RingCentral: Pricing, Plans, Features & Benefits

RingCentral is a cloud-based VoIP phone system provider with tiered pricing plans between $19.99 and $49.99. Prices vary depending on the number of users and billing schedule. Specific features are provided with each of its four tiers, but all include unlimited calling, faxing, texting, and access to the mobile app.

Thanks to the volume discounts provided with two or more users, RingCentral’s pricing per user goes down as your business grows, giving you more value for your money. There are four different money-back guaranteed service plans, which vary by price and included features to meet specific needs, and a 15-day free trial is available for anyone to try the service.

Additionally, for all healthcare providers, schools (K-12), and nonprofit organizations that have been impacted by COVID-19, RingCentral is offering free access to their RingCentral Office suite for new customers.

RingCentral Pricing

All RingCentral plans allow you to pay annually or sign up to pay month to month. However, annual plans are 33% cheaper than month-to-month plans and start at $19.99 per user, per month. RingCentral also offers additional user discounts as your team grows.

RingCentral Plans at a Glance

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RingCentral Features

Many of RingCentral’s most convenient features come standard with its most basic business phone system package. This includes features like toll-free and vanity numbers, unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada, and document sharing with teammates. Other phone providers charge an extra fee for these services, but with RingCentral, they are standard features.

Thanks to RingCentral’s desktop and mobile apps, you can sync your devices to make and receive phone calls. This means that your computer, laptop, tablet, and phone all seamlessly work together no matter where you are.

Calling Management & Faxing

A clear user interface (UI) makes RingCentral extremely user-friendly. Buttons and labels for things like call transferring and hold are easy to see and navigate, making it simple to direct calls to the correct department or extension.

The presence capability feature is simple yet convenient, especially for large businesses with many employees. It shows on the UI whether your colleagues are already on a call, are away from their desk, in a meeting, or otherwise engaged. It is a small thing, but when you’re managing a heavy call volume, it makes a huge difference by helping you better direct phone calls.

You can easily send digital faxes with RingCentral. The feature is included in RingCentral’s three higher-tiered plans, but can be added to the Essentials plan for as low as $17.99 per month. This turns your desk phone into a mini-fax machine, allowing you to quickly digitize and share documents. If you’re not sure whether you would use this feature, you can take advantage of the digital fax free trial.

Phone Numbers & Extensions

Local, toll-free, and vanity numbers are available with RingCentral. Choose from over 200 local area codes to establish a local presence in your community, or take advantage of vanity phone numbers (customized numbers, e.g., 1-800-FLOWERS). You can also port an existing phone number if you would like to.

The Essentials plan includes a toll-free or vanity number, but if you find that you need more, you can purchase additional phone numbers. Local and toll-free numbers cost $4.99 per month, and “true” toll-free numbers (1-800) and vanity numbers do too—but the difference is that true toll-free and vanity numbers charge a $30 setup fee, as well as additional state and local taxes.

Auto-attendant

Auto-attendant services are only offered in the three higher tiers of service, but it is a highly beneficial feature. This is because RingCentral’s auto-attendant serves as a virtual receptionist, routing calls to the correct department or extension after welcoming callers with a professional greeting.

If you would rather use a professional voicemail greeting service, RingCentral offers these services as well. Partnering with Snap Recordings, RingCentral charges $50 for 75 words in a recording, while on-hold messages and professional background and hold music is $99 for the first 100 words.

Voicemail-to-Email & Voicemail-to-Text Transcription

All tiers of service offer visual voicemail. This simple feature transcribes all your voicemails to text, making them easily readable and revisitable later on. You can then forward voicemails to a specific device or download them to be reviewed and listened to later.

If you prefer to receive your voicemails via email, this is a feature that is also offered with all tiers of service. Every voicemail is automatically sent as an audio attachment to an email as well as transcribed in a readable format.

Mobile Apps

You can use RingCentral’s desktop and mobile apps no matter which package you purchase. Softphone features are included with both the desktop and mobile apps, meaning that you can make and receive calls from any device synced with the app. The app also supports SMS text messaging for business, team messaging, and video conferencing. You can also manage things like account settings and auto-attendant routing directly from your phone or computer.

Call Recording

Enriching the customer experience is always a goal in the business world, and RingCentral helps you do so by providing call recording services with higher-tiered plans. You can save up to 100,000 recordings, which are stored for up to 90 days.

Integrations

RingCentral’s app gallery offers hundreds of apps to help your business run as efficiently as possible. You can browse the app gallery no matter what your service tier, but Premium and Ultimate plans offer built-in integrations such as Zendesk, Salesforce, and Office 365. These powerful integrations help to streamline your business by increasing productivity and automating services, as well as providing better customer service to your clients.

Pros & Cons of RingCentral

Collaboration and providing a seamless user experience are two things that RingCentral excels at. With an easy-to-use UI and exciting features, there are many great things about RingCentral. However, as with anything else, there is room for improvement in some areas.

RingCentral Pros

The standout benefits of RingCentral include:

• Communication methods: Between team messaging, SMS texts, and video meetings, there is more than one way to stay in contact with your team and your clients.
• User-friendly: Learning how to use RingCentral is easy for people of all skill levels, whether they’re tech-savvy or not.
• Variety: Four different tiers of service means that you can choose the plan that fits your needs the best, giving you options in a service plan.
• App integration: The ability to download apps you already use makes it easy to manage customers and employees.

RingCentral Cons

The notable drawbacks of using RingCentral include:

• Managing features: Although it’s easy to learn the system, the fact that there are so many features can be overwhelming to learn them all.
• Price: Compared to competing voice-over-internet-protocol VoIP systems, RingCentral leans on the pricier side.
• Interface speed: Peak hours of operation can slow down the web portal. This can make the system feel laggy, which is frustrating when you’re trying to work quickly.

RingCentral Customer Reviews

Overall, businesses and customers have a positive attitude toward RingCentral. It is easy to learn and its UI is clear and concise, making it even easier to navigate the menu. Its many features are exciting, but because of the sheer number of them, it can take some time to learn how to use them all. If you’d like to learn more, visit our customer reviews page.

Alternatives to RingCentral Plans

Not everyone needs everything that RingCentral has to offer. The many features and settings are RingCentral’s biggest draw, but for some businesses, it can feel like too much. Thankfully, RingCentral is only one of many VoIP systems available. If you’d like to compare features and prices, there are plenty of competitors to look into.

The noteworthy alternatives to RingCentral include:

Nextiva

Nextiva is another highly rated VoIP phone service. They have three tiers of service ranging in price from $19.99 to $31.95 per user, per month. The prices are notably lower than RingCentral’s, offering many, but not all, of the same features. Collaboration tools include unlimited conference calling and team messaging, while Outlook and Google integrations help to make your workday a little easier.

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Grasshopper

If you’re a growing business, Grasshopper is the ideal phone system for you. It is a virtual phone system that allows you to use your personal device to make and receive business calls. You can port an existing phone number or create a new one with Grasshopper, including toll-free and vanity numbers. Grasshopper’s plans range between $26 and $89 per month and include features like call forwarding, extensions, and voicemail.

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Ooma

Ooma is another virtual phone provider, but is unique in that there are no contracts with this service. You can use your existing phone and can keep your phone number, and service starts as low as $19.99 per user, per month. You must contact Ooma to get a full scope of its features and pricing, but Ooma is recommended as a top RingCentral competitor.

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Bottom Line

While there are other systems available that will allow you to make and receive business calls, RingCentral is a full VoIP service ripe with features and collaboration tools. Different service tiers offer different features, but video conferencing and team messaging are included in every plan.

If you’re looking for a full-scale VoIP solution for your business, RingCentral can help. If you want to try each plan before you buy, that’s no problem; each plan offers a 15-day free trial to get you started.

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