Grasshopper is a straightforward and simple virtual phone system. It’s great for solopreneurs, freelancers, local businesses, and smaller remote businesses with infrequent calling needs. We use it ourselves as a remote team and find it to be easy, cost-effective, and more than enough for irregular use.
It doesn’t have any advanced features, but it’s sufficient for very basic needs.
Grasshopper Compared to Its Closest Competitors
Grasshopper is not the most comprehensive communications system, but it’s one of the simplest and lightest options on the market.
If you’re looking for something more scalable and comprehensive, Nextiva is our top choice. You’ll be able to use desk phones (you can’t with Grasshopper), and you’ll get video conferencing, team messaging, incoming and outgoing faxing, and deeper analytics.
You’ll also never outgrow Nextiva, which is something you’ll have to consider with Grasshopper. Nextiva’s more expensive, but worth it if you plan on growing or need a more traditional phone system.
Google Voice is one of the closest Grasshopper alternatives in terms of simplicity. But it’s structured very differently — you pay per user, and the more “business phone system” features (like auto attendants, ring groups, and call routing) kick in on higher tiers. It’s also limited to local numbers, so if you want a true toll-free number, you’ll need something else.
Pricewise, Quo, Dialpad, and Zoom are in the same ballpark. All three offer an unlimited domestic calling plan starting around $15 per user per month (often with annual billing).
Zoom also offers an even cheaper metered plan with pay-as-you-go pricing if you don’t need unlimited calling. Overall, Zoom’s phone system is simple and straightforward with an unlimited international calling add-on you can’t get from Grasshopper.
Quo is a collaborative phone system where users can log in and out of numbers — it works best for one to five users if that’s an approach that could work well for your team. Dialpad offers one of the most affordable suites of voice, video, texting, and team messaging if you need internal collaboration features, too.
If you have a bit more to spend, Ooma is a decent option for physical phone systems. Its plug-and-play devices make it incredibly easy to get your whole office set up in just a few days.
Aircall and Cloudtalk are more expensive than all the others mentioned so far. But they bring call routing, queueing, recording, and other lightweight call center features to the table. They’re the most affordable places to start for small or new call centers that need tools for managing higher call volumes.
Check out our favorite virtual phone systems and VoIP providers to learn more.
Grasshopper Business Phone: The Good
Seven-day free trial: Grasshopper lets you try it free for seven days. You’ll get one phone number and up to three extensions with 50 minutes of voice and 100 texts. None of the features are gated, so you can try the entire platform before you buy.
Users don’t drive the price: Most phone systems charge per user. It makes sense, but it also gets expensive, especially for smaller companies. Grasshopper does it differently — Solo Plus and Small Business both include unlimited users, so a team of five costs the same as a team of fifty. You only have to pay for extra phone numbers or extensions if you need more than your plan allows.
Easy to use and deploy: Because everything’s softphone-based, Grasshopper is incredibly easy to set up. It takes less than 15 minutes in most cases—usually less. We had no problems getting things going or adding new users as the need arose.
On top of that, its mobile and desktop apps are modern, clean, and well organized.
User-friendly mobile app: The mobile app, in particular, is intuitive while still being fully featured. It has tens of thousands of five-star reviews across the App Store and Google Play that mirror our experience.
Vanity, local, and toll-free numbers: Grasshopper offers three different types of phone numbers, giving you plenty of options to get the digits you want. Most numbers are available for use instantly, but a few may take up to 24 hours. Alternatively, you can keep the business number(s) you’re already using by porting it Grasshopper for free. This process can take a while—sometimes up to two weeks—but you don’t have to do anything other than initiate the transfer and wait.
Unlimited calling and texting on every plan: Every tier includes unlimited domestic calling and texting, so your bill doesn’t move with call volume or how much your team messages. A few capabilities sit higher up — the phone menu and call recording start above the entry plan — but the day-to-day essentials are the same whether you’re paying $14 or $55.
Number and extension forwarding: You can forward direct numbers and extensions to any existing phone number. If you do this, you won’t need to download the mobile app for incoming calls. You won’t be able to make outbound calls or send texts using the new number. But it can work well if you just need a way to accept inbound calls without giving out your personal number.
When calls are forwarded, you can choose what shows up on caller ID (either the original caller or your Grasshopper number), so it’s easy to tell business calls apart without losing visibility into who’s calling.
Unlimited business texting: Most business phone systems limit each user to a few hundred text messages per month. Grasshopper gives you unlimited texting so you never have to worry about running out or paying per message. If you enable texting from a local number, you’ll typically pay a one-time $19 registration fee and ongoing monthly compliance fees that start around $1.50 per month (the exact monthly amount depends on your campaign type and usage). These fees are passed through to The Campaign Registry. Toll-free numbers still require registration, but the fee structure can differ.
Automated text responses: Once you’ve registered your number, you can set up scripted text messages that automatically go out if you don’t answer a call. You’ll be able to let callers know when to expect a call back, what your business hours are, or any other info you’d like to share.
The best part is that it helps you deliver better service without having to do anything extra.
Custom schedules and business hours: No matter the plan you’re on, you’ll be able to set custom forwarding and voicemail options for holidays, after hours, and any other schedules you have. Want to send after-hours calls straight to voicemail? No problem. You can even combine it with a custom greeting stating your business hours and an automated follow-up text stating when they can expect to hear from you.
Voicemail transcription: Prefer reading voicemails rather than listening? In a few clicks, you can set up automated speech-to-text transcriptions sent directly to your email (or multiple email addresses).
Online faxing: Grasshopper lets you view incoming faxes as PDFs directly in your inbox without the need for additional faxing services or a fax machine. The best part is that people can send faxes right to your business line so you don’t need a separate fax number.
Straightforward reporting: All of Grasshopper’s pre-built reports are easy to understand at a glance. You won’t have to do a ton of digging or get a degree in data science to know what’s going on with your system. There are three different types of reports to choose from—usage, detail, or activity. Usage shows the number of minutes your team has used and the average length of your calls. Detailed reports let you view a list of interactions within a given time frame. And activity reports show high-level information about faxes, calls, and voicemails. Overall, Grasshopper’s reporting features are very basic but super easy to use.
Helpful add-ons for small businesses: Add-ons are a common theme among business phone systems. Some of them are actually useful, and others are more about making the company more money. Grasshopper’s add-ons are definitely the former.
You can order professional greetings in English or Spanish, set up simultaneous ringing on up to 15 lines, or supplement your team with live answering services through Ruby (and get 35% off). Professional Greets and Virtual Receptionists are add-ons available to all tiers. Basic IVR is available on the top 2 tiers.
It can grow alongside you: Grasshopper plans once capped you at your allotted numbers and extensions, so reaching the top plan meant reaching the ceiling. Today, Small Business includes four phone numbers and unlimited extensions, with the option to buy as many additional lines as you need. You get full control over how extensions work, so the system can grow on pace with your business.
Grasshopper Virtual Phone System: The Bad
International calls are charged per minute: Other systems offer unlimited international options or discounted minute bundles, but you have to pay for international calls per minute with Grasshopper. This is fine for low volume, but gets expensive if you do it a lot.
Desk phones aren’t an option: Everything on Grasshopper is based on softphone functionality, so you can only use it via the mobile or desktop apps. Alternatively, you can forward numbers and extensions to an existing phone number without using either of the apps. The system’s very mobile, but you won’t be able to use it with standard desk phones.
Inbound faxing only: Grasshopper lets you receive faxes to your business number and delivers them as PDFs to your inbox, but you can’t send outbound faxes.
No video conferencing or team messaging: Most VoIP phone systems include both of these capabilities as standard. You’ll have to use something else, like Zoom or Slack, if your team needs an easy way to collaborate with each other.
Routing stops at the basics: You can set up holiday and business hour routing, and Grasshopper’s phone menu, which its own documentation calls a basic IVR, will point callers to the right extension on the top two tiers. But you don’t get ACD, call queuing, or a custom call flow builder you’ll find in more comprehensive solutions. Grasshopper isn’t really targeting businesses that need those kinds of advanced capabilities, so we can’t fault them too much for not including them.
Recording: Grasshopper offers call recording on its higher tiers, and it’s a useful feature if you need it for training, documentation, or quality control.
Potential bugs during app updates: Mobile app reviews mention issues right after major updates. It can be frustrating to experience problems, but the team’s quick to action — many reviews are updated to say the problem has been fixed within a few days. This isn’t a problem specific to Grasshopper. Bugs and issues after updates happen all the time with every type of software.
Reporting: They’re standard, text-based reports covering usage, call detail, and activity, including breakdowns for missed calls and individual extensions, but no speech analytics or real-time data, so anything beyond after-the-fact summaries means exporting to another tool.
You might outgrow it: Because Grasshopper isn’t a full phone system with desk phone functionality and a range of advanced features, you might need to switch to something with a fuller feature set in the future. As long as it offers what you need now and for the foreseeable future, don’t let this hold you back, though.
Grasshopper Plans and Pricing
Grasshopper prices by plan rather than by user, and the tiers differ in how many users, phone numbers, and extensions you get.
True Solo, the entry-level plan, is a great choice for freelancers and solopreneurs. It includes one user, one phone number, and one extension.
At $14 per month billed annually, or $168 for the year, it’s one of the cheaper phone systems we’ve seen with unlimited calling and texting. Zoom’s pay-as-you-go plan is a few dollars cheaper, but you have to pay per minute on top of that.
Dialpad’s phone system starts at $15 per user per month on annual billing, or $27 billed monthly, and includes video conferencing and team messaging. That per-user structure is the real difference between the two: Grasshopper charges by plan, so the gap widens with every person you add.
If you need video and messaging, you probably have a team, in which case Grasshopper’s entry-level plan wouldn’t suit you anyway. Dialpad gives you more functionality per dollar, but it’s far more complex, and it isn’t built for solo users or with the simplicity Grasshopper is designed around — so you’d be paying for a lot of features you may never touch.
Grasshopper’s middle and top tiers are where the flat-rate model pays off.
Because you don’t pay per user, dozens of people can share extensions and a single phone number on Solo Plus, at $25 per month billed annually — $300 for the year. Additional extensions cost $3 per month and additional phone numbers $9 per month. Small Business, at $55 per month billed annually or $660 for the year, includes unlimited extensions and four numbers, with the option to buy more.
Each person on your team can have their own extension at no extra charge.
Per-user systems price this very differently. RingCentral’s entry plan is $20 per user per month, and Nextiva’s is $15. A team of 20 fits on Grasshopper’s $55 plan, where the same team would run around $400 a month on RingCentral or $300 on Nextiva.
If you go with Grasshopper and decide to register local numbers for texting, you’ll also pay a one-time registration fee per number plus ongoing monthly compliance fees, which vary based on campaign type and usage. This isn’t unique to Grasshopper — many companies charge these fees, or build them into their pricing, to keep everyone in compliance.
All prices as of September 2026.
