Search for “cloud phone” and you’ll get two completely different products in the results: virtual Android devices hosted on remote servers, and internet-based business calling systems that replace office PBX hardware. They share a name and a “the phone lives in the cloud, not in your hand” premise, but beyond that, they solve different problems…

A business cloud phone system — also called cloud telephony, a hosted PBX, or a cloud-based phone system — replaces a company’s physical phone lines and on-premise PBX hardware with calling delivered entirely over the internet. Instead of a phone closet full of equipment, call routing, voicemail, and call recording all happen on a provider’s…

A cloud phone is a virtual Android device that runs on a remote server instead of on hardware in your hand. You see and control it through a streaming client on a computer, tablet, or another phone, while the operating system, apps, storage, and processing all happen in a data center. It looks and behaves…