RingCentral Review
Is It The Best Choice For You?
Last Updated: By TRUiC Team
Are you looking for reputable business phone service, but you’re not quite sure if RingCentral is the best choice for you? There are many companies offering telecommunications services for business these days, and it’s not always easy to figure out which one you should use.
As a supplement to your own research, my team and I studied the details of each major business phone service provider. My goal with this review is to help you make an informed decision by sharing this information with you.
In this RingCentral review, you’ll find an overview of their pros and cons, pricing and features, customer reviews and much more. Let’s find out if they’re a good fit for your company!
Pros & Cons of RingCentral
Pros of RingCentral
- My favorite part of RingCentral’s business phone service is their convenient integration options with tons of great software products. With RingCentral, you can sync your account with industry giants like Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, Salesforce and Zendesk. None of their competitors come close to this level of integration.
- RingCentral is the most popular VoIP (voice over internet protocol) business phone service available. They have over 350,000 clients currently using their products and services, which is a much larger customer volume than most competitors can claim.
- You can save up to 33% if you pre-pay for 12 months of service. While most of the competition also offers volume discounts, RingCentral provides more value than others. (For example, Nextiva offers a $2/month discount for a 36-month contract.)
Cons of RingCentral
- RingCentral outsources customer support to foreign countries, and some clients have problems trying to communicate with service reps who may not speak English as a first language. In fact, this is probably the most common issue mentioned in their critical customer reviews. Speaking of…
- While their customer feedback looks pretty good on some sites due to solid average rating scores, a closer look reveals a different story. RingCentral used to receive strong customer reviews, but over the last couple years, the trends have definitely changed. Many of their recent reviews are negative in nature.
RingCentral Alternative
We're a big fan of Nextiva's unlimited minutes plans, and their customer feedback is the best in this industry that we're aware of. Read Review
RingCentral Pricing & Features
RingCentral provides 4 options for business phone service: Essentials, Standard, Premium and Ultimate. In the screenshot below, you can see how they advertise these packages on their own website, and then we’ll dive into the details.
There are two variables that can affect the price point for any of these plans: Monthly vs. annual payments, and number of users. If you pay for your entire year of service in one transaction, you can save between 25-33% per user per month, which is a really significant discount. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of how the number of users can make RingCentral’s prices fluctuate.
Essentials (prices are per month, per user)
1 user: $39.99 / 2-10 users: $29.99 / 11+ users: N/A
Standard
1 user: $49.99 / 2-99 users: $34.99 / 100-999 users: $32.99 / 1000-9999 users: $29.99
Premium
1 user: $54.99 / 2-99 users: $44.99 / 100-999 users: $42.99 / 1000-9999 users: $39.99
Ultimate
1 user: $69.99 / 2-99 users: $59.99 / 100-999 users: $52.99 / 1000-9999 users: $49.99
What do you get with each of these packages? RingCentral offers a core suite of standard features that includes some services that many competitors make you pay extra for. Let’s take a look at how their 4 service plans differentiate.
- Standard Features: Conference calling, text messaging, iPhone/Android apps, voicemail to email, integrations with popular apps (Microsoft, Google, Dropbox), unlimited video meetings
- Essentials: 100 minutes
- Standard: 1,000 minutes, adds auto attendant, internet fax
- Premium: 2,500 minutes, adds call recording, custom app development, advanced integration tools (Salesforce, Zendesk, Desk.com)
- Ultimate: 10,000 minutes, adds voicemail transcription
Recommended Package
Obviously, when different businesses have different needs, it’s tough to pick just one service plan and make a blanket recommendation. My personal preference is probably the Premium package, which RingCentral also says is their most popular. It has a nice balance of advanced features, and with 2,500 minutes you shouldn’t be running out very quickly.
Customer Reviews
There are hundreds of customer reviews for RingCentral across the web, and in general they receive more positive feedback than critical reviews. However, once I dug into their feedback, I realized that over the last couple years, customers have gotten increasingly negative in their perceptions of RingCentral.
People seem to be unimpressed by their customer service lately, and also experience some technical issues. Of course, there are still quite a few RingCentral clients who like their service, especially with all the integration options.
Customer Reviews Section Last Updated 12-14-17
- Get VoIP: 4.0/5, 149 reviews
- VoIP-info: 4.0/5, 129 reviews
- Virtual Phone System Reviews: 3.0/5, 110 reviews
- Consumer Affairs: 3.0/5, 96 reviews
- TrustPilot: 1.3/10, 64 reviews
Conclusion: Overall, customer reviews are a slight positive for RingCentral. However, given the more critical nature of their recent feedback, I’m less excited about RingCentral’s customer reviews than I thought I would be just from looking at their average rating scores.
How RingCentral Compares
I’ve invested lots of time into business phone service research, and I’ve naturally developed some personal favorites along the way. Of course, my goal isn’t to convince you to hire the same provider I use myself, but rather to help you figure out if RingCentral is a good fit for your business.
Obviously, no one service provider is going to be the perfect choice for every entrepreneur seeking business phone service, and it’s always important to keep an eye on what the competition is offering. With this in mind, let’s do a quick comparison between RingCentral and Nextiva, one of their top competitors.
Pricing: Nextiva’s pricing also works on a bit of a variable model that changes depending on the number of users, and on the length of your contract. In general, RingCentral and Nextiva have pretty comparable price points. For one user on a month-to-month payment plan, RingCentral charges $39.99 compared to Nextiva’s $34.99 offer.
Features: The biggest difference between the features these services provide is that Nextiva offers unlimited minutes with all of their business phone service packages. Aside from that, they differ a bit in regards to integrations — whereas RingCentral has Microsoft, Google, Dropbox and more, Nextiva offers Skype solutions.
Customer Support: RingCentral does not have a great reputation when it comes to customer service, as they can often take up to 48 hours to return calls and messages, even though they offer 24/7 support. Also, their reps are often outsourced and not U.S.-based. On the other hand, Nextiva is known for providing timely, effective support. They’re available from 8am-9pm ET weekdays, and 9am-9pm ET weekends.
Experience: Nextiva has served 150,000+ customers since opening back in 2003. RingCentral is on another level of experience, as they opened in 1999 and have over 350,000 active clients on their platform.
Here's a Quick Breakdown
RingCentral
Pricing $29.99-$69.99
350,000+ customers served
Perfect for: Anyone needing a cost-effective/flexible cloud phone service
Nextiva
Pricing $34.95-$44.95
150,000+ customers served
Perfect for: Anyone needing a large scale business VoIP phone service & excellent features
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Shouldn’t I Obtain Business Phone Service From a Traditional Phone Company?
When you use a VoIP service like RingCentral, you will almost certainly save a significant amount of money over using a traditional phone company for your business phone service. Additionally, because RingCentral operates on an internet connection rather than a standard phone line, it’s also a more flexible and portable format.
How Secure is Their Service?
Generally speaking, RingCentral is every bit as safe and secure as the network it’s running on. There are no known security issues, and they also use Trustwave identity verification to protect you when making purchases on their website.
How Easy is the Setup Process?
Straight from their own website, “you can set up in minutes, rather than the weeks required with legacy systems.” Sounds pretty good to me!
Should You Use RingCentral?
RingCentral is worth a score of 4.4/5 in my book. They offer exclusive integrations with a ton of major software products, and their popularity is unrivaled in this industry. That being said, if this doesn’t sound like your perfect fit, check out our Best Small Business Phone System review. Cheers!