Most Google Voice alternatives are business phone systems: better apps, more seats, same silence when you can't pick up. If your problem is the calls you miss rather than the calls you make, the useful alternative is a line that answers. Beside answers, qualifies and books, from $16.67 a month billed annually.
Beside answers the phone for one-person businesses. The owners we talk to rarely switch because a feature is missing. They switch because the number rings out while both hands are busy, and they have stopped trusting what happens after the beep.
What Google Voice does with a call you don't answer
Google publishes what each business plan includes; the table below is the short version. Nothing on the three tiers talks to the caller. A call you don't pick up becomes a transcribed voicemail, and from the $20 Standard tier up it can play a menu or ring another phone first. (Source: Google Workspace, 2026) That is a useful feature, and a different product from someone answering the question the caller actually asked.
Benjamin Wentworth runs Mixing & Mentoring, an audio production business in New York, and he put the cost of that gap better than we can:
"When you miss a call mid-session, you're just wondering if it's an emergency or they're just trying to book." — — Benjamin Wentworth, Mixing & Mentoring, New York
A voicemail notification is the interruption without the information. It takes the focus and gives nothing back.
| Price | A call you don't answer becomes | Whose voice the caller hears | What you have afterwards | Beside | Google Voice Starter | Google Voice Standard | Google Voice Premier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $16.67/user/mo billed annually ($199.99/yr), or $29.99/mo month to month | A conversation: it answers, asks your questions, books the appointment | Yours, if you clone it | A transcript, a summary with suggested actions, and a daily recap | |||||
| $10/user/mo | A transcribed voicemail | No one; the caller reaches voicemail | A transcribed message | |||||
| $20/user/mo | A transcribed voicemail, after a menu or a ring group | A recorded menu, then voicemail | A transcribed message | |||||
| $30/user/mo | The same, with automatic recording | A recorded menu, then voicemail | A transcribed message and a recording |
Prices and features from Google's own Voice plan page and beside.com/pricing, checked 1 August 2026.
One cell needs a note. Beside handles the appointment request and books it into your calendar. (Source: beside.com/pricing, 2026) Google Calendar is not named on our integrations page today. The booking lives in Beside and the call summary carries the calendar event. Zapier, which our pricing page lists as reaching 1,000+ apps, bridges to whatever calendar you run on; set that up before you rely on it. There is a longer write-up of how the booking works once a call is answered.
Why it costs more than ten dollars a seat
Beside is $16.67 a user a month on the annual plan. Google Voice Starter is $10. Beside costs more, about $6.67 a month or $80 a year, and there is no way to phrase that away. What the difference buys is a call handled instead of a call recorded.
Price it against the work rather than against the seat. The Census Bureau counts 2,875,590 one-person construction businesses in the US taking in $238.0 billion between them. (Source: US Census Bureau, 2025) Divide one by the other, which is our arithmetic and not the Census Bureau's, and the average one runs on about $82,800 a year, or roughly $331 of work per working day.
A year of Beside is $199.99, which is less than one of those days. Your business is not the average one, so run it again with your own ticket.
What answering actually means
The call is answered instantly, with no hold music, and in your voice if you cloned it: you read a script for about thirty seconds in the app and the clone generates in under ten seconds. (Source: Beside Help Center, 2026) It asks the qualifying questions you wrote and handles the appointment request.
Whether any of this holds up on a real call is the part skeptics ask about first, and the fairest answer is an owner who tried it. Allester Thomas, who runs the Brooklyn salon Loc'd And Braided, says of setting it up: "It was really easy to set up… I was able to point the website to it… and when I did the first test call myself, I was blown away."
Afterwards you get a transcript, a summary with the suggested next actions, and a daily recap of everything the line did while you were working. (Source: Beside on the App Store, 2026) The value is not only the call that got answered, it is knowing at 6pm exactly what came in. We have written the full version of the money math in what a missed call actually costs.
Who should stay on Google Voice
Google Voice is a good product for what it is, and for plenty of readers it is still the right answer. Stay where you are if:
- You want a second number so customers don't have your personal cell, and you can usually pick up when it rings.
- Your call volume is low, and the calls that come in are suppliers, confirmations and your accountant rather than new work.
- You sit at a desk. When the phone rings, you can reach it.
- Nothing much rides on the one you miss, because the customer will call back. You are the only one in town who does what you do.
If none of that describes your week, what you actually need is someone to pick up.
How to switch without losing your number
This is the part that stops most owners, and it has two answers.
Forward. Leave the Google Voice number where it is and point the calls at Beside. Our pricing page puts it plainly: keep using your existing business number and forward calls to Beside. There is nothing to unlock and nothing to unwind if you change your mind, which makes it the low-risk way to test a switch against a real week of calls.
Port. Move the number to Beside outright, so all calls and texts arrive in one place. Google charges $3 to unlock a number for porting, waived if you originally ported that number into Google Voice from another carrier. You unlock it yourself in Google Voice under Settings, then Account. Your new provider starts the port, not Google. Google's own instruction is worth repeating: do not delete the Google Voice number once the port is under way. (Source: Google Voice Help, 2026)
Google does not publish how long a port takes. Your old line keeps ringing until it completes, which is the part owners actually worry about.
| Forward your Google Voice number | Port it to Beside | What it costs at Google | Who starts it | Your old line | Reversible | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nothing | $3 to unlock, free if you ported the number in | ||||||
| You, in a couple of minutes | Your new provider, after you unlock | ||||||
| Keeps working | Keeps working until the port completes | ||||||
| Yes, instantly | Not casually | ||||||
| Trying this on a real week of calls | Once you've decided, so it's one number and one bill |
What to check before you switch
Five questions worth asking of any alternative, including ours. They are useful even if you pick something else.
- Does it answer, or does it record? Read the feature list for a verb that involves talking to the caller.
- Whose voice does the caller hear? A stranger reading a script is a different business from the one they called.
- What do you have after the call? A message, or a transcript, a summary and the next action.
- Can you keep your number, and what does it cost to leave later? With us, forward it for free or unlock it at Google for $3.
- What does it cost in month 13, and does the price rise when you add a person? With us it is $199.99 per user per year, the same in month 13, and a second person is a second seat.
If you want the wider view first, we keep a running comparison of how the AI receptionists stack up on price and on what they actually do, and a plain explainer of what Beside does on a call.
What this looks like on a real week
Allester Thomas's hands are in someone's hair all day, which makes the phone a genuine conflict rather than an annoyance. His line had lost so much of its purpose that he took it off the table entirely:
"We didn't publish a phone number for almost two years… it was impossible for us to take calls and service our clients." — — Allester Thomas, owner-operator, Loc'd And Braided, Brooklyn
A business that hides its phone number has stopped selling to anyone who prefers to call. The interesting part is what happened when the number went back up with Beside answering it. The thirty to forty calls a day he had been missing dropped to near zero, and bookings and client retention both went up. Those were not new customers finding him. They were the people who had been calling all along.
Sources: Google Voice plans and pricing, Google Voice Help on porting a number out, US Census Bureau, nonemployer businesses. Beside pricing, capabilities and rating verified on beside.com/pricing, the Beside Help Center and the App Store listing on 1 August 2026. The $331 per-working-day figure is Beside's own arithmetic from the Census figures cited above. Photo: Beside customer photography, Loc'd And Braided.