While Five9’s contact center software offers strong AI features and dozens of communication channels in a user-friendly interface, it’s one of the most expensive solutions on the market. Further, some alternatives offer stronger workflows, routing options, and quality management features that Five9 doesn’t provide.

We’ve tried many other contact center products to determine the best alternatives.

 

Five9 Alternatives At-a-Glance Overview

Provider Standout Features Integrations Communication Channels Pricing
Five9 AI-powered workflow automation, Predictive dialer, Interaction analytics Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics Voice, Email, Webchat, SMS, Social media, Video Starts at $175 per user/month
Talkdesk Visual flow designer, Advanced IVR, AI and machine learning capabilities Salesforce, Slack, Zendesk, Microsoft Teams Voice, Email, Chat, SMS, Social media, Video Starts at $85 per user/month
Nextiva AI-powered contact center, Advanced CX analytics, Geographic disaster recovery Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk Voice, Email, Chat, SMS, Video, Social Media Starts at $99 per user/month
NICE CXone Workforce management, Quality management, Analytics and insights Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow Voice, Email, Chat, SMS, Social media, Mobile apps Starts at $71 per user/month
Genesys Speech-enabled IVR, Predictive routing, Workforce engagement Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow Voice, Email, Chat, SMS, Social media Starts at $75 per user/month
Dialpad Voice intelligence, Real-time transcription, IVR, ACD Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Slack Voice, Email, Chat, SMS, Video Starts at $80 per user/month
8x8 Skills-based routing, IVR, Reporting & Analytics Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, HubSpot Voice, Email, Chat, SMS, Social media, Messaging apps Quote-based pricing

 

Why Seek a Five9 Alternative?

Five9 is a solid CCaaS provider, but it’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution that works for every business. Here are a few reasons to consider alternatives:

  • Pricing: Five9’s pricing is on the higher end compared to competitors like Talkdesk and Dialpad, which both offer budget-friendly options with similar or stronger feature sets
  • Flexibility and Customization: While Five9 offers strong call center capabilities, it is not as flexible when it comes to integrations and custom workflows compared to others like Nice CXone and Genesys
  • Omnichannel Support: Five9’s omnichannel features are improving, but other providers like 8x8 and Talkdesk offer more seamless native integrations for video messaging, chat messaging, and video
  • Reliability and Uptime: A few users report occasional call quality issues or outages when using Five9, where other competitors like 8x8 and Genesys offer more reliable service
  • Advanced AI and Automation: Five9’s AI-powered automation are robust, but alternatives offer more advanced machine learning and predictive analytics at a cheaper price point

 

How We Evaluated These Alternatives

  • Pricing and Plans: We examined included features with each offering’s different pricing plans to determine overall value
  • Integrations: We looked into how many pre-built integrations each platform offered as well as the depth of those integrations
  • Security: We researched the security features of each solution such as data encryption, compliance certificates, authentication, etc.
  • Reliability: We tested the reliability of each platform by looking for outage information, points of presence, redundancy, uptime SLA, etc.
  • Advanced Features: We examined the advanced features of each provider such as AI-powered Agent Assist, automated summaries, AI-enabled insights, etc.
  • Communication Channels: We looked at what communication channels were supported by each platform and whether there was a unified agent interface
  • Ease of Use: We tested how user friendly each solution was including the mobile app, and whether call flows and automations could be built without code
  • Customer Support: We researched the customer support hours, what channels were available, and whether priority support packages were available

 

Best Five9 Alternatives

  • Nextiva: Best for AI, chatbots and self-service, UCaaS+CCaas
  • NICE CXone: Best customer journey orchestration
  • Genesys: Best for voice-only or digital-only
  • Dialpad: Most comprehensive AI features
  • 8x8: Best for team collaboration
  • Talkdesk: Best for custom routing, workflows, and SLA

 

Nextiva

Nate Reviews Nextiva

Nextiva’s Customer Experience Suite offers a contact center with proactive outreach, campaign and contact management, and a built-in CRM system. They offer plans for voice-only, digital, or omnichannel contact centers that bundle voice, SMS, email, social messaging, and live chat. Nextiva’s sentiment analysis and proactive customer insights offer a deeper understanding for businesses looking to improve customer engagement compared to Five9’s.

While Five9 offers strong AI-driven tools, Nextiva’s offerings in automation, chatbots, and self-service options are far stronger. Nextiva’s virtual agents can take on more complex inquiries to cut agent workloads and offer human-like interactions. It also features a no-code automation building that makes customization of call flows and self-service options easier than Five9’s workflow designer.

 

Nextiva is a Good Five9 Alternative if You Need:

  • Voice bots and digital messaging bots: Create automated chatbots and virtual agents for voice and live chat. Embed chatbots into your website or app, to handle rich services like routing, appointment booking, even secure payment processing.
  • Custom workflows: Nextiva offers a rich workflow engine to customize bot-to-agent task assignment and automate proactive responses based on triggers. The drag-and-drop designer is user-friendly.
  • Intricate routing options: Choose between several different routing options from IVA and IVR menus–list-based, round-robin, least occupied, time-based, skill-based, relationship-based, or AI-based
  • Custom surveys: Create forms and surveys across multiple communication channels, including voice, email, SMS, and live chat. Combine these with workflows to automatically elicit customer feedback, viewing this data in the analytics portal.

 

Pros

  • Feature-rich basic plan: While many alternatives offer minimal features in their lowest pricing tier, Nextiva offers agent scripting, campaign management, auto-dialers, and the full workflow engine
  • Payment processing: Nextiva enables payment processing via live chat, which is a unique rich service that many others on this list don’t provide
  • Sales use cases: Nextiva offers progressive and predictive outbound dialers to make the sales-calling process more efficient

Cons

  • High price floor: While Nextiva’s lowest-tier plan offers rich features, it costs about 25% more than voice-only or digital-only call centers from some alternatives
  • Few native integrations: While Nextiva integrates with other systems via REST API, it does not include any out-of-the-box integrations–while some other CCaaS platforms offer dozens or hundreds of prebuilt integrations chatbots

 

Nextiva Pricing

Nextiva offers three Customer Experience plans from $99 to $139 monthly per user when charged annually. The provider does not offer a free trial for their contact center software.

For more information, see our Nextiva pricing guide.

 

NICE CXone

Nate Reviews NICE

NICE CXone is AI-powered call center software that unites dozens of channels: voice, video, email, SMS, collaboration platforms like Slack, streaming sites like YouTube, and social media messaging sites like FB Messenger.

While Five9 has great AI features, CXone’s features go a bit further when it comes to customer journey orchestration. This is achieved through its deeper analysis of real-time customer behavior to deliver personalized recommendations for next-best actions across different channels. Its AI-driven routing ensures seamless switching between self-service and live agents, giving your customers choices.

 

NICE CXone is a Good Five9 Alternative if You Need:

  • AI-based customer support: CXone’s Enlighten Experience Optimization analyzes historical voice and text interactions, tracking sentiment and frequently mentioned topics, using these to improve automated support.
  • Personalization customer journey orchestration: Transition customer conversations seamlessly across over 35 different automated and in-person channels–including voice, email, chat, video, collaboration platforms like Slack, and social media
  • Agent omnichannel display: In the agent dashboard, agents can handle dozens of conversations at once. Customer profiles compile contact information, recent notes, and the customer’s multichannel conversation history.
  • Supervisor support tools: CXone Supervisor combines a wide bank of manager capabilities–an overview of queue insights and data, live monitoring dashboards, real-time sentiment metrics, skills management tools, and reports

 

Pros

  • Easy-to-use omnichannel routing: NICE CXone supports many communication channels, with drag-and-drop tools to connect them and AI enhancements to create a powerful customer experience.
  • Customizability: Nice CXone’s collection of over 450 REST APIs provides a framework of diverse functionality, providing your developers with databases and resources to compose tons of aspects of your contact center.
  • Rich self-service capabilities: CXone’s multichannel self-service tools–built with a drag-and-drop designer–can offer discounts, facilitate account-management actions, book appointments, and more.

Cons

  • Best features are add-ons: Our favorite NICE CXone features, like AI analytics and agent assistance, are reserved as add-ons that will increase the cost
  • Lack of AI coaching: Some alternatives, like Dialpad and Talkdesk, offer AI features that evaluate agents and provide feedback. NICE does not offer this functionality.

 

NICE CXone Pricing

NICE CXone pricing plans range from $71 to $209 monthly per user. The lower-tier plans include a messaging-only contact center, a voice-only call center, and an omnichannel option.

For more information, see our review of NICE CXone pricing.

 

Genesys Cloud CX

Nate Reviews Genesys

Genesys Cloud CX offers a cloud-based call center software with VoIP telephony, SMS, email, web chat, video meetings with screen sharing, and social media messaging across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Compared to Five9, Genesys Cloud CX provides more tailored solutions, allowing businesses to choose between voice, digital, or a full omnichannel experience without paying for unused features. Its AI-driven automation, predictive routing, and real-time analytics optimize customer interactions, whether through self-service chatbots, IVR, or live-agent support.

Both platforms offer workforce management and AI-powered agent assistance, but Genesys Cloud CX’s scalable, no-code customization tools make it easier to adapt to changing business needs. For companies focused on voice-first or digital-first strategies, Genesys Cloud CX provides a cost-effective, AI-enhanced, and highly flexible alternative to Five9.

 

Genesys is a Good Talkdesk Alternative If You Need:

  • Workforce management: Use AI to forecast staffing demands and generate adaptive agent schedules. Automatic call recording and customer insights help supervisors monitor agent performance, with real-time queue insights and KPIs.
  • Speech and text analytics: Genesys AI offers complete transcription for all interactions across channels, analyzing these transcripts for customer satisfaction and keyword trends
  • AI-driven predictive engagement: Agents have a variety of display- and AI-based tools at their disposal to engage customers. AI tracks customer journeys and identifies ways to engage them proactively–recommended actions, offers, and the best channels to use
  • Knowledge management tools: Write articles and build a knowledge base. Answer Q&As, sort articles into categories, and format articles with fonts, bullet-point lists, and images. Customers can search by keyword, and agents and chatbots can share articles in live conversation.

 

Pros

  • Digital and voice-only options: Genesys uniquely offers digital-only plan options–even on higher-tier plans with advanced features–in addition to voice-only and omnichannel options.
  • AI tools: Genesys provides a well-rounded suite of AI-based agent-support and routing capabilities.
  • Deep customer profiles: Access rich customer profiles with historical data, cross-channel interactions, customer journeys, and predicted outcome scores. Pull data from CRM integrations and other data sources.

Cons

  • Complicated UI: I needed a few days to get the hang of the Genesys dashboard, routing menus, and agent support tools. The interface may feel overwhelming for new users.
  • Underdeveloped AI in some areas: Some of Genesys’ tools, like live-agent assistance and workforce management, don’t integrate AI as well as competitors do. The AI features seem either non-existent or weak in these areas.

 

Genesys Cloud CX Pricing

Genesys Cloud CX offers five pricing plans that range from $75 to $155 monthly per user. The provider offers digital-only, voice-only, and omnichannel plans with a 14-day free trial.

To learn more, check out our guide to Genesys pricing.

 

Dialpad

Nate Reviews Dialpad

Dialpad’s AI contact center offers an omnichannel dashboard uniting VoIP phone, SMS, social messaging platforms, video conferencing, customer-facing web chat, and internal team chat channels. While Five9 provides AI-powered agent assist and automation, Dialpad Ai goes further with real-time transcription, live sentiment analysis, AI-generated call summaries, and automatic action item detection. These features come natively-built in and available on all tiers.

Both platforms support omnichannel engagement and workforce management, but Dialpad’s AI-powered voice intelligence and real-time coaching tools provide deeper insights and richer improvement opportunities. With a more comprehensive AI feature set, native speech recognition, and built-in automation, Dialpad is a top choice for businesses looking to maximize efficiency and elevate customer experience above what Five9 currently offers.

 

Dialpad is a Good Five9 Alternative if You Need:

  • AI-generated customer sentiment: Dialpad identifies customer sentiment and CSAT scores for 100% of your customer interactions, using this information to provide agent feedback and generate predictive analytics.
  • Real-time agent feedback: Real-time coacting suggestions include pacing and word-choice feedback, knowledge base information, and canned responses
  • Supervisor and coaching assistance: AI scorecards, a feature unique to Dialpad, automatically evaluate each interaction based on predetermined criteria you design. Choose the criteria and scoring system, then AI handles the evaluation.
  • Post-call summaries: After each call, Dialpad automates post-call summaries with the recording, transcript, action items, topics, and key moments

 

Pros

  • Advanced AI tools: Dialpad offers a diverse array of unique AI tools–not just sentiment detection and agent assistance but AI scorecards, sales assistance, auto-generated summaries after calls
  • Supervisor support and visibility: The supervisor dashboard provides a live view of queue happenings, seeing conversation participants, live call durations, sentiment scores, and live transcripts. Click on a call to listen in or join the call via audio.
  • Video meetings: All Dialpad contact center plans include video meetings for internal or customer-facing use cases. Generate and send invite links and collaborate with features like chat, screen sharing, breakout rooms, and polls.

Cons

  • No voice-only or digital-only offerings: Dialpad only offers omnichannel contact center plans starting at $115 monthly, so companies seeking a simple call center can find a more cost-effective alternative
  • May be too feature-rich for some: The software includes tons of AI support features, which may feel overwhelming for companies seeing a more basic contact center setup

 

Dialpad Pricing

Dialpad offers AI contact center plans starting at $115 monthly per user, and AI sales center plans starting at $95 monthly per user. The provider offers a 14-day free trial.

For more information, read our guide to Dialpad pricing.

 

8x8 Contact Center

Nate Reviews 8x8

8x8’s cloud contact center bundles voice, web chat, SMS, email, social media messaging, and messaging apps like WhatsApp. While Five9 focuses primarily on contact center operations, 8x8 integrates Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) into a single platform, enabling agents to collaborate effortlessly through voice, video, messaging, and file sharing.

Both platforms provide AI-driven analytics and automation, but 8x8’s conversation intelligence, native video conferencing, and advanced workforce engagement tools make it ideal for businesses that encourage strong internal collaboration to support customer engagement efforts. With an all-in-one communication suite, AI-powered insights, and strong omnichannel capabilities, 8x8 is a top alternative for companies seeking a more unified and collaborative solution than Five9.

 

8x8 is a Good Five9 Alternative if You Need:

  • Omnichannel routing: Build an intelligent, self-service IVR system that utilizes AI, speech recognition, and natural language processing to route inbound customers to the right agent or queue.
  • Workforce engagement management: Supervisors can drill down into each conversation with transcripts and audio playback, with the option to make comments.
  • Speech analytics: Speech analytics identify sentiment and repeated words, and automated customer services gather detailed feedback
  • Trends and business analytics: 8x8’s Analytics tab offers dozens of dashboards and hundreds of KPIs, filterable by agent and historical timeframe. View live queue summaries, agent activity, and other KPIs in statistical, table, or graph form.

 

Pros

  • Easy routing setup: Set up IVR menus and IVA query distribution using a drag-and-drop designer, which makes it easy to customize task flows
  • Multichannel team collaboration: 8x8 includes collaborative video meetings and team chat, along with mobile app access that enables teams to communicate from anywhere
  • Easy-to-use agent workspace: The omnichannel workspace organizes all active tasks in one dashboard, separating each conversation into a tab. New tasks pop up on an agent’s screen, with the option to accept or reject.

Cons

  • Lack of advanced features: One of the simplest omnichannel solutions on our list, 8x8 lacks workforce management and scheduling features, AI agent evaluations, and automated live-agent assistance
  • Basic analytics: While 8x8 provides KPIs for queue activity and agent status, it doesn’t offer the same depth as competitors with customer sentiment, keyword usage, and trends

 

8x8 Pricing

8x8’s CCaaS platform offers three pricing plans, including a voice-only call center and omnichannel options. They don’t publicize pricing information but offer a free trial upon request.

To learn more, check out our 8x8 pricing guide.

 

Talkdesk

Nate Reviews Talkdesk

Talkdesk’s contact center software offers voice-only, digital messaging-only, and omnichannel plans with email, live chat, SMS texting, and social media messaging. Like Five9, Talkdesk provides AI-powered agent assist features, real-time transcription, and automated summaries. But Talkdesk’s AutoPilot and Agent Assist offer deeper automation and more seamless AI-human collaboration, with a no-code workflow builder that makes customizing IVR flows and call routing easier than Five9’s offering.

Both platforms include workforce management (WFM) tools for forecasting, performance tracking, and scheduling, though Talkdesk’s tools provide adaptive forecasting and automated scheduling adjustments, things Five9 does not. For businesses seeking a more modern and highly customizable CCaaS solution.

 

Talkdesk is a Good Five9 Alternative if You Need:

  • Low-code customizability: Talkdesk lets you customize your routing flows, IVR menu, IVA and chatbot support, and workflows with a drag-and-drop designer that requires low code or no code
  • Quality management: All Talkdesk plans include quality management tools like call recordings, streamlined coaching and evaluations, and a supervisor portal that displays daily call activity and trends. Higher-tier plans add AI-based agent evaluations and screen recording.
  • Workflow automations: Use the drag-and-drop designer to link multiple tools into workflows. Synchronize surveys, agent-support scripts, task assignment and status updates, and more.
  • Customer feedback: Create custom automated surveys to deploy on any channel. Customer experience analytics, available on the high-tier Elite plan, dig even deeper.
  • On-the-go agent tools: Talkdesk uniquely offers a Conversations mobile app that lets agents handle calls from their mobile device
  • Custom user dashboard: Talkdesk is one of the only providers on our list that lets you customize the agent interface–choosing which channels, customer data, tasks, and connected apps are displayed in each panel

 

Pros

  • Low cost: Talkdesk offers some advanced features at a lower cost than virtual competitors. These features include quality management tools, surveys, and workflow customizations.
  • Customizability: Talkdesk lets you customize virtually everything about it–workflows, IVA and IVR, customer journey, and the agent workspace–with minimal or no code
  • Choice: The Elite plan lets you choose between Agent Assistance, Customer Experience analytics, Outbound Engagement auto-dialers, and Workforce Management. Teams who want just one of these add-ons will be able to get the functionality much cheaper than with an alternative

Cons

  • High-tier plans lack comprehensive features: Since the high-tier plans make you pick between add-ons like Agent Assist and Workforce Management, teams will have to pay extra to have all of these features
  • Weak AI capabilities: While Talkdesk has AI-based conversation analysis and agent assistance, Five9 offers stronger AI tools. Five9 AI also provides call summaries and insights
  • Less conversational chatbots: I felt that Five9 enabled more lifelike chatbots, capable of providing richer services and communication than Talkdesk chatbots

 

Talkdesk Pricing

Talkdesk offers four plans ranging from $85 to $145 monthly per user when charged annually, with voice-only and digital-only options. The provider offers a free trial upon request and per-hour pricing.

For more information, see our Talkdesk pricing guide.

 

Which Five9 Alternative Should You Choose?

When selecting a Five9 alternative, choose a contact center software and plan that offers the channels and features you plan to use, with minimal extras you don’t need.

Here’s a quick guide to help you decide on the best platform:

  • Live Agent Support: Dialpad and NICE CXone offer AI features for real-time AI assistance
  • Workflows and routing: Nextiva and Twilio Flex have highly customizable workflow engines for omnichannel routing and task assignment
  • Digital-only or voice-only call centers: Genesys Cloud CX and Talkdesk offer cost-effective options for those seeking digital contact centers or voice-only call center software
  • Team collaboration: 8x8’s contact center not only supports omnichannel customer service but internal collaboration via video and team chat