solution, although a little cleaner.

RingCentral vs Vonage: RingCentral
Source: PCMag UK

There is little to separate these tools in the interface and initial setup departments. We might give a slight edge to Vonage when it comes to the installation process, as they offer more options for support and guidance.

RingCentral Vs Vonage: Features

Both RingCentral and Vonage offer free calling and SMS in the U.S. and Canada, even in their cheapest plans. The only difference here is that Vonage also offers free minutes (but not SMS) for Mexico, which shouldn’t be overlooked if you’re running a US-based company. 

However, Vonage doesn’t offer their product internationally. This doesn’t mean that you can’t dial international numbers or receive calls from abroad – both systems are capable of that. The key difference here is that you can’t have an international number with Vonage. So, if you’re business is not in the U.S. or you have employees outside of the U.S. that will need a VoIP system, either go for RingCentral or choose one of our recommended Vonage alternatives.

If international calling is an important feature you can’t do without, consider a tool that we are passionately buildingRingblaze. Not only does it support international numbers but calling your business from anywhere in the world will be free for your customers. Sign up for Ringblaze and try this out!

When it comes to other features, RingCentral’s voicemail-to-text, team messaging, and document sharing are worth noting, especially since they come even with the most basic plan. Vonage, on the other hand, works more as a “choose your own features” type of deal. You can pick the ones your business will need and ignore the other ones.

RingCentral Vs Vonage: Integrations

Running a business is easier if the tools you’re using work well together. That’s what we call “integrations”, and they can be as simple as scheduling a call through Outlook or as complex as viewing extensive call reports on Salesforce.

If your preferred VoIP provider doesn’t offer certain integrations, you can ask your IT department to create them for you or even invest in a third-party integration solution. However, it’s always better when the integration you need comes right out of the box.

RingCentral call log
Source: RingCentral

Vonage was one of the first providers to offer integrations but RingCentral has caught up and the two providers are now close competitors in this field. They both offer integrations with the most popular apps, such as Google Apps, Office 365, Salesforce, Zendesk, and OneDrive.

There are only slight differences that could guide your decision here. For instance, RingCentral offers integration with Dropbox, while Vonage doesn’t. On the other hand, Vonage has Netsuite integration, which RingCentral doesn’t.

RingCentral Vs Vonage: team collaboration features

If you have a customer support or sales team that works in shifts, you’ll likely benefit from a VoIP tool that has team collaboration and similar advanced features. That way, your agents can easily stay in the loop and manage their collective workload.

RingCentral has something to offer here with Glip – a team chat solution similar to Slack. Since RingCentral acquired Glip in 2015, it now comes free with all of their pricing plans, allowing your agents to chat via text, audio, and video. Much like Slack, Glip offers a set of benefits: you can access notes, collaborate on documents, and have unlimited storage.

Vonage also partners with a team chat provider to offer this service but they formed a partnership with a much more famous brand: Amazon. Vonage partnered with Amazon Chime, a collaboration solution that offers much of the same features as Glip does. You can use it for video conferencing, team chat, and many other collaboration perks. It’s also worth noting that Amazon Chime is a safer option than Glip.

Since both RingCentral and Vonage use outside help to provide a collaboration tool, you might want to consider a VoIP provider that has this tool built-in. Ringblaze has one such tool, a team collaboration dashboard that allows you to assign calls, leave comments, and collaborate in real-time to improve the call managing experience.

Sign up for Ringblaze and see just how advanced team collaboration can get!

RingCentral Vs Vonage: Pricing

When it comes to pricing, both of these tools have several plans which you can choose from, with various features, extension limits, and integrations.

RingCentral starts at $19.99 with their Essential Plan. After that, you have the Standard plan ($24.99), Premium (34.99), and Ultimate ($49.99). All of these prices are per user, per month, which means that the more extensions you need, the more you’ll end up paying.

It’s important to mention that some of the more interesting features aren’t available in the Essential plan. For example, integrations with Office 365 and G Suite and international numbers start from the Standard plan. If you want CRM integrations with tools like Salesforce, you’ll need to go for the Premium plan.

RingCentral vs Vonage: RingCentral pricing
Source: GetVoIP

Vonage’s pricing plans are similar: Mobile comes at $19.99, Premium at $29.99, and the Advanced plan is $39.99. Just like RingCentral, Vonage also starts offering more advanced features in the more expensive plans. For example, Vonage’s virtual voicemail is only available in the Advanced plan.

On the other hand, you can purchase Vonage extensions easily and scale up your service in no time.

If you find it hard to navigate through these pricing plans and the features they offer, Ringblaze could be the perfect choice for you. There is only one pricing plan and it’s more affordable than both RingCentral and Vonage! If you choose to pay annually, you’ll pay only $15 per month, per user, and if you pay annually, the price will be $19 per month, per user.

Sign up for Ringblaze and take advantage of its transparent, affordable pricing.

RingCentral vs Vonage: Vonage pricing
Source: CallHippo

RingCentral Vs Vonage: Customer service

This is one field where these two providers take different approaches. While RingCentral is focused on giving you as many channels as possible to get in touch with them, Vonage focuses on the quality of their phone support.

With RingCentral, you can consult their extensive FAQs and get support from the community but you can also open a support case or contact them via live chat that’s available 24/7. For all plans, excluding Essential, you have live phone support. And, since RingCentral allows you to have an international number, they also have support lines that work European hours.

Vonage has FAQs, a ticket system, and a live chat option as well, but they don’t make themselves as available as RingCentral. Their phone support is also available only from 9 am to 9 pm on weekdays.

RingCentral Vs Vonage: User reviews

Vonage has slightly better reviews on most review websites, with users praising its reliability and quality of service, including good call quality and easy installation. On the other hand, it’s been criticized for a lack of customer support. Vonage’s business solutions have also been criticized, as some users consider the residential version of Vonage better than the enterprise one.

RingCentral reviews praise the provider for making their service available across country borders. Most users also consider the user interface intuitive and easy to navigate. Most of the criticism is focused on a slightly harder installation process and pricey plans.

RingCentral Vs Vonage: Summary

As both companies evolved, the differences between RingCentral and Vonage have become less obvious. They’ve both focused on the small business market, lined up their prices, and packed their plans with useful features.

At the end of the day, the most important difference is that RingCentral provides their service internationally, which will benefit companies that have (or are planning to have) global, remote teams.

However, both of these providers have been criticized for their price and a lack of serious team collaboration features.

If you would like to use a more affordable alternative packed with advanced features (including a dashboard for team collaboration), give Ringblaze a try. The setup is super fast and all calls for your customers are completely free, even if they’re calling from international locations!
Sign up for Ringblaze now and take your customer service to the next level.

free trial

Check out how other platforms compare to RingCentral:

RingCentral vs Vonage: FAQs

Which is better: RingCentral or Vonage?

The choice between these two solutions depends on your needs. RingCentral is better for international reach. Vonage is more reliable, slightly easier to set up and offers a high quality of service.

Who is RingCentral’s biggest competitor?

There are several RingCentral competitors on the market, including Ringblaze and Vonage, but also others not mentioned in this article, such as Dialpad, Nextiva, 8×8, Grasshopper or Zoom Phone.

Is Vonage still good?

Vonage can work well for you if you operate within the U.S. It offers free calls within the country as well as Canada and Mexico.

What makes RingCentral different?

The tools we described are similar in many aspects. The main way that RingCentral stands out is with its international calling options.

Comments to: RingCentral vs Vonage: Which is Better for Your Business?

Leave a Reply