Our pick · Verified 19 August 2026
KrispCall — local numbers in 100+ countries at the lowest serious entry price
Essential from $12/user/mo billed annually · calls and SMS charged separately
For a multi-site study the binding constraint is usually geography: a participant in Nairobi or Warsaw is far more likely to answer a local number than an international one, and your coordinators should not be using their own handsets to find out. KrispCall sells virtual numbers across 100+ countries and puts calls, SMS and voicemail in one shared inbox, at an entry price around $12 per user per month billed annually — the cheapest credible option in the category. The honest catch, which we cover in detail below: that price buys the platform and one number, not the calls.
See KrispCall pricing Opens on the vendor’s site · CASRAI referral link
Handling PHI on these calls? Read this first → — We could not confirm that KrispCall offers a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. If your calls involve protected health information, verify that directly before you buy anything.
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In summary
- KrispCall Essential is around $15/user/month, or $12 billed annually, for up to 5 users with one free US, Canada or UK number each. Standard is around $40/user/month ($32 annually) for unlimited users, API access and call monitoring.
- Calls and SMS are billed pay-as-you-go on top of the subscription, and numbers outside the US, Canada and UK are a paid add-on. The headline price is not your bill.
- Pricing here came from third-party aggregators, not the vendor page — KrispCall blocks automated access, so treat the figures as indicative and check the live rate.
- The real research use case is participant-facing numbers that are not someone’s personal mobile — an ethics point as much as a convenience one.
- Do not buy a phone system if your actual need is one shared voicemail box for one study. A single number and an answerphone is cheaper and adequate.
What actually drives the cost
The five variables that decide a business phone bill, in the order they bite
| Dimension | Variable | Why it decides your bill |
|---|---|---|
| Per-user licensing | Almost every vendor charges per seat, per month | The advertised figure. It is also the smallest part of the bill for any team that actually makes calls |
| Call and SMS usage | Charged per minute and per message on top | The line that surprises people. A recruitment push with hundreds of outbound calls costs far more in usage than in seats |
| Numbers | One free number per user is typical, US/CA/UK only | Every additional country is an add-on. A five-country study is five recurring number charges before anyone dials |
| Recording storage | Often capped on entry tiers | Qualitative interview recordings are long. Storage limits push you up a tier faster than seat count does |
| Contract term | Annual billing is usually ~20% cheaper | Fine for a standing office; a poor fit for a phone line that only needs to exist during an 8-month recruitment window |
We do not quote competitor prices anywhere on this page. We publish a price only when we have read it off a vendor page and can date-stamp it, and most of this category quotes rather than lists.
Why a research team ends up needing one
Four situations drive this, and none of them appear in a vendor’s sales deck.
Coordinators handing out personal mobile numbers. This is the most common and the least examined. A study coordinator rings participants to arrange visits, and does it from their own phone because nothing else exists. The participant now has a private number for a named individual, retains it after the study ends, and may call it at any hour. The coordinator has no way to separate work from life, and when they leave the study the continuity simply breaks. Ethics committees increasingly ask how participants will contact the study team, and “someone’s mobile” is a poor answer.
Multi-country recruitment. Answer rates for unknown international numbers are poor, and in some markets they are close to zero. A local number is not a vanity feature — it is the difference between reaching your sample and not. This is where virtual numbers across many countries genuinely earn the subscription.
A study line that outlives its owner. Grants run for years and staff turn over. A number attached to the study rather than to a person means the helpline in your participant information sheet still works in year three.
Records. Who called whom, when, and what was agreed. For a trial with protocol-defined contact windows, a call log is evidence. Reconstructing it from personal phone bills is not something anyone wants to do at a monitoring visit.
The advertised price is not your bill
Every business phone vendor advertises a per-user monthly figure, and for a team that actually makes calls that figure is the smaller half of the cost. Three things sit on top.
Usage. Calls and SMS are billed per minute and per segment. For an office that mostly receives calls this is negligible. For a recruitment campaign making several hundred outbound calls a month — often to mobiles, often internationally, both of which cost more — usage can exceed the subscription several times over. Ask for the per-minute rate to the specific countries you will be dialling, not the headline domestic rate.
Numbers beyond the free one. On KrispCall, the free number that comes with a seat is a US, Canadian or UK one; numbers elsewhere are a paid add-on. A study running in four countries therefore carries four recurring number charges regardless of how many people are on the account. That is normal for the category, and it is the line most likely to be missing from a first budget.
Recording storage. If you are recording interviews, storage limits on entry tiers will bind before anything else does. Qualitative interviews run to an hour; a study with sixty participants generates a lot of audio.
Practical advice: price a realistic month rather than the sticker. Take your expected call minutes, your country list and your recording volume to the vendor and ask for a worked figure. If a grant is paying, that worked figure is what belongs in the budget — and it needs to be there before the award, because adding a communications line later is far harder than including it up front.
Call recording is a consent problem before it is a feature
Call recording is on every feature list and it is the part with real legal weight attached.
Consent law varies and it varies within countries. Several US states require all parties to a call to consent to recording, not just one; others require only one. In the UK and EU, recording a call that captures personal data engages UK GDPR or the GDPR, which means you need a lawful basis, a retention period and a transparency notice — and for research the basis is rarely simply “we told them at the start.” Recording a participant across a border can engage both regimes at once.
For human-subjects research, recording is a protocol matter. If you intend to record participant calls, that belongs in the protocol and the consent documentation your ethics committee approved, with the participant told what is recorded, why, who can hear it, how long it is kept and how to decline. Switching recording on because the platform makes it easy is a protocol deviation waiting to be found.
Where the audio lives matters as much as whether you record. Recordings of participants are personal data, frequently special-category data if health is discussed. Storing them on a vendor’s cloud means a data-processing agreement, a documented transfer mechanism if the vendor is outside your jurisdiction, and a retention schedule that someone actually enforces. Your DPO should see this before the first call, not after.
None of this makes recording wrong — for qualitative research it is often essential, and a good recording beats a coordinator’s notes every time. It makes recording a thing to design rather than a checkbox to tick.
If your calls involve health information
We want to be direct about a limit in our own research here rather than glossing it.
If your calls will involve protected health information — discussing a participant’s condition, confirming clinical details, taking a symptom report — then under HIPAA the vendor handling those calls is a business associate, and you need a signed Business Associate Agreement. That requirement is not satisfied by encryption, by a security page, or by a vendor describing itself as “secure”. It is satisfied by a signed BAA and nothing else. We cover the principle in full on our business associate agreement guide and our HIPAA-compliant fax page.
We could not confirm that KrispCall offers a BAA. We looked and found no evidence either way. That is not the same as saying it does not — it means we do not know, and we are not going to imply coverage we have not verified. If PHI is in scope for your calls, ask KrispCall directly and get the answer in writing before you buy. If they will not sign one, they are not the right tool for that particular use, whatever else they do well.
Worth separating the two cases, because they are frequently conflated: scheduling calls that merely confirm an appointment time usually carry far less exposure than clinical calls that discuss a condition. Plenty of research telephony is the former. Decide which you are actually doing before you decide what you need to buy.
What to check before signing
- Per-minute rates to your actual countries, not the domestic headline. Get them in writing.
- What the free number covers. On most platforms it is US/CA/UK only; everywhere else recurs monthly.
- Number portability. If the number goes in a participant information sheet, you need to know you can take it with you. Ask before you print anything.
- Data residency and the sub-processor list, for your DPO. Non-negotiable if you record.
- What happens at the end of the contract — can you export call logs and recordings, in what format, and for how long are they retrievable?
- Whether the term matches the grant. Annual billing is cheaper and awkward for a line that only needs to exist during a recruitment window.
- Mobile app quality. Coordinators are not at a desk. If the app is poor, people revert to personal phones and you have bought nothing.
When not to buy one at all
One study, one line, low volume. If the requirement is a single number that participants can ring and leave a message on, a basic virtual number with voicemail costs a fraction of a per-seat platform and does the job. Buying a multi-user system for this is over-specification.
Your institution already provides one. Many universities run a telephony platform that can issue a departmental number and a queue. It is often unloved and rarely advertised, but it is already paid for, already covered by institutional agreements, and already assessed by IT — which removes an entire procurement and data-protection conversation. Ask before buying.
You will not staff it. A number in a participant information sheet that rings out is worse than no number at all. If nobody owns answering it, the system is not the missing piece.
You need PHI coverage and cannot confirm a BAA. Covered above. That is a hard stop, not a risk to price in.
Price a realistic month, not the sticker
Take your expected call minutes, the countries you will actually be dialling and your recording volume, and get a worked figure. That number is what belongs in a grant budget — the per-seat headline is not.
Essential from $12/user/mo billed annually
See KrispCall pricing Opens on the vendor’s site · CASRAI referral link
Frequently asked questions
What is the best business phone system for a research team?
For multi-country study teams the deciding feature is local virtual numbers, and KrispCall covers 100+ countries at around $12 per user per month billed annually — the lowest serious entry price in the category. If all your calls are domestic and low-volume, a single virtual number with voicemail is cheaper and adequate.
How much does a business phone system cost?
KrispCall Essential is around $15 per user per month, or $12 billed annually, for up to five users with one free US, Canada or UK number each; Standard is around $40 per user per month ($32 annually) for unlimited users and API access. Calls and SMS are billed pay-as-you-go on top and additional-country numbers are an add-on, so the subscription is not the whole bill.
Why do you hedge on KrispCall’s pricing?
Because KrispCall blocks automated access to its own pricing page — we got HTTP 403 on both the pricing page and the homepage when we checked on 19 August 2026. These figures come from third-party pricing and review aggregators and are consistent across them, but they are not the vendor page, and every other price on this site is. Check the live rate before committing.
Is KrispCall HIPAA compliant?
We could not confirm that it offers a Business Associate Agreement, and we are not going to imply coverage we have not verified. If your calls will involve protected health information you need a signed BAA — ask KrispCall directly and get it in writing before buying. Encryption and a security page do not substitute for one.
Can we record participant calls?
Technically yes on most platforms, but treat it as a consent and protocol question first. Some US states require all parties to consent, UK and EU recording engages data protection law, and for human-subjects research the recording should be described in the protocol and consent documentation your ethics committee approved. Also settle where the audio is stored and for how long.
Do we need a phone system if coordinators already have mobiles?
That is the situation most worth fixing. Participants end up holding a named individual’s private number indefinitely, the coordinator cannot separate work from life, and continuity breaks when they leave the study. A study-owned number solves all three, and ethics committees increasingly ask how participants will contact the team.
What is a virtual phone number?
A number not tied to a physical line or SIM — calls route over the internet to whichever device or app you choose. That is what makes it possible to hold a local number in a country you have no office in, and to keep the number attached to a study rather than to a person.
