Written by Joe De Bari, Lead of Marketing Communications at OnSIP. The following content was last updated on January 23, 2020. Any new information since that date may not be included in this article.
OnSIP and Jive are hosted VoIP providers that offer businesses easy-to-use cloud phone systems. Both companies have built their platforms from the ground up. While there's plenty of overlap between the providers' feature sets, the companies ultimately offer distinct advantages.
This is a deep dive VoIP comparison of how OnSIP and Jive (recently acquired by LogMeIn) hold up on pricing, features, phones, and support. Most of the information is freely available on Jive's website. Other information was gathered in conversations with Jive's sales team.
Pricing
Jive
Jive charges customers monthly on a tiered per user basis. 1-4 users costs $29.95 per user; 5-9 users costs $25.95 per user; 10-24 users costs $23.95 per user; 25-49 users costs $21.95 per user; and 50+ users costs $19.95 per user. Special pricing is available for businesses with 100+ users. These tiers offer unlimited domestic calling (the contiguous U.S., Puerto Rico, and many locations in Canada) and a wide suite of features.
The features set included with each Jive user covers mainstays such as auto attendants, voicemail, ring groups, call queues, and conference bridges.
OnSIP
OnSIP offers two paid pricing plans and one free plan:
- Unlimited Plan: The Unlimited Plan offers unlimited Standard Area Calling for $18.95 per person per month (the Standard Calling Area covers the contiguous U.S. and 16 other countries). This plan enables customers to set up an unlimited amount of calling features like voicemail boxes, groups, and auto attendants; additional features like conference suites and call queues can be bought a la carte. Call recording is also included in this plan.
- Basic Plan: The Basic Plan allows you to 'pay as you go' for features and calls. You can customize your account with this plan by building your own feature package: starting off with a basic set of popular business phone features at $49.95 per month, you can then add (and delete) additional features as needed. Calls cost 3.2 cents per minute (and 3.9 cents per minute for inbound calls to toll-free numbers). Extension to extension dialing, in-house calling, and SIP-to-SIP calls are all free. You won't be charged when adding users or phones on this plan; you simply pay for the calls that you make.
- sayso Website Chat Plan: OnSIP's innovative sayso Website Chat plan lets you use sayso, our website voice and video chat solution, for free! Once you add sayso to your website, site visitors can click on a call button to quickly start a voice or video call with one of your business representatives right through the browser window—no phones needed. The call occurs within the browser and entirely over the Internet.
All OnSIP plans have a 30-day free trial period.
Features
OnSIP and Jive both offer hosted PBX features that have become standard in the market. Each company has auto attendants, call parking, ring groups, Music on Hold, voicemail to email, call queues, conference bridges, call blocking, and call forwarding as part of their platforms.
Both companies are well known for their geographic redundancy. OnSIP operates data centers on the East and West coasts—an architected platform that has been patented by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Jive operates 10 data centers that are distributed around the world.
OnSIP and Jive both offer call analytics and call tracking with their services. OnSIP's Enhanced Queue is an advanced call queue that allows supervisors to monitor queue calls in real-time and generate performance reports that can be exported as .CSV files. Enhanced Queues also allow for call barge (burst into conversation), call whisper (speak only to your call agent), and call monitor (listen without customer or call agent knowing). Jive offers the same features and abilities with its call queue feature.
Jive has online faxing with a service they call Virtual Fax. It is included on all plans at no additional cost. The feature lets you send and receive unlimited faxes, as well as view faxes right from your email inbox.
OnSIP offers sayso, a unique web calling solution in the business VoIP marketplace. Placing the sayso button on your company's website allows visitors to engage in video or voice calls with one of your staff members using only their Internet web browsers, with no downloads or plugins required. The button is made possible through a snippet of code automatically generated in the OnSIP Admin Portal.
The OnSIP app, a free softphone available for all OnSIP users, is a complete desk phone replacement. With this app, users can make and receive calls, video call coworkers, host video conference calls with up to five participants, listen to and delete voicemail, and much more. The OnSIP app is available in the browser (Chrome, Firefox, and Opera), as a desktop app for Mac and Windows computers/laptops, and as a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
Jive provides a variety of applications that let their customers use the service on any device. Their mobile and desktop applications, as well as an in-browser interface, offer calling, coworker chat and Presence statuses, and even enable sending text messages to your contacts.
Phones
Jive sells phones to new customers at discounted rates. The company offers a wide variety of desk, conference, cordless, and executive phones from brands such as Polycom, Cisco, and Yealink. VoIP phones purchased from Jive arrive preconfigured with a user's extension and other pertinent account information.
OnSIP operates a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy and does not sell phones to customers, although the company does offer provisioned phones through a preferred partner. OnSIP does offer a 'boot server' to its customers that automatically configures Polycom, Panasonic, Cisco, Yealink, and Grandstream phones. But, any phone that follows the SIP RFC standards will work with the service. OnSIP also maintains its own section of objective phone reviews to help users find the right device.
Support
OnSIP's Customer Success Team is located entirely in Pennsylvania. It currently holds an average caller wait time of 22 seconds per call. Customers have given OnSIP a 4.5/5 TrustScore rating on Trustpilot. Customers can contact the company for ongoing support through live phone calls, emails, support tickets, and an online Knowledgebase. OnSIP's CEO and Co-Founder Mike Oeth answers at least one support call per day, in order to stay up-to-date with issues that customers are facing.
Jive's Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through mediums such as calls, emails, and a web support center. Founded in Utah, they also employ staff throughout the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. Like OnSIP's Knowledgebase, Jive hosts a full library of articles for DIY support issues.
JIVE is a registered trademark of Jive, Inc. Jive and its products/services are not affiliated with OnSIP or Junction Networks, Inc. OnSIP believes the statements made in this post to be accurate as of the publish date of this post.