iPlum vs Google Voice: Which is right for you?

Looking to streamline your business communications into one place? Ready to free yourself from the confines of a landline or personal cell number? Getting a business phone system is the answer. But is iPlum vs Google Voice the modern phone solution?

In this article, iPlum and Google Voice are going head-to-head. To help you decide which tool is best for your business, we’ll compare their pricing, features, and integrations.

You’ll also find the most modern business phone solution to consider while you’re doing your research. 

iPlum vs. Google Voice: How do these platforms compare?

Both iPlum and Google Voice have business phone systems for small businesses. 

iPlum offers a business phone app that works as a second phone line on your current cell phone plan, with the option to make calls over the internet. 

Google offers a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone product that lets you use any internet connection to make work-related calls or send clients text messages. They call it Google Voice.
Let’s take a look at how iPlum vs. Google Voice compare on three important fronts: pricing, features, and integrations.

1. Pricing: Which provides the most bang for your buck?

Winner: iPlum

Price isn’t the only factor when you’re shopping for a business phone service, but as you know, it’s still important.

With iPlum, you can get an unlimited plan for a US phone number starting at $8.99 per user per month when paid annually. Canadian numbers are available starting at $11.99 per user per month and toll-free numbers start at $14.99 per user per month on annual plans. 

Though not as steep as other business phone services, iPlum’s subscription does not include many basic features businesses require. For instance, if you want transcriptions for any voicemails sent to your number, you’ll need to pay an extra $4.99 per month (bummer, I know). 

Google Voice offers a free plan, but it also has very limited features (basic calling, texting, and voicemail) and is only accessible if you have an existing US number. Plus, Google charges for phone number porting if a user decides to port their Google Voice number on the free plan.  

Its business plans, also known as Google Voice for Workspace, deliver more features and range from $10-$30 per user month. Though simple on the surface, accessing Google Voice’s business communication features also requires an active Google Workspace account, subscriptions for that start at $6 per user month. 

When you do the math, iPlum comes out as a more affordable business phone service, especially if you can get by with a local number. With the Workspace subscription, Google Voice will cost you, at minimum, $16 per user per month.

2. Feature: Which delivers more?

Winner: Toss-up

Most teams want a business phone service be accessible from any device that enables them to be able to work anywhere. Built-in features to make collaboration even simpler is a major plus.

Unfortunately, while letting you work from anywhere, iPlum is available on mobile devices only (no desktop or web app offered). Your team members can use a shared number to make and receive calls, but there are no built-in collaboration features to streamline this. You’ll also need a separate subscription for each member if you want to show your main number as the caller ID for all of them. 

Google Voice for Workspace doesn’t make collaborating on your external communications any simpler. Although multiple team members can use Voice’s ring groups feature to answer calls from a single number, there’s no option to share notes or tag each other, making it difficult to be on the same page.

Comparing iPlum vs Google Voice, both also have separate inboxes for voice messages and texts, which makes it time-consuming to stay up to date on conversations.

But Google Voice has apps for mobile and web browsers, which means you have more flexibility with the devices you can use to make business calls. However, you miss out on some handy functionality that iPlum offers, like toll-free numbers and auto-replies. Keep this in mind, though, that you’ll need to upgrade to iPlum’s most expensive plan ($14.99 per month, paid annually) to use a toll-free number or pay $9.99 and work off their complicated phone credit system.  

3. Integrations: What apps connect with each?

Winner: Google Voice (barely)

The best small business phone systems help speed up your workflow by letting you integrate your phone app with your other business apps. Unfortunately, iPlum and Google Voice don’t make the list because they barely offer any integrations. 

iPlum only offers a Rest API that app developers can use to prompt their users to download the app. But there’s no integration for other business software. 

Google Voice for Workspace is only slightly better: you can integrate your phone system with other Workspace apps like Calendar and Meet, but nothing outside of Google’s umbrella. If you want to connect to third-party apps,, you’re out of luck.

Look beyond iPlum vs Google Voice for the business phone system you need 

iPlum and Google Voice each make their own case to business owners, but if you’re serious about finding a business phone system that can support you at any stage of growth, you need a provider that offers the essential features out of the box — and then some.

Meet OpenPhone, a modern business phone system that checks all the boxes for how a virtual phone should work for growing companies. Here’s how OpenPhone outshines iPlum vs Google Voice.

1. Work the way you want

OpenPhone lets you and your team work however you prefer with desktop, browser, and mobile apps. 

Your subscription includes unlimited free calls and texts in the US and Canada and the ability to add more numbers (US, Canadian, or North American toll-free numbers are available). Each user on your team comes with one number for free; we only charge $5 per number per month if the amount you need exceeds your team’s total user count. 

Already have a number you’d like to use? OpenPhone will port your phone number for free.

2. Give your team context (without paying more)

OpenPhone boasts more features than either iPlum or Google Voice, even on the Starter plan. You’ll get the essentials like voicemail transcriptions and call recordings without having to pay any add-on fees. 

Moreover on the Business plan, you can configure your own auto-attendant (aka a phone menu or IVR) for calling routing to the right information and folks on your team. 

3. Streamline your communication workflows

OpenPhone has other handy timesaving features too. With snippets, you can save frequently sent messages as templates to use in any relevant client conversation. This saves you hours and can supercharge your sales, marketing, or customer service team.

Slack and HubSpot integrations bring your other communications into a single interface with OpenPhone. And with a Zapier integration, you can connect hundreds of other tools and apps to your OpenPhone account to achieve even more with your business phone system. 

4. Level up collaboration between your teammates

Using OpenPhone’s shared phone numbers, your team can split responsibility for responding to incoming calls and messages. Plus, they can see when someone calls or drafts a message to a contact, so no one duplicates work.

OpenPhone also makes collaborating on your external communication flat-out simple. Teammates can:

• work together  on responses
• leave notes on any conversation or contact to provide teammates further context 
• assign follow-up tasks using threads

Check out this table breaking down OpenPhone vs iPlum vs Google Voice for a more granular comparison:

Take your business communications to the next level with OpenPhone

When you compare iPlum vs Google Voice, it becomes clear they both lack many of the features modern companies require in a business phone system. iPlum doesn’t even offer a desktop or web app, which means you’ll need to use your mobile phone even while working in the office. Plus, they don’t offer any integrations with any of the other software your teams use.

OpenPhone provides more value than iPlum and Google Voice combined. Best of all, OpenPhone is flat-out simple to get started using so you can easily streamline your business phone conversations and collaborate away (think of us as Slack for external communications). Want to give it a try? Sign up for a free seven-day trial of OpenPhone.

Words by Daryna Kulya

Co-Founder at OpenPhone. Ukrainian-Canadian in SF. Love exploring new hiking trails.