Ooma vs RingCentral: Compare Pricing, Features & Call Quality

Ooma and RingCentral are both popular VoIP software providers with features that enhance business communication while meeting the needs of today’s mobile workforce.

Ooma got its start with residential VoIP plans, while RingCentral is one of the top business solutions.

In 2013, Ooma launched its Office and Office Pro plans, marking its entry into the business VoIP space.

Which solution works best for your business?

Our full Ooma vs RingCentral comparison covers pricing, plans, available features, user experience, and more.

Table of Contents

• Ooma vs RingCentral: At a Glance
• How We Compared Ooma vs RingCentral
• Ooma vs RingCentral: Direct Comparison
• Ooma vs RingCentral: Pricing and Plans
• Ooma Pros and Cons
• RingCentral Pros and Cons
• Which Provider is Right for Your Business?
• RingCentral vs Ooma: Which is the Winner?

Ooma vs RingCentral: At a Glance

RingCentral is unquestionably the better provider when it comes to finding a well-rounded solution for large companies.

On the other hand, Ooma offers unlimited calling to the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico at a lower price point. This makes Ooma ideal for smaller companies just looking to reap the benefits of VoIP calling rather than the more extensive UC features of other business communication tools.

We’ve created this summary table for both providers to give you a general comparison.

How We Compared Ooma vs RingCentral

We used the below criteria to compare Ooma vs. RingCentral:

Calling Features: We determined which provider offers the most robust set of voice call management features like call transfer, call forwarding, and call recording.

Auto-Attendant: We tested auto attendants and IVR systems from both providers to see which was more intuitive and provided customers a higher level of self-service

Analytics: We looked at the analytics capabilities of each platform to see which solution had superior real-time and historical reporting, customizable and pre-made templates, and which KPIs are monitored

Integrations: We compared available third-party integrations for the two solutions to see which app gallery had a wider selection and a more active developer community

Scalability: We evaluated the costs and available plans from each provider to see which one can better evolve with your business needs

Call Quality: We looked at Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and current user reviews to determine which provider offers the best call quality and network reliability

Security: We analyzed the security of both providers, examining available protocol and feature standpoint to see which provider offers greater data protection, access controls, and third-party security certifications

Hardware: We reviewed the catalogs of both providers to see which offered more variety in terms of analog desk phones, speakers, headsets, and other VoIP hardware and equipment

Cross-Platform Compatibility: We downloaded and tested the two platforms’ respective mobile apps to see which one offered a better, more complete experience on smartphones and other mobile devices

Ease of Use: We looked at the account creation, installation, and intuitiveness of both providers to see which platform was easier to use

Customer Support: We evaluated available support channels and hours, resolution times, and overall user satisfaction with the ticketing process

Pricing: We compared plans from both providers, evaluating, cost, overall value, and available bundles/packages

Ooma vs RingCentral: Direct Comparison

To help you find the right the provider, here are 12 comparison points:

Calling Features

RingCentral has most of the UCaaS features we’ve come to rely on like call recording, screening, and forwarding.

It also comes with 1,000 to 100,000 toll-free minutes (which could offset the higher base price of your subscription) plus unlimited storage on the Ultimate plan. Toll-free numbers are also available.

Ooma Office may not have as many features — with its video conferencing, call recording, and voicemail transcriptions locked behind its Pro version — but you’ll still get unlimited calling to the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico at a more affordable price than RingCentral. Ooma also offers unlimited international calling to over 60 countries, with prices from $9.99/month.

Winner: RingCentral has more calling features than Ooma, which gets it the win — but keep in mind that RingCentral costs more.

Auto-Attendant

All RingCentral plans include their auto-attendant feature without any additional charges. Only admins can establish and edit answering rules for the main company number.

However, any user can customize the greetings for their own extension.

The Ooma Office auto attendant automatically sets up a virtual receptionist when you create your account.

You can then add additional virtual receptionists for each department like marketing, sales, or finance to achieve a multi-level IVR system that streamlines call routing.

Winner: Ooma achieves a narrow victory here due to its automatic setup and multi-level capabilities.

Analytics

Ooma Office doesn’t have many advanced analytics capabilities, though it does offer business call logs and a new call volume trend KPI, seen in the image below.

One workaround for this lack of analytics would be to use CRM integrations with Ooma Office, but it’s hardly an ideal solution.

RingCentral is the opposite, offering 30+ prebuilt Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), quality of service reports, and real-time notifications to proactively address potential issues. It also lets admins see the platform adoption by department, so you know which teams are getting the most value from RingCentral.

Winner: RingCentral gets an easy win with its real-time analytics capabilities.

Integrations

RingCentral has over 1,000 apps to choose from, including project management tools like Monday, Asana, and Trello, or cloud storage integrations with Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. It also has native project management capabilities, meaning even contact center users may be able to avoid using third-party tools altogether.

Integrations are one area where Ooma Office falls short, especially considering their “affordable calling” business model.

They do have a few integrations with tools like Google Workspace, Google Contacts, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics, Office 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk, but that’s nothing compared to the incredible variety that RingCentral offers.

Winner: RingCentral gets the most decisive win in this comparison with a landslide victory for the integrations category.

Scalability

Even with its lower pricing, don’t assume Ooma Office is the most scalable option.

Though most teams with less than a hundred users will indeed be paying less if they use Ooma Office, the same isn’t true for larger companies.

Factoring in the annual billing discounts and bulk pricing of RingCentral, you’d only be paying $22.99/month for each user on the Standard plan. Unlike RingCentral Essentials, the Standard plan has more features and functionalities than Ooma Office and Ooma Office Pro.

Winner: RingCentral is the more scalable solution since it offers more features at a lower price past the 100-user mark.

Call Quality

Both Ooma Office and RingCentral MVP are known for their impeccable HD call quality. The clarity is superb and you’re unlikely to experience any dropped calls unless your internet goes out since all VoIP solutions need an active connection.

In terms of uptime, the two platforms come to a stalemate once again with both providers offering a 99.999% or “five nines” guarantee. However, RingCentral has a background noise suppression feature in beta while Ooma relies on hardware-side noise cancellation.

Winner: RingCentral gets the win due to its native noise cancellation but this is an otherwise drawn match in quiet environments.

Security

As an industry leader, it should come as no surprise that RingCentral takes VoIP security very seriously. It has SOC 2+ report, SOC 3 report, C5 attestation, and is HITRUST-certified which is a testament to the trust it has built up with third-party auditors over the past two decades.

Ooma Office calls are encrypted, but only if both end users are communicating via Ooma. However, Ooma claims that it uses the same encryption as governments, passing signaling traffic through a VPN tunnel and encrypts voice data using SRTP.

Ooma Office is also not HIPAA compliant, and even after a one-on-one chat with a representative, we weren’t able to receive immediate answers (or links to documentation) regarding security standards.  Especially given that Ooma also sells security products, this was somewhat troubling.

Winner: RingCentral wins due to its track record, wider encryption protocols, and transparency.

Hardware

RingCentral supports a wide range of hardware with compatible phone models from Yealink, Cisco, Poly, and Unify leaving users spoilt for choice. The prices range between $90 and $580 depending on which model you’d prefer. RingCentral also offers a phone rental system to spread out the costs.

Ooma Office’s compatibility is a bit more limited since it only works with first-party Ooma hardware and a smaller selection of Yealink devices.

Hardware is also charged as a one-time payment, without a rental option. Ooma hardware purchases could certainly increase upfront costs.

Winner: RingCentral is the clear winner, offering compatibility with hardware from more manufacturers and a rental system that significantly slashes your initial investment.

Cross-Platform Compatibility

Though RingCentral has more customer reviews from mobile users, Ooma offers a similarly pleasant experience on iOS devices. However, UX deviates significantly on Android devices.

RingCentral receives the same near-perfect reception from user reviews on the Google Play Store, while the Android app for Ooma Office has a 2.8-star rating — a far cry from its 4.9-star rating on the App Store.

Winner: RingCentral gets a clear victory in the mobile arena by offering a great user experience on both platforms (but iPhone owners would be well-served with either provider.)

Ease of Use

RingCentral is easy to use because its applications have the same intuitive interface across all channels and devices. This consistent UI, alongside the ability to complete system configuration within minutes, makes RingCentral extremely user-friendly.

Most Ooma Office users have also praised the ease of setup and intuitive experience, citing that you likely won’t need to call the helpful phone support team at all. However, we’ll have to knock off a couple of points for the poor user experience on Ooma’s Android app.

Winner: RingCentral snatches a close victory here. but the ease of use is essentially equal unless accessing the platform via an Android device.

Customer Support

RingCentral has become known for its world-class support team that works to quickly resolve any customer issues. Their agents are highly-efficient and can find their way around a wide variety of issues.

That said, the Ooma Office support team has also met if not exceeded user expectations on most occasions. Their representatives are available 24/7, knowledgeable about the product, and nice to customers.

Winner: Ooma Office takes the win. Though both platforms offer exceptional customer support, RingCentral customers must upgrade to Standard or higher for 24/7 support.

Ooma vs RingCentral: Pricing and Plans

While Ooma and RingCentral offer the same entry price (if you bill annually for the latter) the costs quickly rise for other MVP plans. For instance, the RingCentral Ultimate plan costs $49.99/month for each user – even after annual discounts.

Ooma Office has only two plans at $19.95/month and $24.95/month, both of which include most of the basic features you’d need in a VoIP provider. There’s no question that RingCentral offers a lot of value on their pricier plans, but users are essentially forced to purchase a more expensive plan to access the features they need.

Ooma Pricing

When it comes to pricing, the value that Ooma Office Pro provides makes it the better choice in most scenarios. The regular Ooma Office plan isn’t much cheaper and only includes calling features.

Conversely, for an extra $5/month for each user, the Pro version would offer video conferencing, screen sharing, call recording, voicemail transcription, and protection from robocalls. Unfortunately, there are no discounts for users who’d prefer to pay their subscription annually.

The image below outlines Ooma Office pricing in more detail:

RingCentral Pricing

RingCentral’s Essentials plan should be considered a primarily call-centric plan since it doesn’t have many other features aside from a few like visual voicemail, business SMS, and file sharing.

On the other hand, the Standard plan will likely provide the most value for business since it includes video conferencing for up to 100 people, internet faxing, 24/7 support from the RingCentral team, and integrations with top tools like Office 365 or Google Workspace.

The Premium plan is also well worth the money if you’re looking for features like hotdesking, want to integrate CRMs like Salesforce and Zendesk, or just want to increase your conference capacity to 200 participants.

Finally, the Ultimate tier will likely be overkill for most companies unless your use case calls for unlimited storage or device status reports. All plans include unlimited calling within the US and Canada.

The below image outlines available RingCentral MVP pricing and plans for teams of one to 20 users (with annual billing):

Winner: Ooma Office is the more affordable solution and doesn’t use 24/7 support as an upselling incentive to get customers to upgrade.

Ooma Pros and Cons

There are quite a few unique benefits that Ooma customers stand to gain such as their highly-acclaimed iOS app, end-to-end encryption, and affordable entry price.

Pro #1: iOS App

With 4,900 user reviews and an aggregate rating of 4.9/5 stars, Ooma Office is clearly on top of their iOS mobile app game. Users can separate business calls from personal ones, making it a lot easier to go back through your call history.

The app tells users if the incoming call is for their business phone number, ensuring team members answer professionally even on a personal cell phone. The mobile version also has instant messaging, picture sharing, and voicemail capabilities.

Pro #2: End-to-End Encryption

While the end-to-end encryption only takes effect if both users are using Ooma Office, it does make internal communications more secure. External audio and video calls also benefit thanks to Ooma’s tunnel VPN and SRTP security measures.

There’s still room for Ooma to improve on the security front, though. Two-factor authentication is a feature that Ooma customers have been requesting for over a decade but has yet to be implemented (and one that RingCentral already has.)

Pro #3: Entry Price

The entry price for most companies will be lower if they go for Ooma Office or Ooma Office Pro. These plans start out cheaper than RingCentral while offering more features than the latter’s Essentials plan.

That said, the Office Pro plan will likely be the only viable option for most businesses since core features like video conferencing, call recording, and voicemail transcriptions would be otherwise unavailable on the basic version.

Note: RingCentral is also more cost-effective for companies with 100 users or more.

Ooma Office Cons

Ooma Office is a pretty compelling package considering its price point, user experience, and quality of customer support. However, it can occasionally struggle when it comes to robocalls and blocking spoofed caller IDs.

RingCentral Pros and Cons

There’s a lot to like about RingCentral like their project management and analytics features, but also a couple of drawbacks to note before making your final decision.

Pro #1: Team Collaboration

RingCentral has a variety of third-party integrations with popular project management tools and even communication platforms like Slack. However, its native team collaboration features shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Users can reach team members through calls, DMs, and video conferences without leaving the platform. It’s also possible to pull documents from Google Drive, then index them on RingCentral to speed up file sharing.

Pro #2: Omniplatform UX

Consistency is one of the biggest strengths of RingCentral.

It offers the same reliable and high-quality experience regardless of whether you’re using the web app, desktop app, or mobile apps for iOS and Android.

There’s also an extension on the Chrome Web Store, but it’s rather buggy and the user experience is subpar compared to RingCentral’s other apps.

Pro #3: Detailed Analytics

RingCentral’s Analytics Portal is one of the best dashboards in the industry for real-time tracking and custom reports. Admins can view data from a department, client, and agent level, and creating reports is easy with RingCentral’s pre-made templates. A few reports topics include:

• First call resolution rates
• Average handle time or call duration
• Percentage of calls answered versus sent to voicemail
• User escalation rates
• Internal adoption (to see how well your team is utilizing the platform)
• Live reports of 30+ user activity metrics

RingCentral Cons

It’s difficult to find any major issues with RingCentral.

However, they do fall somewhat short in the billing department with unclear invoices and drawn-out cancellation processes.

Which Provider is Right for Your Business?

The below tables offer insight into who should or shouldn’t consider each platform.

RingCentral vs Ooma: Which is the Winner?

Though  Ooma and RingCentral bring much to the table for small businesses, the winner comes down to what you’re looking for in a VoIP service.

If you want unlimited calling, crisp quality, excellent support, and a great iOS app for an affordable price, then Ooma Office offers incredible value.

However, companies needing cross-platform consistency, native task management, or the benefits of the 1,000+ integrations on the RingCentral App Gallery will find their money is well-spent.

To learn how additional business phone systems like Vonage, Grasshopper, Nextiva, 8×8, and more, review our comparisons of all the top VoIP platforms.