When choosing a SIP trunk provider, it’s important to consider your company’s current infrastructure, as well as your anticipated monthly call volumes and destinations. You should anticipate what phone system features you’ll want—such as ring groups, IVR and analytics. Consider your company’s scaling expectations and, if you have remote workers, where they’re located.
Here’s a more elaborate breakdown of what to look for and consider when choosing a SIP trunk provider.
Essential SIP Trunk Provider Features
When evaluating a SIP trunk provider’s features, first consider its global coverage and virtual phone number offering. Then consider aspects such as the virtual dashboard, call routing features, call logs and voicemail.
Here’s a closer look at what features to compare.
- Global coverage: Each SIP trunk provider offers distinct global coverage options—allowing you to call certain countries and have service around the globe. Before signing up with a provider, ensure its network covers the countries you call most often—and supports connectivity where your team is based.
- Phone number offering: Some SIP providers only offer phone numbers from across the U.S., while some provide virtual numbers from over 100 countries. Ensure your SIP provider offers virtual numbers from the countries where you want to establish a business presence.
- Virtual dashboard: A SIP trunk service’s admin dashboard lets managers purchase and assign phone numbers, manage billing and track call logs. Check out each provider’s dashboard to ensure it feels simple and intuitive.
- Voicemail: Some SIP trunking providers let you set up voicemail messages directly within the virtual dashboard, while some do not. Voicemail is a critical feature for retaining customers who call when you’re unavailable.
- Call routing and forwarding features: Many SIP providers offer call management features such as automated call forwarding during particular business hours or when you miss a call. This capability improves your customer support by ensuring that more calls get answered by a live agent.
- Call records and analytics: Most SIP services track basic call records and display them in the virtual dashboard. However, some SIP providers offer more detailed analytics about each call’s connection quality. Further, some display call data in visual formats such as graphs or charts.
- Ring groups: Some SIP providers let you bundle phone numbers or users together so their phones ring in unison. This feature works well for creating intracompany departments and ensuring that all calls are handled by the right representative.
Pricing
Evaluating a SIP trunk service’s pricing model is an essential part of your selection process because pricing amounts and structures vary significantly between providers. Some providers offer “elastic” pricing, which means they charge your calling by the minute, while others charge a flat monthly rate.
Here are the primary pricing models that SIP providers offer.
- Elastic pricing: Elastic, or usage-based, pricing charges you by the minute, varying rates depending on where you call. Some providers charge as much as 3 cents per minute, while others charge as little as 0.5 cent per minute. Elastic SIP providers, such as Plivo and Twilio, often offer volume-based discounts and a good deal for teams with low or high call volumes.
- Monthly cost pricing: Many SIP providers charge a flat monthly rate—either for the user/channel or the SIP trunk itself. Often, providers charging per user offer unlimited calling in the U.S., which can be cost-effective for companies with high domestic call volumes.
- Combination: Some providers charge a monthly rate for your SIP trunk plus a metered per-minute price beyond that. In most cases, this pricing structure offers the worst overall value—though some providers with this model make up for it with excellent coverage or features.
Integrations and BYOC Connections
One of SIP’s main benefits as a cloud-based technology is that it can integrate your phone system with other digital data sources such as CRM systems, unified communications and messaging platforms, and contact centers.
Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) integrations refer to a platform’s ability to support you in integrating your own phone system into its service. For example, Microsoft Teams’ BYOC capability lets you bring your own phone system—including SIP trunk service—and use it within the Teams dashboard. Many contact centers and unified communications platforms offer this same capability, but it depends on your SIP trunking provider’s available and pre-built integrations.
Before choosing a SIP trunking service, check its pre-built integrations and BYOC connections to see if you can enhance your phone system by connecting it to other communication platforms.
Customer Support
Since your phone system is an integral part of your business’s daily functions, it’s important that your SIP trunk provider is available to provide service when you need it. Unfortunately, many SIP trunk providers only offer customer service through support tickets—which can take up to 24 hours to receive a reply.
Customer service can be even harder to reach for companies based outside the U.S., since most SIP providers staff their support teams during U.S. working hours. However, some SIP providers—such as Nextiva—offer 24/7 live support through phone, live chat and email.
Before deciding on a SIP trunking service, confirm the provider’s customer service availability and make sure it will accommodate your needs.