SIP or VoIP: What’s Best For Your Business Needs?

Both SIP-based systems and VoIP infrastructures are modern-day technologies that are helping several businesses struggling with traditional phone systems to boost their customer service, lower expenses, and add impeccable voice calling capabilities. 

While VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) allows businesses to seamlessly enable voice calls over the Internet, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), on the other hand, helps integrate advanced features like video conferencing, messaging, and even CRM tools.

And quite often businesses tend to mistakenly take both the protocols to be the same, while both SIP and VoIP go hand-in-hand in rendering scalable and efficient solutions. That is why I have come up with this post, which explains the major differences between the two solutions and helps you select the right technology for great operational success. 

What is VoIP?

VoIP, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol, is a technology service that helps businesses to make and receive calls over the network without using any traditional public switched telephone network lines. And it works by converting voice analog signals into digital data packets, thus ensuring costs are reduced and quality is not compromised.

Some of the unique features of VoIP include versatility, improved communication, deployment flexibility, and reduced costs.

Do you know? Voice over IP APIs allow developers to build VoIP calling apps with communication features like voicemails, call forwarding, and much more.

What is SIP?

A SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a software that is used primarily to start, modify, and end instant and real-time communication sessions over the internet. And mostly SIP acts as an enabler for VoIP in helping the latter work better by adding advanced capabilities like instant messaging, multimedia conferencing, video calls, and more. 

Some of the unique features of the SIP software include easy connectivity, seamless integration, omnichannel communication, and quick scalability. 

SIP vs. VoIP: Key Differences 

Below, we will see some of the major differences between SIP and VoIP calling solutions that might help you make the right decision for your business in the long run. 

1. Scope of Communication

We know that people usually get along socially well with each other through different communication modes. And by clearly communicating, we can share our feelings, build relationships, and understand each other better. Also, conversing crisply helps motivate humans and make them ready for challenges. 

So, the scope of communication here refers to the different areas such as social community interactions, business meetings, international meetups, and even personal chats where communication can be used to achieve the above-mentioned goals. And as an aid, VoIP helps people to make voice calls over the internet and SIP is used to add exquisite features like messaging, file sharing, multimedia capabilities, and video conferencing. 

2. Technology Type

A technology is either a tool or a system that is built to help users or people solve problems and make tasks easier in some way. And with years passing by, we can see tremendous technological advancements that are all aimed at making processes even simpler. As we speak about technology, there are different types of it, each with unique functions that help businesses make processes efficient. For example, the Internet, which we are so much into, is a technology type that makes communication easier.

Other types are VoIP, which is also an internet-based voice calling technology, and SIP, a protocol that enables VoIP and other forms of real-time communication. 

3. Call Setup & Management

Call management refers to the process of diverting all the inbound calls received from the customer or users to the right call center agents for effectively handling and tracking calls, and boosting agent productivity and service rates. The call management feature can either be implemented remotely, or a business can use a third-party provider’s service to add attributes like help desks, order tracking, support, and IVRs. 

And VoIP uses protocols like SIP, H.323, and MGCP to manage and route calls over the network. In comparison, SIP is used to manage calls like initiating, modifying, and terminating. 

4. Device Compatibility

Device compatibility usually means how well the mobile apps or software run perfectly on various other devices, platforms, OS, browser versions, and network environments. And to check this, there are device compatibility tests that are mostly done after the stabilization phase of the software. So speaking of compatibility, VoIP works on almost all devices like softphones, desk phones, mobile devices, and computers.

Whereas SIP sits well on all VoIP devices and traditional public phone exchange systems. 

5. Scalability

Scalability is a metric or feature that measures a system’s ability to increase or decrease performance or cost whenever demand is more or less. Let us say, how well a real-time chat app can handle latency when the number of users increases or the database withstands the growing query numbers, and similar issues.

Now, if we talk about the scalability metric for the two technology protocols, then I must say that VoIP is best suited for small and medium businesses that require basic voice calling features, and SIP can be used to scale connections with growing office locations and remote teams effortlessly.

6. Cost Efficiency

Here, we will see which is more cost-effective: SIP or VoIP? But before we answer this question, we must have a clear view of all the spending and cost data, and only after achieving this transparency, can we make any reactive decisions. So, VoIP usually requires lower initial costs, but to add videos and messaging features, you need to increase your budget.

Contrary to this, SIP needs higher upfront costs, but when you pay this, you can integrate multiple communication channels into a single app.

7. Call Routing & Management

Call routing and management means automatically directing all incoming calls to the right person in the department by placing them in a queue so that customers can reach the agents when they are in dead need. This process is also called the Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) system, and it happens even before the call is picked up at the receiver’s end. 

And talking about this feature, VoIP has limited call routing capabilities while SIP has call routing, failover options, and load balancing attributes to manage high-volume traffic easily.

8. Internet Dependency

Though both protocols work over the Internet, VoIP is highly or completely dependent on a stable Internet connection to work. So, if your internet goes down, then you will not be able to make or receive calls, and your phone lines will go down. Another aspect to worry about with VoIP is the security, as you need a stable and secure connection to make voice calls using this technology and to ensure that no data is hacked by prying eyes. 

SIP, on the other hand, can easily switch between VoIP and landlines so that your business continuity is not lost during outages.

9. Video Conferencing Capabilities

Video conferencing is turning out to be a prominent feature in most of the real-time chat applications as users love to engage in one-to-one video chats or group video calls. And adding this feature too is helping businesses in improving their ROIs and boosting retention rates. So, it is slowly becoming a must-have attribute. 

And SIP natively supports this feature without needing any additional services, while VoIP, on the other hand, offers video conferencing as an add-on.

10. Security & Compliance

Security and compliance are challenging features that most businesses worry about, as a small data leak can destroy their industrial game. So, companies ensure to use the highest security standards and mechanisms when building any application or software and while choosing a protocol. 

Likewise, they also ensure to meet the legal compliance standards set by third-party regulatory boards to show users that their internal process is entirely secure. And when it comes to the SIP and VoIP protocol, SIP supports end-to-end encryption and the most secure authentication parameter. On the other hand, VoIP’s security completely depends on the service provider.

Conclusion – Use VoIP & SIP To Boost Communication Efficiency

Got to know what VoIP and SIP are, and how different they are from each other? Hope this article has given you a clear understanding of the two technologies. And whether yours is a small business, a startup, or a giant enterprise, choosing between the two protocols needs to be wise as it can impact efficiency, scalability, and business performance. 

Also, if your focus is fully on scalability and cost-effectiveness, VoIP can be beneficial, and if you are searching for advanced collaboration and communication features like voice, video, and chats, SIP should be at the top of your list. Additionally, SIP offers a unified communication solution that helps businesses boost their customer satisfaction rates easily.

So, if you are satisfied with what I say and ready to opt for them, let me tell you that there are numerous SIP and VoIP API providers, each of which excels in feature set, pricing, and reliability, and that which helps you add features in minutes. Therefore, it is required that you take a look at them well before giving it a go.