Ooma

Ooma is a business communications provider offering solutions for SMBs and enterprise-level companies alike.

Its most popular products are Ooma Office, an all-in-one office phone service, SMS messaging, and video conferencing platform, and Ooma Enterprise, a more advanced UCaaS system, and call center software.

Though Ooma also offers residential VoIP services, home security systems, and Internet plans, we’ll focus on their business software solutions.

Ooma is best known for its affordability, ease of use, and highly accessible customer service. Find out more about pricing, features, pros and cons, and more in our Ooma Office review below.

Jump to ↓

• Ooma Key Features
• Ooma’s Call Center Platform
• Ooma Integrations
• Ooma Plans and Pricing
• Ooma Pros and Cons
• Ooma Customer Support
• Is Ooma Right For You?

Ooma Key Features

The Ooma platform includes many advanced features designed to optimize customer engagement, agent productivity, and team collaboration. We’ve reviewed some of our favorites below.

Caller Info Match

Caller Info Match integrates with third-party CRM systems like Salesforce, Zoho, and HubSpot to detect spam phone calls and give agents quick access to relevant customer data during inbound and outbound calls.

Caller Info Match displays past customer interactions and account history, contact information, and previous agent notes. Additional agent notes written directly in the Caller Info Match interface are automatically uploaded to integrated CRM software.

Ooma also pulls phone number data from web search engines like Google and social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn–an especially beneficial feature for connecting with new customers and for teams without a standalone CRM tool.

Call Queueing

Ooma’s call queueing feature cuts down on caller hold time and optimizes available agents during peak call times through basic call flow design and routing strategies.

Every Ooma call queue has its own phone line extension, every queue can have up to 10 callers in line, and Ooma Office Pro users can create up to 5 separate call queues, while Enterprise Call Center users have unlimited queues.

When an inbound call comes in, Ooma automatically routes callers to the first available agent within a specific queue, keeping them on hold until an agent is available or automatically forwarding the call to another representative. Most Idle and Round Robin call routing strategies can also be used to further shorten hold times.

Admins can upload pre-recorded greetings, hold music, or other messages that will play while a caller is in the queue. If there’s no answer (or if the ring duration has been exceeded) the call is automatically routed to the next available agent, voicemail box, or recorded message ending the call.

Ooma’s after-call work time (up to 5 minutes) ensures agents have enough time to take notes on the interaction or complete any additional tasks before taking their next call.

Ooma also generates call queue reports that display key metrics like average and longest call wait time, the number of accepted, missed, and rejected calls, average ring count, and call abandonment rate.

Enterprise Audio Conferencing

Ooma Enterprise Audio Conferencing provides on-demand audio conferences with 24/7 availability for an unlimited number of participants–giving it a serious leg up on competitors that only offer conference bridges.   Enterprise users are assigned a permanent dial-in number and passcode that lets them start a conference call from any location and on any device, including landlines (desk phones, analog phones), desktop computers, and mobile devices like cell phones.

Participants can dial in from anywhere, and international participants have the option to call in using an Ooma-generated toll-free number.

Users can mute participants, record, and store conference call recordings, and access multiple conference rooms via a secure PIN.

Note that Ooma Office users have access to three-way conference calling, as well as a bundled Conference Line with unlimited Conference Bridges.

Video Conferencing

Ooma’s Enterprise Enhanced Plan and Office Pro Plan both include video conferencing, though Enterprise users have access to more advanced video calling features like layout management and high-level meeting access control.

Users can participate in video calls on any desktop or device with an Internet connection via data or WiFi.

All Ooma Meetings users have access to essential features like simultaneous screen sharing, in-meeting chat messaging, and mute options. However, neither the Enterprise nor Ooma Office support in-meeting whiteboarding, file sharing, and editing, nor breakout rooms.

Ooma Office and Enterprise users can host up to 100 internal and external participants for up to 12 hours per meeting.

Every user has an assigned personal meeting room with a unique ID, designed for internal communication. Ad-hoc temporary meeting rooms, scheduled one-time meetings, and recurring video meetings are also available. Users can link and sync Ooma Meetings with their Google and Microsoft Office 365 calendars. The Ooma Meetings Dashboard shows all upcoming and past video meetings.

Virtual hand-raising, public and private chat messaging, and a list of all participants are all available during video calls, and hosts can pin and unpin users or enable active or grid speaker views. Users can update their video backgrounds with blurring, pre-loaded background photos, or uploaded background images.

Basic host controls available to all users include remote screen control, mute/unmute, turn video on/off for all users, host transfer, and the ability to remove participants from meetings.

Though lackluster when compared to other video conferencing features, one thing Ooma Meetings gets right is its screen-sharing functionality. Multiple users can share screens simultaneously and can share their entire screens, their web browser tab, or an individual application.

Finally, though Ooma only offers call recording–not video meeting recording–the Speaker Stats analytics features help admins understand who contributes to meetings the most.

Virtual Receptionist

Ooma’s Virtual Receptionist tool gives businesses access to multi-level IVR (Interactive Voice Response) call menus that help to manage and direct inbound calls.

Admins can use the text-to-speech feature to record greetings that automatically play when a caller dials your business VoIP phone number or a specific extension. These call menus provide customers with the information they need to connect with the right agent, ring group, extension, or department (“For billing, press 2,” etc.)

Plus, because calls are automatically forwarded according to preset call path rules and customer input, callers don’t have to hang up and redial another number.  Callers can use the Dial by Name directory to connect with a specific employee.

Call flow settings and rules can be configured by language, if the call came in during or after business hours, by custom agent schedules, or by holiday hours. If no one is available, admins can program the Virtual Receptionist to direct the call back to voicemail.

The Virtual Receptionist feature is available in all Ooma plans.

Ooma’s Call Center Platform

Ooma’s Call Center platform, the highest tier of the Ooma Enterprise platform, is specifically designed for high-volume contact centers looking to improve the customer experience and provide a balanced workload to prevent agent burnout.

Its drag and drop call flow creator lets admins design and edit no-code call paths.

Inbound calls are routed to agents based on caller data, IVR selection, time of day, or agent skill set. Artificial Intelligence (AI) bots (virtual agents) can also be built and added to call flows, along with ring groups.

These Virtual Agents provide a high level of customer self-service thanks to their 24/7 availability. They provide answers to frequently asked questions, direct callers to knowledge base resources, and determine which customer service and support issues should be directed to a live agent (as in the screenshot above.)

Historical and real-time customizable call center analytics track agent performance, productivity, call flow, and more. Ooma’s call center platform includes both voice analytics, such as frequently used words, and desktop analytics, such as activity tracking.

Other Ooma Call Center features include:

• Built-in call recording and agent scoring
• Phone number porting
• Barge/Whisper/Listen
• CRM integrations
• Personal automated attendant
• Presence
• Softphones
• Ring (hunt) groups
• Screen pop
• Shared line appearances
• Time-dependent call treatment
• Do not disturb
• Dial by extension
• Dial by name
• Encryption
• Enhanced 911 service
• Faxing
• On-phone presence monitoring
• Instant messaging
• Intercom one-to-one

Ooma Integrations

Ooma does not offer as many integrations as its competitors but does integrate with popular CRM tools and business applications.  Below is a breakdown of available Ooma integrations by plan.

Ooma Plans and Pricing

Ooma has two separate three-tiered pricing plans. One is for small businesses (Ooma Office) and the other is for Ooma Enterprise. See a full pricing breakdown below.

Ooma Small Business Plans

Below is a breakdown of the pricing and features offered in Ooma’s plans for small businesses (Ooma Office).

Ooma Enterprise Plans

Below is a breakdown of the pricing and features offered in Ooma’s plans for enterprises.

Ooma Pros & Cons

Here are some of the pros and cons of Ooma’s platform.

Ooma Customer Support

Customer support is one of the areas where Ooma really shines as a VoIP system and UCaaS provider. Like most of its competitors, Ooma has a robust knowledge base with articles and how-to videos as well as a customer discussion forum accessible here.

Note, however, that much of the information in the knowledge base conflicts with what’s currently on Ooma website product pages, so relying on it completely will prove inefficient for many.

The good news is that Ooma is set apart by its dedication to providing live customer support to all users on all plans. Without exception, all Ooma business customers have 24/7 access to Ooma live chat as well as 24/7 live phone support.

Additionally, Ooma Enterprise customers (all plans) are assigned a Dedicated Customer Success Hero to assist with deployment and ensure setup and installation goes quickly and smoothly.

Is Ooma Right For You?

Even though Ooma offers more basic features when compared to its competitors, there are several reasons why it’s still a great choice for small businesses.

First, at $19.95/month/user, the Ooma Office Essential plan is very affordable and includes essential business phone features such as simultaneous ringing, virtual extensions, and hold music. The Mid-range pro plan is only $5 more per month, per user, which makes scaling less painful.

Ooma’s unlimited calling to Mexico, available on all plans, is quite unique in the UCaaS provider space and makes it a wise choice for companies that do business there.

Finally, Ooma’s 24/7/365 live customer support is a great asset for any business, but especially for startups and small businesses without a dedicated IT department.

Although Ooma does offer competitive Enterprise and Contact Center solutions, their features may simply be too bare-boned for larger call centers. A lack of key KPIs and reporting metrics like sentiment analysis, a limited video conferencing tool with a small participant cap, and no mention of an uptime guarantee or SLA mean Ooma Enterprise falls short of its competitors. Ooma alternatives like RingCentral, Dialpad, Vonage, and Nextiva may be a better fit for some.

The fact that Ooma doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption (except for Ooma-to-Ooma calls) or HIPAA compliance will automatically rule it out for businesses working with sensitive or confidential information.

However, startups and SMBs that are looking for a simple, straightforward communication system with a fast setup process, scalability, and that’s easy to use could find Ooma to be the perfect fit. To discover Ooma alternatives, check out our list of the best business phone systems.