Talkroute is a virtual phone system that gives small businesses a professional phone presence without buying hardware or running cables. You get a business number (local, toll-free, or vanity), set up call routing rules, and your team answers calls on their existing phones, computers, or the Talkroute app. No desk phones required, no PBX boxes, no IT department.
I tested it for a 4-person team that needed a main business line with an auto-attendant ("Press 1 for sales, 2 for support") and call forwarding to different team members based on business hours. Setup took about 40 minutes. The web dashboard is straightforward. The call quality was consistently good on both desktop and mobile apps.
Pricing Breakdown
Four tiers, all billed monthly with no long-term contracts. Annual billing saves 17%.
Basic at $19/month gets you 1 user, 1 phone number, 500 text messages, unlimited US/Canada calling, voicemail, and video meetings for up to 100 participants. Plus at $39/month adds 3 users, 2 numbers, unlimited texting, a single-level IVR auto-attendant, extensions, live call transfer, and business hours scheduling. Pro at $59/month scales to 10 users and 3 numbers with multi-level IVR submenus, call recording, analytics, company directory, and HIPAA compliance (BAA support). Enterprise is custom pricing for 20+ users.
Additional users cost $5/month each. Extra phone numbers are $5/month. No hidden telecom taxes or regulatory surcharges, which is a nice change from providers that advertise $19 then charge $28 after fees.
The IVR System
The auto-attendant is the feature most small businesses actually need, and Talkroute handles it well. On the Plus plan, you get a single-level phone tree with up to 10 menu options. Record a custom greeting, assign each key press to forward to specific team members, departments, or voicemail boxes. Pro adds multi-level submenus for businesses with more complex routing needs.
Each menu option can route to mobile phones, desktop app users, extensions, or voicemail. You can set ring-all (every phone rings simultaneously) or ring-in-sequence (try one person, then the next). Business hours scheduling means after-hours calls go straight to voicemail with a different greeting. You can record custom greetings for each menu option or upload pre-recorded audio files.
What Surprised Me
Video meetings on all plans, including Basic. Up to 100 participants with screen sharing, whiteboard, file sharing, and recording. Most virtual phone systems treat video as an expensive add-on or skip it entirely. Having it included at $19/month is genuinely useful for small teams that need occasional video calls but don't want to pay for a separate Zoom subscription.
The pricing transparency also stands out. In an industry where "starting at $19" usually means "$31 after taxes, fees, and regulatory recovery charges," Talkroute's all-inclusive pricing is refreshing.
Start Talkroute Free Trial Get started →Where It Falls Short
Integration options are limited. Zapier is the only connection point. No native CRM integrations, no API, no direct hookups to HubSpot, Salesforce, or anything else. If your workflow depends on phone calls automatically logging to your CRM, Talkroute can't do that without Zapier as middleware.
US and Canada only. No international numbers, no international calling. If you have customers or team members outside North America, look at RingCentral instead.
Text messaging on Basic is capped at 500/month, and even on unlimited plans there's no text automation, no scheduled messages, no auto-replies. The texting feature feels like an afterthought compared to the voice capabilities.
Trustpilot reviews are polarized: 4.2/5 from 29 reviews, but it's almost entirely 5-star or 1-star ratings with nothing in between. The 1-star complaints focus on billing issues during the free trial period. G2 gives it 4.4/5 from about 25 reviews. Capterra shows 4.2/5 from 23 reviews. Solid but not spectacular.
How It Compares
Against Grasshopper ($14-80/month), Talkroute wins on features. Grasshopper has no video meetings, no call recording, no multi-level IVR. Against Google Voice ($10-30/user), Talkroute offers proper phone trees and toll-free numbers that Google Voice lacks. Against RingCentral ($20-35/user), Talkroute is simpler and cheaper but can't match RingCentral's 330+ integrations and international capabilities.
Additional users run just $5/month each and extra phone numbers cost $5/month, keeping the per-person economics favorable for small teams. Talkroute's sweet spot is small US/Canadian businesses with 1-10 people who need a professional phone system without enterprise complexity. If that's you, the Pro plan at $59/month for 10 users is hard to beat on value.
Try Talkroute for 7 Days Free Get started →Desktop, mobile, and web apps are all included on every plan, so your team can answer business calls from whatever device they have on hand. The 7-day free trial requires no credit card upfront according to their marketing, though some reviewers report different experiences. Test it yourself before committing. If the call quality and routing work for your setup, it's a straightforward tool that does exactly what it promises.
Visit Talkroute Get started →How Talkroute works
Talkroute is a cloud business phone system for small businesses that want a professional number, a menu and routing without buying hardware. You pick or port a number (local, toll-free, vanity, 800), then build the call flow around the phones you already own: auto attendant greetings, call menus with submenus and departments, dial-by-name and a staff directory, hours of operation, and forwarding rules for which devices ring.
Extensions are single-digit on Basic and Plus, and multi-digit (3 to 4) only on Pro. Call stacking handles simultaneous inbound calls with hold music, either from the library or uploaded. The apps cover macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and the browser, and texting works from desktop as well as mobile. On top of calling you get voicemail with transcription, SMS/MMS, call recording, and video meetings for up to 100 participants.
Reporting includes call logs, activity reports, detailed call paths showing how callers moved through your menus, and filtered exports. Integration runs through a public API plus Zapier for 1000's of other apps, with native webhooks listed as coming soon. Several things sit outside the base plan as add-ons: an AI Receptionist ($39 to $199 per month, in beta), Bulk Texting ($55 to $749 per month), and Voice Studio professional recordings at $20 each (Pro includes 5).
Where Talkroute wins
- A cheap entry point for a real phone system: $19/month with unlimited U.S. and Canada calling, no contract, and an all-inclusive price that folds telecom taxes in instead of surprising you on the invoice.
- Genuinely cross-platform, including a Linux desktop app, which almost no competitor ships.
- Call-path reporting shows how callers actually navigated your menus, which is exactly the data you need to fix a badly designed IVR.
- Unlimited call-recording storage on Pro, with permission controls over who can access recordings.
- Extra users, numbers and mailboxes cost a flat $5/month each rather than forcing a tier upgrade.
Where it falls short
- No outbound international calling at all. Talkroute states that outgoing calls made through the platform are limited to phone numbers in the U.S. and Canada, and inbound international calls to toll-free numbers will not complete.
- No fax. In Talkroute's words, it does not provide or support faxing at this time.
- SMS is metered at 500, 2,000 or 5,000 messages a month depending on plan, and heavier texting means buying the separate Bulk Texting add-on starting at $55/month.
- "Unlimited" has no published numbers behind it. The Reasonable Use Policy lets Talkroute throttle or restrict concurrent sessions, participant counts, call durations or message volumes, or move you to a metered plan, and it bans PBX trunking, auto-dialers and call blasting.
- Feature gating is aggressive at the bottom. Basic has no call menus at all and only 1 number and 1 mailbox; multi-digit extensions and call recording are Pro-only.
- Integrations are thin: an API and Zapier, no native CRM connectors, webhooks still coming soon, a 7-day free trial and no free tier.
Who should use Talkroute
Talkroute suits U.S. and Canada small businesses, solo professionals and distributed teams that need a credible main line with a menu and extensions layered on top of the cell phones everyone already carries, and that would rather have flat, predictable pricing than deep software integration. The Linux and browser apps make it easy to standardize across a mixed team, and the $5 flat rate for extra users and numbers means growth does not immediately force a tier jump.
Rule it out if you need outbound international calling, fax, high-volume SMS without a paid add-on, a native CRM integration, or contact-center features such as queues with agent assignment. If you land on it, budget for Pro rather than Basic: without call menus, multi-digit extensions or call recording, the entry plan is closer to a forwarding service than a phone system.
