VoIP integration with CRM: The essential guide

Teamwork is a challenge — especially when your team doesn’t have access to each interaction with a contact. If no one can get the context they need, how can anybody pinpoint where a deal went south? 

For any growing team, integrations solve tangled webs of misunderstandings and miscommunications. A VoIP-CRM integration can help solve operational problems and improve communication by syncing data in real time between platforms. This cloud-based solution is effective for businesses seeking clear and consistent communication.

In this user-friendly guide to VoIP integration with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, you’ll learn how it works and how it benefits you, how to choose the best VoIP system for CRM integration, and what CRM integrations the top VoIP providers offer. Now, let’s dig in.

What exactly is a VoIP integration? 

In short, VoIP integrations allow for automatic data syncing between your phone system and   any two compatible software platforms of your choosing. You can use multiple VoIP integrations (such as Slack, Zapier, and email) if your VoIP provider allows it. This process lets you maximize the strengths of each platform without making any tradeoffs.

How does a VoIP integration work?

VoIP can be integrated with email systems, scheduling tools, customer service software, and more. The goal is to make everything work smoothly and save your team time on repetitive tasks.

So, how does this integration work? The technical details can get complicated, but the general idea is that your VoIP system can sync with other tools to automate specific workflows. For instance, using OpenPhone’s Zapier integration you can seamlessly integrate a popular scheduling tool like Calendly with VoIP systems to streamline your communication workflows. 

So, what is a VoIP CRM integration? 

A customer relationship manager,  or CRM, is a tool businesses use to track customer interactions.

So basically, a CRM integration means making your CRM system talk to your other business tools.

For example, often when you’re working with a team, it can be tough to remember who’s talked to a contact and when. Butif you have a VoIP business phone system and a CRM system with integration capabilities, they can share information automatically. When you and your teammate make multiple calls to a contact using your business number, the CRM tool automatically logs these calls, saving you time. This ensures that both you and your teammate have accurate information, providing the necessary context to deliver exceptional customer service.  

How does a VoIP integration with your CRM work?

In case you need to break this down for your team, let’s first look at exactly how VoIP phone systems integrate with CRMs.

Depending on your VoIP provider, a VoIP integration can give you a CRM with text messaging, call notifications, voicemails, and call recordings all automatically logged — providing your team a single source of truth.

This safeguards your team’s time. For example, instead of spending time on menial tasks like manually logging every customer contact touchpoint or re-entering contact information in both systems. The integration will take care of it for your team so they can spend more time focusing on customer satisfaction.

Your CRM contacts can also automatically be pushed to your phone system so you can see when an incoming call is from a contact already added to your CRM. Then, you can pull up their history in just a couple of clicks and be ready to go. 

Opting to integrate your VoIP service with your CRM is one of the simplest ways of organizing client and prospect data while improving the customer experience. As a result, increased conversions and better team communication are added bonuses of integrating.

Selecting the best VoIP system for CRM integration

The first step to integrating VoIP with CRM is to find software tools that are compatible with each other. Otherwise, you won’t be saving much time at all. If your current phone carrier or VoIP service provider doesn’t offer CRM integrations, perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere.

Beyond ensuring a VoIP platform integrates with your CRM software, teams can shortlist their must-have VoIP features, such as:

1. KPI tracking and analytics

You first need to find a modern VoIP system that can provide key metrics and reporting. Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you measure your growth, so choosing a VoIP system with compatible analytics capabilities automates the tracking to save you time. Depending on your CRM system, you may also have a dashboard you can easily review that incorporates date from your phone system.

This means you can make your team’s life easier by combining data from different tools like your CRM and phone system. 

For example, if you want to quantify the reach of your communication, you can track the number of unique conversations. Alternatively, you can review productivity teamwide or at an individual level, all based on metrics like:

•  total time on the phone
• number of messages sent
• activities per hour

Or, you can review actions by the hour of the day to find out when your team is most active or when inbound calls spike.

2. CRM contact visibility in your phone system

The dreaded “address book dilemma” can be a serious problem for fast-growing businesses because it’s disorienting to constantly switch back and forth between your CRM and phone address book.

With a VoIP provider like OpenPhone, your CRM address book can sync automatically with your phone inbox. That makes it easy to quickly identify CRM contacts in your VoIP system each time you receive incoming calls and messages. Your team can also keep tabs on essential customer information and communications without juggling multiple desktop windows.

3. Auto-log conversations

One of the biggest perks of integrating your CRM account with your VoIP service is the ability to auto-log. After you get a VoIP number, you can effortlessly capture all customer messages and calls without missing a beat with auto-logged data.

You won’t have to undertake any additional steps to ensure your colleague in sales sees the customer service call you just made on a client account. The auto-log feature makes it easy for cross-department collaboration, and it’s an integral component of any VoIP-CRM integration — a feature OpenPhone proudly offers users.

4. Additional business features

Other business phone features could be helpful in your arsenal to streamline your internal business communication and general workflow.

OpenPhone stands out from the pack with features built for the modern-day workplace. VoIP service offerings include all the business tools you’d expect and those you didn’t know you needed:

• Away voicemail greetings
• Customized business hours
• SMS and MMS capabilities
• Snippets and auto-replies
• Scheduled text messages
• Phone menu (IVR)
• Call recordings
• Caller ID
• Call analytics
• Internal chat threads
• Integrations with tools like Zapier, Slack, and email

When you take the time to browse for top VoIP providers, you’re bound to find the best one for your business. While you’re at it, consider pricing, analytics, business feature options, and integration capabilities. Once you’ve made your decision, you’re ready to hit the ground running and get the most out of VoIP integrations with CRM.

Top VoIP providers with CRM integrations

Ready to begin your search? We’ve done some legwork for you. Here’s a convenient comparison grid with some of the top VoIP providers, and you’ll find an overview of each below the grid.

Provider	OpenPhone	RingCentral	Dialpad	8×8	JustCall
Price	Starts at $23 per user per month	Starts at $25 per user per month	Starts at $25 per user per month	Starts at $24 per user per month	Starts at $48 per user per month
Unlimited calling to US & Canada	✓	✓	✓	✓	X
SMS/MMS to US and Canada	✓	100 per user per month	US & Canadian customers only	✓	✓
Salesforce integration	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
HubSpot integration	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Auto-log calls	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Auto-log texts	✓	Salesforce only	Salesforce only	X	✓
Shared Phone Numbers	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Additional Phone Numbers	$5 per number per month	$4.99 per number per month	Varies	$5 per number per month	$6 per number per month

Keep reading for more information on the top five VoIP providers with CRM integration.

1. OpenPhone: The best option for growing teams

OpenPhone is a cloud-based VoIP phone service designed to help you build better relationships with your customers. You can use our platform to reach contacts anywhere in the world on devices (laptops, computers, smartphones, and tablets) your team already uses.

Every user comes with a number (US, Canadian, or North American toll-free)  for unlimited calling and texting in the US and Canada. 

You can also assign team members to a single shared number. With shared numbers, every member assigned to the number can call and text from that number. This means everyone can work more efficiently as a team and follow up on conversations quickly and seamlessly.

On the Business plan, you’ll also get call recording, phone menus (IVR auto-attendant), group calling, call transfers, and analytics and reporting to help you interpret your customer data. It’s like having a universe of business tools right at your fingertips whenever you need them.

As one user put it, “OpenPhone gives me the ability to do everything I usually do on my phone from the desktop while I’m using my CRM. I love the voicemail transcripts and text message conversations I can have within the platform!” 

You can track it all in OpenPhone’s lightweight CRM or integrate with Salesforce and HubSpot. Each CRM integration lets you automatically log all phone interactions into your CRM and see when a CRM contact reaches out when your team is using OpenPhone. You can also loop in teammates outside of your CRM and phone systems by integrating with Slack. If you don’t use any of those, our Zapier integration and webhooks lets you create workflows to connect OpenPhone to your CRM.

Another OpenPhone user wrote, “OpenPhone is easy to set up and use, and the functionality it provides is exceptional. We made the move to have easy integration into our CRM, and that has been an easy and seamless process. The mobile app makes it so simple to keep up with calls even when we’re away from our desks, and the team at OpenPhone has been DELIGHTFUL.” 

High praise, don’t you think? In addition, all call recordings, texts, and voice messages are in the same view inside your OpenPhone workspace, allowing your team to easily catch up on conversations and help customers. 

Thousands of growing teams and businesses use OpenPhone to build better relationships with their customers. You can try OpenPhone for yourself by signing up for our seven-day free trial today. Then, once you decide OpenPhone is the right fit, you can easily port any existing US, Canadian, or North American toll-free number straight from the web or desktop app. 

Key features of OpenPhone

• Local (US and Canadian phone numbers) and toll-free number options
• Zapier, HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, email integrations, and webhooks
• Automatic logging of calls, texts, and voice messages with Salesforce and HubSpot
• Salesforce and HubSpot CRM contacts sync in OpenPhone
• Shared phone numbers
• SMS and MMS support
• Business hour settings
• Voicemail to text transcriptions
• Phone menu and VoIP call routing options
• Automatic call recording
• iOS and Android mobile apps
• Web-based app for all browsers
• Desktop apps for Mac + Windows

OpenPhone pricing

Here are OpenPhone’s pricing plans, designed to give your team the flexibility to scale as your business grows:

Starter

• Starting at $15 per user per month
• Includes the option to share a number with up to 10 teammates, auto-attendants, scheduled texts, and more 

Business

• Starting at $23 per user per month
• Unlocks call transfer, logs and analytics, HubSpot CRM integration, the ability to share your phone number with as many teammates as you need, and more

Enterprise

• Custom pricing for a custom plan
• Unlocks a dedicated account manager to tailor a plan to your team’s needs

2. RingCentral: The top option with a Microsoft Teams integration

RingCentral is a unified communications platform (UCaaS) offering call, text, and video conferencing features on every plan. If you field a lot of calls, you might like that RingCentral caters to large enterprises with large call centers.

While RingCentral offers a lot of features, it all comes at a price — and with a lot of glitches.

One RingCentral user wrote, “Our salespeople are always on the move using WiFi. This may not be all RC’s fault, but the reliability is so bad for some of our salespeople that they have just stopped using the app when they’re not at their desks. This causes a lot of different issues (not using something we’re paying for, their numbers not hitting our KPI reporting software, etc.).”

While that’s not ideal, RingCentral has helpful features if you can get it to work properly. RingCentral integrates with CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, and Zoho and has related features — like automatic call recording, video meetings, and integrations with Microsoft Teams, Slack, and other popular apps. But those are locked behind higher tiers. Even with upgrades, you can’t quickly review all calls, texts, and voicemails with a customer in the same thread.

If you’re a HubSpot user, you won’t be able to log your text messages. And forget working as a team. RingCentral’s shared phone number feature is only helpful for incoming calls. While you can use shared lines to answer calls with other team members, you won’t be able to field incoming texts together. 

But what if you have a few dozen employees needing to access your cloud CRM? In that case, RingCentral can cost more than $1,500 monthly if you want to use all their features and the call center solution. And on RingCentral’s advanced plan, you’re limited to 100 text messages per user monthly and can use your toll-free numbers for 100 minutes per month. So, your team might need to ration or deal with unpredictable add-on costs every month.

But honestly, who has time for that? 

And those automatic and on-demand call recordings? They expire after 90 days. 

When all is said and done — if you’re not a call center — your time might be better used looking for other VoIP systems with CRM integrations.

Key features of RingCentral

• CRM and workflow integrations (requires upgrade)
• Local or toll-free phone numbers
• 200+ users on higher-tier plans
• Android and iOS Mobile app
• Voicemail transcriptions
• Document file sharing
• Team messaging
• Business texting
• Call recordings
• IVR

RingCentral pricing

RingCentral users can choose from three major tiers:

Core 

• $20 per user/month
• Get unlimited calls in the US and Canada with business SMS (25 texts per user)

Advanced  

• $25 per user/month 
• Access video meetings with voicemail transcriptions, automatic call recording, CRM integrations, and 100 text messages per user

Ultra 

• $35 per user/month 
• Get additional storage, device analytics, and 200 text messages per user

3. Dialpad: The best option with AI-based agent training

Dialpad is another VoIP business phone system built specifically for call centers and larger teams. It offers AI-based training for call center agents. If you’re a small business, you might find all of its bells and whistles make your workflows less streamlined instead of more.

One Dialpad user wrote, “The admin portal/website is clunky, not intuitive, and overall not very user-friendly. Learning how to set things up, get it functioning, and teach your team is hard. Calling and texting are easy to learn; anything advanced is tough.” 

Its Salesforce integration lets you automatically log inbound and outbound calls, voicemails, recordings, and SMS messages sent or received directly from its desktop or mobile apps. But don’t expect perfection — it won’t always do what you want.

Another Dialpad user wrote, “Sometimes the integration to Salesforce isn’t perfect. Notes don’t always transition over how I would like for them to, and the transcript could be better at times.” 

Dialpad’s HubSpot integration logs calls and connects matching contacts and notes between Dialpad and HubSpot. However, you won’t be able to log texts to HubSpot automatically. 

Like most VoIP services, talk and message are Dialpad’s core cloud phone services. With any plan, you can get calling along with Dialpad offering 250 free messages per user per month. The option to text internationally is only available if you upgrade your plan.  And Dialpad also bundles the free, basic version of their video meeting service, Meetings, with their VoIP products.

If you’re a smaller business or solopreneur, you might be frustrated to find Dialpad requires you to pay for at least three users on their Pro plan. Of course, you’ll need at least the pro plan to access advanced features like CRM integrations. So, if you’re on your own — you’re on your own. 

Our guide to Dialpad alternatives also covers some of the other roadblocks you can run into when setting up your team in Dialpad. 

Key features of Dialpad

• Analytics
• Call recording
• Auto-attendant (IVR)
• Relatively low base plan
• Call and voicemail transcriptions
• Provides AI solutions that can benefit call centers
• Integrations with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and Office 365
• Speed coaching, which tells you if you’re speaking too fast or too slow
• Offers calling and texting to US and Canada with any plan (if you’re based in either country)

Dialpad pricing

Dialpad offers three base plan options:

Standard 

• $15 per user per month 
• Includes unlimited calls, SMS and MMS support, and unlimited video meetings 

Pro

• $25 per user per month 
• Access local numbers in 70+ countries, up to 25 ring groups, CRM integrations, and international SMS (three user seat minimum)

Enterprise

• Custom monthly price 
• Unlock guaranteed uptime, unlimited ring groups, and (100 user seat minimum)

Keep in mind Dialpad charges extra for porting in more than one existing phone number. 

4. 8×8: The best solution with intelligent interactive voice response (IIVR)

Another VoIP business phone system with CRM integration is 8×8. It’s a cloud-based VoIP offering voice, video, and text messaging features.

If you choose to upgrade to get IIVR functionality, you can automate tasks like:

• answering frequently asked questions
• helping customers pay bills over the phone
• setting appointments with a voice prompt

But 8×8 is yet another VoIP business phone system built for enterprises and not for small businesses, so these features do not come cheap.

Also, 8×8’s Salesforce and HubSpot integrations don’t log texts, meaning you can’t push business messages to your current CRM. Keep in mind that even though they have some good features, those come with a few significant limitations. Here are some examples:

• Only 35 hours of call recording per user 
• A limit of 80 stored voicemails per user 
• Only offers SMS support for local numbers (no texting from numbers enabled with ring groups or auto-attendants) 

Although 8×8 advertises unlimited calls in 14 countries, only four of them are truly unlimited. 8×8 doesn’t let you call mobile, special, or premium phone numbers in the remaining 10 countries, which means you can only contact clients through ‘non-premium’ numbers. Since 8×8 doesn’t define ‘special’ or ‘premium’ numbers, you’re left guessing unless you contact support.

You may also find transparency, customer service — and even CRM integrations — are lacking. One user wrote 8×8 was “unable to provide overseas numbers as promised. Terrible customer service at every level, except for the AE, who was more responsive and reasonable. Integration with Hubspot is not really functional and caused a lot of browser window reloads.”

Another 8×8 user called out their lack of pricing transparency and wrote, “They still have some bugs where calls get hung, and I can’t clear them from the admin side. I also detest their billing – at last count, I believe they have 9 or so licenses or tiers, which gets very confusing. They’re not very cost friendly from my experience.” 

Based on those reviews, small businesses trying to promote teamwork, easily monitor budgets, and prioritize customers might want to shop around to find a solution that suits your business needs. 

Key features of 8×8

• Free unlimited calling in the US and Canada
• Salesforce, HubSpot, and other integrations
• Multi-level auto-attendants  
• Team messaging
• Voicemail transcriptions
• SMS, MMS, and team chat 
• Intelligent interactive voice response (IIVR) (upgrade required)

8×8 pricing

For small businesses doing business in the US, 8×8 has some useful features. But to access more countries or if analytics help your business run more efficiently, be prepared to pay almost double. 

Take a look at these five pricing tiers to see the options:

X2 plan: 

• $24 per user per month 
• Includes unlimited voice calling to 14 countries, multi-level auto attendant, CRM integrations, call handling, team messaging with document sharing, video conferencing

X4 plan: 

• $44 per user per month 
• Unlocks calling to 48 countries, advanced call handling, and supervisor analytics

X6 plan: 

• $85 per user per month
• Access contact center tools like customer journey mapping, skills-based routing, IVR, call recording, CRM, and analytics

X7 plan: 

• $110 per user per month
• Includes multi-channel support for social media, chat, email, and texting

X8 plan: 

• $140 per user month
• Unlocks speech and text analytics, and additional quality management

Keep in mind that more advanced CRM features like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and Pipedrive integrations require you to pay for a higher-tier plan.

5. JustCall: The top choice for outbound sales teams

JustCall offers call center software and automations to contact centers and customer support teams. (Noticing a trend here? It seems most VoIP business phone services are designed for call centers.) It serves 6,000+ enterprise customers within a wide range of industries, including some well-known brands.

Some features – including call routing and voice transcriptions — are only available with separate add-on fees. Even if you upgrade to JustCall’s highest-tiered plan, you’ll still need to pay the additional charge.

Even then, you don’t get to choose who on your team gets access to the features. “Some of the add-on feature pricing was unexpected at times. There are also features that I would only want to apply to parts of my team, but I often did not have the ability to apply them to a given group,” one JustCall user wrote.

While JustCall does offer Salesforce, HubSpot, and other advanced integrations, you’ll double your monthly payment because integrations require an upgrade to the Premium tier ($48 per user per month). 

And according to some users, these CRM integrations leave room for improvement. This JustCall user wrote, “Salesforce, Outreach, and Gong syncing needs to improve by a lot. JustCall activities synced to these, and other company’s systems are still not trustworthy.” 

What’s more, JustCall is one of the pricier options, and you’ll have to pay for outbound calls by the minute. With all these barriers, some small businesses will find the upgrades and add-ons aren’t worth dipping into the budget.

Key features of JustCall

• Local number
• Call recording
• SMS and MMS inbox
• Analytics
• Call recording
• Interactive voice response (IVR)
• Ring groups and call distribution
• Unlimited inbound minutes

JustCall pricing

The first thing that stands out about JustCall’s tier list is the price tag. There are three major plans:

Standard: 

• $24 per user per month
• Includes local number, unlimited inbound minutes (toll-free excluded), call recording, SMS and MMS inbox, and analytics

Premium: 

• $48 per user per month
• Unlock access to JustCall’sAPI and Webhook, Salesforce and other advanced integrations, and SMS automation

Custom: 

• You’ll need to contact for pricing
• Unlocks everything from Standard and Premium, unlimited outbound calls, and guaranteed 99.99% uptime

How much can I expect to pay for a VoIP system with CRM integration? 

As it is for most questions in life, the answer is, “It depends.”

Based on our research, you might spend anywhere from $20-$140 per user per month to get a VoIP solution that integrates with your CRM. 

Since each business is different, you should consider the following factors when choosing a VoIP system:

• Your business’s size: VoIP providers often charge on a per-user basis. Some providers even charge more per user if you have a smaller team; so the more users you have, the higher your monthly cost will be.
• Features you need: Basic VoIP services may be pretty affordable, but if you need advanced features like video conferencing, call center functionality, or advanced analytics, you can expect to pay more.
• Your preferred CRM system: Some VoIP systems may integrate with specific CRM systems better than others. If you’re using a popular CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot, you will find more options than using a less common CRM.

By integrating your VoIP business phone system with CRM, you can unlock a range of benefits. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways this powerful combination can help your team succeed.

Benefits of using a VoIP integration with CRM

Still need to get buy in from your team on connecting your CRM to a VoIP system? Or curious about some of the other perks?

Let’s break down the top eightadvantages of using a VoIP-CRM integration in a little more detail:

1. Drive more revenue

With your auto-logged activities, you can run reports in your CRM to see how your team spends their time on the phone. Filter by customer support representative, dates, and other criteria to gain an accurate overview of VoIP phone usage. Who’s spending the most time on calls? What kind of conversion rates are you seeing? You can then use these metrics to coach your sales team, reward team members who go above and beyond, and track call outcomes.

2. Collect vital customer information in a flash

Without a VoIP system with a CRM integration, your team would have to dial customers separately, input call data into a CRM, and re-consult with the CRM when it’s time to follow up. 

Instead, if one teammate calls a client and someone else needs to follow up, they can easily access that previous interaction from one convenient dashboard. With VoIP integration, they can also click to call directly from the CRM.

3. Save big on operating costs

Time is money. As a result of increased operational efficiency, VoIP-CRM integrations allow you to save big. Rather than chasing down prospects manually with follow-up messages and corresponding separately with team members, you can relax knowing everything is stored safely in one place in the cloud.

Then, you and your team can use this newfound time and capital to focus on the things that matter, like reaching out to new prospects or adding value to your company’s services or products. 

4. Track all your phone communication

A VoIP-CRM integration will make life easier by centralizing customer contact information and giving you an overview of your sales funnel. With click-to-call enabled in your CRM, your team shouldn’t ever need to use their personal phones for work. Instead, reps can call directly from your VoIP service via desktop or cell phone. And your company won’t ever need to worry about missing phone call data. This means your team members will enjoy a healthier work-life balance with separate work and personal phone numbers.

5. Save time after every call

The best VoIP-CRM integrations auto-log all activities, saving teams time and energy. Since your CRM automatically stores all of your inbound and outbound calls, voicemails, call recordings, and texts under the relevant contact, it solves the stress and time-suck of manually logging information.

Plus, the next time you need to reference a customer conversation, you will know exactly where to find it.

6. Organize customer contact information across systems

Worried about entering duplicate contacts? How about the stress of keeping up with multiple address books? 

With a CRM phone integration, you can throw those worries out the window. CRM contacts can automatically push to your VoIP system to avoid duplicate contacts.

7. Deepen your existing customer relationships

Integrations are a great way of streamlining customer acquisition. But we can’t round out this guide without touching on another of their main selling points: the ability to deepen trust and build relationships with existing customers. 

These current clients could be calling with customer-support concerns or to ask questions about forthcoming features. Whatever they need, a CRM allows you to provide valuable help in a jiffy. Dial back from your CRM, instantly view caller history, and read past customer requests in no time.

The best part is you don’t have to spend hours of your week switching between platforms or crafting the same repeat text message over and over. 

Automations and the VoIP integration with your CRM remove repetitive, monotonous tasks from your daily schedule. 

8. Get the best of both worlds

There’s no substitute for an all-in-one CRM like HubSpot, just like there’s no stand-in for stellar VoIP phone service. When you link your primary business tools together, you never have to compromise on your business call management or customer relations — you simply can have your cake and eat it too.

Using HubSpot or Salesforce? Connect your CRM to OpenPhone

There are plenty of CRM platforms and VoIP providers on the market today. The trick is finding the right tools for your business and ensuring they’re compatible.

If you’re ready to make the leap and connect your HubSpot or Salesforce CRM to OpenPhone, what are you waiting for? OpenPhone’s strong business feature offerings and integration options make it more than just a run-of-the-mill phone system. Take advantage of call logging synchronization with your CRM account, transparent pricing plans, and easy scalability using OpenPhone.

Test it out for yourself by signing up for a free trial of OpenPhone today.