Grasshopper Review

Grasshopper is an industry leading telecom provider that offers unified communications solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in particular. They bill themselves as a complete, turnkey provider of all the tools that a business needs to “sound big and grow bigger,” and it offers an impressive array of technologies aimed at accomplishing precisely that.

All told, Grasshopper is an ideal way to get access to all of the communications services that a business would need to serve its customers – all without needing to buy into additional devices that they may not be able to afford or properly use.

Business Telecom Solutions From Grasshopper

Grasshopper’s best business phone system offering comes by way of its business phone service – a solution that is compatible with any smartphone or mobile device that a customer may already be using. When you sign up for a new account with Grasshopper, you get your choice of a selection of toll-free numbers, vanity numbers and local numbers to choose from. You can even port your existing business number so that you don’t have to inform customers that you’ve made a change or deal with an interruption to your customer service capabilities.

At that point, you can download and install the Grasshopper desktop and mobile apps to any device you’re already using. This lets you make and receive calls from your business line via those devices, thus letting you be as productive as possible while on-the-go.

From that point on, you can always see when an incoming call is for your business in particular, thus allowing you to answer accordingly to sound as professional as possible. You can even make use of an automated greeting to welcome callers and easily direct them to certain departments or even employees if you so choose. Grasshopper is notable in that it also gives you access to professional voice talent for these greetings, which is a great way to make sure that every caller gets the exact experience you were going for.

In addition to the desktop and mobile apps and the aforementioned automated greetings. Grasshopper customers also get a number of other notable features, too. These include things like:

• Voicemail transcription. In a matter of minutes, Grasshopper will transcribe your voicemail so that you can easily read them as text without having to stop what you’re doing and listen to a message.
• Simultaneous call handling. This allows you to take calls from multiple people at the same time, thus making sure that nobody has to deal with a busy signal ever again.
• Reporting. With detailed call reports, you can see exactly how many calls your business is fielding and how long it takes each one to reach a satisfying conclusion. This is a great way to learn more about those elements of your current approach that are working and, more importantly, which ones aren’t.
• Ruby receptionist. Grasshopper also gives you access to live receptionists that are based in the United States so that you always have someone who can help out, even during periods of heavy call volumes.
• Business texting. This is a great opportunity to provide customers with important updates and quick replies via SMS text messaging from your business number, all so that your private number can remain confidential.
• VoIP/Wi-Fi calling. Short for “voice over Internet protocol,” this is a way to use your Internet connection to make and receive calls – even in those environments when actual cell coverage may be poor.
• Virtual fax. This lets businesses have incoming faxes delivered as PDF attachments to their email inboxes, even if they don’t have a physical fax machine at all.
• Incoming call control. This feature lets you not only screen callers but also block certain numbers and set up custom schedules that are relevant to your business hours.

In addition to everything outlined above, Grasshopper also offers call forwarding capabilities that let you route all business calls to your personal phone, to another team member or to any other destination of your choosing. It’s also important to note that you can give employees or even entire departments within your company their own extensions (complete with their own sets of forwarding rules), and you can always place callers on hold and even transfer them to another number whenever you need to do so.

How Much Does Grasshopper Cost?

While Grasshopper does have a free trial that you can use to make sure the services are an appropriate fit for your needs, ongoing service will require you to purchase one of their available plans. Each plan can be billed monthly and you can cancel at any time, or you can get billed annually for a savings of approximately 10%. These plans include:

Regardless of the type of plan you choose, all Grasshopper plans offer the features outlined above like voicemail transcriptions, custom greetings, call forwarding VoIP calling and more.

What Customers Are Saying

Grasshopper customers agree that the company’s best business phone systems offer a wide array of innovative services that other providers simply cannot match. Grasshopper’s website indicates that they have served more than 350,000 happy customers over the years, in just about every industry you can think of.

One testimonial on the company’s website from an accountant said that “having a phone number on our site increased conversion of site visitors to sign up and paid users,” indicating that the flexibility offered by Grasshopper actually helped them begin to grow their business almost immediately. Another said that “Grasshopper lets my company scale like never before. Now, my entire team is accessible to our customers despite their location or time zone.”

Grasshopper’s Innovative Technology: Today, Tomorrow and Beyond

In 2016, Grasshopper’s founder David Hauser sold the company to tech giant Citrix for $165 million. He also received $8.6 million in stocks out of the deal. Citrix itself is a company that provides server, application, desktop virtualization, networking, SaaS and similar solutions that are used by over 400,000 clients all over the world.

First founded in 1989, Citrix had a revenue of $3.01 billion in 2019 and a net income of $575 million. It had 8,200 employees worldwide as of 2018, all of this according to information found on Citrix’s website.

All of this is to say that the Grasshopper acquisition was clearly a strategic one, as both companies (and the technologies they employ) fit quite well together. Citrix’s acquisition not only supports existing Grasshopper customers, but it will also allow them to better serve an entire generation of new ones – making this the perfect time to sign up for your own plan with the company.

For More Information

For additional information on why 8×8 ranks highest among the world’s best business phone systems, feel free to contact 8×8 anytime at (877) 660-1363, to speak to an enterprise telecom expert. A knowledgeable, helpful specialist will answer all your questions about telecom cloud services features, implementation for your company, pricing, software integrations, customer support, and other important details about a communications system and platform options that are right for your business. Or, visit the 8×8 website for lots of helpful information.

Grasshopper
Grasshopper is rated as #9 in our Small Business Phone Systems Category.
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