COMPARE:
Unitel Voice or Grasshopper for a small business phone
Unitel Voice against Grasshopper for putting a business number and a menu in front of a small team, with the same seven questions asked of each and neither one flattered. Mamba Labs builds Apify actors, and neither of these is one of them, so there is no third column on this page.
If you only read one part
Grasshopper is a business number on your own phone, set up in minutes. Unitel Voice is a small phone system with an auto attendant and a live receptionist option. One person, Grasshopper. A team with a front door, Unitel Voice.
The same questions, both tools
| Unitel Voice | Grasshopper | |
|---|---|---|
| What it actually does | Gives a small business a main number, an auto attendant, extensions and call routing to mobiles, with a phone app for the team. | Puts a business number on your personal phone, with an app, texting, an auto attendant and extensions. |
| Coverage and hit rate | Local and toll free numbers, an auto attendant, extensions, voicemail to email, a mobile app, and a live receptionist service. | Numbers, extensions, call forwarding, texting, voicemail transcription and a desktop and mobile app. |
| What it costs | Per month by plan and minutes, with the receptionist service priced by the calls it handles. | Per month by plan, sized by numbers and extensions rather than by users. |
| How it fits a workflow | A main number rings a menu and the menu rings people. There is no CRM logging and none is expected. | Calls ring your mobile and texts come to the app. It is the smallest phone system that still looks like one. |
| Where the data comes from | Your own numbers, ported in or new. | Your own numbers. |
| What it takes to set up | An afternoon. Porting an existing number takes the standard carrier wait. | Minutes. Pick a number and install the app. |
| Where it stops | It is a front door. A sales team dialing lists from a CRM wants a different category of product. | No live receptionist, no desk phones, and it thins out fast past a handful of people. |
The same seven questions are asked on every compare page here, in this order, so two of these pages can be read against each other.
What each is actually better at
- Unitel Voice wins on coverage and hit rate, what it costs. A virtual phone system for small businesses, with a live receptionist team as an option.
- Grasshopper wins on how it fits a workflow, what it takes to set up. A virtual business number and app for solo operators and very small teams.
- Nobody wins on what it actually does, where the data comes from, where it stops. Unitel Voice and Grasshopper give the same answer on those, and we are not going to invent a difference.
Where to get them
The honest answer
A solo operator or a two person shop wants Grasshopper. It is cheap, it is instant and it makes a mobile look like an office. Once there are extensions to route, a menu to record and calls you cannot answer yourself, Unitel Voice is the one built for that. Its receptionist service is the honest answer for a business that misses calls. Neither belongs in a sales team dialing from a CRM. That is a different product category and it is compared elsewhere on this site.
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