Best Business Phone System UK 2026: Top 10 Compared

Last updated: April 2026

Choosing a business phone system in 2026 is a very different decision than it was even a few years ago. The PSTN switch-off completing in January 2027 means traditional landlines are disappearing entirely. Every business in the UK needs an internet based phone system, whether that is hosted VoIP, an on premise IP PBX, Microsoft Teams Phone, or something else.

The good news is that the options available today are better, cheaper, and more feature rich than anything the old copper network ever offered. The challenge is working out which one is right for your business when there are dozens of providers all claiming to be the best.

We are Compare The Networks. We have been helping UK businesses compare and choose phone systems since 2008. We are OFCOM regulated, rated 4.3/5 on Trustpilot from over 1,000 reviews, and we have guided over 2,000 businesses through this decision. This guide gives you our honest, experience based comparison of the best UK business phone systems for 2026.

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Types of Business Phone System Available in 2026

Before we get into specific providers, it helps to understand the four main types of system. Each works differently and suits different businesses.

Hosted VoIP (Cloud PBX)

Your phone system lives in the cloud, managed entirely by your provider. You pay a monthly fee per user. The provider handles all infrastructure, updates, maintenance, and support. You plug in phones (or use an app) and you are ready to go.

Best for: Most small and medium businesses. Simple, affordable, and no technical management required.

On-Premise IP PBX

Phone system software runs on a server in your office or on a virtual server you control. You manage the system yourself (or your IT provider does). You connect to the phone network through a SIP trunk.

Best for: Businesses that want full control over their phone system, have IT resource to manage it, and need advanced customisation.

Microsoft Teams Phone

External calling added to your existing Microsoft Teams platform. Turns Teams into a full phone system that can make and receive calls to regular phone numbers.

Best for: Larger organisations already on Microsoft 365 E5 licensing who want to consolidate everything into Teams. See our detailed Teams calling alternatives guide for an honest assessment.

Hybrid Systems

Some providers offer a mix of cloud and on-premise functionality. The system runs partly in the cloud and partly on local hardware, giving you some of the benefits of both approaches.

Best for: Businesses with specific compliance requirements, unreliable internet, or a need for local call processing alongside cloud flexibility.

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The 10 Best UK Business Phone Systems for 2026

We have selected these based on our experience comparing and deploying them across thousands of UK businesses. The ranking considers value for money, feature set, reliability, support quality, and suitability for UK SMEs.

1. 3CX

Type: On-premise / self-hosted cloud IP PBX Price: Free for up to 10 users (basic), Pro from ~£150/year, Enterprise from ~£230/year Per user cost: Roughly £8 to £18/month including SIP trunking

3CX is the system we recommend most often for businesses that want serious telephony features without serious monthly costs. It is a software based phone system that runs on your own server (a small PC in your office, a cloud VM, or through a 3CX hosted instance).

The feature list is extensive. Auto attendant, call queues, call recording, CRM integration (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho and more), live chat, video conferencing, voicemail to email, and detailed call reporting are all included. The web based admin console is genuinely well designed and most settings can be configured without specialist knowledge.

3CX also offers Microsoft 365 integration for presence sync and calendar access, meaning your Teams status updates when you are on a call, and you can see colleagues' availability from within 3CX.

Pros: Feature rich, cost effective for 10+ users, excellent admin interface, strong integration options, flexible deployment. Cons: Requires some technical knowledge for initial setup (though 3CX partners can handle this), you are responsible for server maintenance unless you use 3CX's hosted option.

2. Hosted VoIP (Provider Managed)

Type: Cloud PBX Price: From £6+VAT/user/month (basic), £10 to £15 (standard), £18 to £25 (premium)

This is the catch all category for fully managed cloud phone systems where the provider handles everything. You do not install software, manage servers, or configure SIP trunks. Your provider sets up the system, ports your numbers, configures your call flows, and supports you if anything goes wrong.

The major UK hosted VoIP providers offer broadly similar core features: auto attendant, call queuing, call recording, voicemail to email, mobile apps, and desk phone support. Where they differ is on pricing, contract terms, support quality, and the specific advanced features available.

We compare hosted VoIP options from multiple providers to find the best match for each business. Get a free VoIP quote and we will compare options tailored to your specific requirements.

Pros: Simplest option, no technical management, predictable monthly cost, provider handles everything. Cons: Less customisable than 3CX or on-premise options, you are dependent on your provider for changes and support.

3. RingCentral

Type: Cloud PBX / UCaaS Price: From around £13/user/month, with most businesses on plans around £20 to £28/user/month

RingCentral is one of the biggest names in business phone systems globally. Their UK offering includes voice, video, messaging, and fax in a single platform. The feature set is strong, particularly for businesses that need video conferencing and team messaging alongside their phone system.

RingCentral's strength is its scale and reliability. They operate a global network of data centres with 99.999% uptime SLA. The platform supports integrations with over 300 business applications including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft 365.

Pros: Enterprise grade reliability, extensive integrations, strong video and messaging features, global presence. Cons: More expensive than many alternatives, the admin portal can be overwhelming, support quality varies, contract terms can be inflexible.

4. 8x8

Type: Cloud PBX / UCaaS Price: From around £12/user/month for voice only, £20 to £35/user/month for unified communications

8x8 offers a unified communications platform that combines voice, video, chat, and contact centre functionality. Their UK data centres and GDPR compliance make them a solid choice for businesses with data residency concerns.

The contact centre features are particularly strong, making 8x8 a good option for businesses that handle high volumes of inbound calls and need skills based routing, workforce management, and detailed analytics.

Pros: Strong contact centre features, UK data centres, good international calling rates, comprehensive unified communications. Cons: Pricing is on the higher end, the interface has a learning curve, smaller businesses may find the feature set overwhelming.

5. Vonage Business

Type: Cloud PBX / UCaaS Price: From around £10/user/month, typical plans £15 to £25/user/month

Vonage Business Communications provides voice, video, messaging, and SMS in a cloud platform. They have a strong API ecosystem, which makes them popular with businesses that want to integrate their phone system deeply with custom software or workflows.

The core telephony features are solid, and Vonage's mobile app is well regarded. They also offer virtual receptionists, call recording, and call monitoring as standard on most plans.

Pros: Strong API and integration capabilities, good mobile app, competitive pricing on mid-range plans, virtual receptionist included. Cons: Basic plan is quite limited, some features require higher tier plans, customer support has mixed reviews.

6. Microsoft Teams Phone

Type: Add on to Microsoft 365 Price: Teams Phone licence ~£7.50/user/month + Calling Plan ~£10 to £12/user/month (total ~£17.50 to £19.50/user/month)

Teams Phone turns Microsoft Teams into a full external calling platform. If your business already uses Teams for chat and video meetings, adding phone calling keeps everything in one app.

The telephony features are adequate for basic call making and receiving but limited compared to dedicated phone systems. Auto attendant setup is complex, call recording requires additional licensing, and reporting is minimal. For a detailed breakdown of when Teams Phone does and does not make sense, see our Teams Phone alternatives guide.

Pros: Single app for everything if you are a Teams shop, integrates naturally with Microsoft 365, good for remote first teams. Cons: Expensive for small businesses, limited telephony features, complex administration, restricted desk phone choices.

7. Gamma Horizon

Type: Cloud PBX (sold through resellers) Price: From around £8/user/month, typical plans £12 to £20/user/month

Gamma is one of the UK's largest wholesale telecoms providers, and Horizon is their hosted VoIP platform. You will not buy Horizon directly from Gamma. Instead, it is sold through hundreds of UK resellers who add their own support and pricing on top.

The platform itself is solid and well established. Auto attendant, call recording, call queuing, and a decent mobile app are all included. Because it is sold through resellers, the support quality and pricing vary significantly depending on which reseller you use.

Pros: Well established UK platform, good core features, wide availability through resellers, competitive pricing. Cons: Experience depends heavily on your reseller, the admin interface is dated compared to newer platforms, limited advanced features.

8. GoTo Connect (formerly Jive)

Type: Cloud PBX / UCaaS Price: From around £10/user/month, typical plans £18 to £25/user/month

GoTo Connect combines voice, video meetings, and messaging in a single cloud platform. The call routing system uses a visual dial plan editor that makes it straightforward to set up complex call flows without technical knowledge.

The platform includes over 100 telephony features as standard across all plans, which means you do not need to worry about which plan tier unlocks the feature you need. International calling is included to 50+ countries on higher tier plans, making it a strong choice for businesses with overseas contacts.

Pros: Intuitive dial plan editor, all features included on all plans, good international calling bundles, reliable platform. Cons: Pricing is mid to upper range, the mobile app could be better, UK specific support can be slower than domestic providers.

9. BT Cloud Phone

Type: Cloud PBX Price: From around £13/user/month, typical plans £16 to £25/user/month

BT Cloud Phone is BT's hosted VoIP offering for small and medium businesses. It includes the features you would expect: auto attendant, call recording, voicemail, and a mobile app. The advantage of BT is brand familiarity and the ability to bundle your phone system with BT broadband and mobile services.

BT is aggressively pushing businesses towards digital phone solutions as part of the PSTN switch-off, and Cloud Phone is their main product for the SME market.

Pros: Trusted brand, bundling options with broadband and mobile, straightforward to order if you are already a BT customer. Cons: Typically more expensive than independent providers, long contract terms, support can be slow, less flexible than specialist VoIP providers.

10. Wildix

Type: Cloud / on-premise hybrid UCaaS Price: From around £15/user/month, typical plans £25 to £40/user/month

Wildix is a newer entrant targeting businesses that want a premium unified communications experience. The platform is browser based, meaning it works entirely through a web browser without installing any software. It includes voice, video, chat, screen sharing, and integrations with CRMs and help desk tools.

Wildix positions itself as a sales focused phone system with features like website live chat, visitor tracking, and CRM screen pops. It is sold exclusively through certified partners.

Pros: Modern browser based interface, strong sales team features, good CRM integrations, innovative approach. Cons: Premium pricing, only available through certified partners, less established in the UK market, overkill for businesses with straightforward phone needs.

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The Full Comparison Table

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How to Choose the Right System for Your Business

With ten solid options on the table, how do you narrow it down? Here are the questions that matter most.

How Many Users Do You Have?

1 to 5 users: Hosted VoIP is almost always the best choice. Simple, cheap, and no management overhead. At this size, the cost savings of managing your own 3CX system are minimal, and you probably do not have IT staff to handle it.

5 to 20 users: Hosted VoIP or 3CX, depending on how technical you are. If you have someone comfortable with basic IT admin, 3CX will give you more features for less money. If you want someone else to handle everything, hosted VoIP is the safe choice.

20 to 50 users: 3CX starts to shine at this size. The per user cost savings add up, the advanced features become genuinely useful, and most businesses of this size have enough IT resource (even if outsourced) to manage the system.

50+ users: Consider 3CX, RingCentral, 8x8, or Gamma Horizon depending on your needs. At this scale, the enterprise platforms start to make more economic sense, and features like workforce management and advanced analytics become important.

What Features Do You Actually Need?

Be honest about this. Most small businesses need: incoming calls answered professionally, the ability to transfer calls, voicemail, and maybe call recording. That is it. You do not need a contact centre platform for a 6 person office.

Here is a feature checklist ranked by how commonly businesses actually use them:

• Essential for almost everyone: Auto attendant, voicemail to email, call transfer, call forwarding, mobile app
• Important for many: Call recording, call queuing, out of hours routing, on hold music
• Useful for some: CRM integration, call reporting, call whisper/barge, IVR menus
• Specialist: Skills based routing, workforce management, wallboards, speech analytics

Match your actual needs to the system that delivers them at the best price. Do not pay for features you will never use.

What Is Your Budget?

Here is what a phone system costs per month for different business sizes across the main options:

These are indicative ranges based on typical UK pricing. Your actual cost will depend on the specific features you need, contract length, and any promotional pricing available.

Do You Need Desk Phones?

If you do, budget for them. IP desk phones from brands like Yealink, Snom, Fanvil, Grandstream, Cisco, Polycom, Panasonic and Gigaset typically cost £50 to £150 to purchase, or £3 to £5 per month to lease. Entry level models (Yealink T31G, Snom D120) sit at the lower end. Feature rich models with colour screens and Bluetooth (Yealink T54W, Snom D785) sit at the upper end.

Alternatively, many businesses are moving to softphone only setups, where staff use an app on their computer or mobile instead of a physical phone. This eliminates the hardware cost entirely and works well for remote or hybrid teams.

How Important Is UK Based Support?

If something goes wrong with your phone system, you want to speak to someone who can fix it quickly. The quality of support varies significantly between providers:

• Hosted VoIP through a UK provider: Typically UK based support teams with good availability. This is one of the biggest advantages of choosing a smaller specialist over a global platform.
• 3CX: Support comes from your 3CX partner (reseller), not 3CX directly. Choose your partner carefully.
• RingCentral, 8x8, Vonage, GoTo: Global support teams. You may or may not get UK based support depending on the time of day and your plan level.
• BT: UK based but often slow, especially for smaller customers.
• Teams Phone: Microsoft support, which is global and varies wildly in quality.

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What About Broadband?

Your phone system runs over your internet connection, so reliable broadband is essential. Each concurrent VoIP call uses roughly 100kbps in each direction. For a 10 user office where 5 people might be on calls simultaneously, you need at least 500kbps of reliable upstream bandwidth.

In practice, any modern broadband connection handles this easily. We supply Sky SOGEA broadband at 80Mbps download / 20Mbps upload for £35+VAT per month, which comfortably handles 20+ simultaneous VoIP calls alongside normal internet usage.

If your current broadband is unreliable, consider upgrading before or alongside your phone system switch. A great VoIP system on poor broadband will give you a poor experience.

For more on the broadband side, see our business broadband guide.

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Our Recommendation

If you have read this far and still are not sure, here is the short version.

For most UK small businesses (1 to 20 users) wanting a reliable, affordable phone system with zero hassle: Go with hosted VoIP. You will pay £6 to £15 per user per month, get professional features like auto attendant and call recording, and your provider manages everything. Get a free quote here and we will compare options from multiple providers.

For businesses (10 to 50 users) that want more features, more control, and the best long term value: Go with 3CX. The feature set is outstanding, the per user cost is competitive, and the admin interface is a pleasure to use. You will need either someone comfortable with basic IT admin or an IT provider to manage it.

For everyone: Whatever you choose, do it before the PSTN switch-off in January 2027. If you still have traditional landlines, read our guide to replacing landlines with VoIP and start the process now. The last minute rush will be painful.

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Further Reading

• Hosted VoIP for Business UK: Complete Guide for a deep dive into cloud phone systems.
• VoIP Problems and Solutions for troubleshooting common issues.
• Microsoft Teams Calling Alternative for businesses considering or currently using Teams Phone.
• Business VoIP Comparison to see how our free comparison service works.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cheapest business phone system in the UK?

Hosted VoIP is the most affordable option for most businesses, starting from around £6+VAT per user per month for a basic package. For slightly more (£10 to £15/user/month), you get a standard package that includes call recording, auto attendant, and call queuing. 3CX can also be very cost effective, particularly for businesses with 10+ users, because the software licence is a flat annual fee rather than per user per month.

Do I need to buy new phones for a VoIP system?

Not necessarily. If you want desk phones, you will need IP phones (not the old analogue handsets), which cost £50 to £150 each or £3 to £5/month to lease. However, many businesses are going entirely "softphone" and using apps on computers and mobiles instead of physical phones. Most VoIP providers include a softphone app at no extra cost with every user licence.

How long does it take to switch to a new phone system?

For a straightforward setup with 5 to 20 users, expect 2 to 4 weeks from initial enquiry to going live. That includes choosing the system, ordering any hardware, porting your phone numbers (which takes 5 to 15 working days), and configuring everything. Your provider manages the timeline and should ensure a seamless transition with no gap in service.

Can I keep my existing phone numbers?

Yes. Number porting is a standard, regulated process in the UK. Your existing landline numbers (01, 02, 03 prefixes) can be transferred to any VoIP provider. The process takes 5 to 15 working days and is managed by your new provider. Your customers will not notice any change.

Is VoIP reliable enough to replace a landline?

Yes. Modern hosted VoIP platforms run across multiple redundant data centres with 99.9%+ uptime guarantees. Call quality on a decent broadband connection is equal to or better than a traditional landline thanks to HD Voice codecs. The main thing you need is a reliable internet connection. With SOGEA or FTTP broadband and optionally a 4G failover connection, VoIP is as dependable as the old copper network ever was.

What happens to my phone system if my internet goes down?

Most VoIP systems have failover options built in. If your office broadband drops, calls can automatically divert to mobile phones, an alternative office, or a voicemail system. Some businesses add a 4G backup broadband connection that activates automatically if the primary connection fails. Your VoIP provider will help you configure the right failover setup for your business.