Ooma Office Review – Should you pick Ooma for your Small Business?

In this Ooma review, we'll take you through Ooma's great range of business and home phone packages, which start from $19.95 per user, per month. During our last round of VoIP phone research, Ooma achieved a score of 4.1/5, the fifth-best score out of the 12 VoIP providers we tested.

Ooma excels when it comes to customer experience, scoring 4.4/5 for customer support, largely thanks to 24/7 live support options and a useful knowledge base. Ooma also scores well for overall business features (4.1/5) and is a good choice for retailers because of its inbound and outbound communication options.

However, Ooma is lacking when it comes to security (1/5) and integrations (2.7/5), which means there might be better options out there for your business. If you're unsure, use our comparison tool to get matched to the most suitable providers and compare custom price quotes. In this Ooma Review, you'll find:

• Ooma Review: Core Features
• Ooma Review: Pricing Plans
• Ooma Hardware Pricing
• User Experience
• Ooma Alternatives
• About Our Research
• How to Get Ooma Office
• Ooma FAQs

Ooma Review: Core Features

Ooma scores 4.1/5 for business features and has a decent baseline set of functions and tools, no matter which Ooma plan you choose. The provider excels in some areas, such as call management, while severely lacking in others, such as security and integrations. Here's a quick rundown of Ooma's core features, plan by plan:

Call Management

Ooma Office comes with a wide selection of call management features, that are designed to help you organize your incoming calls from clients. There’s Call Flip, which allows users to move a call between devices, without any interruption. There’s also Call Park, which lets users put a call on hold, then pick it up from a different device. It can also be picked up by another call handler.

In addition, there are several varieties of call transfers available. Blind transfer sends the caller to a new extension with no need for interaction, while attend transfer lets the user announce the call before transferring it. It's also possible to directly transfer a caller to a user's voicemail.

Integrations

Ooma scores 2.7/5 for external connections/integration. While Ooma integrates with a sufficient selection of other programs, it isn’t quite as compatible as some of its competitors, such as Vonage or RingCentral, the latter of which has over 50 CRM integrations.

With Ooma, Integrations are available with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Gmail. It’s no slouch in this regard, but there are now internal or external live chat integrations on any plans or analytics integrations.

However, you'll need at least Ooma Office Pro, Ooma's second plan ($24.95 per user, per month), to get any integrations at all – and CRM and Helpdesk integrations aren't available until the Office Pro Plus plan ($29.95 per user, per month).

Apps

Ooma Office is a modern telecom solution so, naturally, it has its own app. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, both versions are well-reviewed by users. The apps include a range of features, which includes group messaging, call transfer, voicemail access, and the ability to pick up calls from another device.

The Android app is compatible with devices running Android 5.0 or higher, while the iOS app requires iOS 12.0 or higher.

Security

This is one area where Ooma is noticeably behind the market, scoring just 1/5 for security overall during our research.

This is, in part, because Ooma does not display any compliance certificates online – and its terms and conditions section does say it isn’t HIPAA compliant. RingCentral and 8×8 are both HIPAA compliant, by way of contrast. Our testing found that the best VoIP security comes from 8×8 and Google Voice.

Ooma does not offer multi-factor authentication, and you can't enforce password rules on the program either. There's also no way to activate user permissions. Again, providers like RingCentral – which are only slightly more expensive – have all of these things.

Reporting

Ooma’s level of reporting depends on the package that you take.. For the Ooma Office tiers, you’ll get all the basic information, such as what calls have been made, and when.

For high-level reporting, you’ll need to look to Ooma Enterprise. A customizable dashboard gives oversight of important metrics for your team, while also allowing a granular deep dive. Pre-built reports can identify trends for your team, phone numbers, and channels.

The Ooma Enterprise Call Center package goes even further, adding voice analytics to help identify training opportunities.

Equipment

Ooma has VoIP phone hardware available, and its home phone hardware range is ideal for people with home offices, perhaps who work for themselves and are only expecting a low call volume.

In terms of hardware, Ooma Telo costs $99.99 (ethernet connection), while Ooma Telo Air is available for $129.99 (Wifi router connection). Ooma Telo LTE costs $149.99 (cellular network connection).

You can also buy IP and Wi-Fi desktop phone models from Ooma, with prices from $59.99, and prices begin at $69.99 for third-party phones, like the Yealink T21P E2 – a solid choice for small businesses.

Ooma Review: Ooma Pricing

Ooma has two price plan categories, Ooma Office – which will suit small businesses – and Ooma Enterprise, which (you guessed it) is geared towards large businesses and it includes a plan for companies that operate call centers. Ooma's Enterprise plans have features that Ooma's Office plans don't, most notably management and collaboration tools. Read on for more details on Ooma pricing, or get a quote from Ooma now to find the best deal for your business.

Ooma Small Business plans

• Ooma Essentials ($19.95 per user, per month): although Ooma's first plan is limited when compared with a provider like Vonage because it has no integrations available, it still has all the basics you need. This list of features includes voicemail, ring groups, localized and toll-free numbers, call conferencing, a mobile app, and phone-based 24/7 live support.
• Ooma Pro ($24.95 per user, per month): Ooma Pro is the first of its plans with email and workspace app integration, such as Google Workspace. It also has management features that include call recording; analytics tools; video conferencing; and a spam prevention feature, which other providers, like 8×8, don't have on any of their plans.
• Ooma Pro Plus is priced at ($29.95 per user, per month): This is the last plan geared towards small businesses specifically, and it's the first Ooma plan with helpdesk and CRM integrations, like Salesforce and Zendesk. You'll also be able to take advantage of one of Ooma's “Customer Success Managers” which are available for numerous onboarding or troubleshooting-related queries.

Ooma Enterprise plans

• Ooma Standard is priced at $19.99 per user, per month: Ooma's Standard plans for enterprises have conversation features, such as call forwarding and call flip, which aren't on any of the Office plans. It also has call transcripts, call monitoring and other management features that are useful for training staff.
• Ooma Enhanced is priced at $27.99 per user, per month: This plan offers spam prevention and voicemail to text for enterprises (which the Standard Enterprise plan doesn't), as well as eternal video calling, call conferencing, and call recording. CRM integrations, like Salesforce, are also available.
• Ooma Call Center is priced at $49.99 per user, per month: The call center package has a call-flow designer and customizable SLAs among its extra management features, plus a call queue, which is super useful for managing high volumes of calls.

Ooma Home phone plans

• Ooma Home Basic is priced at $99.99 (one-time payment). This will get you the Ooma Telo hardware you need (there's no monthly subscription) and, at the moment, the Ooma Telo box is even on offer for $79.99. On this plan, you'll get free US calling, a mobile app, Amazon Echo integration, an answering machine, and calls logs via the MyOoma online portal.
• Ooma Home Premier is priced at $99.99 per month + $9.99 per month. You'll get everything in the free plan plus some useful additional features, including call blocking, a free second number, a second phone line, voicemail monitoring, call forwarding, voicemail-to-email audio forwarding, free calling to Canada/Mexico, and three-way conferencing.

Free Trial

Ooma offers a 30-day trial for users who want to give the service a try, without necessarily having to commit to a long-term subscription. Within this time period, customers can cancel the service and return any equipment – free of charge. Find out which Ooma plan you should take out for a spin with our comparison tool.

Ooma Review: Ooma Hardware Pricing

Ooma also offers phone hardware as well as software. This is the hardware you'll be looking at if you select one of Ooma's home phone plans, which is ideal if you’re self-employed, working from home, and won't be managing an endless stream of calls.

• Ooma Telo ($99.99): needs ethernet cable and a high-speed internet connection to be affected, and is intended for residential VoIP use only.
• Ooma Telo Air ($129.99): This Ooma hardware needs a Wifi connection to a home router to connect, rather than an ethernet cable. It can integrate with Amazon Echo, so you can use it as a speakerphone.
• Ooma Telo LTE ($129.99): The Ooma Telo LTE doesn't even need Wifi to connect and, rather, can be used directly through any cellular network. This is useful because it means you stay connected, even when your primary network is down, and even includes a battery backup.

If you're opting for one of Ooma's small business-focused or enterprise-specific plans, then you'll have a range of desktop phones provided by Ooma and its partners to choose from (some of which are pictured just below).

• Ooma 2602 IP Phone ($59.99): This is currently the cheapest hardware available on the Ooma website, and is good for new or small businesses with simple desktop needs, or for managing a low to medium call volume.
• Yealink T48U IP phone ($299): This model has a large 7-inch console, and is the priciest IP phone available from Ooma, and would suit companies expecting extremely high call volumes, such as financial services teams, executive receptionists, and more.
• Ooma 2602W Wifi IP phone ($79.99): This would suit companies with low to medium call volume, or any small businesses that want to connect by Wi-Fi if an ethernet cable is not available. It's the cheapest Wi-Fi phone listed on the site.
• Yealink T48S+ WF50 Wi-Fi Bundle ($319.99): By contrast, this is the most expensive Wi-Fi phone available and, like the Yealink phone listed above, is what you'll need if you're expecting an extremely high call volume.

Ooma Review: User Experience

Call Quality

From somewhat rocky origins, VoIP has made some serious ground in recent years to compete with traditional analog phones, and it’s now difficult for the average caller to tell between the two.

That’s a good thing, of course. Going with VoIP can unlock some serious savings for businesses, but you don’t want to sacrifice the level of quality and service that your customers expect.

Call quality is something that Ooma takes seriously, so much so that it regularly sends out its own surveys to customers. In its most recent survey, 76% of Ooma Office users rated its sound quality as an eight or higher on a scale of one to 10. Less than 3% of users reported experiencing regular call quality issues.

Customer Support

When it comes to customer support, Ooma users aren’t left wanting. Ooma scores 4.5/5 for customer support overall, which was one of the better scores out of the other 12 providers we've tested, including Google Voice and Vonage.

There's a good selection of contact methods and online information available to its users. If you'd like to contact Ooma yourself, on the Small Business plans or the Ooma Enterprise plan, you'll have a live chat option, a phone line, and 24/7 live support..

If you're someone who likes to troubleshoot issues yourself, then you can peruse Ooma's user forum and knowledge base for answers to whatever you may be having.

Setup and Installation

If the thought of setting up a new telephone system has you breaking out in a cold sweat, then don’t worry with VoIP, it’s refreshingly simple. Gone are the days of disruption, specialist teams needing a site visit, and complicated hardware,, companies are able to set up VoIP systems quickly and easily by themselves.

In fact, Ooma is so confident in how quick and easy its system is to install, it quotes an average time of just 20 minutes to get up and running.

User Ratings and Satisfaction

On the internet, a positive Ooma review isn't difficult to come by. Ooma has an average customer score of 4.4/5 across major rating sites, such as Capterra, G2, and Trustpilot. This is better than RingCentral, our top-rated VoIP provider, and puts it in line with other services that offer a great user experience, like Google Voice.

What is really impressive is that there are only a few VoIP providers that achieve high customer ratings on sites, as illustrated by RingCentral's unimpressive score. The reality is, most users are perfectly happy with RingCentral’s service and don't feel the need to leave a review.

Ooma actually scores very well on the App Store, with an impressive average of 4.9/5 stars from 6,200 people. The rating on Google Play (3.9/5) is less impressive, but it is only an average of 691 reviews and over half of them give Ooma 5 stars.

Alternatives to Ooma

The business VoIP world is a busy one, and Ooma came fifth out of 12 providers in our last round of testing, which means there are plenty of Ooma alternatives. Alternatively, you can skip all that hassle and instead fill in a 60-second questionnaire for a free quote tailored to your business’ size and needs, just check out our comparison tool.

Ooma offers an excellent customer experience and was also highlighted by our research teams as a good option for retail companies. This is because it has the features to deal with large levels of inbound calls and its plans have useful training features, like call recording. However, it is poor for security (for which it scores just 1/5) and isn't even HIPAA compliant, which most VoIP systems we tested are.

Ooma vs RingCentral

Our top Ooma alternative is RingCentral, which is also our top-rated VoIP provider, scoring an overall 4.7/5. Its plans are only slightly more expensive than Ooma's, but you get access to a lot more features.

RingCentral scores 4.9/5 for scalability thanks to a range of useful management and collaboration features, as well as good security options (4/5). RingCentral has a wealth of available integrations, helping it to a 4.3/5 for external connections. This sees it receive the highest score of any provider we tested, with users gaining access to 96 CRM integrations, for example.

Even when it comes to Ooma's strongest point, customer support, RingCentral still comes out on top, scoring a solid 5/5. It has everything Ooma offers, plus email support.

View our Ooma vs RingCentral Comparison.

Ooma vs 8×8

8×8 scores 4.6/5 and is not quite as impressive as RingCentral overall, but it is better than Ooma for small businesses, in the long run. Although it may slightly pricier, it scores well for integrations (4.2/5) and top marks for customer support (5/5), and security (5/5), making it great value for money.

Ooma will let you enforce multi-factor authentication on all its plans and password rules after its first paid plan. It also has more compliance certificates than RingCentral and user permission options, so you can see why the security score is so high. This makes it an excellent choice for any company managing sensitive calls and data, such as those in the healthcare industry.

Ooma vs Google Voice

Although Google Voice can't compete with Ooma or RingCentral when it comes to features, scoring a 2.6/5 in this category by our researchers, – it does excel when it comes to security (5/5), and it's got a great customer score (4.4/5), which means users are having a good time with the service.

Google Voice is also inexpensive (scoring 4/5 for price). It's significantly cheaper than RingCentral or 8×8. However, it's only really suitable for small teams, and there are better options out there for enterprises. If your top concern is the security of your business, it's at least worth a look.

View our Ooma vs Google Voice Comparison

Ooma vs MagicJack

MagicJack is a popular VoIP service but, with an overall score of just 2.5/5, it doesn't even come close to competing with Ooma.

MagicJack scores just 1.1/5 for integrations because it has so few relevant ones, and a poor 1/5 for security, which will make it an inappropriate choice for businesses operating in industries like healthcare. There's also a lack of management and collaboration features, which contributed to a poor scalability score (1/5).

In fairness, MagicJack won't set you back quite as much as Ooma, RingCentral or 8×8, but it's got so few features that you're almost definitely better off looking elsewhere.

View our MagicJack vs Ooma Comparison

Ooma vs Vonage

Another big-name VoIP service, Vonage, is also a worthy contender.

One of the reasons we might suggest Ooma over Vonage, is that the price you see is the price you get with Ooma. With Vonage, its base price is the same, but there are a number of optional extras that carry additional charges, such as installation, call transfer, and virtual numbers – which are all included with Ooma.

Ooma also has the advantage of phone support, which Vonage doesn’t offer. But otherwise, Vonage does score more highly on our tests for integrations, features, security and overall value (3.8/5 vs 3.5/5).

View our Vonage vs Ooma comparison

Want to find out which VoIP provider fits your business best? Get a free quote using our comparison tool.

How We Reviewed and Tested Ooma

At Tech.co, we're lucky enough to have a full-time research team who road test software on a daily basis. They also conduct detailed market research so that we're aware of the latest industry trends, changes, and movements. This team allows us to provide our readers with the most accurate, up-to-date information, and to assist our expert writers when they review products.

Features, customer support, security, scalability, customer score, and pricing were the areas of inquiry our research team focused on when testing business phones because these were found to be the most important factors to our readers, like you. Each provider we test gets an individual score for each category, based on how it performs against a variety of criteria.

Tech.co has commercial partnerships with some of the service and system providers we write articles about. However, it is important to know that we're completely editorially independent. When we say a product is the best, that's down to our independent testing and research – and nothing else. Find out more about our research – or read on to find out our final verdict on Ooma.

Ooma Review: Frequently Asked Questions