Google Voice for Workspace vs Quo (formerly OpenPhone)
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentGoogle Voice for Workspace compared with Quo (formerly OpenPhone)
Quo (formerly OpenPhone) is $15 to $35 a seat with a genuinely good shared inbox that threads calls and texts together, internal comments, AI call summaries, and HubSpot and Salesforce logging, none of which Google Voice has. Google Voice wins on admin console integration, SSO, and Vault eDiscovery. If your team collaborates on customer conversations, Quo is clearly better. If your priority is that phone numbers behave like any other governed Workspace resource, Google Voice is the right shape.
Choose Google Voice for Workspace if
Small and mid-sized businesses already standardized on Google Workspace that want business phone numbers provisioned, governed, and offboarded from the same console as email, with the least possible additional vendor management, and whose phone usage is ordinary inbound and outbound conversation rather than sales dialing.
Choose Quo (formerly OpenPhone) if
Small businesses, agencies, trades, and founder-led sales teams who need a shared work number with texting, light routing, and CRM logging, and who make dozens of calls a day rather than hundreds. Anyone who wants a business phone that costs less than a lunch per seat and can be live in an afternoon.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Google Voice for Workspace | Quo (formerly OpenPhone) |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Calling | Calling |
| Starting price | $10 per user per month, plus a Google Workspace subscription from about $7 per user per month (free plan available) | $15 per user per month billed annually ($19 monthly) (7 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Per-user per-month add-on to a paid Google Workspace subscription, sold in three tiers with unlimited domestic US calling and texting included and international calling billed per minute from prepaid credit on the lower two tiers. | Per-user per-month subscription with a number included in every seat, unlimited US and Canada calling and messaging on all tiers, and usage-based charges only for international calling, extra numbers, automated SMS, and AI credits. |
| Free plan | A free consumer Google Voice plan exists for personal Google accounts in the US, with a single number and no business features, no admin console, no support, and no eligibility for business use. | No |
| Free trial | Google Workspace offers a free trial that includes Voice; there is no separate standalone Voice trial | 7 days |
| Best for | Small and mid-sized businesses already standardized on Google Workspace that want business phone numbers provisioned, governed, and offboarded from the same console as email, with the least possible additional vendor management, and whose phone usage is ordinary inbound and outbound conversation rather than sales dialing. | Small businesses, agencies, trades, and founder-led sales teams who need a shared work number with texting, light routing, and CRM logging, and who make dozens of calls a day rather than hundreds. Anyone who wants a business phone that costs less than a lunch per seat and can be live in an afternoon. |
| Setup time | Minutes for an existing Workspace administrator on new numbers: buy licences, assign them, provision numbers, done. Porting existing numbers takes the usual one to three weeks for simple local ports. Building an auto attendant and ring group structure on Standard adds an hour or two of thought. | Under an hour for a solo user and about half a day for a small team. Choose a number, install the apps, set business hours and a ring group, and you are live. Number porting takes longer, typically one to two weeks, and runs in parallel while you use a temporary number. |
| Learning curve | Very low for administrators already familiar with the Workspace console, because Voice uses the same organizational units, licence assignment, and policy model as every other Google service. Very low for users, because the interface is a Google app. The only genuine learning is the routing configuration on Standard. | Near zero. The interface is a messaging app with a keypad, and staff who have never used a business phone system understand it without training. The only genuinely unfamiliar concept is A2P 10DLC registration, which the product walks you through. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail integration, Supported IP desk phones (Polycom and others), Analog telephone adapters, SIP Link for third-party carriers | iOS, Android, macOS desktop app, Windows desktop app, Web app, Chrome extension |
| Compliance | SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 as part of Google Cloud, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018, HIPAA coverage under a Google Workspace business associate agreement where applicable, GDPR with Google's standard data processing terms, STIR/SHAKEN call signing, E911 address registration per user | SOC 2, GDPR, A2P 10DLC carrier registration handled in-product, STIR/SHAKEN attestation on outbound US calls |
| Founded | 2009 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States | San Francisco, California, United States (remote-first) |
| Ownership | Subsidiary product of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) | Venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Google Voice for Workspace
Strengths
- Provisioned, governed, and offboarded from the Google Workspace admin console, which removes an entire vendor relationship for a company already on Workspace.
- Google identity means SSO, two-step verification, security keys, and context-aware access apply to the phone system by default rather than as a premium tier feature.
- Google Vault brings calls, voicemails, and texts under the same retention, legal hold, search, and export policy as email and documents, which no competitor at this price matches.
- Unlimited domestic US calling and texting on every tier with no per-minute meter and no message allowance to trip over.
Limitations
- No dialer, no dispositions, no cadences, no local presence, and no answering machine detection, so it is unusable as an outbound sales tool.
- No CRM integration at all. There is no Salesforce or HubSpot connector, no CTI panel, no screen pop, and no automatic activity logging.
- No international SMS on any plan, and texting is US-domestic only, which rules it out for teams with contacts abroad.
- Starter is capped at ten users in one location, so growth forces a jump to the $20 tier rather than a gradual increase.
Quo (formerly OpenPhone)
Strengths
- The shared-number inbox with internal comments and assignment is the single best small-team phone experience on the market and is why the product spreads by word of mouth.
- A phone number is included in every seat, unlimited US and Canada calling is on the cheapest tier, and there is no seat minimum, so the entry cost is genuinely $15.
- API access on every plan including Starter, which most competitors reserve for their top tier or a custom contract.
- Setup is measured in minutes, not days: pick a number, install apps, invite the team. No PBX concepts, no dial plans, no reseller.
Limitations
- No dialer of any kind: no power dialing, no parallel lines, no answering machine detection, no local presence rotation. For a real outbound motion this is disqualifying.
- Unlimited calling stops at the US and Canadian border, and international is metered, which makes cost modelling awkward for anyone selling across regions.
- Call recording, CRM logging, and phone menus are all gated behind the Business tier, so the advertised $15 entry price is not the price most buyers actually pay.
- The Scale tier at $35 mostly buys support and call tags. The value curve flattens hard after Business.
Pricing compared
Google Voice for Workspace
Per-user per-month add-on to a paid Google Workspace subscription, sold in three tiers with unlimited domestic US calling and texting included and international calling billed per minute from prepaid credit on the lower two tiers.
- Starter$10
- Standard$20
- Premier$30
Priced strictly as telephony, Google Voice is unremarkable: $20 a seat for Standard buys routing, recording, and queues that Ooma Office sells for $24.95 with unlimited calling into Mexico thrown in, and that RingCentral sells at $25 with 330 integrations and a CTI. Priced as administration, it is excellent value, because the marginal work of adding, governing, retaining, and offboarding a phone number is close to zero when the number lives inside the identity system you already run. The Vault eDiscovery coverage for calls, voicemails, and texts is genuinely rare at this price and is the strongest single argument in its favour. For a three-person team making 100 calls a day each, three Standard licences are $60 a month on top of Workspace, and because domestic calling is unlimited those 6,300 calls add nothing to the bill; but there is no dialer, so all 6,300 are placed by hand and none of them are logged to a CRM.
Quo (formerly OpenPhone)
Per-user per-month subscription with a number included in every seat, unlimited US and Canada calling and messaging on all tiers, and usage-based charges only for international calling, extra numbers, automated SMS, and AI credits.
- Starter$15
- Business$23
- Scale$35
At $23 a seat for recording, transcripts, AI summaries, and CRM write-back, Business is the best price-to-capability ratio in small-business phone, and the fact that a number is included rather than billed separately quietly saves another few dollars a seat against Aircall or CloudTalk. The value case collapses only in two places: heavy international traffic, which is metered, and outbound dialing, which does not exist here at all. Judged as a phone system for a company under 30 people, it is underpriced. Judged as a sales dialer, it is not competing.
Editorial verdict on each
Google Voice for Workspace
Google Voice for Workspace is bought for administration, not telephony. If your company already runs Workspace, it is the least effortful business phone in existence: numbers are provisioned from the console you already use, governed by the identity policies you already set, retained under the Vault policies you already have, and revoked the moment you suspend a user. The Vault coverage for calls, voicemails, and texts is the single most underrated feature in this category. But it is a plain phone. There is no dialer, no CRM integration whatsoever, no international SMS, thin reporting, and the cheapest tier is capped at ten users with no auto attendant. Buy Standard at $20 if you are Workspace-native and want the phone to disappear into your existing IT. Buy almost anything else if the phone is how your team sells.
Read the full Google Voice for Workspace profileQuo (formerly OpenPhone)
Quo is the best small-business phone system you can buy for the money, and it is not an outbound sales tool. The shared-number inbox, the included number in every seat, the absence of a seat minimum, and API access on the cheapest plan add up to a product that a two-person company can adopt in an afternoon and never think about again. Business at $23 with recording, transcripts, AI summaries, and HubSpot or Salesforce write-back is the tier to buy. What you do not get is any dialer, any local presence rotation, any spam remediation, or unlimited calling beyond North America, and those absences are the whole difference between this category's phone systems and its dialers. If your reps work lists, buy Kixie or PhoneBurner. If customers call you and you call them back, buy Quo and stop shopping.
Read the full Quo (formerly OpenPhone) profileGoogle Voice for Workspace profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Quo (formerly OpenPhone) last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.