Heard of Nextiva? Its a phone system featuring not just a VoIP phone but also fax and CRM. Ideal for businesses that need few solutions bundled in one service!
Nextiva’s business phone services is a great starting point for your business since they provide all this and so much more. Read on for our review.
Unlike other popular VoIP services available, Nextiva VoIP solution is a full fledged business communication service that offers solutions for both Small and Medium sized businesses and Enterprise customers. In this review, we will cover Nextiva’s business VoIP service.
Pros
- Top of the line VoIP phone services with crystal clear phone calls
- 99.999% system uptime
- 24×7 customer service via phone, email and chat
Cons
- Limited team & collaboration capabilities on lower plan
- Expensive
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Nextiva VoIP Capabilities
Nextiva’s VoIP service includes a variety of features such as unlimited phone calls within US/Canada, free local and toll-free number and toll free minutes. Free minutes differ from plan to plan and start from 1000 mins on the Essentials plan. You also get HD voice and video calling with unlimited internet fax service. They also have standard business phone controls such as call forwarding, call waiting, do not disturb and call recording.
So what makes Nextiva different? They’ve extended traditional business phone services to include real world productivity capabilities within their VoIP phone system.
For instance, Caller AI is a feature unique to Nextiva. It gives updated account information for each customer. This can include, past survey results, customer value, customer experience score etc. All this information is displayed on the screen when a user accepts a client call.
Nextiva offers Unlimited Call recording and voice analytics on their Professional plan and higher.
Other interesting features are voicemail to text and email, shared line appearance etc. All this makes Nextiva one of the best VoIP service providers in the US.
Online Meetings, Team Collaboration & Messaging
When using Nextiva, team collaboration & messaging functionality is greatly limited according to the plan you choose. For instance, on the Essentials plan, conference calls are limited to 4 participants and for audio only. The Professional plan offers greater flexibility with up to 40 participants and video calling functionality.
Other functions available on Professional plan is the ability to share screens with video & audio, mobile app calling with video, team messaging and unlimited business SMS.
Reporting & Administration
In terms of reporting and administration, Nextiva provides full call history and call log reports. Users also get voice analytics on professional plans and above. Administration is easy since the admin portal is separate from user portal. A user dashboard gives access to the most useful information such as call logs, history, transcripts etc.
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Integrations
Nextiva offers the most popular business software integrations with their Essentials (base) plan. These include MS Outlook, Salesforce, Hubspot, Zendesk and Google Contacts. Nextiva also has their own CRM that comes with each plan for business ease.
Nextiva CRM is integrated with the Caller AI functionality we discussed earlier. Other CRM integrations include: Lotus Notes, Microsoft Dynamics, Sugar CRM, Act!, Netsuite, ConnectWise, Goldmine, Workbooks, Oracle Sales Cloud and Bullhorn.
If you’re not sure of switching to a VoIP solution as yet, you can easily run a speed test to check your network readiness for Nextiva’s VoIP solution.
Soft Phones Versus Physical Phones
Nextiva’s phone system is easy to use and accessible via software available for Windows & Mac. They also have mobile apps for iOS and Android. Depending on your plan, these apps provide a set of capabilities to the user.
For those of us who still love a physical handset, Nextiva’s solution integrates with industry standard VoIP devices. If you don’t already have VoIP phones, then you can buy them directly from Nextiva or from online retailers such as Amazon, Walmart etc.
For those, who have already invested heavily into their analogue equipment, they can buy adapters.
Nextiva Support
Nextiva provides 24×7 customer support via email phone and chat. They also provide professional implementation on all plans hence there is no need to worry about setup and configuration. Their customer service is considered one of the best in the industry.
Nextiva’s customer service agents also support clients throughout the length of their contract. This means they are their for troubleshooting and general administration / housekeeping as well. As a business owner this is hard to beat.
International Calling
While Nextiva provides unlimited phone calls within the US and Canada, their rates for charged for obvious reasons. By default, international dialling is turned off on Nextiva plans. Administrators can turn this on individually for each employee.
TechVise compared Nextiva’s rates with AT&T and Skype. Nextiva’s rates for international calling were a lot less than AT&T and slightly lower than that from Skype. They were comparable with Google Voice.
Suffice to say, if you’re doing a lot of business outside of US and Canada, then Nextiva is an easy choice. You can check out their rates for international calls here.
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Nextiva Pricing
Nextiva’s pricing can be a little confusing if you go directly to the pricing page on their website. This is largely because they display their prices based on 100 employees/users per year instead of per month. At TechVise we prefer to show our readers the highest price they would pay instead of the lowest. Hence, here’s a breakdown for you:
| Users | Monthly | 12 Months (Annual Prepay) | 36 Month agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-4 users | $34.95/mo | $30.95/mo | $32.95/mo |
| 5-19 users | $29.95/mo | $25.95/mo | $27.95/mo |
| 20-99 users | $24.95/mo | $20.95/mo | $22.95/mo |
| 100+ users | $21.95/mo | $19.95/mo | $19.95/mo |
| Users | Monthly | 12 Months (Annual Prepay) | 36 Month agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-4 users | $37.95/mo | $33.95/mo | $35.95/mo |
| 5-19 users | $32.95/mo | $28.95/mo | $30.95/mo |
| 20-99 users | $27.95/mo | $23.95/mo | $25.95/mo |
| 100+ users | $24.95/mo | $20.95/mo | $22.95/mo |
| Users | Monthly | 12 Months (Annual Prepay) | 36 Month agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-4 users | $44.95/mo | $40.95/mo | $42.95/mo |
| 5-19 users | $39.95/mo | $35.95/mo | $37.95/mo |
| 20-99 users | $34.95/mo | $30.95/mo | $32.95/mo |
| 100+ users | $31.95/mo | $27.95/mo | $29.95/mo |
TechVise Recommendation:
Nextiva’s pro plan is the best for business in times when remote working is increasingly becoming the new norm. Currently, Nextiva offers a free trial (available on Professional plan) for new businesses on their platform. At signup, make sure you get at least half of your employees on the solution and in the next month (after the trial is over) pay monthly. At the end of 2 months, switch to an annual plan where you get 20% off.
Final Thoughts
In the world of Business VoIP solutions, Nextiva’s business phone system is one of the very best. It is easy to use and doesn’t require a lot of administration for day to day use.
If the high price is a problem for you then consider this: you are saving on admin costs. You can use Nextiva’s customer service representatives to help resolve issues. Many of their customers save administration costs by using Nextiva’s customer support for administration and troubleshooting. This in itself pays off the slightly higher price for VoIP system when compared to other business VoIP service providers.
