Top RingCentral Competitors: Best RingCentral Alternatives 2024

In the following article we discuss the main difference between RingCentral and the major business phone service providers who offer services like RingCentral, ones that may be better than RingCentral depending on your needs! Keep reading for the ultimate comparison guide for RingCentral and its competitors.

Best RingCentral Alternatives & Competitors

Quick Review of RingCentral

RingCentral is the leading cloud communication and enterprise collaboration solution today. Even in the crowded shelf of VoIP, business phone systems, cloud-based PBX features, and multitude of conferencing apps, RingCentral stands atop the pile of worldwide subscriber count and market share. However, like any service provider atop that podium, there are several pretenders to that throne, increasingly vying for consumer attention by fitting in attractive feature-sets, innovations, and affordability at once. Our RingCentral Alternatives articles takes a closer look at both RingCentral, and some of its main competitors and also cheaper alternatives to see how they stack up.

As a cloud-based business communications solution, RingCentral (similar to Vonage Business) has steadily made its way up, thanks to both it’s wide array of innovative feature set, as well as low-cost options. RingCentral offers a suite of products tending to businesses of all sizes:

• RingCentral Office – The flagship product is easy to set up, mobile, and packs a punch with its app integration and open platform options. The feature set covers a wide spectrum of communication options like: HD audio and video conferencing, messaging, screen sharing, file-sharing), multiple extensions, mobile apps for iPhone and Android, call forwarding, auto-attendant, business SMS, and fax. Customizable settings and cutting-edge technology round off a cloud-based PBX system to cater to all kinds of businesses.
• RingCentral Professional – The professional suite offers local, toll-free numbers for phone and fax, and full enterprise call management options like routing, auto responders, and voicemail. With apps for major operating systems, global businesses can put up a professional image with local presence without compromising on mobility.
• RingCentral Fax – Fax may not the first thing you think of, in this age of electronic communication, but it can often be the last. From sending across confidential business details, to closing a deal with a signed copy, businesses need it. RingCentral’s internet faxing is a cost-effective way to do all that, with freedom from legacy hardware and dedicated phone lines. The software-based solution allows you to fax from your computer, or cloud-storage like Google Drive, Box, Dropbox etc.
• RingCentral Meetings – A powerful collaboration tool, Meetings^TM allows video conferencing for up to 100 participans in HD quality, screen sharing, file sharing, and messaging. You can leverage your existing conferencing tools with Room Connector^TM, or replace them with Rooms^TM.
• RingCentral Glip – The latest entrant to the suite, Glip was acquired in 2015 as the cutting-edge enterprise solution for team messaging, event and task management, document sharing, and one-stop information management.

Seamless integration, developer platform, high quality, low deployment barrier, and lower cost of maintenance than disparate communication solutions have propelled RingCentral to major accolades from technology reviewers, and brand trust evaluators alike. Endorsement from the likes of Box, Okta, and PGA, among other leading brands, have only added to their standing.

But as high-speed internet continues to bring astonishing speeds, bandwidth, and low cost together, unified communications as-a-service (UcaaS) is among the fastest growing technology segments for several enterprise solution brands trying to bundle small business needs.

RingCentral Competitors

RingCentral vs Skype for Business

Like Vonage Business, Skype is a very familiar brand for VoIP. Among the first to leverage the benefits of low-tariffs, pay-per-use subscription plans, and high-speed internet to connect over 60 countries with their proprietary audio-visual calling options, Skype’s business app can deliver advantages of multiple communication channels to improve collaboration and productivity. Their reasonable monthly subscription rates, flexible pricing model, and seamless integration to the MS suite – they are globally among the most adopted UCaaS solutions for businesses. However, unlike residential needs, where Skype’s early reputation was established, cloud PBX solutions for business requires a robust calling/ phone service alternative. Skype, essentially a software app, necessarily needs a computer (or portable internet-connected device). It can still call a traditional telephone – but requires a headset.

Key Features

• Economical – as an established software application, their pricing plans are very affordable, feature-rich, and offer integration with the entire Microsoft suite, in addition to several third-party applications.
• Feature options – Individual and group calls, video conferences, screen-sharing, file transfer, messaging (text and voice message), and sending images, emoticons,  to group of two or more.
• Business VoIP-specific tools –  Skype for Asterisk, and Skype for SIP Open Beta have narrowed the gap with established business VoIP and cloud based solutions. Both solutions are free as software, but require credit-based use, and still rough around the edges.
• Security – With 256 bit AES encryption, Skype adheres to a high standard of information encryption and protects communication. However, it’s still essentially a communication tool, and doesn’t implement multi-layer security, especially for stored data.

Comparing with RingCentral

Verdict

Ultimately, this is a platform war. If you’re a MS suite user, Skype for Business works for you. It has a much lower entry point in terms of price, and offers a decent clutch of VoIP features as the lowest common denominator. However, lack of phone support, or a toll-free number (critical for adding some legitimacy to small business contact feature) are a concern. Conferencing features (both voice and video) – with plethora of file transfer, streaming, screen-sharing, VM, and instant messaging is a good start. Most small businesses probably should have a Skype account to start with, to minimize early upfront costs for communication.

But the game changes swiftly once you look at scalability, and the sheer power RingCentral offers. Their app integration range alone is a winner, especially for dedicated CRMs, lead gen features and business-critical applications like Hubspot, Dropbox, SugarCRM etc. Toll free numbers regardless of geolocation, internet faxing, and advanced call management (paid option) are also a big plus. The monthly payments are certainly higher than Skype, but the returns often justify the means, especially as your business looks to scale. The biggest plus is a full-feature customer support, along with a 24/7 fraud protection department to safeguard your data. Compared to just enterprise grade security on the app, RingCentral’s multi-layer data storage security is a winner by some distance.

Unless you’re planning to operate on a pretty small scale, looking to only use basic communication features, or need it only for wide international language support, RingCentral wins this.

RingCentral vs Jive

Jive Communications delivers enterprise-grade communication technologies, UCaaS solutions, and hosted VoIP to several business partners at an affordable price. Services are reliable and their feature-rich advanced telephony suite has found popularity with startups and small businesses. Jive ships pre-configured phones to your location, ready to plug-in and use, thus saving valuable time, effort, and money required for installation. Softphone app, internet fax, and virtual numbers round off a great alternative to legacy phones. Despite the low profile, Jive boasts of solid number of subscribers in public sector.

Key Features

• 5 tiered paid plans – With five pricing tiers for plans, Jive offers plenty of flexibility for businesses in choosing their options suited to their team size (1-4, 5-9, 10-24- 25-49, 50+ users).
• Feature options – Advanced call management, conferencing features, 24/7 tech support via phone, choice of 8 different on-hold music options (plus uploading your custom message), and Salesforce integration to boot. Extension dialing, auto attendant, dial-by-name directory and other such standard features we expect from any VoIP service.
• Paid features for premium plans –  Surprisingly, Jive has number porting, call-recording, softphone app, and file storage – all or some of which are available as a standard suite of features with several competing services. Performance and support doesn’t disappoint, however.

Comparing with RingCentral

Verdict

Jive’s target customers are clearly the slow-moving establishments like government agencies, schools etc. Since they plan out budgets well in advance, Jive often look to engage in long-term contracts to offer discounts, and their deep discounts for multi-user plans are not as comprehensive. Neither are their features beyond the basic VoIP features. Without API integrations or app integrations to speak of, they rely more on their multi-channel presence and ability to manage legacy fax might be their only big USP. Jive mobility app, for a $20 payment, doesn’t have Windows and Android support either.

RingCentral knocks this one out of the park, even with basic feature-suite. Then come the pricing for multi-user plan tiers, much more comprehensive advanced features, app integrations, and small business call center options. Plus, wide-ambit app support, better customer service, video tutorials, .. it’s a no-contest in favor of RingCentral as far as Business VoIP solution is concerned.

RingCentral vs Google Voice

With several options such as VoIP and hosted PBX, start-ups and small businesses may potentially view the free services as some sort of scam, or be wary of fine-print. Google Voice and Hangout have emphatically challenged that thought, given their brand status and market credentials as a major tech player. The brand name ensures the technology is refined and flexible, with several key features available out-of-the box. However, to replace legacy telephone units, businesses need more than just incredible basic feature-suite. So how does Google voice fare when the stakes are higher?

Key Features

• Free video and voice options – Nothing is more attractive than reliable set of free features. Google Voice and Hangouts comfortably handle phone and video conferencing (with HD option available for up to 15 people) needs without the learning curve of a new app, installation, or monitoring panel.
• Advanced features – You can procure a custom number for your region, caller ID, voicemails can easily be transcript-ed, and emailed. Plus you can enable intelligent muting, built-in screen sharing, optional screen focus, and custom control for admins.
• Cross-platform flexibility – Integrates seamlessly with the G-suite, calendar to set up meetings, and Gmail for mailing. Works with all kinds of computing devices.

Comparing with RingCentral

Verdict

For ease of doing business, and starting off without any entry-level cost with HD video and audio conferencing needs Google Voice may suffice. But Google voice is essentially, a free communication solution, think Skype for Business but without any cost and their most basic features. That’s not a knock on the performance and solid box of goodies on offer, just that business telephony needs, cloud PBX solutions, or VoIP bundles for small businesses often need more than a friendly, easy app for call and video conference.

RingCentral is not only a far more robust solution for a nominal monthly fee, but offers more in terms of scalability, security, features, and integration. In fact, with their full Google suite support, they pretty much offer the best of Google Voice and their own set of excellent applications and features for that one price tag. That settles the debate in their favor. Another big factor is having a real, and best-reviewed VoIP customer support around. Ringcentral also nets out to be more reliable, since their users typically don’t look for free applications which can run on weak Wi-Fi, hence the lags, or bounce-back of 250 character+ messages (common Google Voice issues) are non-existent.

RingCentral vs MegaPath

MegaPath Hosted Voice delivers a robust Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software solution for medium and large businesses. As such, it targets the unified communication as a service (UcaaS) domain largely left untapped by most of the competitors of RingCentral who aim only for the SMB clientele. The exceptional functionality streamlines the communication channels – both in and out of the workplace – mobility features, integrated networking services, security, connectivity etc. The hosted PBX can manage each of these features for the entire organization keeping a single point of monitoring.

MegaPath also offers proprietary high-speed internet solutions, allowing their users to cherry-pick the format of connectivity and the allied features e.g. Their data-based Ethernet allows users to set a nearly identical download and upload speed, which can be customized to suit the needs of the user. This helps build a stable back-up cache and retain connection even if during failures in other sections. In addition their services extend beyond the traditional VoIP goodies, adding a host of useful features like SIP trunking, enterprise-grade advanced voice management features, business advertising options, and mobility solutions – making them a fairly well-rounded bundle.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features

MegaPath features arguably match RingCentral, and even provide some additional features which are very handy

• Auto Attendant
• Music-on hold and pre-recorded greetings.
• Caller ID and Name: Both services offer multi-level IVR and caller ID, as well as name recognition options. Also includes caller ID block.
• Call transfer, routing , call me now, and after-hours management 
• Call forwarding
• Call logs, call monitoring, call notification, analytics, diagnostics.
• Voicemail to Email: Email attachment, voicemail-to-text transcribing, and forwarding voicemails.
• Ring Groups: Distribute incoming call traffic.
• Conference Bridge
• Vanity and Toll-Free Numbers

MegaPath also offers couple of unique features like:

• User portal
• Unified Inbox – a one-stop location for Voicemails, SMS, and email.
• Call recording at all plan tiers (as opposed to RingCentral offering that only for premium tiers)

While these are good to have, especially as a UCaaS solution, RingCentral comfortably beat that stack with its own unique set of features like:

• Barge – admin control to insert themselves in a conversation
• Business SMS
• Call monitoring, call screening, and call queuing – allowing users to keep track of calls, sources, identify or block calls selectively, as well as place calls in the queue and attend them in order of receipt in case all the responders are busy. These are each vital for businesses to put up a professional performance.
• Click-to-call
• Mobile app, with additional desktop sync feature.

It’s an easy pick if you need more features. Though MegaPath has a pretty good, stable service suite of common features, as the stakes get higher, RingCentral keeps getting more efficient by offering more value for money.

Customer Support

MegaPath customer service has a reputation for being promptly at service in case of issues, often under 2 hours. Their service reps have consistently ranked among the best for their knowledge and ability to troubleshoot problems. With nationwide coverage, and in-person service personnel they have a solid presence in teh deomain. IN addition their phone and technical support mails are available 24/7. On the whole, a pretty good experience.

RingCentral has a 8 a.m.- 9 p.m. phone support for single-line users. But more than one-line and you get 24/7 fully USA based support. Plus you have a online support center, comprehensive FAQs, user community forums, personalized product demo for installation and other queries, live-chat, and email.User feedback reveals 26% of the users needing customer support. Up to 9% users reported the support to be unsatisfactory in resolving their problems. Any data or frauds are also treated as an emergency with a dedicated fraud alert unit, irrespective of your pricing plan.

It has to be a marginal win for MegaPath. RingCentral  gets more resources to customers to be able to resolve the problems, but MegaPath goes that little bit extra to make customer support more personable and available. Keeping in mind that the clientele may not always be tech-savvy, or willing to go the DIY route, MegaPath edges out just a touch.

 Verdict

On the whole, MegaPath makes a decent fist of basic features. With comparabale price point, they manage to get a fair share of customers rooting for them, especially since their customer support is arguable, a bit better than RingCentral. However, RingCentral still holds the aces, when it comes to features, technology, and offered solutions as a whole, in addition to the work they’ve put in to detail out customer support options. As a low-cost UCaaS option, MegaPath can potentially become a bigger challenger if they expand their tech stack over the next few years, while keeping the prices in the similar bracket.

RingCentral vs Mitel

Mitel is a new-age VOIP provider which caters a wide-ambit cloud-hosted, mobile solution for startups, SMBs, and enterprise users alike. Integrated solutions can help teams and companies collaborate, and connect internally, as well as with their customers seamlessly. Hosted PBX solutions with virtual hosting, collaboration studios, and contact centers deliver a full suite of solutions which the clients can avail. Mitel Office(MiOffice) and Mitel Cloud (MiCloud) are at the forefront of technology targeting over 3,000 partners in 100 countries for an affordable price.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features

Mitel focuses on some of the standard features we’ve come to expect of most VoIP solutions.

• Auto Attendant
• Admin portal/ dashboard
• Anonymous call rejection, Do Not Disturb mode.
• ‘Busy’ notification
• Advanced call features – call forwarding, call continuity, call hold, call parking, call transfer, call waiting, caller ID, speed dial, call recording, and call notifications.
• Call logs and reports.
• Ring groups
• Voicemail to email feaures

As you notice however, this is the upper limit of all that MiTel has to offer, and isn’t nearly enough. RingCentral steals a march when it comes to the entire visual aspect of communication with their HD video conferencing solutions, and visual voicemail options. In addition, there are several other advanced call management features which RingCentral offers:

• Advanced call forwarding – landline-to-mobile, real-time call control, answering rules etc.
• Call-me-now, call pass for mobile users, call queuing, call return, and advanced transfer features.
• Call screening, caller ID block, dynamic caller ID to change your display number while calling, and conference calling.
• Call analytics and diagnostics.
• Custom greetings.

Not only are each of these features more handy for businesses to establish a seamless, and cohesive presence as a communication cloud, the fact that most of these are incrementally included in tier plans, makes RingCentral capable of offering much more, albeit at a higher price. All these are further buttressed by RingCentral’s much superior app integration and UCaaS options. It’s a classic case of you get what you pay for, and one suspects, businesses might not mind a $10 per month difference in lieu of much more comprehensive unified solution, as they scale.

Customer Support

RingCentral has an 8 a.m.- 9 p.m. phone support for single-line users. Multi-line users get 24/7 fully USA based support. You also have an online support center, comprehensive FAQs, user community forums, personalized product demo for installation and other queries, live-chat, and email. User feedback reveals 26% of the users needing customer support. Up to 9% users reported the support to be unsatisfactory in resolving their problems. Any data or frauds are also treated as an emergency with a dedicated fraud alert unit, irrespective of your pricing plan.

MiTel on the other hand, had a 24/7 North American customer service based off Ontario, Canada until 2018. However, they have since decided to move their support overseas. Perhaps not unexpectedly, the service quality has taken a hit, leading to higher count of complaints and incomplete service requests.

Verdict

As a low-cost solution, MiTel offers a decent set of options for business VoIP. However, it quickly starts falling behind RingCentral’s power-packed and broader set of options, and the control which comes with it. RingCentral plans also service a wider geographical area. Perhaps their biggest setback however, has been the decision to move their customer support overseas, leading to noticeable decline in service quality, and they are only falling more rungs down the pecking order. Honestly, RingCentral didn’t even have to put up much of a fight to win this round.

RingCentral vs Freedom Voice

FreedomVoice has been one of the oldest virtual telephony players. For over two decades, the California-based company has catered to a loyal subscriber base with a simple three-tier structure aimed at individual consumers, small businesses, and enterprise clients. With the competition for market sharing heating up, they have re-positioned themselves recently, the tiers now tending to solo entrepreneurs/ home offices, SMBs, and medium businesses. Their focus on cloud services and cloud hosted PBX has allowed more flexibility on that front.

Comparing with RingCentral

Pros

• The CloudPBX service has positioned itself from UcaaS or cloud phone services of other VoIP solutions like RingCentral. This is a smart move, given that not all SMBs, or small entrepreneurs rely on phone in this era of high-speed internet. FreedomVoice markets this as minimum charges per month per seat with shared minutes, instead of industry standard of monthly pricing plans for each tier by number of seats.
• The CloudNumber feature targets SMBs (1-4 users) portfolio. With choice of 800 (toll-free) and local numbers, free number porting, included extensions, and advanced call management features.
• Top-shelf VoIP phones like Cisco, Linksys, Jabra, and Polycom offer ipressive list of features.

Cons:

• The flip side is that there is no standard pricing plan advertised, and it’s essentially by quote after reviewing customer requirements. While it allows the flexibility of matching expenses, a wrong plan could quickly unravel into a bad decision since additional minutes at $0.039 for both incoming and outgoing services add up rapidly.
• Despite their assurance of the cloud technologies being “plug and play” (as they should be!), they send the technician service. While it might give the businesses peace of mind, it also may be construed as a sign of lack of faith in their native tech stack. It’s also a service cost which they’re bearing, which isn’t exactly a business gain.
• Missing a bonafide ‘unlimited minutes’ option is never a good idea when aiming at business customers, especially those in the enterprise bracket. That pricing model alone undid a lot of good work.

Key features

The standard feature set of FreedomVoice doesn’t disappoint. It offers the call management features like

• Virtual auto attendant
• Forward to any phone ability
• Unlimited voicemail boxes
• iPhone and Android apps
• Online console reports
• Online fax send and receive

However, this is not nearly enough to compete with RingCentral, who offer plenty of advanced call management features for the premium and enterprise customers.

• Advanced call forwarding – landline-to-mobile, real-time call control, answering rules etc.
• Call-me-now, call pass for mobile users, call queuing, call return, and advanced transfer features.
• Call screening, caller ID block, dynamic caller ID to change your display number while calling, and conference calling.
• Call analytics and diagnostics.
• Custom greetings.

Moreover, RingCentral also scores in making a more intuitive softphone and mobile app, as well a much more well-rounded admin panel for diagnostics, notification mechanism etc. FreedomVoice causes some genuine pet-peeves for customers like call notification through text/SMS only, insufficient fax bandwidth for large documents, no support for Windows on their mobile apps, etc.

Customer Support

RingCentral support
8 a.m.- 9 p.m. phone support – Single-line users.
24/7 fully USA based support – Multi-line users get.
Online support center, comprehensive FAQs, user community forums, personalized product demo for installation and other queries, live-chat, and email options add up to a pretty good support center.

FreedomVoice customer support also gets consistently high rating and feedback from users both for in-person local availability for technical help, installation, as well as online support knowledge. Their interpersonal skills have been rated highly by customers, citing them as patient, helpful, and knowledgeable.

Verdict

FreedomVoice bucks the industry trend in terms of their pricing plan tiers and aspires to provide some unique features based on usage of their clients. As an older company, their investment in cloud based solutions and re-positioning has been well received. However, that comes with the caveat of inadequate scalability support. They also have a pretty good customer service and 3o-day free trial option like RingCentral.

In terms of tech stack, features, and number of advanced VoIP offerings, RingCentral comes across as a better candidate with more professional set of business service, unless your business knows exact extent of their usage, doesn’t have scalability needs, and low price is the only consideration.

RingCentral vs Fonality

Fonality(2011) and RingCentral (2009) have both won Internet Telephony Magazine’s “Product of the year” award, and have since emerged as two of the prominent players in a crowded market. Both offer PBX and UcaaS services to take their standard service stack to the next level. As a flexible deployment solution, Fonality has a complete business solution which can scale and adapt to your business needs. The focus is firmly on volatile and variable business needs. RingCentral on the other hand, offers a solution which you can scale up and down, albeit in a slightly more defined framework of tiers and tied features.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

Fonality starts with doing a lot of things right:

• Their pricing is competitive, though their cheapest monthly plans are more expensive (RingCentral annual payment options save 33% on their monthly subscriptions). Their virtual extensions are also $2.99/ext compared to $2/ext for RingCentral which adds up.
• Fonality HUD is more versatile than RingCentral, which targets more traditional business spaces.
• RingCentral’s strength for the most part, is the enormous set of features, especially advanced call management and app integration it offers for a very affordable price tag. Fonality, at least for the time being, has beat RingCentral on the “advanced call management” options, handsomely. That’s something we haven’t been able to conclude on any other provider thus far.

RingCentral doesn’t give up without a sting in the tail though:

• Excellent faxing options – both paperless and physical, plus apps to read, write, forward, scan, attach to email, and transcribe. This is far superior to RingCentral’s paperless fax.
• Integration option for windows and Blackberry adds wider acceptability, a market Fonality has ignored completely.
• Look closer and you’d notice that Fonality plan with 1,000 toll-free minutes ends up costing you $29, compared to RingCentral’s $19.99 for the cheapest deals. It does depend on number of users though. With more users, the gap closes out.
• RingCentral shades the app integration aspect still, albeit marginally. Fonality, while no slouch, doesn’t nearly offer as many business CRM integration options as seamlessly.
• Conference bride/ virtual rooms are free for RingCentral, while Fonality charges $15/bridge.

Customer service is comparable for both.

Verdict

In a bigger scheme of things, your needs would govern your choice, but Fonality manages to pull away with some notable wins, especially in terms of features. Pricing and customer service, as well variety of app integrations keep RingCentral in the hunt. As an enterprise or medium size business however, Fonality has more wins than RingCentral. While both services will continue to innovate, and RingCentral is arguable a better unified option, as a pure hosted PBX solution, Fonality wins this, just.

RingCentral vs ShoreTel

In terms of alternatives to RingCentral, ShoreTel is a cloud-based business phone system and very much like RingCentral in terms of the suite. Founded in 1996 in Sunnyvale, California, ShoreTel is a strong competitor as a provider of on-premise, hybrid, and cloud-based solutions. Their IP telephony unit was one of the earliest award-winning services in the category, promising cheapest service plans over five years of use. However, ShoreTel isn’t exactly a VoIP solutions provider, focusing on cloud telephony equipment instead (e.g. IP PBX, IP phones, Software) – which could then be used to purchase SIP trunking services from independent providers at a much lower cost.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

ShoreTel has some good features as an UcaaS service:

• Unified interface for their web and telephony services. ShoreTel’s platform is developed, designed, and abetted by software solutions built in-house to work together with their phones. And with their native data center, they also reduce the point of failure to the point they can sign service-level agreements (SLAs) for 100% uptime. RingCentral has a bit of a tall order matching up to those numbers short-term, especially since they use third-party phones, a meeting technology they acquired, and call center. However, given their wider footprint, their 99.9% availability is mighty impressive.
• Pricing gets a lot more affordable if you commit to long term service plans. In fact, they claim to match the cheapest VoIP service plans over five years, essentially leveraging the low-cost services using SIP.
• Customer service is comparable for both. If anything, ShoreTel is marginally ahead in terms of lower wait times and knowledge of agents in resolving the issues. But the difference isn’t huge, and the skill-gap is further narrowed down by the comprehensive online support bank created by RingCentral. The Finances Online survey pegs them at 98% (ShoreTel) and 95%(RingCentral) success rate in closing customer issues.

Verdict

The basic feature set of collaboration tools, conferencing, and the VoIP management suite – calls and voicemail management – is comparable with some goodies thrown in which are unique to either services. However, operational costs are likely to be higher if you use ShoreTel’s services for sporadic, or very limited and specific business needs. That in turn, makes them an unlikely first-choice for freelancers or small businesses, compared to a more flexible set of pricing plans from RingCentral. While ShoreTel does claim long-term savings, lack of a trial option like RingCentral hurts the credibility.

Moreover, in the UcaaS domain, while ShoreTel has some innovative ‘extras’ for business features in their telephony, RingCentral knocks them out of park in terms of app integration, especially with business CRM options.

RingCentral wins it for solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small businesses, and runs ShoreTel equal for mid-size or bigger enterprises.

RingCentral vs Five9

Five9 is an industry leading cloud-based calling solution which offers a feature-rich suite with IVR with Speech Recognition which delivers robust speech application technology, an unified dashboard with graphical user interface, and a full-feature virtual call center. In addition it has specialty features (like like agent optimization, productivity metrics, and staffing cost efficiency tools) as part of its Workforce Management solution. As a comprehensive virtual call center solution, Five9 offers most of the features which one would come to expect of a leading solution of its ilk. However, as we have seen in these sections, that alone is seldom sufficient to challenge the dominance of RingCentral in this market.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

Five9 has some excellent specialty features as a virtual call center. If your business telephony requires agent optimization, some of these are great value:

• ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) for business call center management
• ANI (Automatic Number Identification) to handle, queue, and set call priorities
• Auto dialer
• Blended call center – a unified virtual call center option to serve as the one-stop shop for all call management, distribution, and business telephony needs
• Advanced call management features – the standard set of features we come to expect of any good virtual calling suite like call recording, conferencing, call queue management, CRM integration (Salesforce, NetSuite, Oracle) with call center etc.

RingCentral, despite offering some of these advanced call management features as paid services (Call queuing, Internet fax for $7.99/mo each; call recording, call blocking, click-to-call etc.), adds up several more features as you scale up through plans. That being said, RingCentral is definitely more of a solution to fit diverse, if a bit more general virtual PBX need. It doesn’t specifically target agent traffic or call management optimization, despite offering several of these cutting-edge features.

• In terms of business CRM integration – ZohoCRM, Sugar CRM, HubSpot CRM, Oracle suite, Salesforce, and 57 other applications – RingCentral is a clear winner.
• Video conferencing and recording support is much better that Five9, and in some cases totally absent for Five9.
• Advanced call management for RingCentral includes several extras over Five9 like call parking, unlimited business SMS options, auto-receptionist and custom greeting, call monitoring etc.

Verdict

True to its claim, Five9 is a solid virtual calling center which several unique business features. The focus on optimizing agents, business efficiencies, and all tied into one easy-to-use visual interface is clear. Several tools available are not even offered on RingCentral’s higher tiers, showing the technology to have a leg up.

However, the technology comes at a cost. The industry-wide pricing plan surveys on a scale of 10, reveal Five9 to have a rating of 10 with respect to average price-point (indicating the highest price among those costing more than average), while RingCentral at 4, lower than industry average. The $185 vs $19.99 per month difference would be hard to justify, unless you have a very niche, high-end business need to use the feature-set.

App integration is another area where RingCentral consistently tops the charts, offering more than twice as many options, even in business CRM options. Barring a very specific need to use most of the advanced call and optimization features, the average virtual calling needs for a business (more so for the SMBs and freelancers) are likely to be sufficiently addressed by RingCentral. Five9 would need to really bring the cost down to get competitive, despite some serious wins on tech and customer support front.

RingCentral vs Phone.com

With a name like Phone.com, you better be at the top of your telephony solutions game. Phone.com has a long history of cloud-based, virtual telephony solutions, especially effective in the small and mid-size business market. Offering three basic plans and allowing additional ala carte options to add to these based on shared minutes per pricing tier allows it to have a clean, competitive route to target market share. However, unlike RingCentral which adds on excellent suite of features as you keep moving up the tiers, Phone.com is more flexible at each level about shared and pooled minutes and options.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

Phone.com essentially offers three plans, with options to add shared minutes as you need.

• The pool of minutes is shared on all tiers amon all users added (from 300, to 1,000 minutes) – used for phone, fax, conferencing etc. With another additional $23.99/ user you can add unlimited minutes extensions (essentially, they’re off the hook of shared minutes from the pool). These can be used for both domestic and toll-free calling.
• Overage minutes can also be added in bundles as shown in the chart above, however the pricing is steeper, and it might be better to identify the heavy user and add unlimited minutes extension for them.
• No free trial options. 30-day money-back guarantee offer with base plan, but not nearly sufficient to simulate enterprise or business needs with multi-users.
• No HD video option (neither recording or conferencing).

Compared to Phone.com, which came along only in 2008, RingCentral has had over a decade of headstart in addressing business telephony needs, and consequently shows a better understanding of features required. Not only does it throw in more as it scales, it’s just way more feature rich to cater to enterprise-level and bigger companies:

• Quality assurance, trend analysis, and diagnostic tools for better optimizing of virtual cloud PBX needs of a business.
• Significantly more number of app integrations and business CRM support (57), compared to only basic support for Phone.com (2).
• Standalone support for faxing and virtual call centers, as well as small-business office, mobile-pro plans, and professional plans add much more variety. It comes at the cost of being rigid on what comes with them, and add-on options are not as flexible.
• While easy routing, incoming call management, and internet faxing are designed with the mobile user in mind, their shared pool is only for toll-free calls. And you can’t add unlimited minutes for one user in a multi-user plan. Instead you’d need to avail RingCentral office plans as an upgrade.
• Free trial option.
• HD video, and HD audio, but only for Professional plan and above.

Verdict

For services and technical prowess, Phone.com runs RingCentral close. Most of the virtual, cloud-based PBX features are nearly identical. Phone.com comes with more lines per plan, shared pool of minutes extended to all users for domestic and toll-free calling, ability to add unlimited minutes to a particular user, and quite a bit of flexibility to buffer your plan with minutes as you need. It is much simpler to add phone numbers, users and advanced features – without completely changing plans. However, they also charge more for additional lines ($21.88/mo + $3.88/mo maintenance fee per line), unless you’re opting for a flat fee plan. Not having options of HD video at all, does hurt their prospects. Extra charges for on-hold music, auto-receptionist, custom-greeting, call recording, and VM transcribing – in an age when most companies offer them for free – pegs Phone.com back.

RingCentral offers more on scalability, with $24.99/mo (marginally lower than the total of $25.76/mo) for additional lines, and comparable $4.99/mo on flat fee. But they also offer a host of advanced calling features as part of each higher tier – extending it to additional lines. Though their upgrade options are slightly limiting, you can side-step that by deciding on the right product (professional or office) upfront, to match your business needs. You would however, need to switch plans should your needs change a fair bit.

RingCentral has more options for businesses of all sizes, better integration options, and more included advanced features which doesn’t cost extra, at the cost of options to add minutes or users on the fly. Given that they also have marginally better customer service options, and comparable pricing options, they are winners by a small margin. Phone.com however, could certainly be a handy alternative for appropriate need of flexible plans.

RingCentral vs Twilio

Twilio is a cloud based, communications-as-a-service service which offers powerful APIs to integrate virtual call center services, VoIP, messaging over internet, desktop, and mobile software solutions. They handle the complex telecom hardware aspects and expose their API so that developers can pick and choose the features they need and build the communication system attuned to their unique business needs. The integration is easy, and scalability is a big plus, given the pricing only applies to the usage. The expectation is that the Twilio end-users have their own development resources to write their custom applications and apps which have web-powered communication and notification features leveraging the API.

That being said, RingCentral vs Twilio is perhaps not exactly an apple to apple comparison since Twilio’s main focus is to offer the RESTful API and let the developers manage the application, and consequently the cost flexibility. RingCentral is more of an out-of-the-box UcaaS solution, which delivers all features and integrations as part of the tiered plans.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

Twilio’s specific structure ensures some distinctive wins:

• 141 – App integrations over RingCentral’s 57 is something you don’t often see. RingCentral’s big ace of offering several business and communication app integration often tilts the scales in their favor even when the cost and other specialt features don’t match up. Twilio however, being a software API, is far more compatible with all those plus a host of other email and development platforms like MailChimp, Marketo, Google App Engine, MS Azure bot service, WordPress, LeadMaster etc. Salesforce is the only big name missing.
• HTTPS / SSL for all pages – a big win in the security domain as well, as it puts in secure access on all pages. For businesses dealing with sensitive data, additional encryption is always a welcome news
• Multi-factor access control to database and authentication layers
• Data backup options in multiple data centers across the world, ensuring a remarkable failover strategy and market-leading 100% uptime guarantee.
• Several big brands like ridesharing giants Uber and Lyft, AirBnB, Hulu, Instacar, Intuit, and eBay are using Twilio to develop their custom app.

Given that the pricing can be as low as $0.1/user per month for using basic app features for your application, it’s certainly more efficient if you have your own in-house developers to build to your custom needs – adding more line-of-sight and control over your costs, scaling, and application eneds.

Needless to say, RingCentral feels the heat from a competitor who targets the communication cloud solutions from a different angle. They do however, have some of their gains to speak for:

• Small businesses or solo entrepreneurs/ freelancers may not however, have the resources and prefer a solution bundle out of the box. RingCentral offers them at very agreeable costs.
• RingCentral has its own DevAPI now. The big question however, is if it can be used for modular development of flexible feature-set and custom apps by companies, like they do for Twilio. Thus far, their tiered plans don’t offer quite as much liberty to do so.
• RingCentral offers both standalone and cloud solutions.

Verdict

This one is a tricky verdict. Purely from the perspective of cost and what it has to offer in terms of flexibility – Twilio edges out RingCentral. It offers you all the tools to build a solution to match your business needs.

RingCentral apportions those solutions by tiers, which still has a market for the smaller shops who can’t afford development resources (or don’t want to), for bigger enterprises and brands however, Twilio API is a clear winner. RingCentral’s API is a direct response to that challenges but is not yet as broadly tested and engaged in the market.

Over time, RingCentral’s API and positioning their plans for that might make it a true comparison. As of now however, this round goes to Twilio.

RingCentral vs OnSIP

OnSIP, previously called Junction networks, is a real-time hosted VoIP solutions company founded in 2004. It offers simple, powerful solutions which can either be pay-per-usage, seat-based, or even bring-your-own-device(BYOD) option which leverages their hosted SIP trunking and API solutions for IP PBX features. As a heavy hitter in the domain, OnSIP solutions scale with business needs of IP telephony. Over 50+ virtual IP PBX features, multiple integration and configuration choices, and flexible payment options have helped OnSIP has steadily consolidate its reputation as an innovative solution provider.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

OnSIP has a fair bit of overlap in terms of standard IP PBX features on offer. The difference lies in the way their plans distribute them to users and tiers.

• The standout win for OnSIP is their PAYG user package, which doesn’t need you to pay for all-inclusive package for every single user (like RingCentral), instead get a bundle for as low as $49.95/month and allows you to distribute the features among users sharing the tier. Rather than lock you to unlimited minutes which may end up being unused, they have a $0.029/min on calls with extension-extension calling, in-house calling, SIP-SIP calls all included for free. Also, no additional charge to set up additional users (compared to $4.95/ user for RingCentral).
• Metered plan charges you per user ($8.95/user/mo), but it’s still a third of $24.95/user/month as levied by RingCentral.
• OnSIP InstaCall – allowing free features of single click web-based calling, video, and web phone communication is a great, user-friendly feature.
• Free plan includes a lot of good features which are industry-standard for virtual IP PBX units, including integration with Zendesk and Slack, and getting up to 100 registered users.
• Multipoint HD video conferencing option is another big win as a free feature – offered as a paid one for most other competing services.

Both RingCentral and OnSIP have enhanced ACD queues for the paid user enabling supervisors to take advantage of call reporting, call monitoring, call whisper, and generate key analytics reports.

RingCentral however, doesn’t claim the additional costs for nothing. They do have a few key features OnSIP does not:

• Internet faxing option at $7.99/mo is a handy one, especially for businesses using contracts
• Visual VM, Vm transcribing, and VM-to-email features.
• Conferencing and collaboration tools which include automated recording of both voice and HD video.
• Security features like SSL, role-based access control, secure VoIP service, and single-sign on.
• Call flip
• Paging and unlimited business SMS features for advanced tiers.

RingCentral also has options to sell business VoIP phones of Yealink, Cisco, and Polycom make, all available at discounted prices. OnSIP follows a BYOD policy and works with all SIP RFC compatible devices.

Verdict

OnSIPs clear win is in pricing. Industry surveys peg them at 2 on a scale of 1-10 on price with respect to industry average, which iis lower than even the impressive score of 4 for RingCentral. Allowing the flexibility of ala carte options to add minutes with metered and unlimited plans is also beneficial if you know that all users may not use the several unlimited offers. The number of options for the free user, and 30-day money-back guarantee for the free trial is also likely to encourage businesses.

RingCentral however, is a happy medium of pricing, features locked to each tier, and wider range of options for businesses of all sizes. App integrations, as expected, are far superior. There are also advanced call management, video conferencing, collaboration, and business features which OnSIP doesn’t quite have. It reveals itself as more capable and sturdy as a solution as the needs grow, even if a touch more expensive. Having their own hardware options for internet phones, headphones etc. (with discounted pricing) adds to their ability to offer a bundle which gets plenty done.

RingCentral is a winner on scalability and options. OnSIP may however, be a good choice for freelancers or smaller shops who have a handle on their usage stats.

RingCentral vs CallRail

As one of the biggest players in multi-channel IP PBX solutions across business horizontals, CallRail has significant presence both within the USA and across the world. CallRail is a popular choice for several enterprise categories like Automotive sector, Construction, Healthcare, and traditional businesses across nearly 170+ sectors. Having a free option also adds to their allure for smaller businesses. That being said, CallRail’s focus is much more on tracking and lead management rather than providing an unified communication system. As a business analytics platform, CallRail does dominate the market share, but RingCentral recent growth and diversification makes it a potent match-up. Let’s look at how close it really runs.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

CallRail targets businesses with a greater focus than many of the IP PBX solutions. Features and tools targeted as enterprise solutions reflect in the greater market share – with quite a few distinctive gains:

• Allowing Elite plans by quote makes it easier to mix and match a la carte features to strengthen the Pro Plan. This is especially helpful for bigger businesses and corporate clients.
• International minutes and pay-as-you-go options help it establish much bigger international footprint in several countries.
• Labeling, bid Management, keyword tracking, and unlimited business accounts allow plenty of goodies for businesses using this as a one-stop shop for unified solution.

RingCentral is a big threat to their share for several reasons:

• Better security features like SSL, role-based access control, secure VoIP service, and single-sign on.
• Paging and unlimited business SMS features for advanced tiers.
• Much better suite of app intergration, as always, is a tangible win for RingCentral. Not only does it work for several business CRMs, but also day-to-day office suite and applications across the technology aisle.
• RingCentral also gains from having more features added as you scale, not least the ability to be portable and mobile friendly with their Android, iOS, and windows integration (plus softphone apps) – allowing much higher adoption rate as you attempt unified communication solutions.

Verdict

CallRail is a strong competitor in business domain. Their market share reflects their investment in business solutions. Even in app integration front, they offer some unique app tie-ups, as do their feature-rich suite.

However, their tunnel vision is also their limitation as they offer no options fo rportable devices besides web-based options, no softphone or mobile apps, no independent API to build on, no integration options with standard suites like Microsoft, Oracle cloud, Zendesk, or Zoho. All these mean, that as an UcaaS solution RingCentral gains ground.

CallRail does have a larger international footprint, but RingCentral is certainly growing fast enough to challenge that dominance. Considering current stats, they would be considered equal for different reasons, however as a purely UcaaS solution, RingCentral is a winner and is likely to gain in market share in coming years.

RingCentral vs Dialpad

Dialpad is a standout vendor of UcaaS services among the new, upcoming brands. Founded in 2015, it retained the experience and several positive features of its former avatar as Switch co. and yet, brought a renewed commitment to call, voicemail, and text services as a unified communication suite for businesses via a variety of devices. As a single point of contact (a unique number) accessible to desk phone, mobile phones, and desktops – it has emerged with decent creds. That being said, Dialpad is essentially an ‘improvising’ suite for traditional communication channels, reliant on a new, contemporary software solution. RingCentral, on the other hand, is a seasoned cloud-based unified communication solution.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

Dialpad and RingCentral’s basic suite of features are fairly similar. Most of the features you expect from top-of-the-line cloud communications suite are available for both. However, the broader range of features and integrations RingCentral offers is unmatched. The 15 year head-start in the industry shows as RingCentral adds muscle with each tier, adding a larger footprint of features even as user count and company size grows.

Here are some of the key differences which allow RingCentral to stay ahead:

• “RingCentral for Google” – leveraging the Google Hangouts as a communication hub which can handle audio conferences for up to 1,000 users, dial-in conference line, and integrate with Google search, calendar for scheduling etc.
• Voicemail transcriptions, Visual VM features are available for all tiers instead of only enterprise customers like Dialpad
• Account management, operational support, API services, and reporting/ analytics are also part of the basic suite for RingCentral, as opposed to advanced suite for Dialpad.
• Call whisper, call flip and advanced call monitoring are a major fillip to RingCentral’s business users. While there is call recording available for Dialpad, it is only available once the call is complete, with no ability to use real-time insights.
• Glip, among other things, allows RingCentral to really refine the audio-visual collaborative feature as an online experience. Dialpad has yet to refine that solution, although they are developing and refining their browser based solutions like the Chrome plugin for multi-way connect.

Verdict

As a relatively new solution, Dialpad has done well to carve a space for itself in a highly competitive market, thanks in no small measure to its commitment to cloud-based, software solutions. Basic feature suite is sturdy, and they make it an attractive sell by keeping the price competitive.

However, that also proves to be their downfall, as their solution isn’t that scalable for larger businesses, more users, or enterprise clients yet. RingCentral adds many more features as you go up the tiers, much better customer service suite, and the pricing still remains competitive. App integration has always been RingCentral’s strong suit, and Dialpad falls short there, despite some novelty integrations for collaboration. Without doubt, they’d be broadening their service scope in future upgrades, but RingCentral is considerably ahead as an UcaaS solution.

RingCentral vs eFax

eFax (and its sibling eVoice) are owned by J2, a parent company which has steadily worked its way up the VoIP solutions market. eFax, as the name suggests, aims to take electronic faxing options to the next level. By aiming to eliminate the need for traditional fax lines, fax machines, and the associated paper monster – eFax is helps take the greener route to send and receive fax in your email inbox. It offers complete fax solutions for businesses of any scale, competitive pricing on annual plans, and minimal charges for faxing pages over limit. For the purposes of a fair comparison, we will focus on only the faxing features of RingCentral, since eFax is a corporate solution for just online faxing.

Comparing with RingCentral

Key features and comparison

It’s obvious that the full-feature unified communication as a service solution of RingCentral, is better equipped to offer you an all-purpose solution. Their focus is not just faxing, but all sorts of communication, of which internet faxing is a part. eFax on the other hand, is only focused on faxing options, with eVoice forming the phone/ calling service counterpart.

As a purely faxing option, eFax runs RingCentral close on features. In fact it has a couple of slender wins in:

• Number of document formats it supports
• Free vanity number option (as opposed to $30 for RingCentral), and availability in Australia, the U.K., and several other countries outside North America.
• Leverages Google Cloudprint
• Unlimited cloud storage – good for long-term storage needs like legal documents and sensitive information which may need to adhere to longer retention cycles.

RingCentral though, delivers plenty of goods for a service which is essentially a small part of it’s overall suite:

• Multiple alerting mechanisms, especially text message and smartphone notification allow you to leverage the service even when on the move.
• Schedule a fax delivery at a future time
• Several app integrations
• Softphone application and support for more platforms and mobile devices
• Send/receive faxes on the principal numbers which are also the primary phone channels.

Verdict

eFax does have some notable wins in offering support for over 50 kinds of document formats, unlimited document storage and international number support (including free vanity number options). Plus you can control transmission speed to leverage the connectivity and bandwidth in the best possible way. These are not insignificant.

However, RingCentral is more of a consistent, sturdy suite. It’s more than likely that the user would invest in a UcaaS solution, than just an internet faxing option. RingCentral numbers can double up as faxing numbers, notifications are better, pricing is more competitive, and allow you to schedule faxing times. Even when we keep the comparison down to just faxing services, RingCentral’s commitment to wide-ambit integration, app support, and cross-platform compatibility shines through.

As purely faxing options they are most equal, and each has a slender advantage over other depending on your business needs. But RingCentral is likely to be a better choice if you need anything more than just internet faxing as a communication suite feature. RingCentral is also more scalable, and hence can support large enterprises and freelancers with equal felicity. eFax plans, on the other hand, would work best for small businesses.

Alternatives To RingCentral Conclusions

While there are many great alternatives to Ring Central it’s a difficult task to pick out any specific one that is clearly at the top. The reality is you can’t go wrong with nearly all of the providers covered above, you just need to do your due diligence and properly assess your office phone system needs before settling on a provider. If you prefer to let an expert do the work our partners would me more happy to provide you with a free VoIP consultation.