What RingCentral can do for you‍

RingCentral is a cloud software vendor offering solutions for business communications. Its main product, RingEX, brings a range of channels like chat, voice, and video conferencing under a single platform, along with collaboration functionality like file sharing and whiteboarding. This is often referred to as UCaaS, or unified communications as a service. As the technology runs in the cloud, there’s no need for complex or expensive hardware systems as with traditional on-premises communication solutions. One of RingCentral’s differentiating characteristics is its focus on artificial intelligence. Its RingSense automation and intelligence features offer capabilities like automatic transcription of calls and videos, real-time summarisation and note taking, and AI translation for team messaging. These tools can help your employees save time and communicate more efficiently. Along with UCaaS, RingCentral offers CCaaS (contact center as a service) solutions such as RingCX, so you can deliver the best support experience to your customers. With products for both unified communications and contact center needs — plus integrations with apps like Office 365 and Slack — RingCentral is essentially a one-stop shop for all your business communication requirements, both internal and external.

‍RingCentral pricing structures and tiers‍

RingCentral’s primary service is its RingEX business communications platform. It’s available in three different tiers — Core, Pro, and Ultra. It also offers a CCaaS product, RingCX. The cloud PBX system boasts a 99.999% uptime service-level agreement (SLA), and 24/7 support is available for all tiers as well as single sign-on (SSO). You can find a full breakdown of the RingCentral pricing structure below.

RingCentral pricing – RingEX Core

Price: $20 per user per month ($30 billed monthly)

Core is the cheapest tier of RingCentral pricing. It includes the cloud PBX system for unlimited domestic calling in the US and Canada, with features like voicemail transcriptions, AI noise cancellation, end-to-end encryption of calls, and on-demand call recording. Business SMS is available with 25 messages included per user per month, plus 100 minutes to your toll-free numbers.

Unified communications capabilities in the Core plan include team messaging and file sharing, unlimited audio conferencing, HD video meetings for up to 100 participants, RingCentral Whiteboard for easy collaboration, and remote desktop control.RingSense AI Essentials is included, so customers can use AI tools like live transcriptions, closed captioning, plus video summaries and highlights.

RingCentral pricing – RingEX Pro

Price: $25 per user per month ($35 billed monthly)

The middle tier of RingCentral pricing is Pro. On the phone side, this ups the toll-free minutes to 1,000 and the business SMS to 100 per user per month, and adds more advanced call queue and monitoring features plus support for hot desking. Pro users get unlimited internet fax too, and the same set of RingSense AI capabilities as the Core plan. Managing your RingCentral system becomes more flexible thanks to additional admin tools like cost center management and custom role-based access (RBAC).Another key benefit of the RingEX pro plan is the greater number of integrations available, such as with CRM solutions like Salesforce and Zendesk, and industry-specific products like VMWare, Canvas, and Smarsh.

RingCentral pricing – RingEX Ultra

Price: $35 per user per month ($45 billed monthly)

The most expensive RingEX subscription option is the Ultra plan. This is broadly similar to the Pro tier, but the monthly included toll-free minutes are upped to 10,000 and business SMS is increased to 200 per user per month. Storage for team messaging and file sharing is unlimited, and video meetings can hold up to 200 participants. Ultra users also get a wider set of analytics tools. All integrations are available as in the Pro plan.

RingCentral pricing – RingCX

Price: from $65 per agent per month

RingCX is a separate product to RingEX. It’s an omnichannel contact center solution that’s driven by AI, with features like:

• Automatic call distribution (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), and skills-based routing;
• Voice, video, and over 20 digital channels;
• Call recordings;
• Customer surveys;
• Tight integration with RingEX.

On top, RingSense AI adds benefits like call summaries and transcripts, automated call scoring, feedback, and speech analytics, plus workforce engagement tools to intelligently assist your employees in real time. If RingCX isn’t quite right for your business, RingCentral Contact Center for Enterprise is another available solution with more advanced capabilities and additional digital channels.

‍Additional RingCentral costs to consider‍

There are a few additional products and costs which add complexity to the RingCentral pricing structure. That said, this does mean you won’t be paying for things you don’t need. Here’s a round-up of extra costs you might run into.

Video

While video capabilities are included with RingEX, you can also opt to purchase them separately if you don’t need a full cloud telephone system. There are four separate products:

• Video Pro is free and supports unlimited meetings up to 50 minutes in length for 100 participants;
• Video Pro+ is $10 per user per month and supports video meetings up to 24 hours in length for 200 participants;
• Webinar is $30 per organizer per month and supports webinars for up to 10,000 participants;
• Rooms is $39 per room per month and is a conference room video solution.

RingCentral Events

RingCentral offers an events orchestration tool which offers a range of capabilities for virtual, hybrid, and onsite events with support for up to 100,000 attendees. Prices start from $750 per license per year.  

RingSense for Sales

While RingEX comes with a base level of RingSense AI tools, it can be further enhanced with a RingSense for Sales subscription to add features like personalized coaching and performance analysis, advanced insights into your communication data, and CRM and productivity suite integrations. Customers can contact sales for pricing.

Additional numbers

Extra phone numbers can be added to your plan for an additional cost:

• Vanity numbers – $30 one-time fee;
• Toll-free or local numbers – $4.99/user/month;
• International numbers – from $5.99/user/month;
• International toll-free numbers – $14.99/user/month plus $25 one-time fee.

High-volume SMS

RingCentral uses pay-as-you-go pricing for high-volume SMS. It’s $0.01 per SMS message sent or received.

Push to talk

The RingCentral platform supports push to talk or ‘walkie talkie’ style communication which is often used by frontline workers. Licenses cost $5 per user per month.

‍Other vendors offering cloud-based communication‍

How do RingCentral’s UCaaS and CCaaS solutions stack up against the competition? Here’s a look at three alternative vendors to consider.

RingCentral pricing vs Zoom

Zoom pricing for its base-level UCaaS solution is cheaper than RingCentral’s, but there’s a greater number of add-on costs so it could still end up being more expensive depending what your needs are. Zoom’s CCaaS solution is a little more expensive than RingCentral’s. Which is right for you? RingCentral leans more towards VoIP, while Zoom is heavily specialized in video conferencing.

RingCentral pricing vs 8x8

While RingCentral primarily offers UCaaS services with contact center on top, 8x8 is focused more on the CCaaS side. It’s harder to give a direct comparison between costs as 8x8 does not publish their pricing structure, but some users may find 8x8 may be more cost-effective for unified communications, especially for organizations in the SMB space. Furthermore, 8x8 pricing is highly transparent and there are no additional costs.

RingCentral pricing vs Vonage

Vonage offers similar capabilities to RingCentral and is well-suited to meet both unified communications and contact center business needs. Vonage pricing is a little lower than RingCentral’s for the lowest tier of its UCaaS solution, which may be beneficial for smaller businesses. Its pricing plans extend to meet enterprise requirements, as do its solutions, with dedicated communications API and conversational commerce products available too.

‍RingCentral pricing – the Vertice verdict‍

Ultimately, RingCentral offers a diverse set of capabilities powered by its robust cloud telephony system. Its pricing structure is relatively simple and additional costs are typically reserved for specific functionality, and its UCaaS and CCaaS solutions represent good value for money. Of course, you may still be able to save money by negotiating with the vendor — and that’s where Vertice can help. By letting us aid in your procurement process, we can leverage our market intel to get you the lowest price for RingCentral. Simply get in touch to begin.