Google Voice vs. Plivo

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Voice
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Google Voice is a free IP telephony service that provides users with one phone number that can be forwarded to multiple phones or devices. It includes features such as call forwarding, voicemail translation, text messaging, and voice calls. Fees may apply for international calling.
$10
per user/per month
Plivo
Score 7.5 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Plivo’s cloud communication platform offers a way for companies to modernize their business communications. Plivo’s API platform lets businesses incorporate voice and text messaging capabilities (both SMS and MMS) into their own applications, and offers SIP trunking and phone number rental services. Benefits of choosing Plivo include: • Supports sending messages and making voice calls to 190+ countries. • Enterprise-ready Premium Communication Network boasts an uptime…
$0
per SMS recieved
Pricing
Google VoicePlivo
Editions & Modules
Starter
$10
per user/per month
Standard
$20
per user/per month
Premier
$30
per user/per month
SMS API Platform
$0
per SMS recieved
Zentrunk - SIP Trunking
$0
per call recieved/per minute
SMS API Platform
$0.01
per SMS sent
Zentrunk - SIP Trunking
$0.01
per call made/per minute
Voice API Platform
$0.01
per call recieved/per minute
Voice API Platform
$0.01
per call made/per minute
Local Numbers
$0.50
per month
Toll Free Numbers
$1
per month
Short Code
$500
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google VoicePlivo
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google VoicePlivo
Considered Both Products
Google Voice
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice at the peak of its adoption did serve as a very real and effective solution. However bugs persisted, and innovation lacked, and support for the product soon declined. However, there are several other solutions provided that focus on making one product as best as it …
Chose Google Voice
I chose Google Voice for their seamless integration. Calls and text bundle and email alerts. While Skype had great quality calls a long time ago, I noticed their support team is horrible with many bugs and crashes. The call logs on Skype were not registering and sometimes it …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice stands far above products like Vonage, RingCentral, and Jive (GoToConnect). It is more mature as a VOIP product and free to home/personal users. For small usage scenarios like ours, Google Voice cannot be beat on price and ease of use. It is very affordable to keep …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice is way easier to get going and use. It's cheaper, more robust, and doesn't have any issues with the app not ringing or not transferring calls correctly. Plus, a lot of our employees already have experience using Google Voice with their personal accounts and found …
Chose Google Voice
Zoom and Slack are the closest comparisons I can come up with, but those are pretty different use cases, at least for us.
Chose Google Voice
The integrations of Google Voice with all our devices are flawless, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac. Also, the call performance is far superior on wifi as well as on mobile data. With Skype, we had several problems with personal accounts, performance issues, and in …
Chose Google Voice
FluentCloud/FluentStream is what we ended up using for our business. It too is easy to use, a little tougher to integrate, but not bad at all, and much cheaper. Does everything I need it to do. I would switch to Google Voice if it was cheaper as I use all the other Google …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice is easier to use, but in Skype you can have local numbers in different countries (not only in the US).
Skype call rates are lower than Google Voice's rates for non-US numbers, check the rates according to your predicted usage.
Chose Google Voice
I've used in-house systems at other agencies and they went down all the time, were not reliable and were extremely expensive.
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice is great if you are a one-man business. It allows you to have a business phone number for people to call without having to give your personal cell phone number out to strangers. The cost is very affordable. But as your business grows, you need to look for a better …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice and Dialpad, I believe, are a very equal match, and we chose Google Voice due to only a small amount of interface differences that made a difference in the service's functionality. Also, we had used google voice for a long time before Dialpad, so making the …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice has the best interface, and is the easiest to use of all the phone services out there. It also is free! We love Google Voice because it gives us a free phone number that many people can use, so my entire team can have one unified number that employees can call and …
Chose Google Voice
I primarily use Google Voice for texting, but I’ve also used EZ Texting for similar purposes. The main difference is that Google Voice excels at individual communications, while EZ Texting is best for mass texts. Google Voice texting does not cost anything, whereas EZ Texting …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice is much more cost efficient and doesn't have all the bells and whistles that our small company doesn't need. Google Voice never tries to upsell us and just makes an easy-to-use product that has greatly increased the efficiency of our organization. We aren't …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice performs similar communication activities compared to many other business service tools. However, one often must integrate other Google apps in order to fully experience the benefits that other platforms experience locally. Voice does have the benefit of merging …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice was a superior product in our opinion to some that we looked at because of its versatility and ease of implementation. Not only were those big determinants in our decision, but the cost-effectiveness of the program played a major role in our decision. Some of the …
Chose Google Voice
Google has a larger ecosystem.
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice is more reliable than CallHippo and has better call quality. Additionally, Google Voice's integration into Google Hangouts expands it functionality for video calls. Google Voice also provides access into Google's contact directory giving quick access to anyone who …
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice is hard to compare because on a cost basis it is so much lower than it's competitors. As a whole, I would say it's definitely lacking features compared to Nextiva, and a few from RingCentral but the service is reliable and it has the most commonly used core …
Chose Google Voice
The price was a huge standout since we have a large number of users and because of this it was important for us. Aside from cost the reliability was also of utmost importance due to the urgent nature of some of the calls. These were the two main reasons we chose this platform.
Chose Google Voice
Google Voice was perfect for the small team setting where we needed to coordinate calls from time to time with urgency and supported call forwarding in a manner consistent with the services we need to provide to our clients.
Chose Google Voice
We have Cisco tools as a primary option for our VoIP needs due to it's more professional approach. However Google Voice has recently became a business level program as well. I'm happy to use it due to it's unique features and the flexibility as we always expect from Google.
Chose Google Voice
Considering that Google Voice integrates well into the other Google services, it has clear benefits when sharing and accessing call information. Skype is always a pain to use for calls b/c, not everyone had it, but Google Voice works with any phone and most people already have …
Chose Google Voice
We used Vonage as part of our initial process but conference call and app features were farther behind compared to Google Voice. Both products have some advantages over others but, in the end, for better app and global use, Google Voice makes things easy for our organization. …
Plivo
Chose Plivo
  • Yes, it is good to use Plivo, as per the pricing and ease of integration. Twilio has a difficult pattern for business developers and could be understood only by a developer.
  • Plivo has proper delivery reports as compared to Twilio. Using Plivo has helped us grow efficiently and …
Features
Google VoicePlivo
Cloud PBX
Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Product A and Product B
Google Voice
4.4
Ratings
58% below category average
Plivo
-
Ratings
Hosted PBX8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)5.20 Ratings00 Ratings
User templates1.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Call reports5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Directory of employee names1.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Call Management
Comparison of Call Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Voice
8.1
Ratings
4% below category average
Plivo
-
Ratings
Answering rules8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Call recording10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Call park6.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Call screening7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Message alerts9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
VoIP system collaboration
Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Product A and Product B
Google Voice
7.2
Ratings
11% below category average
Plivo
-
Ratings
Video conferencing7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Audio conferencing7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Video screen sharing5.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Instant messaging9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile apps
Comparison of Mobile apps features of Product A and Product B
Google Voice
5.0
Ratings
46% below category average
Plivo
-
Ratings
Mobile app for iOS5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile app for Android5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google VoicePlivo
Small Businesses
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
Telegram
Telegram
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
Telegram
Telegram
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Telegram
Telegram
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google VoicePlivo
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google VoicePlivo
Likelihood to Recommend
[Google Voice is] great if you have a workforce that needs to make calls for business purposes from their personal mobile device, while keeping their personal phone number private. If you have a large company with its own telecom system, it probably won't be necessary if employees already have their own landlines or separate work phones.
Read full review
If you have a business and a phone you need Plivo so you can track all incoming calls. Using this service allows for you to track an[y] missed calls allowing you the ability to try to call potential customers, clients and see how you can help them with your products and or services.
Read full review
Pros
  • Google Voice has been great for setting up additional phone lines and numbers.
  • The voicemail inbox is a great feature and you can see when messages come in online and listen to the messages from your computer.
  • Google Voice allows us to have multiple phone numbers and lines for specific business purposes.
Read full review
  • Easy integration
  • Customer service is good
  • Services are prompt
Read full review
Cons
  • It can be tricky to configure exactly how you want it. If you are particular about which voicemail greeting goes to which number, and how it appears when it rings through to the phone - it can take a good amount of work to set it up properly.
Read full review
  • Customer support
  • Response times
  • Account transparency
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
It's user friendly, how to use it is self explanatory, they support all their own options while someone like Phone Booth uses a third party. I can cancel Google Voice anytime and I choose how much I spend with Google Voice
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Usability
I haven't had problems with dropped calls, bad reception, lost recordings - everything works the way it should. The iOS app is easy to use, and the process is easy to explain to other people. It's also the cheapest way I've found to call internationally - I've used it to interview people from London and Austraila.
Read full review
They deserve a 10+ rating starting from signing up to implementing their services. I am not the best person to get computer tasks done and this company made it a breeze.
Read full review
Support Rating
They do not offer support unless you have the Business account for Google Voice under G Suite. This is tough, because Google doesn't really have a customer support team for this service, so when it gets shut down for a few hours, we have no choice but to wait it out. But this doesn't happen that often, which is great.
Read full review
I sent a question to support via email and within 12 hours heard back in an email. They also provided me a phone number for further help if I could not solve my issue.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
It is a pretty seamless program to transfer to, even for people who either have little experience with these programs or people who were stuck on Skype
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google Voice at the peak of its adoption did serve as a very real and effective solution. However bugs persisted, and innovation lacked, and support for the product soon declined. However, there are several other solutions provided that focus on making one product as best as it could be. Google made it clear to me as a customer, that this was a backup for a backup. When you look at the simplicity on its own, it appears to be fantastic, however as you dive deeper, and experience its lack of smooth edges, you find that it's been built by engineers who were given a scope, rather than solving for a use case and listening to customer feedback. Many of the other solutions available on the market, see this opportunity. This is why voice communication is a growing SaaS vertical, albeit competitive. Understanding the customer here is key, and Google understands what drives value to the larger organization. As a business owner, I understand, that when a business has to allocate resources, another department, or service suffers. Unfortunately this product feels to be the one that has met that fate
Read full review
  • Yes, it is good to use Plivo, as per the pricing and ease of integration. Twilio has a difficult pattern for business developers and could be understood only by a developer.
  • Plivo has proper delivery reports as compared to Twilio. Using Plivo has helped us grow efficiently and in a good manner.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Google Voice has saved us a lot of time in regards to overall productivity.
  • Google Voice allows us to operate at a greater scale than without it.
  • Google voice allows us to track which advertisements are working best.
  • Google Voice allows us to spend less time listening to voicemails.
Read full review
  • None now that they no longer support their product
Read full review
ScreenShots