Cloud Phone Systems & UCaaS
The rep who sold you your phone system had one phone system to sell.
He wasn't lying to you. It was the only system he was allowed to sell.
Business Phone Systems, Compared Across 200+ Providers
We have no product to push. We compare more than 200 providers, bring you competing proposals with real pricing, and manage whoever you pick through go-live — at no cost to you. Our compensation is a small monthly residual paid over the life of your agreement, not a one-time payout at signing, so we'll still shop your renewal even when it pays us less.
What's the Wrong Phone System Actually Cost?
Dropped calls and outages never show up on the invoice. They show up in churn.
What a New Business Phone System Actually Changes
If your phone system is more than five years old, you are probably overpaying, under-featured, or both. Modern cloud platforms deliver the capability that used to require a six-figure PBX — desk phones and softphones on the same extension, full mobility, auto-attendant and IVR, call recording, analytics, and native Microsoft Teams integration — for a predictable per-seat cost with no hardware refresh cycle. The hard part is not whether to move. It is picking the right platform out of dozens that all demo well, and getting the cutover done without dropping a single customer call.
- UCaaS / Hosted VoIP
- Microsoft Teams Voice
- SIP trunking & POTS replacement
- Long distance, toll-free, intl
- AI & voice analytics
- Collaboration & video
- Full mobility, hybrid & remote enablement
- Number porting & migration
- Hardware sourcing or BYOD
- Auto-attendant, IVR & self-service automation
- Contact center (CCaaS) — inbound, outbound & omnichannel
- TCPA-compliant dialers & CRM integration
- Workforce optimization, QA & coaching
What a Business Phone System Costs Per User
Most cloud phone service lands between $18 and $40 per user per month. Entry tiers with basic calling and voicemail sit at the low end. Mid tiers adding call recording, analytics, and CRM integration run $25 to $35. Full contact center seats with queueing and workforce tools go well past $50. Those are real ranges, not quotes.
The number that actually matters is your total, and the advertised per-seat rate is rarely it. Watch for what sits underneath: desk phones at $80 to $300 each if you buy rather than rent, professional services for build and configuration, e911 and regulatory recovery fees that vendors quote separately, and promotional pricing that steps up in year two. Two quotes at the same headline rate can differ by thirty percent once all of it is on the page.
Seat count moves pricing more than anything else. A twenty-person office in Clayton and a two-hundred-seat operation in Earth City are not shopping the same market, and the providers competing hardest at each size are different. Term length matters too: three-year agreements typically price better than one-year, but they also lock you through a platform generation. We put the competing quotes side by side with all of it visible, and what we're paid never decides which one we recommend.
How We Run a Phone System Change
Most bad phone system decisions get made off a single vendor demo. This is the process we use instead — it takes the guesswork out, and it costs you nothing.
Discovery
We map what you actually have: seat counts, call flows, contact center requirements, CRM and Teams integrations, contract end dates, and where the current system is failing your people.
Sourcing
That requirement set goes out to the platforms that genuinely fit. You get two to three competing proposals back, normalized side by side so you are comparing the same scope, not three different sales stories.
Decision Support
We sit on your side of the table for pricing, term length, SLA, and porting language. You make the call. We are not paid more if you choose one platform over another.
Cutover & Aftercare
We project-manage number porting, provisioning, user training, and go-live — then stay on as your escalation path for the life of the contract, not just through install.
What's In Scope
Voice is rarely just voice. Whatever the phone system touches comes with the project.
Business Phone Service (Cloud Voice)
Hosted VoIP with desk phones, softphones, and mobile all riding the same extension. Auto-attendant, IVR, voicemail-to-email, call recording, and reporting included rather than bolted on — plus AI voice agents where the call volume justifies answering and resolving routine calls automatically.
Microsoft Teams Voice
Direct Routing or Operator Connect if Teams is already where your people live. We price it honestly against standalone UCaaS instead of assuming Teams is automatically cheaper.
SIP Trunking
Keep an on-premise PBX that still has life in it and modernize the trunks underneath it. Often the right answer when a full platform replacement is a year or two out.
Call Center & Contact Center Software
Inbound, outbound, and omnichannel queues, skills-based routing, TCPA-compliant dialers, CRM integration, workforce optimization, and QA and coaching tooling.
Desk Phones, Headsets & Using Your Own Devices
Hardware sourcing when you need phones, headsets, and conference room gear — or a clean BYOD path when you would rather not buy any of it.
Porting & Migration
Number porting, main line and DID inventory, fax and analog device handling, and a phased cutover plan so nothing goes dark on go-live day.
Should You Just Use Microsoft Teams as Your Phone System?
For a lot of companies already living in Microsoft 365, yes — and we will tell you so even though there is less in it for us. Teams Phone adds calling to the app your people already have open, which means no second interface to learn and no second directory to maintain.
Two decisions usually trip people up. The first is how you get dial tone. A Microsoft Calling Plan buys minutes directly from Microsoft and is the simplest path. Operator Connect lets you keep a carrier while Microsoft handles the plumbing, and usually prices better at scale. Direct Routing gives you the most control and the most flexibility on carrier choice, at the cost of needing session border controllers and someone to run them. The right answer depends on your seat count, your existing carrier contracts, and whether you have anyone in-house who wants to own it.
The second is where Teams runs out of road. It is a strong business phone system and a weak contact center. If you have a queue of agents, skills-based routing, or supervisors who need to monitor and coach live calls, you will end up bolting on a platform anyway — and at that point a purpose-built system like RingCentral, Zoom Phone, 8x8, Nextiva, or Dialpad may cost less all-in than Teams plus an add-on. Overhead paging, elevator and fire lines, and analog devices also need a separate answer.
We price Teams honestly against standalone platforms, including the license math most people miss, and hand you the comparison.
Keeping Your Numbers: Porting, Texting, and What Happens When the Internet Goes Down
You keep your numbers.Porting a 314 or 636 number to a new provider is routine, and your current carrier cannot refuse a valid request simply because they would rather keep you. What they can do is delay it over a billing dispute, a mismatched service address, or a name on the account that no longer matches your paperwork. Simple ports typically clear in one to two weeks; larger or messier ones run three to four. We coordinate the porting paperwork with your chosen provider and make sure the old service stays active until the new one is confirmed working.
Your main line can send and receive text messages. Most modern platforms text-enable your existing business number, so a customer who texts the number on your truck or your website actually reaches someone instead of vanishing. It requires registering your business for carrier messaging compliance — a real step with real lead time, and one that trips up companies who try it themselves. Worth doing, because for service businesses it is often the single most-used feature after basic calling.
And yes, cloud phones depend on your internet — but that is a solvable problem, not a reason to stay on copper. A phone system properly designed for outages fails over automatically: calls reroute to mobile apps or cell numbers, and a router with a wireless backup connection keeps desk phones running when the primary circuit drops. During a power outage, desk phones go dark unless they are on battery backup, while the mobile app keeps working on a charged phone. The businesses that get burned are the ones nobody planned this for. We design the failover path before the cutover, not after the first outage.
Phone Systems for Medical Offices, Law Firms, and Multi-Site Businesses
The right phone system depends less on your industry label than on how calls actually move through your day. A few patterns come up constantly across the metro.
Medical and dental practices
High inbound volume, appointment reminders, and after-hours routing that has to reach the right person. If patient information travels through voicemail transcription, recordings, or messaging, you need a provider that will sign a business associate agreement — and not all of them will.
Law firms and professional services
Clayton and downtown are thick with them. The recurring needs are call recording with clear retention rules, per-matter tracking, and attorneys who need their office number to reach them anywhere without handing out a cell.
Manufacturing and distribution
The Riverport and Earth City corridors run on overhead paging, warehouse handsets, and shop-floor phones that survive being dropped. These are the environments where a pure softphone rollout falls apart, and where analog devices need a migration plan.
Multi-location businesses
Offices in Chesterfield, St. Charles, and the Metro East on one system, with extension dialing between sites and one bill instead of five. This is usually where the savings from a change are largest.
Restaurants, retail, and service trades
Simple needs done reliably: calls that never go unanswered, texting on the main number, and no per-location IT staff to lean on.
Churches and nonprofits
Tight budgets, volunteer administrators, and often an aging system nobody wants to touch. Nonprofit pricing exists at several providers and is frequently unadvertised.
We work with companies from roughly twenty to five hundred employees nationwide, with our deepest roots across St. Louis City and County, St. Charles County, and the Metro East. If your situation does not look like any of the above, that is fine — the sourcing process is the same.
Common Questions
What does a cloud phone system cost per user?
Most business plans land between roughly $18 and $40 per user per month depending on feature tier, contract length, and seat count. Contact center seats run higher. The bigger variable is usually what gets bundled — E911, recording, analytics, and integrations are line items on some platforms and included on others, which is exactly why comparing list prices alone is misleading.
How much does VoIP cost per month for a small business?
For a small office, budget $20 to $35 per user per month for the service itself, plus one-time costs for phones and setup. A ten-person business typically lands between $200 and $350 a month all-in once everything is running. The wide part of that range is features, not vendor greed: basic calling is cheap, and call recording, analytics, and CRM integration are what move the number.
What does Gateway charge for this?
Nothing, and you never pay more than you would going to the provider direct. The providers compensate us, and they do it as a small monthly residual paid over the life of your agreement rather than a lump sum at signing. Where one provider's compensation differs from another's, that difference never decides what we recommend.
Do VoIP phones work without internet?
Desk phones need a working connection, but a properly configured system does not simply go dark. Calls fail over automatically to mobile apps or cell numbers, and a router with wireless backup keeps desk phones up when the primary circuit drops. The failover path should be designed before the cutover, not after the first outage.
Will we lose our phone numbers?
No. Your numbers are portable and they stay yours. Porting is the part of a migration most likely to go sideways when it is handled casually, so we inventory every main line, DID, toll-free, and analog line up front and sequence the port rather than flipping everything at once.
Does VoIP work during a power outage?
Desk phones lose power along with everything else unless they are on battery backup, which is inexpensive and worth having for a few critical handsets. The mobile app keeps working on a charged phone regardless, which is why the app matters more during the buying decision than most people assume.
Should we just use Microsoft Teams as our phone system?
Sometimes. If your organization already runs on Teams and your call flows are straightforward, it can be the cleanest answer. If you have a real contact center, heavy call volume, complex routing, or a lot of common-area and analog devices, a dedicated UCaaS platform frequently costs less and does more. We price both.
Can a phone company refuse to port your number?
Not for a valid request — number portability is a regulatory requirement, not a courtesy. What they can do is reject a request over mismatched details: a service address that does not match their records, an outstanding balance, or an account name that changed after an ownership transfer. Almost every rejected port we see is a paperwork problem rather than a real refusal.
How long does a cutover take?
A straightforward 20 to 50 seat office is typically four to six weeks from signature to go-live, with porting driving most of the timeline. Multi-site deployments and contact center builds run longer because the call flow design and testing deserve the extra weeks.
How long does it take to port a phone number?
Simple ports usually clear in one to two weeks. Larger blocks, toll-free numbers, or accounts with billing complications run three to four. Your existing service stays live throughout, so there is no window where calls go nowhere.
What is an auto attendant, and what does it cost to set up?
It is the recorded menu that answers and routes callers — press one for sales, and so on. It is included in essentially every modern platform at no extra charge; what you pay for, if anything, is professional voice recording and the time to build the call flow properly. A badly designed menu is the fastest way to make callers hang up, so this is worth an hour of real thought rather than accepting a default. The alternative worth knowing about is an AI voice agent, which replaces the menu entirely: the caller says what they want in plain language and gets either an answer or the right person, with no tree to navigate. It costs more than a free auto attendant and it is not right for every business, but for anyone whose callers routinely ask the same handful of questions, it is the difference between deflecting those calls and merely sorting them.
How do I choose a business phone system?
Start with how calls actually move through your business rather than with a feature list. Count your seats, decide who needs a desk phone versus an app, work out how inbound calls should route, and identify anything analog — elevators, fire panels, overhead paging — that needs its own plan. Then compare at least two or three providers against that, with all costs on the page. Most bad phone system purchases come from comparing one vendor's proposal against nothing.
Are VoIP phones secure? Can they be hacked?
They can be, and the attacks that actually happen are boring ones: weak or default passwords on extensions, no multi-factor authentication on the admin portal, and toll fraud where someone runs up international calling overnight. Encryption is standard at the major platforms. What separates a secure deployment from a vulnerable one is configuration — strong credentials, MFA on administration, international dialing off by default, and spending alerts turned on.
Is VoIP better than a landline for business?
For nearly every office, yes — on cost, on features, and increasingly on availability, since traditional copper service is being retired across much of the region. Landlines still hold one genuine advantage: they work when the power and internet are out. That is worth solving deliberately with battery backup and a wireless failover connection rather than treating it as a reason to stay put.
Can VoIP phones send and receive text messages?
Yes, and it is one of the most-used features once it is on. Most platforms text-enable your existing business number, so a customer texting the number on your website or your truck actually reaches someone. It requires registering your business for carrier messaging compliance first, which has real lead time and is the step companies most often get stuck on when they try it alone.
We are still under contract. Is it too early to talk?
No — it is the right time. Twelve to six months out is when you have leverage. Once you are inside the auto-renewal window your options narrow and the pricing conversation gets much harder.
Get Two or Three Real Quotes — Not One Sales Pitch
Bring a current phone bill and a renewal date. In one 30-minute call we will tell you whether a cloud phone system saves you money, what it would cost, and what the cutover looks like.
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Tell us what you're running and we'll bring competing bids from 200+ providers — at no cost to you.
No cost, no obligation. Gateway Telecom Advisors is paid by the provider you select.