Grasshopper vs. Ooma Office vs. RoRotel

Grasshopper is well suited for basic needs of texting in and out as well as calling out if you would like to avoid using your personal line. It also eliminates the need to have a dedicated land land in your office or business. You can obtain a vanity number and forward calls through grasshopper.

Incentivized

We use Ooma Office for everyone in the company including mobile users. It has allowed us to eliminate the spam callers as well give our mobile and remote users the ability to make business calls - from any device, from anywhere, at any time - without having to worry about any long distance charges, or without giving up their personal telephone numbers (at home or cellular).

Incentivized

• I like that there are differing voicemails for each extension, to keep up with the image of calling a separate line.
• I love the voicemail text emails. I believe we pay a little extra, but worth every penny for those urgent calls while I am in a meeting.
• The cost is very reasonable for the value added to our company.

Incentivized

• Ease of IVR customization: Allows my business to adapt quickly to an ever-changing business economy
• Plug and Play application: I was up and running within minutes of opening the box with the equipment in it!
• Find Me, Follow Me for remote access: No matter where I go, I can bring the office with me.
• Simple, Straightforward Billing: I recognized savings from day 1; my monthly invoice stays the same every month!

• It would be nice to have the ability to transfer some calls to another Grasshopper IVR, for those customers who mistakenly dial the wrong number (we have two incoming numbers, one for corporate and one for sales).
• Likewise, it would be nice to have the ability to forward to a toll-free number, which would have allowed us to work around the inability to transfer between IVRs (see above).
• Lastly, it would be great to have an 'emergency' switch setting (default off but could be toggled on) that would let us override all IVR settings and transfer all incoming calls elsewhere (either to a direct dial or toll free number) for those rare times when we cannot take any calls (such as a weather emergency OR the one time each year we take all of our staff on a retreat) - that would allow us to send all calls to a backup answering service rather than just voicemail.

Incentivized

• Cell phone app could be a little easier to use.
• Ooma Desktop needs some tweaking to make it more user friendly.
• I would like my 800 number to be assigned to my personal mailbox vs. having to have its own extension.

Incentivized

We have found it very easy to configure, manage, and expand our phone operations with Ooma Office. We needed a reliable phone network as this is the first means of communication for our customers - Ooma has made it a lot easier for us to manage. Their support is also available 24x7 so that's a huge plus.

The admin functions are kind of confusing in the old interface which was my most recent experience on the admin side.

Incentivized

Ooma has helped us make better use of our phones and given us many more capabilities than our previous service. The mobile app has provided an excellent connection and quality. Its integration with the cellular phone app and contacts makes it a breeze to use. Emailed recordings of voicemails are very helpful for both receiving messages and allowing us to archive them. It has also saved us a significant amount of money and provided us with a more capable and reliable system all at once.

Incentivized

When I was setting up my account I contacted support a couple of times. They were also very professional, personable, and helpful. Their response is prompt and thorough. I'm confident I can get any question answered as well as help with any issue I might have. That's pretty important to me.

Incentivized

Ooma Office support is always available. I've never been on the phone with them for longer than 5 minutes. They are knowledgable, have great active listening skills, are able to make recommendations on how to make Ooma Office work even better for you, and wait times to speak with an agent are reasonable and typically less than 1 minute.

Incentivized

Have a plan in place before you start the implementation, open communication with the staff on the changes being made, prepare a reference guide on the system and how to navigate the new setup. Budget and allocate time for helping staff learn the new system. Consolidate and coordinate all the questions internally before reaching out to support.

I have not used any other phone services like Grasshopper. I know that there is another option out there called Ruby, which is more like a virtual receptionist but since I did not try it out I cannot compare the two. When I started my company I found the services that Grasshopper offers to be perfect. It still works for us and we have no need to change to anything else right now.

Incentivized

We went over to Ooma [Office] after having had Intermedia for several years. Intermedia was good, but they were due for an update on many of their systems, which they did after we left. With Ooma [Office], we have our hold music and other basic, easy to use options that fit well for our small business.

Incentivized

• It's allowed us to keep cost down. Other phone systems can seriously get outrageous in implementation and monthly fees!
• It's allowed our team the confidence to work in locations outside of the office and still be seen as professionals.
• It's decreased the amount of time spent on unwanted sales calls via the call screening application.

Incentivized

• System made it one-stop shopping for fax lines and phones numbers and equipment which was convenient.
• It was a shock to see that $39.98 of service manages to result in about $18 of additional “fees” every month. Makes the service significantly less of a bargain than is advertised.