RingCentral is the best all-around hotel phone system on the market in 2024, thanks to its industry-leading features and top tier customer support. However, 8×8 presents a slightly more cost-effective option for smaller hospitality businesses, with prices starting from just $24 per month.

Here at Tech.co, we think the best way to run your hotel's phones is through a VoIP phone system, as they allow you to easily communicate with guests, colleagues, and prospective customers without the need for expensive rewiring. A good VoIP system will also integrate seamlessly with your existing IT communication infrastructure, making life easier and transactions more efficient.

In this guide, we'll cover the best VoIP providers for hotels of all sizes, as well as how much you can expect to pay for a new VoIP system. You can get started comparing VoIP providers for your exact hospitality needs with our free, no-obligation VoIP quotes tool. Simply answer a few questions and we'll connect you with the best deals for your requirements.

Hotel Phone System Reviews

Our impartial research determined that the best hotel phone system is RingCentral, but depending on your business' needs, there could be a better fit. Below we've summarized the top features, pricing, pros and cons, of all the leading hotel phone system providers for 2024.

1. RingCentral – Best hotel phone system provider
2. 8×8 – Best for training staff
3. Vonage – Best hotel phone for larger hotels
4. Ooma – Great chap hotel phone system
5. Nextiva – Best customer support for hotels

1. RingCentral

• Best hotel phone system overall
• Price from $20 per month
• Compatible with Poly, Cisco, Yealink, and Unify

RingCentral is our top choice for hotels looking for a reliable VoIP solution. When we tested its features, external connections, customer support, and the cost of its overall entrance price, it performed better than other leading VoIP providers. In other words, we're confident RingCentral has everything a hotel, motel, restaurant, or other hospitality business needs to run a smooth operation and ensure no bookings are missed or lost.

RingCentral hotel phone features

With call forwarding, delegation, call screening, and caller ID, RingCentral offers plenty of useful call management features for the hospitality industry. After testing out the service, we found it offered a number of features providers like 8×8 lacked, including analytics and spam prevention. Our researchers also found it to have good customization across the board, for tailoring your guests' experience.

What's more, we found RingCentral is really easy to set up and integrate with existing systems like Salesforce, allowing you to match incoming calls with existing customer contact information, which can seriously boost your hotel’s customer relationship management.

Microsoft users will like that you can consolidate all your voice and fax messages easily, using RingCentral's email forwarding Outlook integration. Plus, you can make outgoing calls simply by clicking on an Outlook contact, web page, or document.

RingCentral pricing

The downside to RingCentral is it's very slightly more expensive than some other systems we analyzed. RingCentral has three pricing plans, priced per user, per month.

• The Core plan costs $20 per user, per month. This plan is RingCentral's least feature-rich offering, but unlimited calls to the US & Canada and 100 toll-free minutes are included, as are basic features like a multi-level auto attendant.
• The Advanced plan will set you back $25 per user, per month, and offers a pretty decent package in comparison to RingCentral's Core plan. With Advanced, you'll get an internet fax tool, call log reports,  hot desking capabilities, and tons of advanced calling features.
• The Ultra plan costs $35 per user, per month and adds automatic call recording, a Salesforce integration, and a single sign-on function. That Salesforce integration could be key for your marketing teams when it comes to targeting potential guests. This plan is designed more for call centers than hotels, though.

Is RingCentral the right fit for your hotel?

RingCentral was the best hotel phone system we tested, so chances are it'll serve your business very well. Its advanced call management features are what truly sets it apart from the competition, alongside its onboarding support and external connections with brands such as Poly, Cisco, and Yealink.

However, while RingCentral offers the best functionality for businesses in the hospitality industry, it's not the cheapest provider on the market, making it less well-suited to smaller operations with modest budgets.

If you'd like to compare price quotes for your business' exact needs, you can always use our free VoIP comparison tool to see how all the top telephone systems compare side by side.

2. 8×8

• Best for training staff
• Price from $25 per month
• Compatible with Poly, Cisco, Yealink, and Panasonic

8×8 isn’t the best hotel system overall, but it’s pretty close. In our independent testing, it came in second place with an overall research score of 4.5/5, thanks to its versatile hospitality calling features and solid user experience.

One of the determining factors was its strong features, such as customizable greetings and virtual receptionist, and the fact it has more training tools than all the hotel telephone systems we tested, including Vonage, Nextiva, and Ooma.

8×8 also offers unlimited domestic inbound and outbound calls on all of its plans, which is especially good for succinct customer management. Use our free VoIP comparison tool to see how other top hotel phone systems compare.

8×8 hotel phone features

Compared to other VoIP systems, we were really impressed with 8×8's features in our last round of testing, awarding the provider a near-perfect score of 4.8/5 for its toolkit.

8×8 also has a number of features that are ideal for hotels and other hospitality businesses, like customizable hold music and ring groups. Its video conferencing package is pretty extensive – with a range of moderation calls, customizable meeting screens, end-to-end encryption, desktop, and mobile access, plus the option to invite people from outside the business.

8×8’s contact center software is probably one of its best features. Its multi-channel compatibility, easy telephone integration, smart call routine, reporting, and agent tools make it a great tool to help improve customer experience and business productivity.

8×8 pricing

8×8 offers five pricing tiers in total, all of which include unlimited calls in the US, video conferencing, document sharing, team messaging, and 24/7 support.

• The X2 plan ($24 per user, per month), has no user limit and will let you host video calls with up to 500 participants. There are also call recording and analytics features, a voicemail-to-text feature, a call queue function and ring groups for improved hotel communications.
• 8×8's X4 pricing plan is more expensive, at $44 per user, per month, but includes a call whisper function, call monitoring, and analytics,  designed to help improve on-call training and upskill your team.
• The X6 is the first plan with a task management feature. At $85 per user, per month, it's best suited to larger businesses that deal with higher volumes of calls. Features, like predictive dialing, and unlimited calling to 48 countries also sweeten the deal.
• X7 comes in at $110 per user, per month, and offers a huge range of communication, management, and conversation VoIP tools, plus a full suite of security provisions and integrations. There are chat, email, and SMS options too.
• X8 costs $140 per user, per month. There isn't a huge world of difference between this plan and the X7, other than its multi-screen monitoring, screen recording, and analytics suite – all of which makes it an easier tool to use for call management and training.

8×8 used to have an even cheaper plan, the X1 or Express plan, which came in at only $15 per user, per month, but it's no longer available.

3. Vonage

• Best hotel phone for larger hotels
• Price from $19.99 per month
• Compatible with Polycom, Panasonic, Yealink

Vonage came in third place in our VoIP testing for hospitality because of its impressive suite of features – including customizable hold music and call queues – and its low starting price that undercuts industry leaders like 8×8 and Nextiva.

However, it doesn't have the best customer support, or options for external connections, which means hotels may find it harder to set up and use alongside other software they already have, or plan to get. Experienced VoIP users at larger hotels might be interested in switching to Vonage, if unhappy with their current setup.

Vonage hotel phone features

Vonage does have some useful features for hotel businesses, particularly with the Premium plan. The virtual receptionist and CRM integrations are great for hotels that have a lot of customer interaction prior to arrival, and it also offers unlimited calls to the US and Canada and 24/7 support in case something goes wrong. Plus, on-demand recording, call monitoring and two-way audio and video calls are especially useful for training.

Vonage's app-based system is also very easy to use, whether you're using a desktop, mobile, or a traditional desk phone, its great online training documents and videos are super useful, and help your staff become easily accustomed to the software. Overall, our researchers found Vonage features to be better for hospitality businesses than Ooma and Nextiva.

Vonage pricing

Vonage has three pricing plans starting and they're priced per user, per month. However, Vonage will give you discounts based on the number of users you have.

• The Mobile plan costs $19.99 per user, per month. It gives you access to the Vonage app center, unlimited team messaging, and unlimited outgoing calls and SMS messages.
• The Premium plan costs $29.99 per user, per month and offers a multi-level virtual receptionist, CRM integrations with Google Workspace, HubSpot, Office 365, and Salesforce amongst others. It also works with traditional desk phones, unlike the Mobile plan.
• Finally, the Advanced plan costs $39.99 per user, per month and it brings a full, personalized installation, call grouping, and on-demand call recording.

4. Ooma

• Great low-cost hotel phone system
• Price from $19.95 per month
• Compatible with Yealink

Ooma excels for all manner of small businesses but it is also a good fit for hotel businesses. In our independent testing, its features – which include spam prevention and customizable hold music, achieved a promising score of 4.5/5. Ooma also offers an excellent 24/7 customer support center and solid and good onboarding options that topped Vonage's in our research.

Ooma users also tend to report high satisfaction levels. This could be helped by the fact that Ooma is very affordable for most small- and mid-sized hotels; although the most useful hotel phone system features are reserved for the higher cost plans, which makes Ooma slightly worse value for hotels than other business types.

Ooma hotel phone features

In comparison to Nextiva, Ooma offers a better range of call management features. Call Flip, for example, lets you easily move calls between different devices, while Call Park lets users put a call on hold before picking the call back up on a different device, or with a different user. However, Ooma doesn't offer the breadth of features available with RingCentral or 8×8.

Ooma doesn't offer too many external connections either, lacking external and live chat integrations, as well as helpdesk add-ons on its cheapest tiers. Still, Ooma does offer some integrations with services that can help manage your hotel's booking and marketing. Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft 365, G-Suite, and Service Now all work seamlessly with Ooma which can save your teams a crazy amount of time, but when we compared it to other VoIP providers, our researchers for found that 8×8 and RingCentral offered better external connections overall for hospitality.

Learn more about the provider's features in our full Ooma review. 

Ooma pricing

Ooma offers three small business pricing plans and three enterprise-level pricing plans. These plans are for fairly basic communication, allowing for unlimited US calls, analytics, and call recording, although some features are only available in the Pro and Pro Plus plans.

• The Ooma Office plan is the cheapest, costing $19.95 per user, per month.
• The Office Pro plan costs $24.95 per user, per month
• Finally, the Office Pro Plus plan costs $29.95 per user, per month.

Then, there are the enterprise-level plans, which offer more advanced features like team messaging, document sharing, and call monitoring.

• The Standard plan costs $19.99 per user per month.
• Then there is the Enhanced plan that costs $27.99 per user per month,
• Finally, Ooma also offers a Call Center plan, which costs $49.99 per user, per month. These plans add(Summer 2023).

Is Ooma right for your hotel?

With its affordable pricing options and reputation for high user satisfaction, Ooma will likely be a good hotel phone system option for many small hotels, but it isn't the best option on the market, in our opinion. Its flat-rate calling costs and unlimited coverage of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada and the US are desirable, but its external connections leave a lot to be desired (2.8/5) and other providers, like RingCentral and 8×8 deliver a lot more for a similar cost.

Ooma might offer all that your hotel needs, or it might restrict you in the long run. For more information, you can request an Ooma price quote.

You can also check out Ooma's pricing compared to leading VoIP providers here.

5. Nextiva

• Best customer support for hotels
• Price from $18.95 per month
• Compatible with Polycom, Cisco, Yealink

Nextiva is a popular player in the VoIP industry, primarily designed for big call centers. It offers generous user allowances and conference calling facilities, but they're not exactly must-haves for many hotels, which is why it scored just 3.9/5 overall in our testing.

Its customer support, however, is pretty impressive, as the company is used to supporting businesses that need their phones sorted quickly and effectively. Nextiva also offers great integrations with a bunch of different CRM providers and some enticing pricing models.

Nextiva hotel phone features

When our researchers tested Nextiva against other VoIP providers, it was clear that its hotel phone system features couldn't quite match up to RingCentral or 8×8.

While it does offer a desktop app that supports voice and video calls, emails, messaging, sales, and service tools, there are some features such as call monitoring and analytics that aren't included in any package – only as an add-on, which is disappointing. Therefore, if you're in need of specific calling features, we think you'd have better luck with RingCentral or 8×8 instead.

Nextiva is compatible with the following hardware: Cisco, Yealink & Polycom, however, making it a solid choice for hotels using this hard phone technology.

Nextiva pricing

Nextiva has four pricing plans and the prices for each plan change depending on the number of users that you need. Even better, Nextiva recently lowered the prices across its plans, so you can get access to this platform for even cheaper.

• The Essential plan costs $18.95 per user, per month for up to four users. This plan gives unlimited calls, a virtual receptionist, voicemail-to-email notifications, and integrates with Outlook and Google Contacts.
• The Professional plan starts at $22.95 per user, per month and offers Call Pop which can tell your employees who's calling and about what before they pick up the phone. It also allows you to integrate your phones with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk.
• The Enterprise plan costs $32.95 per user, per month as standard, prior to additional-user discounts. It brings single sign-on functionality and integrations with Microsoft Teams, Oracle Sales Cloud, and ServiceNow.

Ease of use

Advanced VoIP phone systems can sound complicated but, in actuality, they make everyday tasks far easier — from making inbound and outbound phone calls to working with the rest of your hotel's computer phone system.

• You can easily manage reservations and bookings with linked phones and computer systems.
• Internal communications can be improved as you'll be able to talk to staff on the go with softphones and mobile VoIP apps.
• You can fulfill hotel guest requests quicker and easier. Room service request? You can easily fire off the order to a kitchen display from your computer.
• Receptionist staff will find it easier to transfer and hold calls from prospective guests and internal customers — you'll no longer lose customers while they're waiting to get through.
• Facilitate good professional phone etiquette to ensure your guests feel taken care of across the board.

Lower costs

The most pressing advantage, perhaps, is that VoIP systems can be significantly less expensive than traditional wired solutions.

By paying a low monthly fee, especially so with services such as 3CX, you can eschew all of the wiring and logistics involved with traditional phone systems. These infrastructure points cost extra money for upkeep and maintenance. Plus, you'll need to pay for traditional desk phones.

VoIP systems can work with traditional desk phones. However, they also work with softphones — basically computers and mobile devices — which your hotel will need regardless. By choosing a good VoIP system, you won't need to buy two different pieces of hardware, instead, you can get a single computer that does both.

Improved efficiency

All of the providers we've listed offer integrations with popular CRM and business management software.

There's a fair chance your hotel might already be using a system such as Salesforce, Google Workspace, or Microsoft 365. A VoIP system, such as Ooma, will allow your staff to manage data, files, booking, and customer information easily, with no complicated or laborious record-copying — everything will be done automatically.

Easy expansion

Aside from the phones on your front desk, a VoIP system can easily manage phones in guests' rooms — without the need for wiring.

This means that, as your hotel and businesses grow, you can easily add extra phones wherever you need them — it doesn't have to be a complex logistical proposition.

Seamless integrations

Internet-enabled VoIP systems can integrate with other business systems too like CRM or POS systems. This helps you extend the use of your phone service and keep data in one centralized location.

Looking for an accompanying POS system too? Read our full guide to the best hotel POS systems

Buying Guide: How to Choose the Best Hotel Phone System for You

Choosing the right phone system for your hotel will require you to consider a number of factors about your business and its future. Here are some things to bear in mind when choosing a phone system for your hotel.

• Integrations – Phone systems allow businesses to communicate across platforms, unlike traditional phone lines. However, if your business is looking to integrate your phone system with other communication tools, you'll need to ensure your chosen provider offers this connection first.
• Business expansion – If you have plans for growth you should select a telephone system that is capable of changing easily as demand for your business expands. As a general rule of thumb, we'd recommend prioritizing providers with scalable packages and useful add-on options.
• Accessories – Some hotels may need a fully functioning telephone system with a range of accessories integrated into the system such as iPad POS apps, business VoIP headsets, or voicemail. Reflect on what your business needs, and then only consider systems with these accessories.
• Staff training – Often overlooked, this is a key consideration. You need to consider whether staff will need training on any new phone system and how this is to be delivered. Sometimes phone suppliers offer free training, so it’s always worth asking at installation.
• Automation features – Streamlining processes with automated features is a great time to save worker time, especially if your hotel deals with busy periods. Some useful automation features to look out for include automated messages for when your line is busy and automated table reservations.
• Booking and reservations – If you are a formal, fine dining establishment, you would probably benefit from more than one telephone line so you can take reservations. Or perhaps you have a delivery service, in which case a multi-line phone system for small businesses may be best, as you'll need different lines for reservations, payments, and customer concerns.
• Deskphones – We'd recommend that hotels use softphones but, if you're able to forego some flexibility, hard phones allow for slightly better call quality. Our top picks for hotel headphones are Polycom VVX 601 and Cisco 7941. Learn more about our best VoIP desk phones.

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