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When it comes to the top VoIP providers, RingCentral is better than 8×8, offering a more complete service with features like voicemail and call screening that are missing from 8×8. More importantly, RingCentral offers transparent and affordable pricing for its users, making it more functional for small and medium sized businesses.
Both options are excellent VoIP solutions, though, with a vast selection of helpful features for both call management and training, as well as 24/7 customer support for all users. 8×8 does set itself apart from other VoIP providers by providing unlimited international calling to 48 different countries, which is a paid add-on for RingCentral.
In this guide, we’ll match up these two VoIP providers on everything from features and pricing to security and customer support, so you can make the best decision for your business communication needs.
| Price | Desk phone compatibility How many desk phone brands is the service compatible with? | Software integrations | Unlimited calls in US | Unlimited international calls | Video conferencing | 24/7 support | Voicemail screening | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  | ||||||||
| 4 brands | 4 brands | ||||||||
| 73 | 400+ | ||||||||
| | | ||||||||
| 48 countries | Add-on | ||||||||
| 500 participants | 100-200 participants (depending on plan) | ||||||||
| Phone + chat | Phone + chat | ||||||||
| | |
8×8 vs RingCentral: Key Differences
Both RingCentral and 8×8 offer brilliant VoIP solutions, but there are some key differences that will help you pick which one is right for you. Here are some of the important facts to understand about 8×8 vs RingCentral.
- Pricing: RingCentral offers publicly available pricing, with the starting plan costing $20 per user, per month, while 8×8 requires you to contact the sales team.
- Features: Both RingCentral and 8×8 offer a robust catalog of business features for call management, training, and external communication.
- Minutes: Both RingCentral and 8×8 offer unlimited inbound and outbound minutes.
- Business size: RingCentral offers small business solutions, whereas 8×8 is geared towards larger operations.
- Integrations: RingCentral offers more third-party integrations, providing compatibility with nearly more than 400 services, compared to the 73 available with 8×8.
- Security: Both RingCentral and 8×8 offer robust security with TLS/SRTP encryption and compliance certification, although 8×8 offers user permissions in all paid plans, and RingCentral only has it in more expensive plans.
- Support: Both RingCentral and 8×8 offer 24/7 live chat and phone support, along with a 99.999% uptime guarantee.
Of course, 8×8 and RingCentral are just two of the VoIP providers available to your business — for custom quotes from a wider selection of VoIP platforms, use our free price comparison tool.
RingCentral Pricing vs 8×8 Pricing
The most important difference between 8×8 and RingCentral pricing is that one of them offers a transparent cost model and the other doesn’t. RingCentral is completely transparent with its pricing, providing clear cost options for each plan. Here’s the breakdown of RingCentral plans:
- Core: $20 per user, per month
- Advanced: $25 per user, per month
- Ultra: $35 per user, per month
However, while 8×8 used to provide information about its pricing, you’ll now have to contact the 8×8 sales team to get an accurate number when it comes to the cost for your business.
As we mentioned, 8×8 made its pricing options public in the past, though, with the VoIP provider starting previously starting at $24 per user, per month, which is why we’ve noted that RingCentral is slightly more affordable in our research.
Because of this lack of transparency from 8×8, it’s hard to compare the value of each platform, but given that each offer robust, premium services — with RingCentral offering a bit more functionality overall — and RingCentral being a bit more affordable, we’d say the value victory goes to RingCentral.
Check out our RingCentral pricing guide or our 8×8 pricing guide if you’d like a bit more information on either provider’s plans.
RingCentral vs 8×8: Business Features
8×8 and RingCentral both offer some of the largest feature catalogs across our research, offering a robust set of call management and training features, as well as plenty of communication channels to stay in touch with your customers and team members. Below, we’ll explain how they match up on all three, so you can decide for your business which one is a better fit.
Check out our in-depth 8×8 review and RingCentral review to learn more
Best call management features: RingCentral
RingCentral is slightly better than 8×8 when it comes to call management features, but truthfully, both VoIP services are quite impressive in this category. You’ll find features like call queue, ring groups, and localized, toll-free numbers included across all paid plans for both, which was not terrible common for other providers.
RingCentral does take the lead over 8×8, though, because it offers advanced voicemail and call screening tools, which can help larger businesses deal with spam and other unwanted calls to the system. Despite being geared almost exclusively to large businesses, 8×8 does not offer this, even as an add-on.
One of the advantages of 8×8, however, is it’s international calling. With unlimited calling to 48 different countries, 8×8 positions itself as a clear choice for businesses that do business abroad.
RingCentral’s voice mail features offer in-built transcription, reducing the need for us to transcribe calls manually. Source: Tech.co testing
Best for training features: Tie
When it comes to training features aimed at improving your team’s communication skills on your VoIP system, both RingCentral and 8×8 provide everything you need. Both platforms offer call recording, call monitoring, call barge, and call whisper features, which are features aimed at guiding your team to be more efficient and impactful while talking to customers. On top of that, both 8×8 and RingCentral offer analytics and reporting tools that can inform your strategy with detailed data about how your team communications with these VoIP systems.
It’s worth noting, however, that some of these features are only available in the Advanced and Ultra plans for RingCentral. The Core plan is missing call monitoring, call barge, and call whisper, so keep that in mind when it comes to picking your plan.
Users can analyze metrics for inbound, answered, missed, and abandoned calls through 8×8’s analytics features. Source: 8×8
Best for communication channels: 8×8
8×8 is slightly better than RingCentral, but again, this one is basically right down the middle. Both 8×8 and RingCentral offer virtually all communication channels across all paid plans, including team messaging, video conferencing, SMS, and call conferencing, so you can reach team members and customers wherever necessary.
The reason 8×8 gets the win here, though, is that it offers more participants within its video and audio conferencing tools. With RingCentral, you can host between 100-200 participants depending on your plan, while 8×8 offers as many as 500 participants in video and audio conferences.
Additionally, 8×8 offers e-fax included in the platform, whereas RingCentral limits this functionality in the Core plan. If you go with the Advanced or Ultra plans, though, you’ll get access to e-fax.
The RingCentral Messages platform was a simple and effective tool, allowing us to stay in touch with our team. Source: Tech.co testing
8×8 vs RingCentral: Integrations
When comparing VoIP providers, call management features are obviously important. But larger businesses may want to integrate tools like 8×8 or RingCentral into other systems to streamline communication across their team. Not all systems are compatible, though, depending on your provider, which is why understanding what kind of integrations are key.
Luckily, both 8×8 and RingCentral are powerhouses when it comes to hardware compatibility and software integrations, but there are some differences, which we’ll outline below.
Best for software integrations: RingCentral
RingCentral is better than 8×8 when it comes to software integrations, because it offers a whole lot of them. In fact, the RingCentral App Library consists of more than 400 different third party services that are compatible with the VoIP system, so you can integrate pretty much any platform you can think of with RingCentral.
8×8 is no slough when it comes to third party integrations, though. The 8×8 Work system also provides lots of options — approximately 70 software integrations — so unless you need some seriously niche third party services to integrate with your VoIP system, you can safely say that this one is a tie.
Businesses can connect with hundreds of third-party integrations, more than most VoIP providers in our research. Source: RingCentral
Best for hardware compatibility: Tie
Both RingCentral and 8×8 are compatible with four different desk phone brands, which is why we gave them a tie in this category. Each provider is compatible with Cisco, Poly, and Yealink phones, while RingCentral is also compatible with some Mitel phones and 8×8 is compatible with some Panasonic phones.
To find out which specific devices these providers are compatible with, check out the RingCentral compatibility and 8×8 compatible pages to learn more.
Both RingCentral and 8×8 are compatible with Poly brand desk phones, like the Poly CCX 600 shown above. Source: Poly
Alternative VoIP Providers
If you’re wondering how RingCentral and 8×8 compare to other VoIP providers, you’re in luck. We at Tech.co have done some serious research on the best VoIP providers for businesses of all sizes, including 8×8 alternatives.
If the price of 8×8 and RingCentral are turning you off, Google Voice is a top-tier option that keeps costs low, starting at only $10 per month. If you need compatibility with more desk phone brands, GoTo Connect is a solid option with 10 different brands available. If you’re looking for an easy to use VoIP software, Zoom Phone provides an intuitive interface that even beginners will be able to navigate without issue.
Below, we’ve created a table to help you compare some other VoIP providers to RingCentral and 8×8, so you can see a clear picture of what is being offered and what isn’t.
| Plan | Price | Desk phone compatibility How many desk phone brands is the service compatible with? | 24/7 support | Call monitoring | CRM integration | Call queue | Call barge | Voicemail screening | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | |
| 4 brands | 4 brands | 10 brands | 2 brands | 2 brands | 4 brands | 3 brands | 6 brands | 7 brands | 1 brand | |
| Phone + chat | Phone + chat | | Phone + chat | Phone | Phone + chat | | Phone, email + chat | Phone + chat | Add-on | |
| | | | | | | Add-on | | | | |
| | | | | Add-on | | | | | | |
| | | | | Add-on | | Add-on | | | | |
| | | | | | | Add-on | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
How Do We Compare VoIP Providers?
We take our hands-on testing and impartial analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we're giving you the clearest, most useful recommendations.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established business phone platforms on the market, we selected 10 top VoIP systems and took a deeper dive into their plans to find out more about the features and functionality on offer.
Based on years of market research, product testing, and user needs analysis, we've established a VoIP system research methodology that scores each product in eight core categories of investigation, which are broken down into 44 further subcategories. With this framework, we cover everything from internal communication tools and security options to niche training features, and it ensures we can accurately assess each product's value for its price and suitability for different types of businesses.
Our main research categories for VoIP phone systems are:
- Call management features - The presence and quality of call handling features including basic features such as call forwarding, and voicemail, as well as more advanced features like auto-attendant, and interactive voice response (IVR).
- Communication channels - Features designed to support communication other than calling, including integrations with websites and social media platforms.
- Training features - The presence and quality of features designed to support onboarding and training, like call barge, call whisper, and performance dashboards.
- Customer support - The assistance and resources provided by the VoIP service provider to customers, including online resources, knowledge bases, and access to customer support representatives and AI chatbots.
- Security options - The measures and features implemented by the VoIP service to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and protection of voice communications and data.
- Pricing factors - The pricing structure associated with the VoIP service, including factors such as monthly subscription fees, domestic and international call rates, setup fees, hardware costs, and extra costs like add-on features or services.
When it comes to calculating a product's final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are merely "nice to have." After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
Learn more about our research testing process
Verdict: Which VoIP Provider Is Better?
RingCentral and 8×8 are excellent VoIP solutions, but we found that RingCentral is better than 8×8 thanks to its affordable and transparent pricing paired with a slightly larger feature catalog. It also offers more small business options, whereas 8×8 is mostly geared towards larger businesses.
If you do a lot of business overseas, 8×8 is the smart choice, thanks to free international calls to a remarkable number of countries. If you don’t do much business outside the US or Canada, try RingCentral. Remember, if neither feels like the right fit, use our comparison tool to get a free quote.
Our content is funded in part by commercial partnerships, at no extra cost to you and without impact to our editorial impartiality. Click to Learn More