Auto Attendant vs Google Voice

First, Google Voice is two different products

Almost every comparison of Google Voice gets this wrong, and it matters more than any feature. Google Voice is not one product with three tiers. It is two separate product families that happen to share the tier names Starter, Standard and Premier, plus a free consumer plan.

• Standalone Voice is bought with a personal Google account, needs no Google Workspace subscription, and supports a maximum of one user. It is US only.3
• Voice as a Workspace add-on requires a paid Google Workspace subscription first — "Your organization needs Google Workspace before you can buy a Voice add-on subscription"5 — and is the only way to have multiple users. Google states it plainly on the product page: "Workspace is required to enable Voice for multiple users in your organization."1
• The free plan is described by Google as "for personal, consumer use".2

What it actually costs a team

Google's list prices, from Google's own pages: Starter $10, Standard $20, Premier $30, each per user per month.1 Billing is explicitly per licence — "You're charged monthly for the number of Voice licenses you assign to users"4 — and the currency is USD.4

For a team, Workspace is an additional and separate subscription. Google Workspace list prices are Business Starter $7.00, Business Standard $14.00 and Business Plus $22.00 per user per month, and that page notes "Price is per user/month and does not include tax".6

There is a second wrinkle. Voice Starter has no auto attendant and no ring groups — both are documented as "available with the Voice Standard and Premier subscriptions".78 So a team that wants the thing this site is named after is comparing against Workspace plus Voice Standard, not Starter.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Prices are Google's list prices retrieved on the date at the top of this page. Both Google pages carried time-limited promotional discounts when we checked; we quote list, because a promotion is not a price you can plan around. Verify before you buy.

The auto attendant question

Google's own term is "automated attendant (auto attendant)".7 Here is what is true, stated carefully, because this is where stale blog claims do the most damage.

Google Voice does have a real multi-level auto attendant. It is not a single-level toy. The documentation describes sending a caller to a submenu — "Continue to a submenu — Direct callers to another menu" — and transferring between attendants.7 Anyone telling you Google Voice cannot nest menus is working from out-of-date information.

It is gated to Standard and Premier. "This feature is available with the Voice Standard and Premier subscriptions."7 Starter does not have it, and neither does the free plan.

Ring groups are also Standard and Premier, and Google calls them "Ring groups, also called hunt groups", supporting up to 50 members.8 Because a ring group means several people, it requires the Workspace add-on rather than the one-user standalone plan.2

So the honest summary is not "Google Voice has no auto attendant". It is: Google Voice has a capable auto attendant, and reaching it costs $20 per user per month on top of a Workspace subscription.

About the free plan, precisely

Google describes the free consumer plan as being "for personal, consumer use"2 and it remains a current, listed subscription type. We found no Google announcement that it is being discontinued, and this page will not imply otherwise.

One more trap worth naming: "Google Voice Personal" is a paid product, not the free one, and its terms state "These services and features are for business use."16 Anyone conflating the two is describing something that does not exist.

Where each one works

Google Voice business tiers offer numbers in 14 countries and regions: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US.10 American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are excluded.10

Standalone plans and the free plan are US only.3

"Not available in country X" is often too blunt. SIP Link and Carrier Link let you bring numbers from your own carrier in a much longer list of countries — including Australia, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa and others — because "SIP/Carrier Link is also available in countries where first-party calling is not available."10

Getting your number in, and out again

Porting out is supported, documented and cheap. Unlocking a Google Voice number costs $3, and "if your number was originally ported in from another carrier, there's no charge."11 Google Voice is not a number-hostage situation, which is more than can be said for parts of this industry.

Porting a consumer mobile number in costs $20, takes up to 48 hours for calls, and Google warns that "Not all mobile numbers can be ported into Google Voice."11

Two constraints are worth knowing before you commit, because they are discovered painfully at migration time:

• Toll-free numbers cannot be ported in. Google lists them first among numbers you cannot port.12 A business advertising an 800 number cannot bring it.
• In European countries, mobile, VoIP and nomadic numbers cannot be ported in either12 — effectively leaving geographic landline numbers only.

Business ports run through an administrator, need a signed letter of authorization uploaded "within 7 days of creating the port order", and are limited to one wireless number per order.13 Published timelines vary sharply by country: Canada 4 business days, Germany, Belgium and Denmark 13, France 18, Italy and Sweden 20.13

Google's advice on both directions is the same as ours and is the single most important rule in number porting: "Don't cancel your existing service or Voice until Voice notifies you that the number port is complete."12 We cover the mechanics generally on porting your existing number.

What Google Voice includes that Auto Attendant does not

Google Voice is a full phone service, so its plans carry features outside an inbound menu. Desk phone and ATA support is documented across its plans,315 Standard and above allow unlimited users,1 manual call recording is "available for all paid Voice services" with automatic recording on Premier,14 and Premier adds Google Vault and BigQuery reporting.151 Auto Attendant answers incoming calls only: one menu level of up to seven options, each ringing up to three phones in turn, taking a voicemail or playing a message, with voicemails recorded but not calls, and no texting.

Where Auto Attendant fits

For a team whose people already carry mobiles they are happy with, the calculation above is the case for a flat price. Reaching Google's auto attendant means a Voice Standard licence for every user on top of a Workspace subscription; Auto Attendant is one charge per line, however many of the up to seven menu options ring a different person.

• No per-seat licences. Five people on a menu cost the same $29 a month as one, against $135 a month on the Workspace plus Voice Standard path in the table above.
• The team keeps its own mobiles. Calls arrive as ordinary incoming calls showing the business number; nobody installs an app or signs into a Google account to take them.
• No Workspace prerequisite. You do not need to move email, documents or identity to Google to put a menu on your number.
• Set up online. Keep the number your customers already call (porting is done in the app, and nothing is charged until the number has moved) or pick a new one, then write the menu and choose the phone each option rings.

For the wider field, the long-form Google Voice alternatives article sorts the market by the constraint you actually hit, with current per-user and flat pricing and country coverage for each.