8x8 alternative
The 8x8 alternative that publishes its price
8x8 sells five products and puts a price on none of them. Its own plans and pricing page carries no figure at all - every product ends in Request a Quote or Chat with Sales, and there is not a single dollar sign on the page. Two other things decide it for an outbound desk. Their use policy defines what unlimited means, and the definition is not a number you can look up: where a threshold is unspecified, fair use is up to three times the average monthly use of that feature by all 8x8 customers. And the same policy makes enforcing a do-not-call list your obligation for telemarketing or other outbound activities, without providing one.
No card required. No seat minimum.
The short version
- 8x8 publishes no price for any product. The plans and pricing page carries six Request a Quote buttons, four Chat with Sales links and no figures.
- Their use policy defines unlimited by comparison to other customers: where a threshold is unspecified, fair use means up to three times the average monthly use of that feature by all 8x8 customers.
- The same policy, section 2(d), requires you to enforce a do-not-call list for all telemarketing or other outbound activities. Nothing on their product pages provides one.
- There is no dialer in 8x8 Work. 8x8 Auto Dialer is part of 8x8 Contact Center, and the advanced version - behaviour-triggered dialing, segmentation, voicemail drops - is 8x8 Auto Dialer with Regal.io, a third-party product.
- Their integration directory lists 23 CRM integrations. Of the ten investor CRMs only Left Main REI is reachable, and only because Left Main is built on Salesforce.
smrtPhone vs 8x8
The 8x8 alternative, feature by feature
Every 8x8 figure below was taken from 8x8’s own public pricing pages . Prices change; check theirs before you decide.
| What matters when you dial |
|
smrtPhone |
|---|---|---|
| What it is built for | Enterprise contact centres and company-wide communications | Teams making outbound calls and texts from a CRM |
| The phone system underneath | Yes. 8x8 Work, with a receptionist console and global coverage | Yes. Call flows, inbound teams and departments, voicemail, business hours, warm transfer, conference calling and call monitoring |
| Seeing a price before you talk to sales | No. No figure on any product. Request a quote or chat with sales | Yes. Every seat, add-on and rate published |
| Price a seat | Not published for any of the five products | $29 a seat, plus smrtDialer at $50 or $90 |
| Dialing a list | Partly. 8x8 Auto Dialer, part of 8x8 Contact Center rather than 8x8 Work | Yes. smrtDialer, 1 to 4 lines, with AI voice detection, on the same seat |
| Dial lines described | No. No dialer mode or line count described on any page | Yes. 1 to 4, published |
| Voicemail drop | Partly. Listed under 8x8 Auto Dialer with Regal.io, a third-party product | Yes. Included in smrtDialer, logged to the CRM |
| What unlimited means | No. Up to three times the average monthly use by all 8x8 customers, where no threshold is specified | 500 minutes a seat, then $0.03. Unlimited at $99 a seat |
| Outbound list compliance | No. Their use policy makes enforcing a do-not-call list your obligation | Yes. DNC and DNT lists, DNC applet, DNC API, A2P 10DLC and automatic opt-out, in the base seat |
| Texting | Partly. High-volume messaging, with allowances in the documentation rather than on the pricing page | Yes. SMS and MMS in every seat, 1,000 segments, then $0.02 |
| Native CRM integrations | Partly. 23 CRM listings across Work and Contact Center: Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, NetSuite, Zoho, Pipedrive, Zendesk, Bullhorn, SugarCRM, ServiceNow, Freshdesk and eAgent | Yes. Podio, GoHighLevel, Left Main REI, InvestorFuse, DataSift, Realeflow, Invelo, Carrot, Tape and Salesforce |
| Investor CRMs it does not cover | No. Podio, GoHighLevel, InvestorFuse, DataSift, Realeflow, Invelo, Carrot and Tape | Not applicable |
| Where the record lives | Your CRM, where it is one of the 23 | Yes. Your CRM. Calls and texts write to it |
| Buying one seat | No. Quote first, on every product | Yes. Yes, at $29, with a 14-day trial you start yourself |
| Leaving | Not described on the pricing page | Yes. Month to month. Cancel it yourself |
The other side
When 8x8 is the better choice
8x8 is built for a scale smrtPhone is not. If you run a contact centre - omnichannel routing across voice, chat, email, SMS and social, workforce engagement management, speech analytics, supervisor workspaces, secure payment processing - that is the whole product, and smrtPhone sells none of it. It also covers a global office estate, carries a Microsoft Teams integration with no Teams Phone licence required, and is recognised in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS. Its Capterra profile for 8x8 Work is 4.1 from 309 reviews. For an enterprise buying one platform for every channel, this comparison is not the one to read.
- You are staffing a contact centre, not a desk of callers.
- You need omnichannel routing across voice, chat, email, SMS and social.
- Workforce management, speech analytics and supervisor tooling are requirements.
- Your company runs on Microsoft Teams and you want calling inside it.
- You have offices in several countries and need global coverage.
If you are buying an enterprise contact centre
That is what most of 8x8 is for, and it is a real category: omnichannel routing, workforce engagement management, speech analytics, supervisor workspaces, secure payment processing, PCI Pal and Calabrio and Verint alongside it, across a floor of agents with a procurement process to match. smrtPhone runs the phone system - call flows, inbound teams and departments, voicemail, business hours, warm transfer, conference calling and call monitoring - but it does not sell any of that contact-centre layer. If a CCaaS platform is the purchase, the products to weigh are 8x8, Five9, Talkdesk, Genesys and NICE.
This page is for the other case: a small team working a list out of an investor CRM, wanting to know the price before booking a call, and wanting the dialer, the texting and the compliance in the seat rather than in a separate quoted product.
Straight from the reviews
What 8x8 users complain about
Recurring themes across 8x8’s own public review profiles, each one set against what smrtPhone does about it.
- 4.1/5
- 2.8/5
|
What reviewers report
|
What we do about it
|
|---|---|
| No clear way to cancel in the support system | Cancel it yourself, month to month, without opening a case |
| Contracts that auto-renew for another year | Month to month at a published price. The yearly rate is a discount, not a lock |
| Charges continuing after cancellation was asked for | One seat, one published price, and you remove seats yourself |
| Chat that will not reach a person | Chat, email or a scheduled Zoom, handled by the smrtPhone team directly |
| Needing a quote before you can see a price | Every seat, add-on, minute and segment rate is on the pricing page |
Why smaller outbound teams end up somewhere else
-
They could not find out what it cost
8x8's plans and pricing page prices nothing. Contact Center, Engage, CPaaS, 8x8 Work and the Microsoft Teams product each end in Request a Quote or Chat with Sales, and there is no figure anywhere on it. For a three-person acquisitions desk that means a sales call before a number, and a number that depends on the call. smrtPhone publishes the seat, the dialer, the numbers, the per-minute rate and the per-segment rate, and the trial starts without talking to anybody.
$29 a seat, published -
Unlimited was measured against other customers
Their use policy sets fair use for anything designated unlimited at the thresholds in the 8x8 documentation - and where one is unspecified, at up to three times the average monthly use of that feature by all 8x8 customers. That is a ceiling you cannot look up before signing, and a team that dials all day is the shape that moves furthest from an average. smrtPhone meters plainly at $0.03 a minute after 500 a seat, or $99 a seat for unlimited.
500 minutes, then $0.03 -
Compliance was their obligation, not a feature
Section 2(d) of the same policy states that for all telemarketing or other outbound activities you will enforce a do-not-call list. It requires the list; it does not give you one, and nothing on the 8x8 product pages does either. In smrtPhone, DNC and DNT list management, a DNC applet you can drop into a call flow, DNC API access, A2P 10DLC registration and automatic SMS opt-out handling are all in the base seat.
DNC and opt-out in the seat
Built into the CRM you already run
Calls, texts, recordings and dispositions land on the record they belong to, with no connector in between.
Verified reviews
What smrtPhone users say
Everything above is our claim. This is not: these are reviews left on Capterra, where most reviewers are real estate investors.
- 4.7/5
-
5 out of 5. Under 6 months in
Its ability to dial on 4 different lines simultaneously that no other dialer in the market has.
Chad F. Founder, real estate -
5 out of 5. 2+ years in
Integration with Podio and the ability to customize every aspect.
Ryan J. Founder, real estate -
5 out of 5. Under 6 months in
What I like most about SmrtPhone is how responsive and helpful their support team is. In fact, there have been instances during my onboarding that they have proactively reached out. They make the learning curve very easy to overcome.
Brendan P. CEO, real estate
What switching actually involves
Numbers port. Settle one thing first: if what you actually run is a contact centre - queues, supervisors, workforce management, omnichannel - smrtPhone does not replace that, and the comparison worth making is between a quoted platform and a published seat, not between two dialers.
- Port your numbers. They move with you. Nobody has to learn a new number.
- Connect the CRM. Calls, texts, recordings and dispositions start writing to the record.
- Rebuild your call flows. Routing, ring groups, business hours and the DNC applet.
- Run both for a few days. Then move the dialing over once the logging looks right.
How long the port really takes
- Porting takes one to three weeks once the paperwork is in and confirmed. It is faster when your current provider sits on the same underlying carrier we do, and slower if the paperwork comes back rejected over a detail that does not match your carrier record.
- Support does the work. You start it from live chat and the team handles the submission.
- Do not cancel your old provider until the port completes. Your number keeps working throughout.
- Occasionally voice ports a few hours before texting does. It settles by itself.
Questions people ask before switching
How much does 8x8 cost?
Their own plans and pricing page does not say. Every product on it - Contact Center, 8x8 Engage, CPaaS, 8x8 Work and the Microsoft Teams offering - ends in Request a Quote or Chat with Sales, and the page carries no figures at all. Review sites publish estimates, but the vendor does not. smrtPhone is $24 a seat a month billed yearly, or $29 month to month, with smrtDialer at $50 for a single line or $90 for up to four, and every minute, segment and number rate published alongside.
Does 8x8 have a power dialer?
It has 8x8 Auto Dialer, and it is part of 8x8 Contact Center rather than 8x8 Work, the phone system. Their pages describe automated outbound calling, call pacing, prioritisation and compliance safeguards, but no dialer mode and no line count - and the advanced version, with behaviour-triggered dialing, segmentation and voicemail drops, is 8x8 Auto Dialer with Regal.io, a third-party product. smrtDialer runs one to four lines with AI voice detection on the same $29 seat, at $50 or $90.
What does unlimited mean on 8x8?
Their use policy answers this directly. For anything designated unlimited, use must stay inside the fair use thresholds in the 8x8 documentation - and where a threshold is unspecified, fair use means up to three times the average monthly use of that feature by all 8x8 customers. It is a real limit measured against other people's usage rather than a number you can check before you sign. smrtPhone includes 500 minutes a seat and meters the rest at $0.03, or $99 a seat for unlimited.
Does 8x8 handle DNC compliance?
It requires it of you. Section 2(d) of the 8x8 use policy states that for all telemarketing or other outbound activities you will enforce a do-not-call list, and nothing on their product pages supplies one. In smrtPhone, DNC and DNT list management, a DNC applet for call flows, DNC API access, A2P 10DLC registration and automatic SMS opt-out handling are in the base seat.
Does 8x8 integrate with my CRM?
Their directory lists 23 CRM integrations across the two products - Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Zoho, Pipedrive, Zendesk, Bullhorn, SugarCRM, ServiceNow, Freshdesk and eAgent among them. For investor teams the nuance is Salesforce: Left Main REI is built on it, so 8x8 reaches Left Main that way. Podio, GoHighLevel, InvestorFuse, DataSift, Realeflow, Invelo, Carrot and Tape are not covered. smrtPhone is native to all ten, with the call and the text written to the record.
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