There are two ways to get call recording software. The best way is directly through your phone system. Don’t have one? No problem, we’ll cover a few of our favorites here. The second way is via third-party software that connects to your phone system. It’s not as straightforward, but it’s still relatively easy even if you already have a system you love.
The Top Call Recording Software in < 5 Minutes
RingCentral is our favorite full phone system–it includes call recording on every tier, even the cheapest one. You’ll be able to choose from on-demand or automatic on every device, plus set up rules that define when calls are or aren’t recorded. It’s great for remote and hybrid work environments, as well as in-office.
Traditional in-person businesses may find Ooma a bit easier to set up and use, though. It offers call recording on its middle tier, which is slightly more expensive than RingCentral, but very simple.
Brand new call centers will find more of what they need with Aircall. It’s a few dollars more per month but includes a wide range of call center features, like queues, callbacks, smart routing, a shared inbox, live call monitoring, and advanced analytics.
CallRail is great for tracking marketing efforts on top of recording every call. You can set up multiple numbers to see which campaigns perform the best, complete with custom reporting.
If you’re looking for a new customer service platform with advanced ticketing and call recording, LiveAgent is the way to go. Rev Call Recorder is a free app that works in conjunction with your existing system, but the company also offers paid transcriptions and translations, too. Recite by Numonix is a highly secure standalone call recorder for legacy or hybrid PBX systems. And Cube ACR is simple, yet more than enough for recording calls on your mobile device.
The Best Phone Systems with Built-In Call Recording
Choosing a business phone system with call recording capabilities makes everyone’s lives a bit easier. You don’t have to worry about integrating tools together, everything’s managed in one place, and you won’t have to pay two separate subscriptions.
If you already have a phone system you don’t want to part with, you can jump ahead to standalone call recording software.
RingCentral–Best Complete Business Phone System + Call Center Software
With a lot of phone systems, you have to be on a higher tier to record your calls.
But that’s not the case with RingCentral. On the cheapest plan, users can record calls on demand by pushing a button on their keypad to start and stop. Higher plans allow for automatic recordings, too.
We call it a phone system, but it’s really a lot more than that. It includes video conferencing with up to 100 participants, texting, unlimited file sharing, and team chat. It covers nearly every communication channel for the same price as a basic phone system.
However, that’s just part of the reason we love it.
Aside from recording calls, you can also record video meetings and leverage AI for live transcriptions, meeting summaries, notes during calls, recording summaries, and even translations in team chat.
With a full range of advanced features that don’t normally come with phone systems, like IVR, call queues, eight-digit extensions, and walkie-talkie functionality (as an add-on), you don’t have to worry about outgrowing RingCentral. Even if its phone plans aren’t enough, there’s a powerful omnichannel contact center solution ready to help you tackle high volume calling whenever you are.
Whether you want to use your recordings to train agents, give supervisors everything they need to evaluate performance, or for legal reasons, you get all the tools you need.
Sign up for a free 14-day trial or check out our RingCentral review to learn more.
Ooma–Best Simple Phone System for Traditional Office Settings
Looking for the easiest way to fill an office space with desk phones? Ooma is the easiest option, especially if you don’t have your own IT support to assist with implementation.
All you have to do is sign up for a plan, choose your devices, wait for them to be delivered, plug them in, follow the provided instructions, and you’re good to go. They all come preconfigured and ready for you, the second you open the box. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
To get Ooma’s call recording functionality, you have to choose the middle tier or higher.
This plan will also get you access to the desktop app for making and taking calls on a computer, 250 text messages per user per month, and video conferencing with up to 25 people at a time.
Something to note: it costs few dollars more than RingCentral’s cheapest plan and comes with fewer features. So if you aren’t worried about implementation, RingCentral’s a more affordable place to start, with more capabilities and infinite scalability (unlike Ooma).
With that said, Ooma’s a far simpler system, making it easier to set up and use.
You won’t find yourself distracted with a bunch of capabilities you don’t need or features that only work half the time. It’s refreshingly simple in a space that’s always racing towards the next shiny object.
Get started with Ooma or check out our full review for more details.
Aircall–Best for Small or Brand New Call Centers
With Aircall, you get a full-fledged phone system plus customer service tools and hundreds of integration opportunities for far fewer dollars than most call center solutions.
Even if you’re just getting started, you can sync Aircall with your CRM or help desk software for a fully connected customer service machine. Every rep will know exactly what happened with the caller’s last interaction or purchase so no one has to go in blind.
Thanks to Aircall’s recording capabilities, agents can listen to (or read a transcript of) previous interactions to get the full scope of a situation in a matter of minutes.
Supervisors can also use them as teachable moments, in coaching programs, or performance reviews, too.
Most plans include unlimited recording storage so you never have to worry about running out of space. The cheapest plan gives you unlimited storage for up to one year, but the rest are truly unlimited.
Whether its for analytics, training, legal purposes, or something else entirely, Aircall gives you everything your team needs (and more).
While it’s not as robust as RingCentral’s omnichannel contact center solution, it’s a fraction of the price and takes just a few hours to set up. Simply put, RingCentral does it all for everyone and Aircall does it all for small or new call centers on a budget.
Try it for free or check out our full Aircall review to learn more about it.
CallRail–Best for Tracking Phone-Based Marketing Campaigns
CallRail makes it easy to track marketing campaigns and understand their performance. With multiple phone numbers, you’ll be able to tell where each call came from and therefore, how each campaign or asset within a campaign is performing.
Like Aircall, it offers a ton of integration opportunities, including live chat software, CRM, Google Workspace, data visualization software, and more.
Every plan includes five phone numbers at no extra cost. With other platforms, you’d have to pay separately for each one, so $40 per month for the entry-level plan is a steal. You’ll also get 250 minutes and 100 text messages per month regardless of the plan.
Once you go beyond that, you’ll pay per minute or message.
Like the other phone systems we’ve talked about so far, CallRail includes unlimited call recording, a call flow builder to route calls based on predefined rules, call forwarding, and a mobile app so agents can manage their calls from anywhere.
If you upgrade to higher tiers, you’ll unlock call transcriptions, form submission tracking, keyword identification, automated lead tagging, and other helpful reporting capabilities.
Sign up for a 14-day free trial to see if it’s right for you.
LiveAgent–Best Customer Service and Help Desk Software
If most of what you do is via tickets, live chat, social media, messaging apps, or email, LiveAgent is a great option. It has phone services too, but its main focus is customer service via other channels. When you do have to make or take a call, you’ll be able to record it and store it forever.
Recording is available starting on the Medium business plan at $29 per month, so it’s right on par with the other systems we’ve covered so far.
Every recording becomes its own ticket so it’s easy to find from the system everyone’s already used to.
You’ll also enjoy the same call routing, agent monitoring, training, IVR, and analytics that you’d get with the other phone systems. However, you get that on top of a powerful help desk and ticketing solution with unique features, including knowledge base creation, WhatsApp numbers, live chat, and more.
LiveAgent has a free forever plan you can use to try it out, or you can try a premium plan as a free trial before you buy.
Snag your 30-day free trial to see if it’s right for you today.
The Best Standalone Call Recording Software
Whether you already have a phone system you love, want to record calls on your smartphone, or looking for something that’s free, this section’s for you.
Rev Call Recorder–A Free App to Record Anything (with Optional Transcriptions)
Rev Call Recorder is one of the most straightforward services for call recordings and transcriptions.
The app is free to use, no matter what. It lets you record incoming calls, outgoing calls, voice notes, WhatsApp or social media calls, or anything that makes enough sound for the recorder to catch. If you recorded something elsewhere, you can upload it to the app to keep all your recordings together.
Need to record something from your computer? No problem. Rev offers an entirely free (no account needed) recording tool that lets you easily convert audio into an mp3.
When you’re done, you can preview it, fast forward, trim, transcribe (for a fee), or save it.
And unlike other free solutions, there are no ads or anything like that. You’ll only have to pay if you want your recordings transcribed.
If you want to use Rev’s transcription services, there are two options: fast via AI, or slower with more precision using human transcribers. The AI version promises 90% accuracy but you’ll get much higher quality through humans.
Download Rev for free to get started.
RECITE By Numonix–Highly Secure + Works with Legacy or Hybrid PBX Systems
RECITE by Numonix is the only recorder on our list that works for traditional PBX or hybrid systems. If you’ve yet to migrate to the cloud, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a suitable option anywhere else.
It’s also well-versed in compliance for protecting sensitive data delivered over the phone, like addresses, credit card numbers, and confidential patient information. RECITE is compliant with HIPAA, PCI-DSS for accepting payments over the phone, GDPR, BASLII, and MiFID II for doing business in Europe.
On top of that, you get granular controls for user permissions.
Recordings with sensitive data can be locked away where only certain users have access. As such, everyone can be on a need to access basis rather than every user having access to everything.
All of that pairs nicely with RECITE’s reporting, insights, and analytics for on-premise phone systems.
Reach out for a custom quote to get started.
Cube ACR–Best for Recording Calls on Mobile Devices
If you do business on your cell phone and want to securely record those calls, Cube ACR is a great options. First of all, it’s entirely free and available for both Android and iPhone users.
Needless to say, it’s cost-effective, making it great for solopreneurs, field workers, small business owners, or anyone else interested in an easy way to record mobile calls. The best part, though, is that you’re not limited to recordings of calls through your phone app.
It can also capture calls via WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Skype, Instagram, and most VoIP phone apps (like RingCentral and Ooma if your users use them on their smartphones).
While limited in features, Cube ACR lets you initiate recordings any time during a call, including at the beginning or in the middle. You can also have it record particular callers in your contact list or record every call, no matter what.
Each recording is geotagged and you can backup your recordings to Google Drive automatically.
Download the app to get started at no cost today.
How We Review Call Recording Software
From gathering and analyzing thousands of user reviews to trying everything on our own, we go as deep as possible to put each of our software buying guides together.
Here’s a closer look at what we considered most important as we built out our list.
System Setup
Depending on the size of your team, implementing new software can be easy or incredibly complicated. We prioritized call recording software and phone systems that are easy to set up with up-to-date documentation for every step of the process.
Searchability
What good is your archive of call recordings if you can’t find specific ones when you need them? Whether through customizable tagging systems or advanced search features, some scenarios need their call recording software to deliver an easy way to find what you’re looking for whenever you need it.
Advanced Analytics and Insights
Beyond simple metrics like call time logged and overall volume, there are tons of other things call recording software can do for you. From keyword tagging and sentiment analysis to custom scoring metrics, agent performance, summaries, action items, and geolocation, we looked closely at the advanced capabilities of each solution.
While not everyone needs those advanced capabilities, it’s an important factor for those that do.
Storage Space
Depending on what you need your recordings for, storage space and retention policies can be a make or break deal. If a certain regulation requires you to keep recordings for five years, you’ll need unlimited storage or a way to back up your files to your own cloud for permanent storage.
A lot of solutions limit space on entry level tiers and even some don’t offer unlimited space at all.
Integrations
The most important integrations to look for are your existing phone system if using a standalone recording tool and your CRM to attach recordings to customer records. Not everyone needs that, but if you do, this is something that can make or break your decision.
Automated vs On-Demand Call Recording
Not having to think about if calls are being recorded is a huge relief for reps and managers. With all the things to pay attention to on calls, especially high-stakes ones, you shouldn’t also have to worry about forgetting to record and losing out on valuable insights or breaking the law.
For personal use or other use cases, on-demand recording may be sufficient.
