Google Voice Review 2024 — Is it the Best Option for Businesses?

Although this isn’t necessarily a feature, it’s worthy of placing at the top of this section. Google Voice is hands down one of the easiest VoIP systems we’ve tried.

Training is unlikely to be necessary. The dashboard lays out everything on the left-hand side, similar to Gmail, making sourcing what you need a breeze.

To get a personal phone number, all you need to do is enter your city or area code. That said, unlike some providers like MightyCall that offer free phone number porting, Google Voice charges $20 for this.

Google Voice offers unlimited messaging for US customers across any synced device. As you may expect, these texts are also displayed in a simple dashboard that looks a lot like Gmail.

That said, what impressed us most is that this is free and offered on the Basic plan. As we explored in our GoTo Connect review, this isn’t the case for many.

For reference, GoTo charges more for its entry-level plan than Google Voice and it offers limited domestic texting in the US.

By leveraging advanced speech recognition technology, Google Voice can transcribe your voicemail into text. With this, you can easily identify the voicemails that need your immediate attention.

In our experience, we noticed that some of the voicemails can’t be transcribed and, on certain occasions, Google Voice is not as accurate as we expected. However, we were surprised to find it was on offer at all.

Still, if this is an area where you can’t compromise on quality, we’d recommend top VoIP services like Nextiva, RingCentral, or Ooma.

With Google Voice, you can consolidate your existing phone number with others into one so that you can better manage calls. You can also redirect calls from your work phone number, landline, and cell phone – and add up to six phone numbers.

Playing around with the settings for this option is a breeze as well, thanks to Google Voice’s admin center. All you have to do is set up your linked numbers and verify them using a 6-digit code.

Besides this, you can even set certain call forwarding rules, like redirecting calls to multiple phone numbers if there’s no response on one phone number or having them ring on several numbers at the same time.

Google Voice’s ring groups let your team members make and receive calls from a single Google Voice number, albeit from a host of different devices.

Moreover, the automatic call routing rules ensure that a certain agent/team receives calls that are meant for them. We were impressed that you can even limit outbound calls.

Beyond this, you can also customize the call routing, including adding a custom greeting. While other providers offer this feature, Google Voice’s ease of use shone through again.

Unwanted spam calls are a huge nuisance for businesses, and they can also put you at risk of falling victim to scams. We were surprised to see that Google Voice offers protection against this.

Not all VoIP services include this, or they have call blocking but on a high-end plan. With GV, if you accidentally block a phone number, you can easily unblock it from the call logs section of the dashboard.

To simplify this, there’s a separate section where you can see spam texts, calls, and even voicemails, like in Gmail. This isn’t common in other VoIP services, so Google Voice hits it out of the park here.

Set your availability, schedule meetings with Google Voice, and get voicemails for missed calls.

Users can host and join meetings from their browser of via the app, which is available for use on Android and Apple devices. It offers high-quality audio, up to 4K video quality, background noise cancellation, and live captions.

Accept, make, and transfer calls directly from your Gmail without switching tabs.