A Vonage alternative without a licence for every person
Vonage sells two different things under one name. This page is about the seat-based phone system, and the disclosure is that we are a customer of the other one.
Keep Vonage
Your office runs on desk phones, callers reach a menu before they reach a person, or extensions are how the building works. A browser tab does not replace a PBX and it is not trying to.
Choose Airlophone
Your team needs international calling without a licence for every person. You pay only when somebody makes a call.
See Team callingRead the full comparison
01What it is
What Vonage actually is
Vonage Business Communications is a full business phone system: extensions, an auto attendant, desk phones, meetings and messaging, sold per user per month. Separately, Vonage runs a wholesale communications platform that other companies build on. The two share a brand and almost nothing else.
02The model
How Vonage is priced
A licence per user per month across tiers, with an annual commitment usual and several of the things a team assumes are included sold as add-ons. The unit is a person with a login, not a call.
Seat prices change. Check Vonage's own pricing page for its current figure. Airlophone publishes every rate at /rates.
03Where it stops
Where it stops, if the problem is international calling
A seat is a person, and most people on a phone system do not call abroad.
The licence is charged for everyone with an extension. On a team where the international calling is concentrated in two or three people, the rest of the seats are paying for a dial tone they use domestically.
The add-ons are where the phone system becomes the phone system.
Call recording, the reporting, and several of the routing features are priced on top of the licence. The comparison worth making is against the configuration you would actually run, not the entry tier.
International calling is bundled by destination or metered.
Which countries are included differs by plan, and the ones that are included are the common business corridors rather than the ones a diaspora workforce calls. Check the specific countries.
The commitment is annual and the headcount is not.
A team that grows and shrinks inside a year is paying for the high-water mark, which is the same arithmetic that makes seat pricing expensive everywhere.
04What we are not
What you would be giving up
Airlophone is calling, not a phone system. These are the specific things Vonage does that Airlophone does not, stated before the price rather than after it.
No desk phones and no SIP handsets.
Nothing to plug in, nothing to provision, and no hardware to buy for a new starter. The call happens in a browser tab, which is the point and is also a limitation if your office runs on handsets.
No extensions, no auto attendant, no hunt groups.
There is no internal dial plan. Colleagues do not have extension numbers and there is no menu in front of an inbound call.
No meetings and no team messaging.
This is calling. Video, conferencing and internal chat are somebody else's product and we do not pretend otherwise.
No porting, so a number you already have cannot move here.
A local presence outside the United States and Canada is not available either. If keeping the numbers your customers already dial is why the phone system is there, that is a genuine reason to stay with one.
05What changes
What is different the week after you move
The two or three people who make the international calls stop being subsidised by everyone else.
There are no extensions to license. The people who call abroad spend from the balance and the rest of the building costs nothing, which inverts the usual shape where the international callers are a rounding error on a bill sized by headcount.
Add-ons stop being how the real price is assembled.
Professional costs two cents more per minute, and nothing else is sold on top. The figure you compare is the figure you pay.
There is nothing to install and nothing to provision.
It runs in a browser tab. A new person is an invitation, and they are placing calls the same afternoon rather than after a handset ships.
07What it costs
What the calling itself costs here
No licence, no seat, no minimum and no commitment. You fund one balance, the team spends from it, and a colleague who made no calls this month costs nothing. Rates for an established small business calling suppliers abroad, from $0.03 a minute across 221 countries:
| Destination | Landline | Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | $0.09 | $0.12 |
| Germany | $0.07 | $1.15 |
| India | $0.19 | $0.15 |
| Mexico | $0.05 | $0.12 |
| United States | $0.03 | $0.03 |
Per minute in US dollars from a US caller ID, billed per minute with part of a minute counting as a full one. Read live from the published card, so this table cannot disagree with what you are charged. A landline and a mobile in the same country are priced apart because they cost different amounts to reach, and the band is resolved from the digits you dial rather than from a question you are asked.
A shared balance, a monthly cap per person enforced when they press Call, and an answer rate per member rather than a call count: see how the team account works, including the five things it deliberately does not do.
08Try it
Price a call your team actually makes
Type a real number from your own call log. The exact rate for that number appears before anything dials.
Calls to United States from $0.03 a minute for landline and toll-free. Basic rate.
Rates from a US caller ID. Your selected caller ID is priced before calling.
Sign up when you press Call.
09Questions
Common questions
What is the difference between Vonage Business Communications and the Vonage API?
They are two products under one brand. Vonage Business Communications is a business phone system sold per user per month, with extensions, an auto attendant and desk phones. The API platform is wholesale infrastructure other companies build calling and messaging on top of, billed per minute or per message. A team shopping for a phone system wants the first. Airlophone is a customer of the second.
Do you use Vonage to carry calls?
Yes, for some destinations. Calls are routed across more than one wholesale carrier, and the route with the lowest wholesale cost that also meets the quality bar wins, so a share of the corridors on the published card are carried on Vonage's network. That is a supplier relationship rather than a partnership, and it says nothing about their seat-based phone system, which is what this page compares against.
Is there an alternative to Vonage with no monthly seat fee?
For calling, yes. A pay-as-you-go account funds one prepaid balance the whole team spends from, with no charge per person and no annual commitment, and a per-minute rate published for every country before you sign up. It is not a phone system, so there are no extensions, no auto attendant, no desk phones and no meetings.
Can I keep a local number in another country?
Not here yet. Airlophone rents numbers in the United States and Canada only, at a flat monthly rate, and does not accept a number ported in from another provider. If a local presence in several countries is the reason the phone system is there, that is a genuine reason to stay with one.
Bring your team onto one balance
Invite members for free. Set spending limits and see every call in one place.