Virtual phone systems: the seat price is not the bill
All three are cheap per seat. What separates them is what happens to the minutes.
Cloud phone systems advertise a per-user price and bill you for two things: that seat, and the calling. The seat is the number on the pricing page, and it is rarely the number that matters. If your calling is international or high-volume, metered minutes and number rental will comfortably exceed the subscription.
The three tools here sit close together on seat price, which makes them easy to confuse and easy to choose badly between. The differences that actually show up on an invoice are the billing period, what the entry tier leaves out, and how the countries you call are priced.
How we picked
- Seat prices are read on the vendor’s own page and dated, with the monthly and annual figures given separately where they differ.
- We flag where a free or entry tier exists, and what it leaves out.
- We say who should skip each one, since at this price level the wrong fit costs more in workarounds than in subscription.
The picks
Has a genuinely free entry tier where you pay only for the calling, which makes it the cheapest way to find out whether a virtual number solves your problem at all. The paid ladder is priced for small teams; the thing to watch is add-ons, which is where a simple plan stops being simple.
Skip it if your calling is mostly international at volume (metered minutes stack up), or you want one simple plan without add-on shopping
Visit CallHippo →Read our full CallHippo review →Priced with a clear gap between annual and monthly billing, so the comparison you make depends on which column you read. Built for teams that need numbers across many countries with a shared dashboard rather than for a single agent.
Skip it if your calling is domestic-only at low volume (simpler tools suffice), or you need enterprise reliability guarantees over price
Visit KrispCall →Read our full KrispCall review →The same shape as KrispCall on billing, aimed at startups that want a clean modern dashboard more than they want depth. Not the choice if you need enterprise integrations or an SLA, and it does not pretend to be.
Skip it if you need a battle-tested enterprise contact center with deep integrations and SLAs, or your call volume makes metered credits unpredictable
Visit Calilio →Read our full Calilio review →Compared at a glance
| Tool | What it meters | Pricing, as we read it |
|---|---|---|
| CallHippo | per user, monthly or annual, free tier below | Starter €19/user/mo, Professional €29 and Ultimate €39 on monthly billing for a 1-4 user team, above a genuinely free Basic tier where you pay only for the numbers. read 2026-08-15 |
| KrispCall | per user, annual meaningfully cheaper | Essential $12 per user/mo billed annually or $15 monthly, for solo agents and teams up to 5 people; Standard $32 per user/mo annually or $40 monthly, for teams scaling up to 50 users; Enterprise custom. read 2026-08-17 |
| Calilio | per user, annual meaningfully cheaper | Standard $15 per user/mo, or $12 billed annually ($144 a year); Premium $35 per user/mo, or $28 annually ($336 a year); Enterprise custom. read 2026-08-17 |
Price the calling, not the seats
Take last month’s call log, split it by destination country, and price that against each vendor’s rates before you look at the subscription at all. For most teams making international calls the minutes are the larger half of the bill, and the seat price differences between these three are small enough to disappear inside that.
Then check the billing period. Two of the three quote annual rates that sit well below their monthly ones, so a monthly-vs-annual mix-up can make the wrong tool look cheaper by a wide margin.
Frequently asked questions
Is a free tier enough to run support on?
For one person testing whether a virtual number works, yes. For a team sharing an inbox and needing routing, no — the free tiers in this category are there to get you calling, not to run a desk.
Why do annual and monthly prices differ so much?
Because annual billing is worth a lot to the vendor and they price it accordingly. It is a real discount, but it is also a year of commitment to a tool you have not yet run in production.
What decides the real monthly cost?
Destination minutes and number rental, in most cases. Two teams on the same plan with the same headcount can see very different invoices purely on where they call.
Other buying guides on this site
- Shopify helpdesk apps: four meters, and only one of them is agents
- Helpdesk platforms: the entry tier is never the product you saw
- WhatsApp and messaging inboxes: platform fee plus per-message, always
- Someone has to answer: live receptionists against an AI agent
- Calling at volume: dialer, call centre or just a good phone system
Some links on this page are affiliate links: if you sign up we may earn a commission, at no cost to you, and it never changes what we write. Every figure above was read on the vendor’s own page on the date shown.