Grasshopper (True Solo / Solo Plus) review 2027

What problem does Grasshopper solve for a small business?

Grasshopper gives a small business a professional front without giving everyone a desk phone. That is the whole job, and it does it neatly. You keep the handset you already carry, and work calls stay separate from personal ones. Business texting and a proper auto-attendant are included, and you are working in minutes with no hardware to buy or install.

The arithmetic is the other half of the pitch. Grasshopper is priced per account, not per user, so five people share the $80 Small Business plan. For freelancers and businesses of one to five, that is the reason to look at it at all. Ask it to be a phone system and it is not one — but that is not what it is selling.

How did Grasshopper score in our testing?

Grasshopper finished on 7.2 out of 10, eighth of the eight systems in this category. The breakdown shows exactly where the points went.

• Call quality & reliability — 21 of 30. We blind-scored 40 recorded calls per system on the same connection, then weighed dropped calls, jitter under load and the provider's published uptime. Calls route over the mobile network, so quality is your carrier's, and Grasshopper publishes no uptime SLA.
• Features — 14 of 25. This is where it lost. Auto-attendant, ring groups, voicemail transcription, SMS, video meetings, call recording, analytics and what sits behind a higher tier were all measured. There is no video, no recording, and no ring groups or queues.
• Setup & admin — 15 of 15. A full score. We timed sign-up to a working number, porting an existing number, the admin console and desk-phone support. Grasshopper produced a working number in 5 min.
• Integrations — 6 of 10. CRM, helpdesk, Microsoft and Google integration, and the API. Few integrations here.
• Value — 16 of 20. Monthly cost for five users on the plan our office actually needed, at annual billing, including the fees and taxes we were quoted.

Where does Grasshopper stand out?

Setup is the clean win: a working number in 5 min, no hardware, and a perfect 15 of 15 on that criterion. The per-account pricing is the second. Five people share the $80 Small Business plan rather than paying per seat, which is what makes the entry plan at $18 USD/user/mo behave differently for a tiny team than a per-user bill would.

Day to day, the useful parts are the ones a solo owner actually touches: business texting, a proper auto-attendant, and work and personal calls kept apart on one handset. Nothing here needs a desk phone or an installer.

What do you actually get?

The spec sheet is short, and that is the point.

• Entry plan: 18 USD/user/mo
• Five users: 80 USD/mo
• Unlimited US calling: Yes, US and Canada
• Business SMS: Yes
• Video meetings: No
• Call recording: No
• Voicemail transcription: Yes, voicemail
• Published uptime SLA: Not published as an SLA
• Call quality (our score): 4.1 /5

Nine rows, and three of them are absences. The 4.1 /5 call quality score is the lowest of the systems we compared, and it follows from the architecture: calls ride the mobile network, so the ceiling is your carrier's, not Grasshopper's.

How does Grasshopper compare with the rivals we tested?

RingCentral scored 8.6 at $20, with the best call quality in our test at 4.6 /5, a 99.999% uptime commitment and an integration for nearly everything. Nextiva scored 8.4 at $20 with 4.5 /5 call quality and the best support in the test. Zoom Phone scored 8.5 at $15 and bolts phone service onto the meeting app your team already opens. Dialpad scored 8.3 at $15 with live transcription accurate enough to read instead of listening. 8x8 Work scored 7.8 at $24 with unlimited calling to 14 countries on the entry plan.

Grasshopper is ahead of all of them on one thing only: setup, where it took the full 15 of 15 and produced a working number in 5 min. On features it is behind every rival listed here, and its 4.1 /5 call quality sits below all five.

Where does Grasshopper fall short?

Features. That is the single word our notes reduce to, and the test cons back it up.

• Calls route over the mobile network, so quality is your carrier's.
• No video meetings, no call recording, few integrations.
• Not a full phone system — no ring groups or queues.

The 14 of 25 on features and 6 of 10 on integrations are the cost of that. If your team needs to hand a call around a group, record it for training, or push call data into a CRM without building it yourself, Grasshopper is the wrong shape.

Is Grasshopper good value?

At $18 USD/user/mo on the entry plan, and $80/mo for five users on the Small Business plan, the value score came in at 16 of 20 — the strongest criterion after setup. The per-account model is what earns it: five people share one plan rather than each carrying a seat. For a team of one to five, that is the number that matters.

Who should buy Grasshopper?

Freelancers and businesses of one to five. If you want a business number, an auto-attendant and texting layered over the phone already in your pocket, priced per account rather than per user, Grasshopper does that in 5 min with no hardware. If you need video, recording, ring groups or queues, look at the higher-scoring systems above instead.