Grasshopper
Is This Your Business?Author: Kaitlyn Short
Grasshopper is a small business phone service provider that helps businesses handle outgoing and incoming calls. Phone calls can be made to a separate business phone line from either their mobile phone or their computer.
While it is a virtual, cloud-based phone system, and often grouped together with VoIP technologies, Grasshopper is technically not a VoIP service. It is a virtual PBX that transmits calls through the traditional Publicly Switched Telephone Network (PTSN), not the internet. You can switch to VoIP or Wi-Fi calling and still use Grasshopper; however, then your service will depend on your internet connection and your bandwidth.
With Grasshopper, customers can port their existing number, or get a vanity number, toll-free number, or regular local phone number. The big benefit to users is the second phone line, so they don’t have to give out their personal phone number to help keep personal and business calls separate. Users can even send customers text messages with their Grasshopper phone number.
Keep reading our Grasshopper review for pros and cons.
Top Ranked Companies
The Good
- Virtual Phone Features
- Three Pricing Plans
- Free Trial
Virtual Phone Features
Grasshopper offers helpful tools to enhance your phone service:
- Custom auto-attendant and greetings — even get a recording with a professional voice actor for $75
- Virtual phone number
- Desktop app
- Grasshopper mobile app for iOS and Android devices
- Business texting
- Call forwarding
- Conference calling
- Voicemail messages and voicemail transcription for $10/mo
- Extensions
- Call transfers
- Reporting
- Unlimited minutes
- Internet Fax
While this isn’t necessarily the featured package, with all the bells and whistles that would come with an enterprise-level unified communications plan, this is a great collection of tools that small businesses will actually find useful, without any superfluous charges. These options can be used by either the desktop or cell phone app.
Some features are only available at an add-on monthly fee, like SMS Texting, Call Blasting, Read Your Voicemail, or any additional Grasshopper phone numbers above your plan limit.
Three Pricing Plans
Customers can choose from the following service plans:
- Solo — 1 number + 3 extensions $26–29 per month
- Partner — 3 numbers + 6 extensions: $44–49 per month
- Small business — 5 numbers + unlimited extensions: $80–89 per month
On each of the three Grasshopper plans, customers will save about 10 percent if they choose annual billing rather than monthly. The lower number is if you are billed annually. The higher number is if you are billed a monthly fee.
Free Trial
If you aren’t sure, Grasshopper offers a 7-day free trial with one phone number, 100 business talk minutes, 100 business texts, and all of the features. The only thing that’s not included is premium phone numbers from 10 specific area codes and 800 numbers.
The Bad
- International Calling
- Small Businesses Only
International Calling
If you want to call outside the contiguous United States, you have to activate international calling on your account. Then, you are charged a per-minute rate, even for Alaska and Hawaii. To enable this service on your account, you have to pay a $500 deposit.
It costs 10 cents a minute to call Alaska and 8 cents a minute to call Hawaii.
Small Businesses Only
Grasshopper is a phone solution for entrepreneurs and small businesses only. The terms and conditions even have several items to make sure you aren’t using your account for trunking or a call center.
Grasshopper is specifically designed for small operations. The company itself even recommends going with virtual phone service Jive if you need more than five business lines.
The Bottom Line
Grasshopper is a great phone solution for small business owners or entrepreneurs who want to have a business phone number and added communication tools to make and receive customer calls.
Users can easily use their Grasshopper service with an existing iOS or Android phone or through the desktop app. It’s a great fit, as long as consumers don’t want to make international calls, which can be costly to activate.
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