Hosted PBX providers and cloud PBX phone systems: pricing, desk phones, and how to replace an on-premises PBX
A hosted PBX is a private branch exchange that runs in a provider's data center instead of a cabinet in your building, reaching your desks over the internet and billed per user per month. US entry pricing runs about $10 to $20 per user billed yearly, and roughly $19 to $30 for the same plan billed monthly. Phoner is $15 per user yearly and $19 monthly, with free porting and standard SIP desk phones supported if you want to keep physical handsets.
Most people reading this did not wake up wanting new phone software. They got a letter from their carrier, or a quote to repair a PBX that has been sitting in a closet since before the last remodel. That is the honest reason hosted PBX quotes are being requested across the US right now, and it changes what you should be comparing: not feature grids, but what happens to your numbers, your handsets, and the analog devices nobody remembers plugging in.
ENTRY PRICING VERIFIED JULY 2026 · YEARLY AND MONTHLY · DESK PHONE SUPPORT NOTED PER PROVIDER
Last updated July 2026
01 · Pick your number
02 · Your phone menu
03 · Incoming call
Press a key to answer the menu yourself
Voicemail to text
transcribed · texted to you · 0:42
Call sheet
Today
This number can be yours in about 5 minutes.
Recording consent laws vary by state and country. You are responsible for lawful use.
$10 to $20
Entry price per user per month for a hosted PBX in the US, billed yearly
83.7%
Share of US business wireline voice connections already running as VoIP rather than switched lines
March 2026
When the FCC cleared carriers to grandfather legacy copper voice service, which is why the quotes are arriving now
Free
Number porting here, so the numbers printed on your door and your invoices survive the migration
What actually changes when the PBX moves to a data center
01
You stop owning a depreciating box
An on-premises PBX is a capital purchase with a maintenance contract attached, and its economics get worse every year: parts get scarcer, the technicians who know it retire, and a single failed card can idle the whole office until somebody drives out. A hosted PBX converts that into a per-user monthly line item with no hardware on your books. The switching, the redundancy, and the patching become somebody else's job.
02
Some of your desk phones survive, and some are scrap
This is the detail most quotes gloss over. Standard SIP handsets, the kind sold by Poly, Yealink, Grandstream, and Cisco over the last decade, can usually be reprovisioned to point at a new hosted PBX and keep working. Proprietary digital handsets from a key system or an older PBX cannot, because they speak a protocol only their own switch understands. Count which kind you have before anyone quotes you a hardware refresh.
03
Power and internet swap places in your risk plan
An on-premises PBX keeps working through an internet outage and dies when the building loses power. A hosted PBX is the exact opposite: it survives a power cut in your building and depends on your connection instead. The practical answer is not a generator, it is a failover rule that sends the main number to mobiles when the office drops, which takes about a minute to configure and costs nothing.
04
Administration moves from a technician to a web page
Changing an extension, adding a menu option, or rerouting the main line after hours stops being a scheduled service call. That sounds like a soft benefit until you price it: many small businesses have quietly been paying a few hundred dollars a year for changes they could have made themselves. A hosted system moves the phone menu, ring groups, and business hours into a browser tab.
How to move from an on-premises PBX to a hosted PBX
Inventory everything plugged into the PBX, not just the phones
Walk the building. Every extension, every DID, and every analog device: the fax line, the credit card terminal, the fire alarm panel dialer, the elevator emergency phone, the door entry intercom, the overhead paging amplifier. Phones migrate easily. Those analog devices are the ones that turn a two-week project into a three-month one, so find them first.
Get your numbers documented on a current bill
Porting runs off the account record, not off memory. Pull a recent bill listing the billing telephone number and every DID in the range, plus the service address exactly as the carrier has it. A single mismatched digit or an old suite number is the most common reason a port order gets rejected and slips a week.
Decide handsets or apps, then check what you already own
If your team is at desks all day, keeping SIP handsets is reasonable. If half of them are in trucks or at client sites, apps on the phones they carry will do more for you than plastic. Either way, look up the model numbers you have: SIP-capable phones can typically be reprovisioned, proprietary digital sets cannot, and knowing which is which is worth a few thousand dollars.
Port in stages and keep the old system alive until the last extension is proven
Move a low-traffic department first, test inbound, outbound, transfers, and voicemail for a week, then move the main number. Do not cancel the incumbent until every number answers on the new system, because a port cannot be undone on the same afternoon. Register your physical E911 address before the first call goes out.
Three facts that explain why hosted PBX quotes are being requested right now
From federal primary sources rather than vendor blogs, because most urgency in this category is manufactured by whoever wants to sell you the replacement.
March 26, 2026
The FCC adopted its Network and Services Modernization Order, which grants carriers blanket section 214(a) authority to grandfather legacy voice services, lower-speed data services, and interconnected VoIP provisioned over copper, eliminates the filing requirements tied to network change disclosure, and streamlines the discontinuance process for technology transitions. In plain terms, retiring copper just got considerably easier for the carriers, which is why so many businesses received notices this year.
Source: FCC, news release on the Network and Services Modernization Order (March 26, 2026)
83.7%
Share of the 53 million US business wireline voice connections that were already interconnected VoIP rather than traditional switched lines as of June 2025, while switched business lines fell at a 17.9 percent annual rate. The migration you are pricing is not early adoption. It is the last stretch of one that is nearly finished.
Your numbers
Under FCC local number portability rules you keep your telephone numbers when you change providers in the same area, and a carrier cannot refuse to release a number because there is an unpaid balance on the account. The main number on your signage and your invoices is not a reason to stay with a system you are being pushed off anyway.
Source: FCC, Keeping Your Telephone Number When Changing Service Providers
Hosted PBX providers: entry pricing yearly against monthly, and who supports desk phones
Entry plans from each vendor's published pricing in July 2026. The desk phone column is the one that matters if you are replacing a real PBX rather than starting fresh, and almost no roundup tabulates it next to the price. Vonage and Zoom Phone also sell hosted PBX service; both bundle or tier their phone plans in ways that did not resolve to a single published entry figure when we checked, so they are left out rather than guessed at.
| Provider and entry plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | SIP desk phones | Best fit for a PBX replacement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phoner Starter | $15 per user | $19 per user | Supported, optional | Small offices happy to run apps, with a few handsets kept |
| Nextiva Core | $15 per user | $23 per user | Supported | Buyers who want phone and support tooling on one contract |
| Dialpad Connect Standard | $15 per user | $27 per user | Supported | Teams who want transcription on every call before anything else |
| RingCentral RingEX Core | $20 per user | $30 per user | Supported, resold | Larger estates wanting the vendor to supply and stage handsets |
| Ooma Office | $19.95 per user | $19.95 per user | Supported, resold | Offices that want desk phones shipped preconfigured |
| Quo (formerly OpenPhone) Starter | $15 per user | $19 per user | Limited, app first | Teams abandoning desk phones entirely for a shared inbox |
| Grasshopper True Solo | $14 flat per account | $14 flat per account | No | A one-person office, not a PBX replacement at all |
| Google Voice Starter | $10 per user | $10 per user | Limited, certain models | A single user, capped at one seat per standalone plan |
| 8x8 | Quote only | Quote only | Supported | Procurement that expects a negotiated contract and an SLA |
Swipe sideways for the full table
PHONER FIGURES ARE OUR PUBLISHED LIST PRICES · COMPETITOR ENTRY PRICING VERIFIED JULY 2026 FROM EACH VENDOR'S OWN PRICING PAGE AND CHANGES OFTEN · TAXES, REGULATORY FEES, AND A2P TEXTING REGISTRATION ARE EXTRA EVERYWHERE · HANDSET SUPPORT VARIES BY MODEL, CONFIRM YOUR EXACT MODEL BEFORE BUYING
Where a hosted PBX, or ours specifically, is the wrong answer
Four cases stated plainly, because the expensive mistakes in a PBX migration are all things nobody mentioned during the sales call.
The analog devices in your building do not move to us
A fire alarm panel dialer, an elevator emergency phone, a door entry intercom, or an old fax machine is wired to a copper pair, and no per-user phone plan replaces that. Those need a dedicated POTS replacement device, usually a cellular unit sold for exactly this purpose, and they need to be signed off by your alarm or elevator company. Sort them separately, and do not cancel the copper line until they are.
You want to keep the PBX and just buy cheaper connectivity
If the switch in your closet works fine and you only want to stop paying for analog trunks, what you want is SIP trunking, not a hosted system. We do not sell SIP trunks and will not blur the two products to win the deal. Compare trunk providers on channel count, concurrent call limits, and per-minute rates instead.
You have a large estate of proprietary handsets you are not ready to replace
If your building is full of digital sets that only speak to your existing switch, moving to any hosted PBX means replacing them. Vendors that resell and stage hardware for you, RingCentral and Ooma among them, will make that project smoother than a self-serve product will. We support standard SIP phones, but we do not ship, stage, or configure hardware fleets.
You are staffing a queue rather than answering a phone
We do a phone menu, ring groups, business hours, recording with consent tools, and voicemail to text. We do not do predictive dialing, workforce management, skills-based routing, or supervisor wallboards. If agents are being measured against a service level, price contact center platforms and expect a multiple of the numbers on this page.
What a PBX replacement looks like by business type
Small businesses
One main number, a handful of extensions, and a switch that has outlived the person who configured it.
Small business phone systemAccounting firms
Extensions per partner, a reception menu that cannot break in April, and clients who still call the number on last year's letterhead.
Accounting firm phone systemLaw firms
Direct dials that clients already have, intake that cannot go to voicemail, and strict control over who hears a recording.
Law firm phone systemProperty management
A building full of analog oddities, from entry intercoms to elevator phones, alongside an office that just needs calls answered.
Property management phone systemContractors
A yard, an office, and crews who are never at a desk, so half the extensions should have been apps years ago.
Contractor phone systemRestaurants
One line that rings at the host stand during a Friday rush, and nobody available to babysit a phone system.
Restaurant phone systemHosted PBX, cloud PBX, and VoIP: what the words mean when a salesperson uses them
The three terms describe the same modern setup from different angles, and knowing which angle someone is speaking from tells you what they are selling. VoIP is the transport: your call travels as data packets rather than down a dedicated copper pair. Hosted PBX is the legacy industry term for the switchboard itself being run on a provider's servers, and it implies extensions, direct dials, and often desk phones. Cloud phone system is the modern packaging of the same thing, usually with mobile apps and self-serve setup assumed. If you are filling in a procurement form that says PBX, the background is in what hosted PBX is and how it works, and the four categories are laid out side by side in the types of business phone systems.
The distinction that costs money is hosted PBX against SIP trunking, because they solve different halves of the problem. SIP trunking replaces the lines going into a PBX you keep owning, maintaining, and eventually replacing. Hosted PBX replaces the PBX itself, so there is nothing left in the closet to maintain. Trunking is usually cheaper per month and is the right call if your switch is modern, supported, and paid for. Hosted is the right call if the switch is the thing that is failing, or if the person who understood it has left. We sell the second and not the first, which is why we say so plainly rather than describing our product as a trunk. The technology under both is covered on VoIP phone service, and the same product packaged for buyers who never had a PBX is on cloud phone system.
Sizing is where most PBX replacements get quoted wrong, in both directions. A traditional system was sized in lines: how many simultaneous calls the building could carry. A hosted system is sized in users: how many people need an extension, a voicemail box, and the ability to be transferred a call. Those numbers are rarely the same, and the gap usually favors you, because concurrent calling is no longer a scarce resource you buy in blocks. If your current thinking is still in lines, the translation is worked through on multi line phone systems, and the seat-by-seat arithmetic for a team is on small business phone system with worked examples in how much a business phone system costs.
Once you have a shortlist, price every provider twice, once billed yearly and once billed monthly, because the ranking frequently changes between the two columns and a migration is exactly the moment you least want a twelve-month commitment. Confirm each will port your full DID range rather than just the main number, since partial ports are a common and unpleasant surprise. Then check the phone menu you will actually be rebuilding: an IVR phone menu that took a technician a day on the old system should take you fifteen minutes on the new one. The full field is ranked in our best VoIP for small business guide, every provider's entry price sits yearly against monthly in the business phone system comparison, the port itself is walked through in how to port a business phone number, and our own pricing is published in full.
Hosted PBX: the questions buyers actually search
A hosted PBX is a private branch exchange run on a provider's servers in a data center rather than on hardware in your building. It does the same job as an on-premises PBX, answering the main number and routing calls to extensions, but you reach it over your internet connection and pay per user per month instead of buying and maintaining a switch.
Hosted PBX replaces the phone system itself, so nothing is left in your building to maintain. SIP trunking replaces only the lines feeding a PBX that you keep owning and running. Trunking is usually cheaper monthly and suits a modern, supported switch. Hosted suits businesses whose PBX is the thing that is failing or unsupported.
VoIP is the transport technology: voice carried as data over an internet connection. Hosted PBX is a product built on that technology, specifically a business phone system with extensions, direct dial numbers, and call routing run from a provider's data center. Every hosted PBX uses VoIP, but not every VoIP service is a full PBX.
US hosted PBX pricing runs about $10 to $20 per user per month at entry level billed yearly, and roughly $19 to $30 for the same plan billed monthly. Expect telecom taxes and regulatory fees on top, plus one-time A2P registration if you will text from the number. Desk phones, if you buy new ones, run about $80 to $250 each.
Cloud PBX and hosted PBX mean the same thing: the switching logic that answers and routes your business calls runs on a provider's infrastructure instead of a box in your office. Cloud PBX is the newer term and usually implies mobile apps, browser access, and self-serve administration are included rather than sold as extras.
Yes, but almost entirely in hosted form. As of June 2025, 83.7 percent of US business wireline voice connections were already interconnected VoIP rather than traditional switched lines, and switched business lines were declining at 17.9 percent a year. New on-premises PBX purchases are now rare outside specialized environments with strict local-survivability requirements.
For most US small businesses the best PBX is a hosted one billed per user from about $15 a month that includes an auto attendant, ring groups, business hours, and voicemail to text in the entry plan. Buying on-premises hardware at this size rarely pays back. Confirm the provider ports your full number range free and supports an E911 address.
Often yes. Standard SIP handsets from the last decade, such as Poly, Yealink, Grandstream, and Cisco IP models, can usually be reprovisioned to a new hosted PBX. Proprietary digital handsets tied to a key system or older PBX cannot, because they only speak to their own switch. Check the exact model number before assuming either way.
You need whatever answers the main number and gets the caller to the right person, which for a small team is a hosted PBX or an app-based phone service rather than hardware. If two or more people ever answer the same published number, or callers should hear a menu, you need a system rather than a forwarded mobile line.
A hosted PBX typically includes extensions and direct dial numbers, an auto attendant or phone menu, ring groups and call queues, transfers, business hours routing, voicemail with email or text delivery, call recording, and mobile and desktop apps. Business texting and call analytics are common but often sit on higher tiers, so check which plan carries them.
Keep reading
CP-01
Cloud phone system
The same product packaged for buyers who never owned a PBX.
Cloud phone systemCM-01
Business phone system comparison
Every provider priced yearly against monthly in one table.
Business phone system comparisonML-01
Multi line phone system
How lines translate into seats when you leave a key system behind.
Multi line phone systemHP-01 HOSTED PBX · Your line is open
Retire the box, keep the numbers
Published pricing at $15 per user per month billed yearly, $19 monthly, with an auto attendant, ring groups, business hours, texting, and voicemail to text included. Standard SIP desk phones supported, porting free, and no annual contract at the exact moment you least want one.
No credit card to get started. Cancel any time.