Voys alternatives
Weighing up Voys for your business phones, or wondering whether you are paying for more than you use? Here are four South African providers worth comparing, each ranked by what it is genuinely best at: price, features, reliability, and how openly it is priced. (Cloud PBX just means a business phone system that runs over the internet instead of old phone lines.)
Voys sells one thing simply: a single flat price per user (R420 a month for one to three users, R365 from the fourth) with national calls in the rate, no contract and no setup fee. It scores 7.8/10 in our review, with an unusually strong customer-satisfaction record. The catch is the level – per user, Voys sits well above South African providers that bill per extension, so the bundled calls have to earn the difference. If you are comparing, the right alternative comes down to the one thing that matters most to you.
- Lowest price – Switch Telecom
- Reliability & one supplier – Centracom
- Run it yourself – 3CX
- Busy phone teams – Telviva
Stay with Voys if your team calls enough for bundled national minutes to beat per-minute billing, and you want one flat price with no lock-in.
Whichever you pick, you can add WhichVoIP AI Reception – our own AI answering service, not one of the providers compared here – on top of any of them.
What is Voys?
Voys is a business phone provider run from Cape Town that builds and operates its own Cloud PBX platform, Freedom, rather than reselling someone else’s. The group started in the Netherlands in 2006 and came to South Africa in 2013; it is steward-owned and self-managed, sells a single all-inclusive per-user plan with national calls included, and scores 7.8/10 in our review.
How do the Voys alternatives compare?
Four vetted South African alternatives, with Voys as the reference row. Every score breakdown below is the real per-dimension score from that provider’s WhichVoIP review – the green figure is where each one leads.
| Provider | Best for | From /line | Score breakdown | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Switch Telecom | Lowest price | R52/line | 9.2PRICE
8.8FEAT
8.9RELY
8.7SUPP
|
8.6 |
| Centracom | Reliability & one supplier | On request | 6.8PRICE
8.5FEAT
9.2RELY
7.2SUPP
|
7.4 |
| 3CX | Run it yourself | Free <10 users | 8.0PRICE
8.5FEAT
7.2RELY
7.3SUPP
|
7.9 |
| Telviva | Busy phone teams | On request | 7.0PRICE
8.0FEAT
8.0RELY
6.8SUPP
|
7.3 |
| Voys | Calls included, no contract | R420/user (R365 at 4+) | 7.0PRICE
8.0FEAT
8.0RELY
8.0TRUST
|
7.8 |
Score breakdown key: PRICE = pricing value, FEAT = feature set, RELY = reliability, SUPP = support quality. Each is scored out of 10, with pricing value and feature set weighted most (25% each), customer reviews 20%, reliability and support 15% each; the green figure is each provider’s leading dimension. Scores are pulled from each provider’s live WhichVoIP review, verified July 2026 and re-checked against the WhichVoIP record on 4 September 2026. Note the units differ: Voys bills a flat rate per user with national calls included, while Switch bills per line plus per-minute calls, so compare on your actual call volume, not the headline rate alone. Centracom and Telviva are quote-based and 3CX is licence-based, so their per-line cost is confirmed on request. All rates exclude 15% VAT.
What actually pushes a business off Voys?
Feature lists rarely explain a real switch. Businesses move providers for three structural reasons: no enforceable uptime guarantee, a hardware or ownership model that does not fit, or having to run voice and connectivity as two separate contracts. Here is how Voys and the four alternatives actually compare on those three.
| Provider | Uptime SLA | Hardware & ownership | Bundled connectivity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Switch Telecom | No published SLA with service credits – a “Business & Corporate” standby tier exists but carries no numeric guarantee. | Softphone from day one; desk phones are optional, bought outright (R897–R2,967), never leased. | No – voice/UC only, no connectivity of its own. |
| 3CX | No SLA to publish – it is software you or your host run, so uptime is whoever is hosting it, not 3CX’s promise. | Full control: on-premise, self-hosted, or 3CX-hosted, bring your own trunk. | No – BYO-trunk by design, always a separate purchase. |
| Centracom | Publishes a 99.9% uptime target – get it in writing as a contractual SLA with credits before treating it as a guarantee. | BYOD – works on your existing IP phone, softphone, or mobile app. | Yes – the only one of these four selling voice, data and connectivity as one contract. |
| Telviva | No numeric SLA published – “uptime guarantees” are referenced qualitatively, without a percentage or remedy. | Device-agnostic – any device, any mode, no proprietary hardware required. | No – UCaaS/CCaaS only, connectivity is your own. |
| Voys | Publishes “99.9% service uptime” as a track-record claim, though its own hero banner elsewhere states 99% – neither is framed as a credited contractual SLA. | Softphone/webphone-first (app and web portal); physical desk phones are an optional add-on, purchase-or-rental terms not published. | No – VoIP only, runs over whatever broadband you already have. |
Structural facts verified against each provider’s own site, August 2026. Centracom’s and Voys’ uptime figures are presented as published by each provider and have not been independently confirmed as contractual SLAs with service credits – treat them as claims to verify, not guarantees. Voys’ own site is also internally inconsistent between 99% and 99.9%.
Which Voys alternative fits you?
Answer two quick questions for a pick, or read the plain guide below it.
- Choose Switch Telecom if you want a published, low per-line price and only need voice – just know its uptime SLA is not published either, so like Voys the number is not confirmed as a credited guarantee, only a track-record claim at best.
- Choose Centracom if the two-vendor problem is what you are escaping – it is the only one of these four that bundles voice, data and connectivity under one supplier and one invoice, which Voys does not do. Ask for its uptime figure as a written, credited SLA rather than a published target.
- Choose 3CX if the real draw is not owning your own platform – on-premise, self-hosted or 3CX-hosted, you control it end to end instead of depending on anyone else’s SLA at all.
- Choose Telviva if what you actually need is contact-centre tooling – voice, video, chat and WhatsApp in one locally hosted platform. Like Voys, no confirmed numeric SLA is published here either, so the case is capability, not a stronger guarantee.
- Stay with Voys if its softphone-first, no-hardware-lock-in model already suits you – but ask which of its two published uptime figures, 99% or 99.9%, is the one it will actually put in writing.
The four alternatives in detail
Switch Telecom
Strength: A published VoIP line from R52 a month with free installation and month-to-month terms, or a hosted switchboard at R260 per ten extensions (about R26 an extension) with a SIP trunk priced separately from R100 – the lowest verified entry point in this group.
Watch-out: Calls are billed per minute on top of the line rental, so a heavy-calling team should price its real minutes before assuming it is cheaper.
Switching trigger: No published uptime SLA either – like Voys, there is no credited guarantee here, only a track-record claim. The real draw is South African ownership and price.
I continue to be impressed with the wonderful service from Switch Telecom. Good personal service is rare these days.Di Kilpert, Google review, July 2025
Centracom
Strength: Connectivity and voice from a single provider, with strong regional resilience and local presence – one supplier to call when something needs fixing.
Watch-out: Pricing is quote-based, so there is no published per-line rate to compare up front.
Switching trigger: The only one of these four that bundles voice, data and connectivity under one contract – a gap Voys does not fill. Its 99.9% uptime is a published target, not a confirmed contractual SLA – get it written in with service credits.
We recently had an incredible experience with Centracom and felt compelled to share. The level of service provided was excellent, from start to finish.Verified customer, Google review, May 2025
3CX
Strength: Licensed by simultaneous call rather than per user, self-hosted or in the cloud, free for up to 10 users, with deep CRM integrations built in – the opposite of a per-user model if you have many extensions but modest concurrent calls.
Watch-out: It is a platform, not a managed service – you or a reseller handle setup, numbers and support.
Switching trigger: Full deployment control – on-premise, self-hosted or 3CX-hosted – is the actual draw. There is no SLA to compare because you, or your host, own the uptime outcome.
4.4 stars across 546 reviews: IT buyers consistently praise the cost savings, the flexibility and the ease of use, alongside strong CRM integrations.G2 software-buyer rating, 546 reviews
Telviva
Strength: Managed unified communications with real contact-centre tooling – voice, video, chat and WhatsApp in one login.
Watch-out: Quote-based pricing with a once-off setup fee, so it is overkill for a small office that just wants cheap dial-tone.
Switching trigger: No confirmed numeric SLA published here either – like Voys, the pull is capability, not a stronger uptime commitment.
Great ICT provider with awesome support team.T231, Google review, 2018 – more recent Telviva reviews are shorter but consistently positive
How we compare, and what we earn
We do not sell the VoIP or Cloud PBX services compared here, and we earn nothing on which provider you choose. Every provider is scored against the same rubric – pricing value, feature set, reliability, and support quality – with pricing value and feature set weighted most (25% each), customer reviews 20%, reliability and support 15% each. Read our full editorial policy and scoring methodology.
Sources: Scores and pricing verified July 2026 at primary sources – each provider’s live WhichVoIP review, their review score breakdowns and published rate cards, including Voys’s own published per-user pricing and Switch Telecom’s published line and switchboard rates. Customer quotes are independent, verified Google and G2 reviews cited from each provider’s review, with the review date shown. Quote-based and licence-based pricing is noted as such; confirm current rates directly. All rates exclude 15% VAT.
Not sure which fits?
Tell us your team size and what matters most – we will match you to vetted South African providers. WhichVoIP does not sell the services compared here and earns nothing on which provider you choose, so the comparison stays neutral.
Get free quotes →Voys alternatives: common questions
See all recommendations at a glance
| By size \ For | Price & value | Capabilities | Customer experience | Reliability & local |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOHO (1–5) | Switch Telecom8.6 | 3CX7.9 | Switch Telecom8.6 | Switch Telecom8.6 |
| Small (5–20) | Switch Telecom8.6 | Telviva7.3 | Switch Telecom8.6 | Switch Telecom8.6 |
| Growing SME (20–50) | Switch Telecom8.6 | Telviva7.3 | Telviva7.3 | Centracom7.4 |
| Enterprise · CC (50+) | Centracom7.4 | Telviva7.3 | Telviva7.3 | Centracom7.4 |