Summary: NICE CXone and Nextiva are both highly scalable customer experience solutions offering omnichannel communication, AI-powered workflow automation, conversation analytics, and workforce management in a unified platform.
NICE CXone is best suited for global enterprises with a high daily customer contact volume across voice and digital channels, while Nextiva has packages designed specifically for small businesses and enterprises. Both providers offer voice-only, digital-only, and omnichannel solutions for blended contact centers.
Nextiva is more affordable than NICE CXone and offers more flexible pricing options. However, NICE provides a better overall value thanks to its purpose-built Enlighten AI and native WFM features. Unlike NICE, Nextiva has built-in unified communications and collaboration tools, while NICE lists NiCE 1CX UCaaS as an add-on across its core packages. Additionally, Nextiva also offers reputation management features for online review sites and social media platforms, which NICE lacks.
That said, NICE’s performance management capabilities are superior to Nextiva’s. NICE offers AI-powered quality management, high-level forecasting and scheduling tools, custom agent performance scorecards, and automated coaching. While Nextiva offers some of these features, they’re not nearly as advanced.
Use NICE CXone If:
- You’re an established enterprise with multiple locations across the globe, but you’re struggling to respond promptly to customer support requests due to limited staff or high contact volumes. You need omnichannel self-service customer support to pick up the slack without sacrificing personalization.
- You’ve noticed negative changes in customer satisfaction levels and employee performance quality. You need conversation analytics to identify the root causes of these issues, automated agent coaching during live customer interactions, and performance gamification tools to keep agents engaged.
- You use a variety of third-party applications (Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, etc.) that you want to integrate into your customer experience platform. You also have an in-house developer team that customizes your business software, and therefore need a platform with extensive API/SDK documentation and a thriving developer community.
Use Nextiva If:
- You’re a new, digital-first business looking to leverage social media and online review sites to build brand recognition, directly interact with new customers and prospects, monitor competitors, and better understand your target market. You want to expand your social media presence to collect more qualified leads and provide customer service via social messaging.
- You need an omnichannel customer experience solution with built-in unified communications tools like video calling, team chat, whiteboards, and file sharing to connect a remote or hybrid workforce.
- You’re looking for a cloud communications provider that scales alongside your business, helping you grow from a lean startup to a global enterprise. You don’t want to have to switch providers as your business evolves, and are looking for a truly all-in-one solution.
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: At A Glance
The below table provides a quick overview of key differences between NICE CXone and Nextiva.
| NICE CXone | Nextiva | |
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| Digital Communication Features |
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| Security+Network Reliability |
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| Customer Support | 24/7 omnichannel support with priority support upgrades | 24/7 omnichannel support |
How We Compared NICE CXone vs Nextiva
We used the below criteria to compare NICE CXone and Nextiva:
- Pricing and Plans: We evaluated each solution’s available pricing and plans, add-on features, scalability, and overall value
- Communication Channels: We looked at each provider’s available voice and digital channels, including website chat, SMS/MMS, voice calling, email, social media messaging, virtual faxing, video calling, etc.
- AI Workflow Automation: We reviewed how each platform leverages AI to automate workflows and optimize the agent and customer experience, especially through features like live agent assist, omnichannel virtual agents, predictive engagement, customer self-service, interaction summaries, content generation and organization, and more
- Workforce Management: We studied each provider’s WFM suites, evaluating the quality of forecasting and scheduling tools, performance scoring and agent coaching capabilities, gamification features, and more
- Unified Communication and Team Collaboration Tools: We evaluated internal communication channels like team chat messaging and video calling and looked at the availability of collaboration tools like whiteboards and file sharing
- Analytics and Reporting: We studied the quality and depth of each provider’s real-time and historical reporting tools, especially regarding AI-powered conversational analytics, GenAI insights, and Voice of the Customer feedback
- Third-Party Integrations and APIs: We looked at how many third-party applications each provider integrates with, the quality of pre-built integrations, available APIs and SDKs, and the strength of existing developer communities
- Security and Customer Support: We reviewed customer support hours and channels, available premium support plans, network uptime and reliability, security standards, and industry-specific compliance certifications
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: Pricing and Plans
Summary: Nextiva is more affordable and has more flexible pricing than NICE CXone, but CXone provides a better overall value thanks to its advanced AI-powered capabilities and true omnichannel solutions. Both platforms offer excellent scalability with multiple plans to choose from, including voice-only, digital-only, and omnichannel solutions. Only Nextiva provides solutions for both small business and enterprise users, whereas NICE is designed solely for enterprises.
Nextiva Pricing and Plans
Nextiva offers 6 total plans across two separate pricing tiers: Nextiva Business Phone Service and Nextiva Contact Center. While Business Phone Service users can only choose between monthly and annual billing, Contact Center users can choose monthly, annual, concurrent user, or usage-based pricing.
Nextiva Business Phone Service has 3 plans from $15-$75 per user/month with annual pricing and from $23/user/month with monthly pricing. Plans include:
- Core Plan ($15/user/month annual, $23 monthly): Includes inbound/outbound voice calling with call routing, business SMS, video meetings, team chat, screensharing, file sharing, 3 social media accounts, review management for 9 total accounts
- Engage Plan ($25/user/month annual, $50 monthly): Adds website chatbots, toll-free numbers with 2,000 monthly minutes, online faxing, voice analytics, voice and video recording, Microsoft Teams integration, 30 social media accounts, review management for 30 total accounts
- Scale ($75/user/month annual, monthly pricing on request): Adds unlimited SMS, unlimited accounts for review management and social media, dual systems for voice and digital CX management, priority/skills-based routing, inbound sales and service call center, 10 group email inboxes, 10,000 monthly toll-free minutes
Nextiva has 3 contact center plans starting at $75/agent/month with per-user pricing. Concurrent and usage-based pricing are also available. Plans include:
- Essential Plan (from $75/agent/month; concurrent or usage-based pricing available upon request): Choice of one voice or digital channel, skills-based routing, full API access, outbound auto dialers, mini CRM, AI transcription, customer surveys
- Professional Plan: Adds omnichannel communication, live agent coaching with agent screen monitoring, customer journey management, and PCI secure payment assist
- Premium Plan: Adds forecasting and scheduling, interaction recording, performance management, quality monitoring, and AI CX analytics
For more details, see our complete Nextiva pricing guide.
NICE CXone Pricing and Plans
NICE CXone lists 5 core Engagement Orchestration packages. Pricing ranges from $110-$249/agent/month, with Ultimate also listed at $0.25/session. NICE says billing is monthly in arrears with no prepay and uses a usage-based, tiered model. Plans include:
- Omnichannel Suite ($110/agent/month): Includes voice and digital channels, omnichannel routing, proactive web engagement, and recording and compliance; AI routing and outbound engagement are available as add-ons
- Essential Suite ($135/agent/month): Adds screen recording and quality management
- Core Suite ($169/agent/month): Adds workforce management and performance management
- Complete Suite ($209/agent/month): Adds Voice of the Customer and interaction analytics
- Ultimate Suite ($249/agent/month or $0.25/session): Adds AI routing, automated summary, Copilot for Agents, Copilot for Supervisors, Copilot for Leaders, and AI Agents for self-service, sales and marketing, and process automation
NICE also lists 5 industry-specific packages for banking, insurance, healthcare, retail, and government.
For more details, see our complete NICE CXone pricing guide.
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: Voice Calling and Text Messaging
Summary: NICE and Nextiva both offer unlimited local voice calling with smart call routing, call summaries, call recording, live transcription, and IVAs. NICE is the right choice for global teams looking to save on international calling rates, while Nextiva provides better toll-free calling. Enterprises looking for fully automated customer self-service and outbound marketing via voice calling or texting should choose NICE, while small-medium teams that prefer to optimize live phone support and text with individual customers should opt for Nextiva.
While NICE and Nextiva are both primarily designed for digital-first businesses, they share a robust set of AI-powered VoIP calling features like IVR, smart routing, outbound auto dialers, real-time call transcription, and post-call summaries. Users of either platform can choose a voice-only or omnichannel package depending on their needs. Both provide unlimited local calling, but only Nextiva includes plans with a scalable number of monthly toll-free calling minutes. That said, NICE offers unlimited local calling in over 130 countries, while Nextiva users must pay a per-minute rate for international calling.
Call recording is included for Nextiva Engage users and above, and available as an add-on on Core. NICE includes call recording with all plans (except their digital-only package.) Still, both providers limit agent screen recording during live customer interactions to their enterprise solutions.
NICE CXone and Nextiva both include voice customer self-service options with Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs), auto attendants, skills-based routing, call queues, and ring groups. However, NICE comes out on top thanks to CX Smart Assist voicebots powered by Amelia AI. These voicebots are powerful enough to handle multi-intent inquiries while maintaining a natural, conversational tone.
Therefore, Nextiva is best for businesses aiming to reduce hold time for agent-led live phone support, while NICE is ideal for enterprises that want to fully automate phone support to better manage high call volumes.
All Nextiva Business Phone Service plans include bundled SMS. The Small Business Engage plan includes customer-to-team texting, while the Scale plan unlocks unlimited SMS. NICE users have access to SMS and MMS on all plans. Unlike Nextiva, NICE offers agentless, bot-based customer self-service via texting. NICE supports up to 12 concurrent messaging sessions and includes routing, queuing, and bulk outbound SMS.
As with voice calling, NICE SMS is best for high-volume automated texting, particularly for marketing campaigns, appointment reminders, and customer surveys. Nextiva is the right choice for live 1:1 text message customer conversations, internal texting, and smaller group texts.
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: Digital Communication
Summary: Both providers offer competitive digital communications, but the right choice for your business depends on whether you prioritize social media and reputation management via Nextiva, or more advanced real-time digital communication and self-service via NICE. Unlike NICE, Nextiva has native customer:agent video calling and CRM tools. However, NICE includes over 30 digital channels, live digital agent monitoring, and better proactive messaging tools.
Nextiva and NICE both provide live and automated website chat, social media messaging, email, online faxing, and additional digital channels. Nextiva, however, also includes native video calling–something NICE lacks.
The biggest difference between NICE vs Nextiva are their social media features. NICE and Nextiva integrate with multiple social platforms, offer automated and agent-led social messages, and make/monitor social posts. But unlike NICE, Nextiva includes advanced reputation management across multiple online review sites (TripAdvisor, Google, Yelp, etc.) and social media accounts. Nextiva streamlines all social messages into a unified inbox, has real-time review updates, and lets users respond in-dashboard. Nextiva uses social listening for brand mention, trend, and competitor monitoring.
NICE can’t compete with Nextiva’s innovative built-in reputation and social media management tools. However, that’s less of a priority for businesses that don’t consider social media a primarily customer communication channel.
As with its voice features, Nextiva includes agent screen recording during digital customer interactions on Contact Center Professional plans and above, while NICE includes Screen Recording from Essential Suite upward and offers it as an add-on to Omnichannel Suite.
Both providers offer AI-powered chatbots that use CRM, knowledge base, and customer interaction data for 24/7 digital customer self-support. Unlike NICE, however, Nextiva has a native mini CRM tool, while NICE users must rely on third-party integrations.
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: Workforce Management
Summary: Nextiva and NICE include scalable WFM capabilities like performance management, automated agent scheduling, and omnichannel agent assist in all enterprise plans. Unlike NICE, Nextiva provides internal communication and collaboration tools like team chat and video calling. However, NICE has more advanced, AI-powered agent performance coaching and analytics than Nextiva–in addition to knowledge base management tools Nextiva lacks.
Nextiva and NICE CXone enterprise plans offer workforce management features like forecasting and scheduling, real-time adherence monitoring, live agent coaching, automated agent assist, performance gamification, agent scorecards. However, each provider approaches the idea of workforce management somewhat differently.
Unlike CXone, Nextiva includes internal collaboration and communication tools like video meetings, team chat messaging, file and screen sharing, and whiteboards. While call monitoring and omnichannel agent assist are available, Nextiva doesn’t offer the advanced in-call coaching tools that NICE does.
NICE WFM provides more customizable agent scorecards than Nextiva, includes real-time scoring and live supervisor alerts, and uses GenAI to give agents actionable, data-backed performance feedback in a chat GPT-like interface. That said, NICE does not include any team collaboration or UC features–meaning users must integrate third-party tools to access video calling, team chat, and more.
However, NICE has stronger forecasting methods than Nextiva, with a focus on long-term resource allocation. Unlike Nextiva, NICE leverages industry-specific AI to generate customer-facing knowledge base content from conversation transcripts and additional data.
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: Analytics and Reporting
Summary: Nextiva and NICE both leverage conversational AI for real-time and historical sentiment monitoring, intent analysis, and customer journey optimization. Both providers also offer more traditional KPI monitoring via custom and template-based reporting. Unlike Nextiva, NICE lets admins and agents get personalized insights and data-backed answers to specific questions via its Enlighten Actions tool. Nextiva’s AI analytics are strong, but simply not as powerful as NICE’s.
Though NICE CXone and Nextiva Contact Center solutions include conversational AI, custom KPI monitoring, and real-time performance alerts, NICE’s GenAI-powered insights give it the upper hand.
Both providers monitor 100% of omnichannel customer interactions to analyze trends in employee and customer sentiment and intent, distilling findings into interactive reports in several formats.
NICE’s Enlighten Actions tool, however, takes customization to the next level. Agents and admins can type questions into a GenAI-powered chatbot interface, receiving data-backed, personalized responses.
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: Third-Party Integrations
Summary: All NICE CXone plans include integrations with 140+ applications and over 400 custom APIs, while Nextiva Business Phone Service users can add CRM/API access; all Contact Center plans include API access and 32+ integrations. That said, unlike NICE CXone, Nextiva offers extensive social media and online review platform integrations on all plans.
Teams with extensive third-party integration and API needs should choose NICE CXone over Nextiva, while businesses that communicate with customers across multiple social media platforms and review sites are better served by Nextiva.
Prebuilt CRM integrations are available as add-ons across all NICE CXone core packages. However, not all CXone plans provide the extensive social media and online review site integrations included on all Nextiva plans.
Still, Nextiva Business Phone Service includes Microsoft Outlook and Google Contacts integrations from the Core plan up, with Microsoft Teams integration included from the Engage plan. Business Phone Service can add CRM integrations and API access as paid add-ons. All Contact Center plans include API access and 15+ third-party integrations, though NICE CXone offers the larger third-party integration catalog of the two.
NICE CXone vs Nextiva: Which Should You Choose?
We recommend NICE CXone for enterprise-level contact centers needing extensive workflow automation, AI-powered omnichannel customer self-service, and conversation analytics that help businesses optimize both CX and employee performance.
We recommend Nextiva for small to medium hybrid businesses that need an omnichannel contact center platform with built-in unified communications for advanced team collaboration, scalability, and deep online reputation management tools.
NICE CXone is not right for small businesses, remote workforces heavily reliant on team collaboration tools, or teams looking for an intuitive CCaaS solution with an uncluttered user interface.
Nextiva is best matched to businesses that want built-in unified communications and high reliability, and AI capabilities for their contact center. Global enterprises that need the deepest performance monitoring and forecasting toolset, or teams that want an extensive third-party integration catalog out of the box, may find NICE the closer fit.
If NICE and Nextiva don’t suit your business needs, look into popular alternative CCaaS platforms like Genesys, Five9, 8x8, and Talkdesk.
