6 Best RingCentral Alternatives for 2022

As a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) provider with extensive unified communications (UC) features like voicemail-to-text, video conferencing, and team messaging, RingCentral is undeniably one of the best business phone systems. However, RingCentral has a wealth of worthy competitors offering lower pricing, more advanced artificial intelligence, or added feature flexibility. In this guide, we review the best RingCentral alternatives so you can find the right one for your business.

Based on our research, here are the five best RingCentral alternatives as well as one honorable mention:

• Nextiva: Best overall RingCentral alternative because it has a similar four-tiered plan structure, embraces VoIP and unified communications (UC), and costs less than RingCentral
• Dialpad: Best option for businesses seeking to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) for sentiment analysis and matching customers with their best possible agent
• 8×8: Best alternative to RingCentral for international calling—call hundreds of countries at inexpensive metered rates and get unlimited calling to 47 international locations
• GoToConnect: Best alternative for businesses needing longer meetings with more participant capacity
• Vonage: Best RingCentral alternative for businesses that want the flexibility to add on features at will and a per-user price that decreases with more users
• Grasshopper: Our honorable mention RingCentral alternative is best when you need a simplified business phone system without many unified communications features

How We Evaluated the Best RingCentral Alternatives

While doing our research, we selected several RingCentral competitors that provide a wide range of features most businesses find attractive. We took a look at cost, general features all users need, specific and advanced features that could be useful for various businesses, popularity, and ease of use.

We found that Nextiva serves as the most viable RingCentral alternative. Not only does it have the same number of plans for scalability, but Nextiva also delivers on key selling points like integrations, international and local calling options, and video conferencing. It also has unique features like Call Pop, which helps agents be prepared for every customer, and costs less than RingCentral.

Visit Nextiva

Here’s a breakdown of how we measured each of the best RingCentral alternatives:

Nextiva: Best Overall RingCentral Alternative

When comparing RingCentral vs Nextiva, you find many similarities as both offer VoIP and UC features and both have four plan tiers. Most companies won’t have any trouble finding a plan that’s ideal for their needs, covering most aspects of business communications. Still, Nextiva really starts to shine when you look at how well it performs for growing businesses in particular.

This is in part because Nextiva’s volume discounts are more compelling than RingCentral’s. For example, with one to four users at the Essential level with Nextiva, you pay $24 per user, per month (on an annual plan). With 100 users, this is cut significantly to $18 per user, per month. RingCentral’s per-user price doesn’t decrease with volume. These kinds of discounts help keep costs down as your business grows.

In addition to scalability, Nextiva also offers higher attendee counts for video conferencing. With an upgrade to the second-tier Professional Plan, video conferences allow up to 250 participants—50 more than with RingCentral. Also, Nextiva has a 99.999% uptime service level agreement (SLA), which is equal to RingCentral’s SLA and only slightly behind Dialpad, which provides a 100% uptime guarantee.

Nextiva Pricing at a Glance*

• Essential Plan: $21.95 per user, per month for unlimited voice and video calling as well as Google and Outlook integrations
• Professional Plan: $25.95 per user, per month for Call Pop for up to 250 contacts, unlimited conference calls for 40 participants, and unlimited video conferencing for up to 250 people
• Enterprise Plan: $35.95 per user, per month for unlimited voice and video conferencing, unlimited Call Pop, and unlimited video call and conference recordings
• Ultimate Plan: $65.95 per user, per month for automated surveys and customer journey analytics

*Prices are based on annual payment for five to 19 users. With more users, the price per user decreases even more as long as you are paying annually.

Nextiva Features

• Call Pop: This call center technology gives agents information about the customer before (or during) the call, reducing call times and improving the overall customer experience. You have access to unlimited pops from the Enterprise tier up.
• Integrations: Third-party integrations for Microsoft Outlook and Google contacts are available starting at the Essential Plan. Similar to RingCentral, integrations like Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics also become available as you move up tiers.
• Multi-level auto-attendant: Available in the Professional Plan and above for more control over how you route calls, increasing efficiency and reducing transfer time.

Visit Nextiva

Dialpad: Best RingCentral Alternative for Artificial Intelligence

For the past few years, Dialpad has been one of the leading providers for the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). Their Voice Intelligence (Vi) is designed to engage with customers. It uses natural language processing and machine learning to boost agent performance and create a bigger picture from each interaction.

Dialpad says Vi is there “before, during, and after every call.” This means your agents will be provided with pertinent information before a call, coached during the call, and prompted to add to the customer data after the call is over. Dialpad also recently purchased Kare Knowledgeware, another AI platform the provider will use to further improve customer experiences.

With RingCentral, there are AI options for things like sentiment analysis, but this is done using external apps like Theta Lake and Velvetech. Put simply, these aren’t nearly as advanced as the AI features offered by Dialpad.

Dialpad also comes in at a much cheaper price point than RingCentral, which starts at $19.99 per user, per month. At the base plan level, you pay a per-user price of just $15 each month for Dialpad, and you are instantly granted access to several integrations, such as those for Google Workspace and Office 365. Read more about how these two competitors match up in our Dialpad vs RingCentral guide.

Dialpad Pricing at a Glance*

• Standard Plan: $15 per user, per month for as little as one license
• Pro Plan: $25 per user, per month for more than three licenses, local numbers in more than 50 countries, and integration with Salesforce
• Enterprise Plan: Contact Dialpad if you need more than 100 licenses

*Pricing is based on annual payment, but monthly billing is also available.

Dialpad Features

• Voice Intelligence (Vi): When used across a company, agents can provide better customer service, improve sales, and reduce call time by being prepared for customer conversations by pulling up past interactions.
• IVR system: IVR menus route calls more efficiently when agents are unavailable, minimizing call transfers and getting customer calls where they need to be quickly.
• Integrations: Like RingCentral and Nextiva, Dialpad has a variety of integrations available that improve productivity, starting with Google Workspace and Office 365 on the lowest tier.

Visit Dialpad

8×8: Best RingCentral Alternative for International Calling

Today, even small businesses are becoming increasingly global, which is why many companies require a VoIP provider that delivers cheap international calling. 8×8 has unlimited calling plans for 47 counties so that you can reach colleagues and customers overseas without incurring drastic costs.

Some of the included countries for unlimited international calling are the UK, Ireland, China, Brazil, Hungary, Israel, and Poland. RingCentral has excellent international calling options. But as we mentioned in our RingCentral vs 8×8 article, you still pay international rates, which you can sidestep when dialing 47 countries using 8×8.

From a call management perspective, 8×8 is also a very competitive RingCentral alternative. You even get call monitoring features like call barge and whisper, which are useful for most businesses with call centers and client-facing agents. Additionally, regardless of plan, 8×8 is fully HIPAA-compliant for those businesses that deal with sensitive patient information.

8×8 Pricing at a Glance*

• Express Plan: $12 per user, per month for unlimited domestic calls, unlimited chat, and audio and video conferencing up to 100 participants
• X2 Plan: $24 per user, per month for unlimited calls in 14 countries, integration with Salesforce, and video and voice conferencing
• X4 Plan: $44 per user, per month for unlimited calling in 47 countries and agent monitoring features like call whisper and call barge

*Pricing is based on annual payment, but monthly billing is also available.

8×8 Features

• HD audio and video: HD-quality audio and video ensures that teams can collaborate easily, making tasks more efficient, and improves the customer experience.
• Integrations: Similar to RingCentral, integrations with Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot, Zoho, and more are available right out of the box to make your team more productive.
• Mix-and-match plans: Mix and match plans for better communication and team collaboration to create an ideal plan for your business’ needs. RingCentral plans are less flexible, so if you need a feature only available at a higher tier, you must upgrade to get it.

Visit 8×8

GoToConnect: Best RingCentral Alternative for Meeting Features

One of the major benefits of subscribing to one of the biggest and best business phone systems is that unified communications features are typically bundled in. RingCentral has robust video conferencing and unlimited recording storage. Still, with RingCentral, you’re limited to 24 hours when it comes to meeting duration, and the service caps out at 200 participants for video conferences.

GoToConnect, which is part of LogMeIn’s GoTo suite of software, has a more robust conferencing setup with no duration limits and accommodates 250 attendees. Also, with GoToConnect, you’re able to view 25 video feeds at a time. This is significantly more than the 16 you can view at a time on RingCentral.

Like 8×8, international calling is easy with GoToConnect. Unlimited calling is available in more than 50 countries. Still, despite having slightly more unmetered options, you simply have more countries to dial at fairly inexpensive rates using 8×8, even including Antarctica.

GoToConnect is also known for its ease of use. As we covered in our article on GoToConnect vs RingCentral, app functionality is very intuitive, and it’s easy to video conference, text, send team messages, or call directly from the mobile application.

GoToConnect Pricing at a Glance*

• Basic Plan: $19 per user, per month for smart call routing as well as local, toll-free, and vanity numbers
• Standard Plan: $23 per user, per month for unlimited auto-attendant greetings, 1,000 toll-free minutes, and unlimited meetings for up to 150 participants
• Premium Plan: $36 per user, per month for free international calling in over 50 countries, 5,000 toll-free minutes, and unlimited meeting duration for up to 250 participants

*Pricing is for 11 to 20 users with an annual payment.

GoToConnect Features

• Customizable dial plans: Set call flow according to your business needs using a drag-and-drop system to implement things like hours and holidays, so that calls are routed properly.
• International calling: At the Standard and Premium tier, calling to more than 52 countries is included. This is not quite as much as the RingCentral Global Office Unlimited plan, but if you are calling only within these 52 countries, GoToConnect is a good option to consider.
• Team messaging: A simple, easy-to-use way for team members to communicate and stay connected.

Visit GoToConnect

Vonage: Best RingCentral Alternative for Flexibility

By default, Vonage Business Cloud stands out as a solid RingCentral alternative because of its flexibility. Every subscriber is provided with more than 50 VoIP features including click-to-dial, team messaging, and music-on-hold. Vonage also has a relatively unique structure of services. For example, the first tier plan is more like a traditional virtual phone provider, and subsequent tiers provide unified communications.

This is very useful for smaller businesses that plan to scale upward in the future. Start with the unlimited calling and SMS texting features in Vonage’s Mobile plan, and when your company begins to experience growth, upgrade one tier to gain unlimited meetings for 100 users and useful business features like customer relationship management (CRM) integration and IP phone capability.

Vonage also has a 99.999% uptime SLA that ensures you’re not missing out on valuable calling time. Find out more about how it competes with RingCentral in our RingCentral vs Vonage showdown.

Vonage Pricing at a Glance*

• Mobile Plan: $17.99 per user, per month for unlimited calling and SMS texting in the United States, Canada, and Mexico
• Premium Plan: $27.99 per user, per month for CRM integrations and unlimited video conferences with up to 100 participants
• Advanced Plan: $37.99 per user, per month for call groups, visual voicemail, and 15 hours of on-demand call recording

*Pricing is based on 5 to 20 users.

Vonage Features

• Team messaging: For all team members with access to the Vonage app, joining video calls, team chats, and sharing files is simple.
• Vonage Support PLUS: Vonage Support PLUS powered by Soluto™ is additional technical support you can add to your plan for $9.99 per user, per month. This includes hardware installation, third-party integrations, and tech issues your team may encounter.
• Uptime guarantee: Like RingCentral, Vonage has a reliable 99.999% uptime guarantee.

Visit Vonage

Honorable Mention for Virtual Phone: Grasshopper

While Grasshopper isn’t strictly a business VoIP provider, it is a virtual phone system that works well for many small businesses. Unlike RingCentral and alternatives that provide UC in addition to calling features, Grasshopper focuses only on phone-based business communication. As such, it didn’t perform as well based on our criteria, since it is a different type of product than other RingCentral alternatives. For more details, read out Grasshopper vs RingCentral head-to-head comparison.

With that said, not every business needs UC features, especially if it’s very small or a solopreneur. Grasshopper delivers simplicity with business calling features like internet faxing, call transfers, and robust reporting. Call blasting is also available, so up to 15 lines can ring simultaneously when your business receives calls. Additionally, unlike RingCentral and Nextiva, you get three extensions at the base tier.

Grasshopper Pricing at a Glance*

• Solo: $26 per month with up to three extensions
• Partner: $44 per month with up to six extensions
• Small Business: $80 per month with unlimited extensions

*Pricing reflects annual billing.

Grasshopper Features

• Virtual numbers: By default, you receive one virtual phone number to use as a second number with the Solo plan, three with the Partner plan, and six with the Small Business plan.
• Ruby Receptionist: Grasshopper has a partnership with Ruby Receptionist for those needing a virtual receptionist, and Grasshopper subscribers get a 35% discount.
• International calling: Grasshopper offers international calling using a per-minute billing structure. If your business makes frequent international calls, there are also customized plans that can help you save.

Visit Grasshopper

Bottom Line

Having a stable and reliable VoIP provider is critical for most businesses, and while RingCentral may be one of the best on the market, it may not be right for every business. Fortunately, there are several small business VoIP service RingCentral alternatives on the market that provide strong local and international calling, extensive UC features, and advanced AI, as well as integration capabilities and calling features that are on par with RingCentral.