For Australian offices of 1–100 staff: a cloud PBX over the NBN — one business number, queues, apps and after-hours answering, not a box in the cupboard. Keep your number, test-drive the real system for 30 days before you port anything, and talk to support in Australia. No lock-in contract.
★★★★★ 5.0 on Google · 500+ Australian businesses · No lock-in · 90-day guarantee
Also built for clinics and firms — medical phone systems · legal phone systems
If you have between one and twenty people who need to be reachable on a proper business number, you need a small business phone system. That usually means:
Twenty years ago that system was a physical PBX on the wall with a technician on speed dial. Today, for almost every Australian small office, it is a cloud PBX running over NBN — what older quotes still call VoIP or hosted PBX. The brains live in secure Australian data centres, calls travel over your internet connection, and your handsets and apps simply connect to it. Nothing to buy upfront beyond the phones themselves, nothing to maintain, and changes — new staff, new greetings, new opening hours — are things you do yourself in a portal, in minutes, free. Pear's version is Hosted-X.
It is the right fit if you are a medical or dental practice, a trades office, a professional services firm, or a family business that is tired of missed calls and Telstra-style contracts.
Most quotes you collect will be one of these three. The monthly number is the least important row — including when we'd tell you not to buy from us.
| Cloud PBX (Pear Hosted-X) | Old on-site PBX | Mobiles only | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Offices of 1–100 staff that need a main number, queues and people on desks or apps | Rare. Only if you already own the box and have IT on site | A sole trader who almost never needs a reception menu |
| How it runs | Software in the cloud, over your NBN | Hardware in a cupboard | Each person's mobile is the business |
| Hardware & upkeep | Nothing to fail — your PBX is always new, always on the latest software. No power usage, no maintenance, no IT personnel required | An ageing box: firmware updates, power 24/7, maintenance visits and someone to call when it dies | Just the handsets — and no system behind them |
| Typical ongoing cost | From $9.95 per user per month plus calls, $39.95 with calls included, or $8.95 per user plus shared lines — handsets optional | Maintenance plus line rental — often more than people expect | $35–$90 per SIM, no shared queues |
| Keep your number | Yes. We port it at no extra cost | Yes, but leaving later is painful | Your personal mobile becomes the brand |
| After-hours | Rules plus Aria, Pear's AI receptionist | Usually a basic voicemail | Missed-call text if you are lucky |
| Contract | Month-to-month. Tell us before the 27th of any month. 90-day guarantee | Tied to hardware you already paid for | Carrier plan terms |
| Pear view | The default for almost every small office | Do not buy a new one | Fine for one person — not for a clinic |
Ignore the 80-feature slide. These are the ones that change a working day — and all of them are included as standard on Hosted-X, not sold as add-ons.
Monday morning should not be an engaged tone. Callers hear a short menu or hold message and reach the right person — reception, accounts, after-hours — without a receptionist juggling two handsets.
Hosted-X apps put the office number on the phone in someone's pocket. Useful for principals who leave the floor, and for staff who work from home one day a week.
Change the after-hours message yourself. See who missed what. Listen to a call when a client says they were promised a callback. Call analytics show missed calls and peak times instead of guessing.
Local, 1300 and 1800 numbers can be ported. We run the new system in parallel so go-live is a non-event. How porting works →
Aria answers when the desk cannot: overflow, lunch, close of business. She books, takes a structured message, or escalates — and advises emergency callers to call 000. Australian servers. She works beside your team, not instead of them. Meet Aria →
A national number for the website and the signage, and recordings for training and dispute resolution — both standard on Hosted-X, both things you switch on from the portal.
No mystery ranges and no "call for pricing" — this is what Pear Hosted-X costs, the same rate card as every Pear page. For context, the wider market usually charges around $20–$45 per user per month for a hosted cloud PBX, often on a lock-in term. Pear's numbers:
| Pear pricing | What that includes | |
|---|---|---|
| Per user, per month | $39.95 with calls included (or from $9.95 + call charges) | The full Hosted-X cloud PBX — queues, auto attendant, voicemail-to-email, apps and portal. Calls-included covers standard local, national and mobile calls; pay-as-you-go means you only pay for the calls you make |
| Users + shared lines | $8.95 / user licence + lines: $9.95 per PAYG line (+ calls) or $49.95 per unlimited line | Lines are shared across the office — one line is one call at a time. Mix them: Hosted-X sends outbound calls over the unlimited lines and takes inbound on PAYG, each failing over to the other. Often cheaper when not everyone is on the phone at once |
| 8 users, calls included per user | About $320 / month | Eight users at $39.95. Simple, one flat number per user |
| 8 users + 4 shared unlimited lines | About $271 / month, calls included | Eight user licences plus four unlimited lines — up to four calls at once, every call included |
| Same, with 2 PAYG lines instead | About $191 / month + the calls on those two lines | Outbound goes over the two unlimited lines, inbound lands on the PAYG lines, each fails over to the other |
| Handsets | Reuse compatible phones. New Yealink handsets start from $285 to buy, or can be rented. | $0 rental on some plans — quoted with your system |
| Setup & porting | Quoted before you sign | Number porting, call-flow build, training and go-live included |
| Contracts | None | Month-to-month — just tell us before the 27th of any month. 90-day Love Us or Leave Us Guarantee |
Already holding a quote on a 36-month term? Read it next to ours: worked comparison → · full cost breakdown →
Cloud phone systems ride on your internet connection. That is a feature (one bill, one cable) and a risk (a dropped NBN link drops voice). We design for both.
If someone tells you VoIP is "a bit scratchy", they were usually on an underspecified link with no failover. That is a design problem, not a reason to keep an old PBX.
You will also be shown the global unified-communications platforms, or a big-brand cloud phone plan packaged by a large Australian reseller on a three-year term. Those platforms work. The question is who is accountable when a clinic's Monday morning queue breaks.
No offshore tier-1, no ticket number, a person who knows your site and can fix it.
We do not wait on a foreign vendor's roadmap to fix a reception flow. Custom builds are a conversation, not a feature request.
Voice, voicemail and recordings are hosted here. Pear is CyberCert SMB1001 Gold certified.
You are not financing handsets for four years to make the monthly look smaller. Buy, rent, or reuse what you have.
If you already have a 36-month quote on the desk, read it next to ours: compare business phone systems →
Tell us how many handsets and where you are. A person in Australia replies the same business day. Or call 1300 007 327 now.
