Is it right for your business?

About OpenPhone Starting Price: $15 per user per month. Key Features: Unlimited talking and texting. Shared phone number. AI-suggested message replies. Built-in contact management. Automatic call summarization and transcripts.

OpenPhone is known for its unlimited messaging, shared environments, and built-in contact management for small teams. This is the VoIP phone system I ended up purchasing for my team because it was affordable, easy to set up, full of features, and didn’t require us to buy any new equipment.

However, it lacks a lot of the standard features offered elsewhere, and isn’t particularly large in size.

OpenPhone Pricing

OpenPhone pricing is pretty straightforward. There are three plans to choose from, with some incidentals and add-ons to pay for.

• starter: Starting at $15 per user per month.
• Business: Starting at $23 per user per month.
• enterprise: Customized quotation.

The above rates are for annual billing, with a 30% discount for Business tier and a 21% discount for Entry tier. Monthly pricing is also available, and you can try OpenPhone for free for seven days.

My team uses the Business plan; while it’s a little more expensive, it meets your needs for managing calls as a company. In addition to the basic features, you get automatic call recording, AI-generated call summaries, and integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce.

If you want to use business text messaging, you’ll need to pay an industry-wide one-time setup fee of $19 and ongoing text messaging fees ranging from $1.50 to $3 per month.

Every provider will charge these fees or bundle them into the monthly fee you pay, so this is not unique to OpenPhone.

Additional phone numbers are $5 per month, and you can set up automated messages through Zapier for $0.01 per text. International calling and texting rates depend on usage and vary by country.

Key features of OpenPhone

Although most of OpenPhone’s features are relatively basic, it’s a solid platform with some standout features worth noting. You’ll benefit from unlimited calls, unlimited text messages, shared phone numbers, contact management tools, and even some AI capabilities.

Unlimited calls and texts

OpenPhone offers unlimited talk and text within the U.S. and Canada. The price is very affordable.

You’ll also get a new local or toll-free number for each user you connect so everyone can have their own line.

In terms of calls, you can make and receive calls, but there aren’t many features. Unless you upgrade, the only features you really get are manual recording, voicemail transcription, and manual call recording.

In addition to the entry-level, you will also unlock Interactive Voice Response Phone menu, group calling, call hold, hotline transfer and ring sequence.

Unlimited text messaging is definitely a step above the calling options. You can set up a range of automatic text message triggers based on different customer interactions, and even schedule outgoing messages in advance.

Shared phone number

Sharing a phone number with your team might sound strange, but it’s actually pretty useful for OpenPhone’s messaging features.

Let’s say a support rep texts with a customer on Monday. On Tuesday, when the original support rep is sick or taking a lunch break, the customer might respond to the same text. But with a shared number, someone else on your team can quickly pick up where the first rep left off.

For the recipient, the transition is seamless and they don’t actually know they are dealing with multiple people.

This feature helps you provide better and faster responses via text as part of a team collaboration effort.

AI-suggested message replies

You can enable OpenPhone’s built-in AI to automatically generate two or three replies for every incoming message. This is a really cool feature that will help increase your team’s productivity by allowing them to quickly tap on the relevant replies within seconds of receiving a text message.

This feature is available to all OpenPhone users. It’s a good sign that the platform is adapting to the latest AI trends, which are currently a hot topic in business communications.

If you like this feature, you can also try letting OpenPhone’s AI generate outbound messages for you.

You can then send them as is, or edit them before sending in bulk.

Built-in contact management

The OpenPhone platform has a lightweight CRM built into it. Here you can add someone’s contact information along with relevant notes, tags, and other details about that person for everyone on your team to see. Calling it a CRM is a bit of a stretch, but it’s good enough for basic contact management.

The feature also helps ensure that you don’t have duplicate contacts between shared numbers, and you can share specific contact information with other teammates without having to copy/paste or rely on manual entry.

In addition to adding new contacts directly in OpenPhone, you can also import contacts as CSV or integrate your Google contacts.

HubSport, Salesforce, and Gong integrations are available on select plans.

AI call summaries and transcripts for selected programs

If you’re on a Business plan or higher, you’ll get an AI-generated summary and full transcript of every call.

This is a convenient way to quickly reference what happened during a longer call without having to listen to the entire recording.

It also helps you stay focused during calls. You don’t have to listen to someone talking and quickly take notes at the same time, because you can focus on the AI ​​taking notes for you.

Teams can share these summaries with people who missed meetings or calls, helping them get caught up quickly without the full briefing.

Advantages of OpenPhone

• Simple and user-friendly interface.
• Powerful messaging capabilities.
• Collaborative environment.
• Share inboxes, contacts and numbers.
• Build automation with rule-based triggers.
• It can be light and simple if you don’t need much.
• It’s very easy to set up.
• Daily database backups.
• Reliable customer service.
• 7-day free trial.

Disadvantages of OpenPhone

• Includes basic phone features only.
• Analysis is available only for the first two plans.
• There isn’t a lot of room for expansion.
• Limited integrations and no API (coming soon).

OpenPhone alternatives

After researching dozens of options, I bought OpenPhone for my team, and they still use it to this day. Still, it’s not something I would recommend in most situations. Here’s how OpenPhone compares to my top picks.

	Open Phone	Nextiva	RingCentral	8×8	Dial pad
Starting Price	$15 per user per month	$28.95 per user per month	$20 per user per month	Custom Quote	$15 per user per month
Free Trial	7 days	Demo only	14 days	No	14 days
set up	so easy	simple	complicated	complicated	simple
Mobile Applications	great	Average	great	Average	OK
Call Routing	Average	Average	advanced	Average	advanced
Call Recording	All Plans	Top plan only	All Plans	Call center only	All Plans
integrated	6 + Zapier	20+	300+	Over 65 years old	70+
AI capabilities	Average	Average	advanced	basic	advanced
Send SMS	Yes	Some plans	Yes	Yes	Yes
videoconference	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Team Chat	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Online Fax	No	Yes	Some plans	Yes	+ $10 per month

Nextiva

Nextiva is a more comprehensive business communications solution. It comes with everything you need to talk to your clients and each other, including team chat, video conferencing, voice, text messaging, and fax. With new customer discounts and annual plans, it costs only a few dollars more per month than OpenPhone, but has more features. To learn more, read my Nextiva Reviews.

RingCentral

While Nextiva and OpenPhone are simple and easy to use, RingCentral goes the other way. It offers almost every communication and call center feature you can think of. To learn more, read my RingCentral Review.

8×8

If you handle a lot of international calls, 8×8 is the perfect choice. Its plans allow unlimited calls to 14 or 48 countries, which is much more cost-effective than paying by the minute for large volumes of calls. In addition, it includes all communication channels in every plan, even the cheapest one. To learn more, read my 8×8 Review.

Dial pad

Dialpad and OpenPhone are both newer cloud-first phone systems. OpenPhone is simple, while Dialpad offers more advanced features and AI capabilities for call centers and sales teams. It also has a standard phone system, but they include more communication channels than OpenPhone.

method

I researched and reviewed OpenPhone using the same core criteria as other business communications solutions, including:

• Standard and advanced features: We evaluate the basic features you need as well as the advanced features that can take you up a notch. Some of the standard features we look for include video conferencing, SMS/MMS, voicemail, automatic call forwarding, device rollover, and mobile/desktop apps.
• Customer Support: How do you get support and what are the hours? We also look at how helpful the platform’s customer support is and note any positive reviews.
• Third-party integrations: The best phone systems can sync seamlessly with third-party business applications such as CRM, ERP software, fax tools, SMS platforms, cloud storage systems, and more.
• Security and Privacy: We consider redundant architecture, advanced encryption standards, authentication options, advanced management options, data center audits, server locations, and more, all factors relevant to ensuring your calls are secure and your data is safe.
• Uptime Percentage: Anything that could cause unplanned downtime, power outages, service interruptions, or delays due to the technical setup or platform infrastructure.
• Demo or free trial: Can you test or try the platform before buying?
• total cost: Costs, plan options, price differences between monthly or annual billing, setup fees, per-user costs, and more.