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Google Voice vs Grasshopper
March 15, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
22★
Google Voice is a telephone service that provides call forwarding and voicemail services, voice and text messaging as well as international call termination for Google Account owners and for G Suite customers.
13★
A virtual phone system can help your business stay organized with many calls coming in. Sound professional and stay connected.
Google Voice and Grasshopper are, in many ways, two sides of the same peculiar, phone-shaped coin. They both let you have a number that isn’t tied to a physical phone, which is fantastically useful if you enjoy being unreachable in an organized fashion. You can text, call and even marvel at voicemail transcriptions that range from eerily accurate to something that sounds like a poetic ransom note. They exist on the web and in apps, ensuring that your phone calls are never more than a mildly inconvenient tap away. And, most importantly, they both pretend to be indispensable for small businesses, even if those businesses mostly consist of one overworked human and a cat that enjoys sitting on keyboards.
Google Voice arrived in 2009, presumably after a long existential debate at Google about whether people actually wanted to talk on the phone anymore. It’s a U.S.-based service that integrates beautifully with Google’s other offerings, meaning you can miss calls in Gmail just as easily as you miss emails. It’s free for personal users, making it a budget-conscious choice for freelancers, consultants and people who like getting things for free. However, it’s not exactly a powerhouse of professionalism—no fancy call routing, no impressive auto-attendants, just a straightforward way to make calls without revealing your real number, which is either a blessing or a sign that you should reconsider your life choices.
Grasshopper, on the other hand, predates Google Voice by a solid six years, having been around since 2003, possibly because someone thought it was a good idea to name a phone service after an insect. Unlike its Google counterpart, it caters more to small businesses that want to sound important without hiring an actual receptionist. It costs more, but it also gives you things like toll-free numbers and virtual receptionists that politely herd your callers into different extensions. It’s available in the U.S. and Canada, for those who wish to remain professionally elusive in multiple countries. If Google Voice is the scrappy sidekick of digital telephony, Grasshopper is the polished business suit, albeit one that occasionally forgets where it left its tie.
See also: Top 10 Business Phone systems
Google Voice arrived in 2009, presumably after a long existential debate at Google about whether people actually wanted to talk on the phone anymore. It’s a U.S.-based service that integrates beautifully with Google’s other offerings, meaning you can miss calls in Gmail just as easily as you miss emails. It’s free for personal users, making it a budget-conscious choice for freelancers, consultants and people who like getting things for free. However, it’s not exactly a powerhouse of professionalism—no fancy call routing, no impressive auto-attendants, just a straightforward way to make calls without revealing your real number, which is either a blessing or a sign that you should reconsider your life choices.
Grasshopper, on the other hand, predates Google Voice by a solid six years, having been around since 2003, possibly because someone thought it was a good idea to name a phone service after an insect. Unlike its Google counterpart, it caters more to small businesses that want to sound important without hiring an actual receptionist. It costs more, but it also gives you things like toll-free numbers and virtual receptionists that politely herd your callers into different extensions. It’s available in the U.S. and Canada, for those who wish to remain professionally elusive in multiple countries. If Google Voice is the scrappy sidekick of digital telephony, Grasshopper is the polished business suit, albeit one that occasionally forgets where it left its tie.
See also: Top 10 Business Phone systems
