When considering virtual phone systems, many SMBs find themselves comparing Nextiva and OpenPhone. At first glance, the OpenPhone pricing plans seem lower, but it’s important to consider what features you’re getting at each price point.
So, does OpenPhone have all the features your business needs at a price point you’re happy with? Let’s take a closer look.
OpenPhone Plans & Pricing
OpenPhone is a cloud-based communications platform that offers voice and messaging capabilities for businesses of all sizes. It’s a reliable service with basic functionalities that may be perfect for a small or medium-sized business (SMB).
Let’s dive into their pricing plans.
Starter plan: $15/month per user (billed annually)
The Starter plan is ideal for small businesses that have relatively simple communication needs and don’t conduct significant business communications outside the U.S. or Canada.
Features of the Starter plan include:
- One new local or toll-free phone number per user
- Port phone numbers from other carriers
- Voicemail-to-text transcripts
- Unlimited calling and messaging to U.S. and Canadian numbers (subject to additional rates)
- International calling and messaging
- Shared phone numbers with a limit of 10 users
- Snippets and AI message responses
- Manual call recording, auto-replies, and scheduled messages
- Integration with email, Slack, Zapier, Google Contacts, and webhooks (beta)
- Standard support
Business plan: $23/month per user (billed annually)
This plan can benefit SMBs that plan to grow or those that need slightly more advanced and collaboration-focused features.
The Business plan includes everything in the Starter plan, plus the following:
- Unlimited shared phone numbers
- Automatic call recording
- Phone menus
- AI call summaries and transcripts
- Group calling, call transfers, and custom ring orders
- Integration with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Gong
- Analytics and reporting
- Standard support
Enterprise plan: Custom pricing — contact sales for more information
The Enterprise plan can benefit scaling SMBs or large businesses that may need additional support or customization options. However, it doesn’t offer many more benefits than the Business plan.
The Enterprise plan includes everything in the Business plan, plus the following:
- Custom contract and pricing
- Dedicated Account Manager
- Audit log
- Priority support — pushes your support needs ahead of accounts with standard support
Add-ons (across all plans)
OpenPhone customers can choose from any of the following add-ons to include in the monthly plan of their choice:
- Additional phone numbers: $5 per number, per month
- International calls and messages: Billed per minute or message (rates vary by country)
- Automated messages via Zapier: $0.01 per outgoing text message
Nextiva Plans & Pricing
Nextiva’s pricing model offers more flexible plans, which vary slightly depending on the number of users. This makes Nextiva a strong choice for businesses that want to scale, as its pricing remains affordable alongside growth.
For the best rate, we recommend choosing an annual billing option, which is reflected below. Remember, you can change your service anytime, so if you find that your current plan no longer suits your growing needs, reach out to your Client Success Manager.
Nextiva also offers contact center solutions for businesses with growing support or sales teams.
The following subscription tiers accommodate diverse business requirements:
- Digital Package ($20/month): Ideal for businesses focusing on online presence. Features include website chat integration, social media message management, and customer review monitoring and response tools.
- Core Package ($30/month): Expands on the Digital tier by adding voice call capabilities, video conferencing options, and SMS text messaging support.
- Engage Package ($40/month): Builds upon the Core offering with advanced support features, call center functionality with queue management, sophisticated call routing options, and an AI-powered chatbot for continuous customer support
- Power Suite ($60/month): The most comprehensive option, including all lower-tier features plus intelligent routing algorithms for optimal customer-agent matching, seamless integration with CRM and CDP systems, and advanced supervisor dashboards for performance tracking and analysis
Each tier provides incremental value, allowing businesses to choose the level of service that best aligns with their customer engagement strategy and operational needs.
Which Nextiva plan is best?
Nextiva Power Suite offers the most features and functionality for small and mid-size companies. In addition to extensive business communication features, it provides advanced basic call center functionalities.
If you have a smaller budget, check out the Nextiva Core plan for the core business communication features like unlimited calling nationwide, IVR, business SMS, and more. You also get a mobile and desktop app at no extra cost for the freedom to work from anywhere.
And suppose you want to connect your on-premises PBX to Nextiva. In that case, we offer flexible SIP trunking as low as $14.95 per month.
Top Features of OpenPhone & Nextiva
When considering two VoIP service providers, it can be helpful to compare each platform’s key features.
OpenPhone
OpenPhone’s key features include the following:
- Local or toll-free numbers: OpenPhone allows each user to have a new local or toll-free phone number, which can be very attractive for small businesses or startups looking to establish a presence.
- Voicemail transcripts: For busy professionals who may not always have the time to listen to voicemails, transcripts can be a quick way to stay on top of messages.
- Shared phone numbers: Small teams can manage the same phone number, which is useful for collaborative customer service.
- AI message responses: For businesses that want to ensure quick initial replies to customer inquiries, AI responses can provide immediate engagement.
- Cost-effective plan: With a lower entry cost for the Starter plan (three dollars per month less than Nextiva), OpenPhone can be more accessible for startups and small businesses.
Nextiva
Nextiva’s key features include the following:
- Unlimited video conferencing: With higher plans offering unlimited participants, Nextiva is suitable for larger businesses that require extensive video conferencing capabilities.
- Advanced call management: Features in the Enterprise plan, such as call recording and voice analytics, are key for businesses that need to monitor and improve their customer service.
- CRM integrations: Nextiva offers integrations with major CRM software, such as Salesforce, on two of its plans, which is essential for businesses that rely on CRM for sales and customer service.
- Team messaging and SMS: These features support a mobile and flexible workforce, enabling employees to communicate effectively from any location.
- Scalability: Nextiva plans are designed to scale with business growth, making it a good choice for rapidly growing companies.
Expanded Comparison Table
Feature or Functionality | OpenPhone Starter | OpenPhone Enterprise | Nextiva Core |
---|---|---|---|
Monthly price per user when billed annually | $15 | Price not listed online | $30 |
Hardware phone compatibility (VoIP phones) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Unlimited voice calling (U.S. and Canada) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Unlimited video calling | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Mobile apps (iOS and Android) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Video calling functionality | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Video conference functionality | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Meeting scheduling | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Team messaging | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Call recording | ✅ | ✅ | Add on |
Free number porting | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
SMS/MMS | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Voicemail transcription | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Analytics and reporting | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Which Provider Is Right for Your Business?
Choosing between Nextiva and OpenPhone will depend on your current and future estimated communication needs, plans for growth, budget, and required features.
OpenPhone
Startups and small businesses that need basic VoIP features, calling, messaging, and shared numbers may be best suited to OpenPhone.
Businesses that are primarily focused on phone calls and SMS messages can benefit from OpenPhone, especially if they’re open to using an alternative video calling and conferencing solution.
The platform’s biggest strengths include:
- Affordable pricing: OpenPhone’s pricing is slightly lower than Nextiva’s, which can be cost-effective for small businesses with restrictive budgets.
- Easy-to-use design: The platform’s relatively simple features make it incredibly easy to adopt and use.
- Great collaboration features: There are plenty of great workspace collaboration features, such as in-thread team messaging, shared phone numbers, shared contact lists, and group messaging.
- AI features: OpenPhone has some unique AI features, including AI auto-replies.
Nextiva
Nextiva is a more well-rounded communications platform, offering SMBs and large businesses basic functionalities, advanced tools, and extensive support. All plans support Google Contacts and Outlook integration, and the higher-tier plans include integration with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Teams, and more.
It’s also worth noting that while OpenPhone beats Nextiva on pricing alone, it only does so slightly (it’s $3.95 less for the cheapest plan, but $0.05 higher for the mid-level plan, and unknown for the Enterprise plan since you have to call for pricing). It’s always important to consider the value of what you’re getting at each price point.
Nextiva’s most significant strengths include:
- Robust business phone features: Nextiva’s virtual phone features are extraordinarily robust, including options such as auto-attendants, call routing, call logging, and call recording.
- Video and voice conferencing: Nextiva offers both voice and video conferencing, with features such as meeting scheduling, video call recording, and video calls/.
- 24/7 support: Nextiva’s dedicated customer support team is available 24/7/365 on all plans.
- Professional setup: Nextiva’s Professional and Enterprise plans come with the option for professional setup, ensuring that you and your team know how to get the most out of your new communication platform.
The Final Verdict on Nextiva
Nextiva is consistently the preferred choice for growing businesses for the following reasons:
- Clear pricing: There are no hidden fees, our pricing is reasonable, and our plans are transparent.
- Scalability: Nextiva’s expansive communications features scale alongside your business.
- Professional-grade communication: With VoIP office phone compatibility and discounted pricing available, Nextiva is ready for the workplace.
- Mobile-ready: Nextiva’s remote and mobile-ready features are essential for hybrid and remote workforces.
- 24/7 customer support: You can always get support when needed because your business phone system is never something you should gamble on.
- Reliability: Nextiva boasts high reliability and uptime, which are critical for businesses with always-on communication needs.
See what your phone system is missing.
Level up your business communication. See why top brands use Nextiva to handle calls at scale.
OpenPhone FAQs
Yes, OpenPhone does cost money, but it also provides various pricing plans to suit the needs of different businesses or individuals. OpenPhone offers a range of features tailored to enhance customer communications through an advanced phone system. This includes unlimited calls to specific countries, the ability to add unlimited users, and support for mobile devices, making it easy to manage your business communications effectively from anywhere.
OpenPhone provides a free trial of seven days before requiring you to choose one of its pricing plans. This trial period allows users to experience how OpenPhone works with its full suite of features.
OpenPhone works by transmitting voice and multimedia content over the internet, which is called VoIP, rather than relying on traditional telephony networks. This approach enables a more flexible and scalable phone system that’s well-suited for modern businesses, allowing them to operate on softphones and ensuring that team members can communicate effectively, regardless of their location.
OpenPhone operates as a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service, leveraging internet connectivity to facilitate customer communications. This means that instead of relying on traditional telephony networks, OpenPhone works by transmitting voice and multimedia content over the internet.
OpenPhone’s prices per minute for international calls and messages vary by country. As of this writing, the lowest price per minute is $0.02 USD, which applies to several countries including Algeria, Cambodia, and Georgia, and the highest price per minute is $3.45 USD, which applies to the Falkland Islands (Malvinas).