8×8 vs RingCentral: Which VoIP Solution Is Best?

When it comes to RingCentral vs 8×8, we found that RingCentral is better than 8×8 by a hair, because it offers slightly more third-party integrations and more affordable and transparent pricing. It really is quite close, though, with RingCentral and 8×8 representing two of the best VoIP software providers across our research.

In fact, our in-depth, hands-on research found that 8×8 actually has slightly better security than RingCentral, with user permissions across all paid plans, whereas RingCentral reserves this feature for only its more expensive plans.

In this comparison guide, you’ll learn about some of the primary differences between RingCentral and 8×8, including what kind of features they offer, how much they cost, and what kind of VoIP competitors are available.

In this guide:

• 8×8 vs RingCentral: Key Differences
• 8×8 Pricing vs RingCentral Pricing
• Best for Business Features
• Best for Customer Support
• Best for External Connections
• Alternative VoIP Providers
• Verdict: Which VoIP System Is Best?

8×8 vs RingCentral: Key Differences

When 8×8 and RingCentral step into the ring, it’s going to be a close one — no one-round knockouts here. Both providers offer brilliant services, are competitively priced, and are regarded, rightly so, as premium VoIP solutions. 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 inbound and outbound communication, as well as management and collaboration tools.
• Integrations: RingCentral offers more third-party integrations, providing compatibility with nearly more than 400 services, compared to the 69 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.

On top of all those key differences, our in-depth research found that 8×8 and RingCentral are good for particular industries as well. We found that RingCentral is better for retail, healthcare, and customer service, while 8×8 is better for professional services and sales. It’s worth noting, however, that both were in the top two for all industries, so you really can’t go wrong with either.

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 the pricing options for its five plans (X2, X4, X6, X7, X8) on the website, 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.

Best for Business Features: 8×8

We found that, while it was close, 8×8 actually has better business features than RingCentral overall. We’ve separated this category into a few subcategories to help you understand, but they’re almost entirely identical across the board, except for some small differences in outbound communication features, which gave 8×8 the slight edge.

Check out our in-depth 8×8 and RingCentral reviews to learn more about each provider’s features.

Outbound communication features: Tie

8×8’s first plan, the X2, offers custom call lists, call conferencing, and E-fax, as well as external video calling — RingCentral’s starter plan has none of these.

Also, with any of RingCentral’s plans, you need the RingCentral Engage platform, as mentioned before, for certain features, including predictive dialing, custom call lists, and an autodialer. There are also limits on features like external video calling, which 8×8 doesn’t set — and this lost RingCentral some marks.

8×8’s more expensive plans have the full suite of outbound communications you’ll need, but many of these, like a power dialer and predictive dialing, come at an additional cost.

It’s also worth noting that RingCentral offers increasing toll-free minutes based on the plan, with 100 available in the Core plan, 1000 in the Advanced plan, and 10,000 in the Ultra plan. 8×8, on the other hand, is a bit more confusing, with different options that you’ll have to pay for, including usage bundles, carrier minutes, and Contact Center licenses.

When we placed a call, the pop-up dial-pad made it easy to interact with the interface. Source: Tech.co testing

Inbound communication features: 8×8

RingCentral has spam prevention, which 8×8 doesn’t offer on any plans. However, both providers offer a great range of inbound comms features, including voicemail, customizable greetings, localized and toll-free numbers, company hours, and a virtual receptionist on all of their plans.

There are a couple of limitations on both providers’ first couple of plans – RingCentral doesn’t offer ring groups on its most affordable plan, for instance, whereas 8×8’s X2 plan doesn’t have call barge, call monitor or call whisper features.

8X8’s video calling capabilities are simple for communication with your team. Source: Tech.co testing

Management and collaboration features: Tie

Neither 8×8 nor RingCentral offer many management features on their first plans, although RingCentral does have call transcripts and will let you set up teams and departments, whereas 8×8 won’t.

8×8 has a call flow designer and analytics/reporting tools on its second paid plan, which RingCentral doesn’t. However, RingCentral has call recording and call transcripts on all of its plans.

For training features like call monitoring and call whisper, you’ll need RingCentral’s Advanced plan or 8×8’s X4 plan – but RingCentral’s is a lot cheaper, so it’s worth finding out if it’s the best fit for your business.

Both providers have decent sets of collaboration features and offer team messaging and document sharing on all of their plans. However, RingCentral has no video conferencing option on its first paid plan, the Core plan, whereas 8×8 doesn’t have a task management feature on its cheapest plans, and RingCentral has that on all its plans.

RingCentral also offers task management functionality in more expensive plans for easy scalability. Source: Tech.co testing

Best for Customer Support and Customer Satisfaction: Tie

Both 8×8 and RingCentral offer robust customer support options. In fact, they offered two of the best customer support across our research, netting perfect scores in the category thanks to the 24/7 live chat and phone offering, as well as a 99.999% uptime guarantee SLA (service level agreement).

The only point of difference used to be the lack of onboarding support on RingCentral’s cheapest plan, but you can now request help with implementation on all the provider’s plans. 8×8 provides “Customer Success Managers” to help with onboarding but doesn’t explicitly state whether these are rolled into the overall cost or require an additional charge to have assigned to your business.

The 8×8 tutorial was helpful in getting everything set up. Source: Tech.co testing

Best for External Connections: RingCentral

For external connections, RingCentral is better than 8×8, because it simply offers more integrations overall. When comparing the two app libraries, RingCentral has more than 400 pre-built integrations to bolster the platform, while 8×8 offers only 69 across the entire system.

Still, that’s a lot of options for either of them. Rather than going off numbers, you should probably decide which integrations you really need and evaluate if they’re available on either 8×8 or RingCentral.

Granted, you’ve got a better chance with RingCentral given the size of the app library, but with both offering integrations with reputable services like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Google, Slack, and many more, it could be a non-issue for your particular needs.

It is worth noting, however, that more advanced integrations, like CRM platforms Salesforce and Zendesk, are not available in the first pricing plan, so you’ll have to pay a bit extra to get access to this kind of functionality.

RingCentral and 8×8 both offer app libraries with third-party integrations, but RingCentral offers a lot more. Source: Tech.co testing

Alternative VoIP Providers

If you’re wondering how RingCentral compares to other providers, then we have the answer, as we’ve researched plenty of alternative VoIP providers, here at Tech.co. Vonage is the best for training features, and GoTo Connect is great for scaling. Ooma had a fantastic customer service experience too, so it’s worth checking out the other major players on the market:

How Do We Compare VoIP Providers?