Nextiva vs Ooma: Compare Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

Nextiva and Ooma are two of today’s top small business VoIP service providers. In addition to unlimited local and long-distance voice calling, both platforms include text messaging, virtual faxing, video conferencing, and conference calling. Nextiva and Ooma also provide advanced call management features like call queuing and routing, ring groups, and auto attendants.

However, the two VoIP providers have some distinct differences regarding available third-party integrations, outbound auto dialers, and team collaboration tools.

This article compares Nextiva vs Ooma pricing, plans, features, user experiences, and ideal use cases.

• At A Glance
• What Is Nextiva?
• What Is Ooma?
• Pricing Overview
• Feature Comparison
• Nextiva Pros & Cons
• Ooma Pros & Cons
• Which to Choose?

Nextiva vs Ooma: At A Glance

The biggest difference between Nextiva vs Ooma is that Nextiva provides an AI-enhanced business phone system with extensive unified communications features, while Ooma Office focuses primarily on optimizing inbound/outbound voice calling and increasing customer engagement.

What Is Nextiva?

Nextiva is a VoIP phone system and unified communications software that unites multiple communication channels–voice, SMS, internal team chat, and video meetings–into one application for agent collaboration, customer service, and supervisor monitoring.

The NextivaONE app–available on desktop, browser, and mobile–unites an agent’s tools and channels into one dashboard, with the ability to handle multiple customer interactions across channels, make VoIP calls around the world, view and build customer profiles, create video meetings and calendar events, and assign tasks to teammates.

What Is Ooma?

Ooma Office is a more basic business phone system with VoIP, SMS, and video conferencing as well as limited team collaboration tools.

The provider’ svirtual phone system includes voicemail transcription, routing features like auto attendants and ring groups, advanced analytics with team leaderboards, and call queues.

The Ooma app is available on desktop, browser, and mobile, and video meetings are accessible on any device.

Nextiva vs Ooma: Pricing Overview

Below, we compare Nextiva vs Ooma pricing and plans.

Nextiva Pricing

Nextiva pricing includes three Customer Conversation Suite (business phone system+UCaaS) plans from $18.95-$32.95/user/month with annual billing. A 30-day money-back guarantee is available, but Nextiva doesn’t offer a free trial. Unlike Ooma Office, Nextiva users can scale up to an AI omnichannel contact center solution (Customer Experience Suite) or the Brand Management Suite for marketing teams. This comparison focuses on Nextiva’s Customer Conversation Suite.

Essential Plan ($18.95/user/month annually, $25.95/user/month monthly)

• Voice Calling Features:  Unlimited HD calling in the US/Canada, 1 local and toll-free number, auto attendant, call logs/history, 1,500 monthly toll-free minutes, voicemail-to-email, unlimited internet faxing, mobile app for iOS and Android
• Voice Productivity Features: Conversation threading, contact and call notes, 500 shared contacts, voicemail-to-email, team chat/presence, hold music, shared line appearance, busy lamp field, hold music, call groups
• Meetings Features: 45-minute video meetings with Google and Outlook calendar integrations, video meeting recording
• Customer Support: 24/7phone, chat, email support with real-time status alerts

Professional Plan ($22.95/user/month annually, $30.95/user/month monthly)

Essential Plan plus:

• Voice Calling Features: 3,000 monthly toll-free minutes, multi-level auto attendant and call flow builder, voicemail to SMS, AI voicemail transcription
• Business Texting Features:1,000 monthly SMS messages
• Meetings Features: Unlimited conference calls for 40 participants, unlimited video meetings for 250 participants
• Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Oracle, SugarCRM, NetSuite, etc.

Enterprise Plan ($32.95/user/month annually, $40.95/user/month monthly)

Professional Plan plus:

• • Voice Calling Features: 12,500 monthly toll-free minutes,  unlimited conference call participants, unlimited call recording, active directory sync, SSO
  • Business Texting Features:  2,000 monthly SMS message
  • Meetings Features: Unlimited video recording
  • Integrations: Salesforce Lightning UI/Service Cloud, ServiceNow, Microsoft Teams, Bullhorn

Add-on Features

• Real-time performance dashboards/wallboards
• Pre-built CRM integrations
• Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs)

Ooma Office Pricing

Ooma Office offers three business phone plans from $19.95- $29.95/user/month, with no contract required. A 30-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial, is available. Ooma Office users may scale up to higher-tiered Ooma Enterprise call center plans for access to more advanced routing and call flow features. Unlike Nextiva, Ooma does not offer omnichannel contact center or marketing-centric products. In this post, we focus on Ooma Office pricing only:

Essentials Plan ($19.95/user/month)

• Voice Calling Features: Unlimited calling in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, 1 toll-free number with 500 inbound monthly minutes, ring groups/simultaneous ring, virtual receptionist, voicemail-to-email (audio file only), call park/flip, call forwarding/transfer, hold music, virtual faxing, company directory, call blocking, 3-way calling,
• Admin+Support Features: 24/7 support
• Team Collaboration Features: Conference calling for 10 participants
• Analytics: Call logs

Pro Plan ($24.95/user/month)

Essentials Plan plus:

• • • Voice Calling Features: Auto dialer, Call park for desktop app, enhanced call blocking, voicemail transcription, call recording, dynamic caller ID, Caller Info Match
    • Customer Engagement Features: Contact Us website widget
    • Team Collaboration Features: Video calls for up to 25 participants with simultaneous screen sharing,  Google Calendar/Office 365 integrations
    • Text Messaging Features: 250 messages/month, scheduled messages, message templates
    • Integrations: NexHealth
    • Analytics: Call, message, and fax analytics with leaderboards

Pro Plus Plan ($29.95/user/month)

• Voice Calling Features: Advanced auto-attendant with call menus, greetings, and actions, Find Me/Follow Me, hot desking, call screening, shared voicemail boxes
• Customer Engagement Features: Call queues, shift-to-text, online bookings
• Team Collaboration Features: Video call recording, online whiteboard, team chat/team presence
• Text Messaging Features: 1,000 messages/month, One-To-Many Messaging
• Integrations: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics,  Zoho, Freshdesk, HubSpot, etc

Nextiva vs Ooma: Feature Comparison

Below, we’ve compared Nextiva vs Ooma based on key phone-system features:

• Phone system
• Messaging
• Video Conferencing
• Analytics

Nextiva Phone System

Nextiva is a cloud-based VoIP phone system offering local and international calling, multi-level IVR with custom call routing, ring groups, virtual voicemail, conference calling, and voice analytics.

Each Nextiva plan sign-up includes a free local and toll-free number within the US and Canada. Users can also purchase local and toll-free US DID numbers or port in pre-existing numbers. All Nextiva plans include unlimited calling within the US and Canada and tier-based toll-free monthly minutes. Users can upload contacts directly from Google and Microsoft Outlook, manage contact profiles with CRM information, and add custom contact notes.

The NextivaONE softphone app supports click-to-call functionality, allowing users to make calls from any device–desktop, browser, or mobile on iOS and Android. With one click, users can flip calls between devices, park or transfer calls, send a text message, or switch from a voice call to a video call. NextivaONE’s dashboard menu pings agents with new messaging and call activity, including voicemails, missed calls, and more.

Nextiva calls are all HD voice, with conference calls that can support unlimited users.

 Nextiva Routing, Voicemail, and Administrative Features:

• Multi-level auto attendant: Build a single or multi-level IVR call menu to direct inbound callers to the ideal live agent or provide 24/7 customer IVR self-service. Use the drag-and-drop call flow editor to create call paths, set business hours and routing rules, and upload custom greetings/hold music
• Call logs and history: A supervisor tool, call logs and history display core call information–name, phone number, call duration, and date/time
• Call pop:  Inbound calls trigger an instant, in-call pop-up on the agent’s screen that displays customer interaction and order history, account value, contact information, notes from other agents, CSAT scores, and integrated CRM data
• Ring groups: Also known as call groups, ring groups allow you to group multiple agents together to share inbound call responsibility and keep call queues short. A great tool for departments and teams, ring groups let you customize ring order: simultaneous or a custom sequence (round robin, list-based, most idle)
• Call recording: Set up automatic call recording for all calls, or enable on-demand call recording that agents can activate during calls (Nextiva Customer Conversation Suite does not include call transcription)
• Virtual voicemail: Voicemails are organized in a visual log with transcription, and agents can forward their voicemail by email or SMS

Ooma Phone System

Ooma’s business VoIP phone system includes unlimited HD calling in the US, Canada, and Mexico–plus competitive international calling rates.

All Ooma plans include a DID number for each user and a toll-free number. Ooma also offers virtual phone numbers in area codes throughout the United States, or the option to easily port in your pre-existing phone numbers.

Ooma’s hosted PBX system supports queuing and routing, with grouped call queueing, a customizable auto attendant, ring groups to distinguish departments, and advanced call management.

The agent dashboard lets agents manage multiple calls simultaneously, send texts to customers during active calls, or switch to a video call. New activity pings keep agents informed about incoming or missed calls, voicemail messages, texts, and tasks. While on call, agents have access to a variety of call-control features like transfer, on-demand recording, caller ID, call parking, call forwarding, call blocking, and call flip.

Ooma Voicemail, Routing, and Queuing Features:

• Call queueing: Organize and group agents into call queues, which automatically place callers in an organized hold queue when agents are busy. Administrators have a live view in the queue dashboard, which displays the number of queued calls, wait times, and agent availability
• Virtual receptionist: Build a multi-level self-service IVR menu that routes customers to agents, extensions, voicemails, submenus, or announcements. Customize your IVR according to business hours
• Ring groups: Group agents together for shared call responsibility, with a simultaneous or custom sequential ring. Choose ring duration and what happens to the call if no agent answers in time
• Virtual voicemail: A visual voicemail log, with voicemail transcription on the Office Pro plan and up. Automatically forward voicemail audio files to email
• Caller Info Match: Automatically displays relevant inbound caller data from CRM systems, agent notes, and public websites like LinkedIn, Google, or Facebook

Nextiva Messaging

NextivaONE supports collaborative team chat at multiple levels: 1:1, group chat, and chat rooms with file sharing and task management. Users can create public and private chat channels, invite users via email, reply to messages directly via message threading, enable desktop/mobile push notifications, tag other users, and update their user status. Team members can build their own contact profiles, share voicemail messages and emojis, and be added to always-on collaboration rooms for specific projects.

Nextiva rooms include advanced collaboration features:

• Threads: Create smaller conversation threads that branch off from the main conversation, creating subtopics
• Video and call buttons: Ongoing meeting and voice rooms, where users can hop in anytime for impromptu huddles
• File, recording, and link storage: Any files or recordings shared in a room are automatically organized in a right-hand menu, where agents can search and access them later
• Customer Communication Log: Scrollable inbox logging customer’s calls, messages, voicemails, and queue history–all with one-click interaction buttons. Also displays the customer’s profile with contact information, details, any notes left by teammates, and buttons to contact that customer via phone, message, and video.

Ooma Messaging

Ooma Office’s team chat messaging app is decidedly simpler than Nextiva’s. It’s best for getting quick answers from team members during live customer conversations, not continual collaboration. Users can update their status, create public/private channels with up to 8 members, and share images, emojis, audio files, and PDFs. Users can also find specific messages via the chat history search bar.

The interface organizes all of a user’s messaging conversation histories in a scrollable menu, with ping notifications flagging all new activity. A user can send a new message by clicking on a conversation log, typing in a contact’s name, or entering a phone number.

Nextiva Video Conferencing

Nextiva video conferencing comes with every plan and lets up to 250 participants (25 simultaneous screen streams) meet for an unlimited amount of time.

Video conferencing is accessible via browser or mobile, requiring no download.

The biggest issue is that Nextiva does not offer a virtual whiteboard feature–but it does include in-meeting chat with file sharing and screen sharing with remote control.

Users can create/join ad hoc meetings or schedule upcoming meetings directly within NextivaONE’s Meetings tab. Hosts can customize privacy/control settings, invite participants, and share meeting invite links via email, SMS, or chat. Nextiva integrates with calendar apps like Google and Microsoft Outlook for calendar scheduling and synchronization right within the app. Jump from a chat conversation into a video meeting with anyone–including customers–using the conversation’s built-in video meetings button.

Nextiva Video Conferencing Collaboration Features:

• Chat: An ongoing team chat during the live meeting
• Screen sharing: Team members can share their screens for presentations or ideation
• Streaming: Stream videos live to YouTube, for webinars or demonstrations
• Recording: Unlimited audio/video meeting recording (no transcription)

Ooma Video Conferencing

Ooma video conferencing, accessible via the desktop app or web browser, supports collaborative video meetings with 25 participants in Office Pro and 100 participants in Office Pro Plus. Invite teammates or customers, who can join Ooma meetings via browser with no download required–even if they don’t have Ooma themselves.

Any Ooma user can create, schedule, join, or manage video meetings in the app’s Meetings tab. The tab displays one-click buttons to Schedule Meeting, Join Meeting, or Meet Now for impromptu drop-in meetings at any time. This tab displays all of a user’s upcoming and scheduled meetings, including those meetings on a recurring schedule.

Create meetings, invite users, schedule meetings, and synchronize meetings via the Google Workspace calendar integration. During meetings, users can communicate via live chat, use virtual hand-raising or reaction tools, change their video backgrounds, or turn on noise suppression. Hosts can review speaker stats post-meeting to see which participants were the most active.

Ooma Video Conferencing Collaboration Features:

• Simultaneous screen sharing: Multiple users can share their screens at once
• Chat: A running participant chat during meetings
• Password protection: Choose to require that users enter a password to join your meeting
• Whiteboard: Collaborate in real-time on a virtual whiteboard that can be saved, shared, and edited
• Meeting recording: Meeting recording with three months of storage
• Online bookings: Teammates and customers can book a video meeting directly in your business’s calendar and receive automatic scheduling reminders/updates

Nextiva Reporting, Analytics, and Automations

Nextiva’s regular plans include just call logs with basic information: call participants, date and time, duration, and recording.

The Nextiva Analytics add-on provides a diverse suite of dashboards and reports, offering historical and real-time views of call center metrics and KPIs. Reports cover call center activity, agent performance, customer demographic details and location, and more–viewable as bar graphs, line graphs, charts, and statistics.

Nextiva Analytics Reports and Features:

• Interactive maps and graphs: Drill down into metrics like inbound call location distribution, and the distribution of call types over a timeframe. Hover over the visual to sort and zoom into statistics.

• Call summary reports: View agent multichannel activity including call volume, call types, number and percentage answered, and more

• Call recordings: Access call recordings within call reports, with the supervisor's ability to leave notes and give calls a rate

• Wallboards: Create custom colorized wallboards with the real-time metrics you want to focus on, tracking metrics for particular users or departments

• Custom dashboards: Create graphs and visuals for the metrics you want to compare, even placing them side by side. Compare agents, locations, or time periods.

Ooma Reporting and Analytics

The Ooma app features agent call logs, and supervisor call analytics. Call logs display basic call information–participants, date and time, duration–that users can share or download as a CSV.

Ooma advanced call analytics–included with the Office Pro and Pro Plus plans–include reports, metrics, and KPIs that track calling trends, user productivity, and staffing demands. The data below are sortable over custom historical timeframes.

Ooma Analytics and Metrics:

• Call volume: Daily call volume summaries, filterable by date, user, and call type–inbound vs outbound, toll-free, missed
• Queue reports: A live view of queue activity, including active agents, calls in queue, and wait time
• Weekly and daily call metrics: Major call metrics, broken down by 3-hour daily intervals or day of the week

• Call distribution: A heatmap displaying call activity by time of day, spread throughout the week

Nextiva Pros & Cons

Ooma Pros & Cons

Which Phone System Should You Choose?

You should choose the small business phone service that fits your business needs: your collaboration demands, frequent calling area, call volume, and your budget.

For team chat and collaboration, Nextiva offers a superior phone system–especially with its Rooms feature and large-capacity video meetings. For call queues and unlimited calling to Mexico–as well as international calls to China and India–Ooma’s VoIP solution makes a great fit.