Most of what decides whether you are happy in two years comes down to five or six questions, and hardly any of them appear on a pricing page.
Almost every guide to choosing a business phone system is written by a company that sells one. This one included. So rather than tell you what to buy, here is the checklist we would actually work through — including the questions that make us look worse than the alternatives.
Most of what determines whether you are happy in two years is decided by five or six questions, and hardly any of them appear on a pricing page.
Start with three numbers
Before you speak to anybody, write these down. Every quote you receive is meaningless without them.
How many people need a phone. Count everyone who needs an extension, including part-timers and anyone who only takes calls occasionally. This is the number providers ask for.
How many calls you need at the same time. This is the number that actually drives cost, and the one almost nobody works out. Ten staff very rarely need ten simultaneous calls — four to six is typical for a normal office, while a sales floor or a support desk might need close to one per seat. Some providers bundle concurrency; others bill it separately as trunks or channels.
How many locations. One office, three branches, or everyone at home changes what "good" looks like more than any feature list does.
Work out the real cost, not the monthly rate
Advertised per-extension pricing is the least reliable number in this market. The same ten-extension setup can differ by thousands over a first year depending on things that never appear in the headline.
Ask every provider for a first-year total that includes: the monthly subscription at your actual size, any setup or installation fee, the cost of the concurrent calls you need, call recording with the retention period you require, and any per-app or per-user licences. Then compare those totals.
The gaps are real. One provider in this market charges a R1,500 base setup fee plus a per-extension fee on top; another advertises a low per-extension rate but bills voice trunks separately and prices call recording by how long you keep it. We published the full arithmetic across seven providers if you want the worked examples, and a breakdown of what a business phone system actually costs in South Africa.
Decide what happens to your numbers
Your phone system is replaceable. Your number is not — it is on your vehicles, your invoices, your Google listing and in your customers’ phones.
Number portability is regulated here, and the facts are more reassuring than most people expect. Your current provider cannot refuse a legitimate port request, geographic numbers typically move in five to ten business days, and there is no downtime — calls switch over on completion. What does delay a port is an unpaid account, so settle up first.
Ask what porting costs before you commit, because it varies. And if you are still on a copper line, read what is actually happening with Telkom’s copper retirement before you assume you have time. More detail on the mechanics is on our number porting page.
Check the provider is licensed, and at what tier
Anyone carrying your calls needs authorisation from ICASA. It is not a badge or a membership — it is legal permission to operate, and it determines whether you have a regulator to go to when something goes wrong.
Ask two questions: what is your registered entity name, and what licence do you hold? Registered names very often differ from the brand on the website, which is why people fail to find providers on the register and wrongly assume the worst. A licensed provider answers both in one line. We wrote a short guide to checking any provider yourself.
Match it to where your team actually works
A phone system that assumes everyone sits at a desk is a poor fit for a business where half the team is on the road. Work out your real mix of desk phones, mobile apps, desktop applications and browser-based calling, then check what each plan actually includes.
This is worth pressing on, because entry-level plans across this market frequently include few or no app licences — ours included. Ask specifically: how many mobile app licences come with this plan, what does a desktop application cost, and is there a per-user charge. The answer often moves you a tier up from the plan you were quoted.
Ask what support actually means
Every provider claims good support. The question that separates them is simple: who answers at four o’clock on a Friday, and where are they?
Find out whether you are dealing with the company that operates the platform or a reseller who logs a ticket with someone else. Ask for response times in writing, ask whether support is local, and ask what happens outside business hours. When a phone system fails, it fails for your whole business at once, and this is where cheap options usually reveal themselves.
Check recording and retention against your obligations
If you record calls — and most businesses eventually do — POPIA applies. You need to tell people they are being recorded, be clear about why, store recordings securely and keep them only as long as you need them.
Two commercial questions follow. How long are recordings kept, and is retention priced by duration? Some providers charge in tiers, so a year of storage costs several times what three months does, and five years costs several times that again. If you are in a regulated sector, price the retention you are actually obliged to keep. Our guide to call recording and POPIA covers the compliance side.
Check it connects to what you already run
If you use a CRM, a helpdesk or a practice management system, the phone system should log calls into it rather than making your team type twice.
Ask which integrations are native and in production rather than "on the roadmap", whether API access costs extra, and whether the documentation is public. A provider that will not show you the API before you sign is telling you something. We covered what you can actually build with call data, including the reporting and billing use cases most businesses never think to ask about.
Read the exit terms before the entry price
The most useful protection against choosing wrongly is being able to leave. Ask about contract length, notice periods, early termination charges, and what happens to your numbers if you go elsewhere.
Month-to-month terms with no setup fee mean a bad decision costs you a month. A 24-month contract with an installation charge means a bad decision costs you two years. Given how hard these systems are to evaluate from a brochure, that difference is worth more than most features.
How to weigh all this for your situation
A team of under ten. Prioritise total first-year cost, app licences included, and month-to-month terms. You will change your mind about features; you will not change your mind about being locked in.
Multiple branches. Prioritise concurrency, call routing between sites, and whether you administer everything from one place. Per-site systems that do not talk to each other cost more in staff time than they save in licence fees.
Call-heavy operations. Prioritise queues, reporting, recording retention and integrations. The phone system is your production line, and reporting is how you manage it.
Regulated sectors — medical, legal, financial. Prioritise POPIA handling, retention periods, licensing tier and where data is stored. Get the compliance answers in writing before comparing prices.
Five mistakes worth avoiding
Comparing per-extension rates. They are not comparable across pricing models. Compare first-year totals at your actual size.
Buying for headcount instead of concurrency. The number of simultaneous calls drives both cost and whether customers get through.
Forgetting setup fees. They are a first-year cost that can exceed several months of subscription.
Leaving numbers until last. Porting is the part with a regulated timeline, so start it early rather than discovering it in week one.
Not asking who answers support. It is the single best predictor of whether you will be happy in a year.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a business phone system cost in South Africa?
For ten extensions, expect roughly R360 to R700 a month excluding VAT for the system itself, plus call charges and any setup fee. The spread comes almost entirely from concurrency and call recording retention.
What is the difference between VoIP, cloud PBX and hosted PBX?
VoIP is the underlying technology — calls carried over the internet. A cloud PBX, also called a hosted PBX, is the phone system itself running on someone else’s infrastructure rather than a box in your comms room. In practice the terms are used interchangeably in this market.
What is the difference between an extension and a channel?
An extension is a person or a handset. A channel is a simultaneous call. Ten extensions with four channels means ten people have phones but only four can talk at once. This distinction causes more billing surprises than anything else in this market.
Do I still need desk phones?
No. Modern systems work through mobile apps, desktop applications, browser-based calling and standard SIP handsets from manufacturers such as Yealink or Fanvil. Most teams end up with a mix.
Can I keep my existing phone number?
Yes. Numbers are portable between licensed operators, your provider cannot refuse a legitimate request, and geographic numbers typically move within five to ten business days with no downtime.
How long does it take to set up a new phone system?
The system itself can be configured quickly. The timeline is usually set by number porting rather than by setup, so plan around that rather than around the installation.
Should I sign a long contract to get a better rate?
Only if you are confident. A discount for a 24-month commitment is worth little if the system turns out to be wrong for you in month three. Several providers here offer month-to-month terms.
Do I need fibre?
No, but you need a stable connection. Fibre, fixed-LTE and 5G all work. Consistency and low latency matter more than headline speed, and you should ask what happens to your calls when the connection at your premises drops.
How we answer our own checklist
It would be a bit rich to hand you a list of questions and then dodge them. Here is where Othos lands on each one, with numbers you can verify rather than adjectives.
Real first-year cost. R399 a month covers up to ten users, and there is no setup fee and no contract — so ten extensions costs R4,788 in year one, all in. Several providers in this market charge more than R2,000 in setup alone before the first invoice arrives.
Licensing. Othos Telecommunications (Pty) Ltd holds an Individual Electronic Communications Service licence with national coverage. That is the individual tier, not the lighter class tier, and it is on ICASA’s public register under that registered name — go and look.
Where your team works. Mobile apps for iOS and Android are included from the SMB plan upward, the desktop application is R25 a month, and the system works with standard SIP handsets from Yealink, Fanvil and others. Being straight about it: the R149 Starter plan includes no app licences, so if your team is mobile, start at SMB.
Support. Our team is in Cape Town. You are dealing with the company that runs the platform, not a reseller logging a ticket with somebody else.
Call recording and retention. Included, and retained for as long as you are a client at no additional charge. There are no retention tiers to price up — which matters if you are in a sector that requires you to keep records for years rather than months.
Integrations. HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Zoho Bigin, SmartCRM and Google Workspace are live with real customers, and Microsoft Teams is supported for dialling. The CDR API documentation is public, and using the API yourself is free on every plan. If you would rather we build and manage the integration, that is from R299 a month, and included on Enterprise.
Exit terms. Month to month. No contract, no setup fee to recover, and your numbers port away if you leave. If we stop earning it, you go — which is a considerably better guarantee than anything we could write in a brochure.
The bottom line
Choosing well is mostly a matter of asking better questions than the ones a pricing page answers. Work out your concurrency, compare first-year totals rather than monthly rates, secure your numbers early, confirm the licence, and find out who answers the phone when it breaks.
Do that and the shortlist tends to make itself.
If you would rather not do the arithmetic yourself, send us your extension count and how many calls you need at once and we will come back with a first-year total for your setup — no contract to sign and no setup fee to recover. And if you want to check us against the market before you talk to anyone, the seven-provider comparison shows the full arithmetic, while our pricing is published in rands rather than quoted on request. Three of the providers in that comparison will not tell you what they cost until you are on a call.
