Vonage

• Residential Plans
• Business Phone Service
• Mobile App
• Money Back Guarantee

Residential Plans

Vonage offers a residential VoIP service that uses your existing internet connection to place calls and other communications through different cloud services. You can use it through your standard home phone with a provided adaptor, or you can use the service on your mobile phone through the Vonage app. Residential users have a few different plans to choose from:

Vonage North America

• 12-month contract: Pay $9.99/mo first six months, then $24.99/mo
• No contract: $24.99/mo
• Unlimited calling in North America

Vonage World

• 12-month contract: $14.99/mo first six months, then $27.99/mo
• No contract: $27.99/mo
• Free calls to landlines to 60 different countries
• Unlimited mobile calls to over 10 countries: Brunei, Canada, China, Guam, Hong Kong, India, Macau, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Saipan, San Marino, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, United States, and US Virgin Islands

Vonage US & Canada 400

• $12.99/mo
• 400 minutes/mo

Vonage 3000 to Globe Philippines

• 12-month contract: $14.99/mo first three months, then $29.99/mo
• No contract: $29.99/mo
• Free calls to landlines to 60 different countries
• Unlimited mobile calls to 10 countries, 
• 3000 minutes to the Philippines

As an incentive, if you sign a year contract, most plans offer a promotional priced period. Additionally, it comes with a free phone adapter ($79), free activation, and some plans, free shipping. 

Additionally, Vonage’s in-network calling, app-to-app calling is free. 

In 2003, Vonage began offering 911 calling that requires users to register their address with the company so emergency services can respond more quickly. If you choose Vonage for home use, be sure to register for 911 calls. Keep in mind that internet failure is not a threat to calls that are placed over a 3G or 4G network.

Business Phone Service

With Vonage, there are separate platforms for SMBs and enterprise-level business VoIP customers. 

Vonage offers three Business Cloud Plans so companies of all sizes can use their service. Pricing is based on the number of users and level of service, either Mobile, Premium, or Advanced. More users mean lower fees per month per user, while the calling plans with more features lead to higher monthly costs.

Vonage Business Cloud Plans: 

• Mobile: $14.99-19.99 per line per month. 
• Premium: $24.99-29.99 per line per month. 
• Advanced: $34.99-39.99 per line per month. 

If you need 100+ lines, contact Vonage for custom pricing. 

All three plans include: 

• Unlimited calling & SMS in 48 states + Canada
• Softphone access through the mobile app - iOS or Android
• Softphone access through the desktop app
• In-app VonageFlow team messaging

Vonage Enterprise Plans:

• Enterprise Basic
• Enterprise UC
• Enterprise Plus

The Enterprise option offers more collaboration tools and of course more extensions. Pricing is upon request. Customers should note that business service is available on a month-to-month contract, while Enterprise is not.

Vonage is also a strong proponent of an SD-WAN solution. With more and more services getting moved to the cloud; phone, video, and online collaboration tools, the quality of the internet can begin to decline. This can result in dropped or low quality calls. SD-WAN is a wide area network, maximizes your bandwidth to ensure high quality voice and video. It ensures that the most important features of your company will run smoothly. This service is powered by VeloCloud.

Mobile App

The Vonage app for smartphones is seamless and intuitive. Users have access to a number of features, like voice-to-text voice mail, a caller ID that matches your business phone number, a call log, and call forwarding.

Using the smartphone app, users can make and receive calls on their cellphone from their original home phone number. The Vonage home plan also lets users set up virtual numbers that people in other countries can connect to for the price of a local call.

Virtual numbers cost between $4.99 and $9.99 a month in addition to Vonage's regular monthly costs for VoIP service. This can save a lot of money for those who make lots of international calls.

Vonage also provides a free desktop plugin that keeps you informed of calls and voice mails in real-time.

Money Back Guarantee

Vonage offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you cancel within 30 days of your order date, the service provider will refund the first line, monthly fee, taxes, shipping, and activation fees.

• No Free International Calling
• Cancellation Process
• Add-On Features

No Free International Calling

Vonage Business does not offer free international long distance calling. Instead, the Long Distance features let users make calls at fairly low rates.

Keep in mind that app-to-app calling is free. If you call a Vonage number using the app to someone else using the Vonage app, anywhere in the world, the service is free.

Cancellation Process

Vonage's cancellation process was once notoriously difficult but saw a re-haul in 2009. While residential or business users cannot cancel through their Vonage online account or through email, they are provided with a toll-free number to call customer service if they'd like to cancel their service. However, this number was still fairly difficult to find on the Vonage website.

Add-On Features

On both the Business Cloud and the Enterprise levels, there are loads of add-on features not included in standard pricing. Things like call recording, video conferencing, online meetings, and virtual faxing all come at an additional fee. Many other services offer these as a part of their regular pricing structure.

It's great that all of these unified communication tools are available, but some business customers might benefit from a calling plan that already includes these as standard features in their monthly price.