8×8 cloud based phone service has made a huge difference in our medical office, especially during covid. It is so easy to get calls forwarded to you cell phone in order to accommodate hybrid/remote work. You can fax and text directly from 8×8. Also offers a great deal of analytics to keep track of your calls, how many were answered, how many went to VM, etc.
It’s hard to believe that 8×8 can deliver such a great service at such a low price. We are paying one-fifth the cost we used to with another provider… but getting even better service with more features. The original cut-over , incredibly well planned and executed by Fostar Communications and 8×8, was seamless (which never happens with other providers) and we have not had any glitches in our service in the year since we switched to 8×8.
So happy we made the decision to switch our company phone service to 8×8. Support is key when working with a VOIP system and any time I need to reach out to 8×8, the response is always quick and efficient. System is very reliable and devices include all the features you would ever need. Having SMS capability is a huge plus.
Excellent choice for our small business. Intuitive Administrative Console that allows for easy changes when staffing or conditions require it. Extremely customizable features for every user and integrates well with other applications. Very reasonable pricing structure. Support responds promptly when there is a (rare) issue.
Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service Good customer service
It is difficult to get a live person to assist with troubleshooting. Long waits on phone. Unhelpful chat. 8×8 needs to do better on this front. When we finally reached a live human being, Anthony was professional, skilled, helpful, patient. 8×8 needs more of him in an easily reachable manner. Thanks
I have been using 8×8 for almost 10 months now and it has been really helpful, and anytime I have a concern the customer service team helped me with the beast attitude. More than happy with 8×8.
The mobile app they have is really easy to use and even if you don’t have the app you can use the browser on your computer and it is still really friendly and easy to use.
I’ve been an 8×8 user for about 15 years. I have saved a considerable amount over regular landlines (POTS). I find the quality of calls excellent, as well s their tech support. What I like most of all is their Virtual Desktop, which allows me to answer and make calls through my computer. It’s very easy to use. I speak through a desktop microphone and listen through my computer speakers. This allows me to use both hands to call up information on the web while I talk. It’s probably their best feature. The voicemail is also very good. I have no complaints.
Fantastic product and very affordable! Saved $50 a month from previous plan with Vonage, and 8×8 is WAY more reliable! Loved the web interface as well. So much more intuitive than Vonage. And the support provided by 8×8 is outstanding, and something that other voip services should aspire to. Hands down 5 out of 5 stars!
Great opportunity to have work and personal calling on one device.
Diverse features assisting in one’s ability to handle a large call volume.
User friendly, you don’t have to be some tech guru to use app .
Affordable for Small. Business yet with great features.
American company with great response time.
8×8 is a leading Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) provider. Combining these two business communication services into one, 8×8 recently announced its new deployment model, “XCaaS” (Experience Communications as a Service).
8×8’s XCaaS platform includes cloud-based contact center functionality, VoIP calling, SMS chat, team collaboration, and web conferencing.
The XCaaS platform is available at 6 pricing tiers. While only the top three tiers contain 8×8’s powerful CER (Chrome Enterprise Recommended) contact center solution, all plans include some level of contact center functionality.
A multi-level call attendant feature and call queues are available in all business phone system plans, except for 8×8 Express. Additionally, all 8×8 customers benefit from 8×8’s advanced, secure video conferencing and team messaging platforms.
Find out more about the key features of 8×8’s XCaaS platform, along with pricing, plans, customer service, and pros and cons below.
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Some of 8×8’s key features are listed below.
All 8×8 XCaaS customers have full access to 8×8 Meet, 8×8’s feature-rich HD video conferencing platform. Users can host as many meetings as they’d like to per month, and all meetings can last for an unlimited length of time.
The Express Plan allows up to 100 participants while all other plans allow up to 500. For larger events, 8×8 meetings can be live streamed on YouTube.
Participants can join an 8×8 meeting using a desktop browser, iOS or Android mobile app, or through the 8×8 platform. There is also an option to dial in from over 50 countries. 8×8 plans include up to 11 toll-free numbers that can be sent to participants for dial-in purposes.
8×8 video conferencing has all of the essential features needed for effective business meetings, including:
8×8 also includes some unique features like advanced content sharing capabilities, which allow users to share videos on Youtube and audio clips directly to avoid any lag. 8×8 Meeting analytics offer insight into connection issues, participant information, and engagement levels.
8×8’s video conferencing really shines when it comes to security.
8×8 offers a number of advanced security features such as moderation controls, meeting lock, participant lobby, and participant permissions. Moreover, optional end-to-end encryption is available for any meeting. If end-to-end encryption is turned on, only participants with a shared key will be able to join the meeting.
8×8’s native team chat platform is included in all plans and connects employees across your organization with an intuitive, robust collaboration space. Employees in the company directory are automatically added to the Team Chat, and those outside the organization can join in the conversation too via third-party integrations with other chat platforms, like Slack.
Other 8×8 Team Chat features include:
One unique time-saving feature of 8×8’s Team Chat is in-line replies. This feature allows team members to respond directly to a notification without having to open the app. Team members will receive a notification when they are tagged by a colleague using the @mention feature.
8×8’s Omnichannel Routing is a contact center feature that automatically routes customers to the agent best equipped to help them, no matter what communication method the customer uses.
With 8×8’s omnichannel communications solution, you can add all of your customer’s favorite communication channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and SMS into a unified interface. Agents can toggle back and forth between these digital channels in order to reach a fast resolution with customers.
Agents also have the ability to add call notes and other customer information directly into the business VoIP phone service interface. This way, when a customer has to move to a different agent or even a different department, they don’t have to repeat their history or issue.
8×8’s Omnichannel Routing system also allows for long-term custom care. Designed to capture as much data as possible on each of your customers, organizations using 8×8’s virtual office solution are empowered to provide their customers with customized follow-ups and relevant offers.
8×8’s Quality Management and Speech Analytics system (QM/SA) allows organizations to implement relevant and tailored coaching for agents in a hybrid or fully remote environment.
This system, also known as “Conversation IQ”, uses Artificial Intelligence to analyze 100% of contact center conversations across channels, evaluating for compliance, proficiency, and customer sentiment in real-time.
Call center supervisors use an intuitive dashboard to search conversations, @mention employees to provide coaching, create automated workflows for themselves or their employees, perform post-call survey classification, and create a library of best practice phone calls and snippets that are available to all agents on-demand. 8×8’s AI is advanced and has the ability to distinguish between speakers in recordings, filter for hot topics, and detect sentiment.
In addition to the aforementioned features, with Conversation IQ, supervisors have the ability to set multiple consistency goal thresholds for agents.
Support call quality is measured by adding up the number of times an agent met their goal and then dividing that by the total number of evaluations they have received, expressed as a percentage. For example, if an agent passes 5 out of their 10 evaluations, their consistency would be 50%. Setting multiple consistency goal thresholds allows supervisors to track how their agents are doing over long periods of time. They can set one threshold to see which agents hit their goal, another threshold to see which agents were close to hitting their goal, and a third threshold to see which agents had average or poor performances.
Finally, with QM/SA, managers can delegate tasks to other team members by assigning role-based permissions in the softphone app.
8×8’s QM/SA platform is a robust and powerful tool that is constantly being updated and improved. Although it’s only included with the highest-priced plan (X8), it can be purchased as an add-on for every plan except Express.
8×8 Intelligent IVR (IIVR) uses the latest conversational AI technology to enable customer self-service, capture and report on analytics, and route callers to the most suitable agent quickly without forcing them to hang up and dial another phone number.
IIVR must be purchased as an add-on feature, and it’s not available at all for Express, X2, or X4 users. However, for a contact center with heavy call volume, it could be a game changer.
Standard IVR, which is included in the X6, X7, and X8 plans, let admins set up basic call flows using a drag-and-drop editor (for example, “press 2 for sales”) and gain insight with advanced reporting and customer experience analytics.
Intelligent IVR goes even further, allowing businesses to create more complex, nuanced, and “human” speech-enabled call flows using Conversational AI. These call flows can be set up and modified via a graphic drag-and-drop interface.
8×8’s IIVR allows for the creation of robust self-service options. Using CRM integrations, data dips, speech recognition, and Natural Language Processing, IIVR can quickly identify issues that are best handled via self-service and direct customers accordingly. Common inquiries can be completely automated, saving customers time and reserving live agents for only the most complex issues. When an agent is needed, IIVR correlates subject matter, agent proficiency, and availability to find the best fit.
Using Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), IIVR captures detailed data from customers and provides rich analytics that can be used to identify where adjustments need to be made in the customer journey.
8×8’s XCaaS suite (the X series) is available at 6 different pricing levels: Express, X2, X4, X6, X7 and X8. The first three levels (Express, X2 and X4) include essential voice, chat, video and collaboration functionality while the X6, X7 and X8 plans add in advanced contact center functionality and analytics. See the chart below for a full breakdown of pricing and features.
| 8×8 Express | X2 | X4 | X6 | X7 | X8 | |
| Annual price | $15 per mo./user | $24 per mo./user | $44 per mo./user | $85 per mo./user | $110 per mo./user | $140 per mo./user |
| Month-to-month price | $15 per mo./user | $32 per mo./user | $57 per mo./user | X | X | X |
| Unlimited domestic dialing, video conferencing, and chat | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| On-Hold Music | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 99.999% uptime SLA across UCaaS and CCaaS | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Number of Countries in Unlimited Telephony Calling Zone | U.S./Canada only | 14 | 48 | 48 | 48 | 48 |
| Visual Voicemail | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced Call Management with call routing, business hours, etc. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Number Porting (self-service or managed) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto Attendant (Basic) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto Attendant (Multi-Level) | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Call Handling (Caller ID, Call Forwarding, Transfer, Park, Hunt Groups, Ring Groups, 3-way calling) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Call Queues | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Barge, Monitor and Whisper | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| HD secure Voice, Hot Desking | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mobile and Desktop app or Browser-based Access | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Presence Detection | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Voicemail with Transcription | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Web-Browser Click-to-Call | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cross Platform Team Messaging with File Sharing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| HD Video Conferencing with screen sharing, recording and transcription | Up to 100 Active Participants | Up to 500 Active Participants | Up to 500 Active Participants | Up to 500 Active Participants | Up to 500 Active Participants | Up to 500 Active Participants |
| Branded Video Conferencing with customized background, logo and vanity URL | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced Moderator Controls of Audio and Video Meetings | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Out of the Box Integrations | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams Add on included | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| UC Media Storage (unlimited capacity) for meetings and UC Call Recording | X | 30 Days | 130 Days | 130 Days | 130 Days | 130 Days |
| CC Media Storage (unlimited capacity) for CC Call Recording | X | X | X | 30 Days | 30 Days | 30 Days |
| Unlimited Internet Fax | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8×8 Frontdesk tailored experience for receptionists | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Conversation IQ add-on provides speech analytics and quality management | X | $ | $ | $ | $ | ✓ |
| Screen recording and real-time multi-screen monitoring | X | X | X | X | X | ✓ |
| Call Activity Analytics | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Supervisor Analytics | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8×8 Agent Workspace delivering a tailored and intuitive experience for contact center agents | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8×8 Contact Center for Microsoft Teams Solution Certified | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Chrome Enterprise Recommended (CER) Contact Center Solution | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Omnichannel routing of voice, chat, email, SMS, social media and messaging apps | X | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ |
| Skills-Based Routing | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CX Journey Mapping | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| ACD and Basic IVR | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Intelligent Interactive Voice Response (IVR) | X | X | X | $ | $ | $ |
| Queued and Web Callback | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Post Call Survey | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Contact Center Reporting and Analytics | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8×8 Secure Pay | X | X | X | $ | $ | $ |
| Co-Browsing | X | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-Dialer Preview, Progressive & Predictive | X | X | X | $ | $ | ✓ |
| Quality Management | X | X | X | $ | $ | ✓ |
| Interaction Analytics | X | X | X | $ | $ | ✓ |
| Enterprise Grade Security | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Compliance and Certifications (GDPR, HIPAA, ISO27001, 9001 etc.) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
8×8 is somewhat limited in integrations when compared to competitors, but it does offer a decent selection of key integrations to enhance team collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM) and productivity.
These integrations can be accessed in any of the X series plans except Express.
8×8 integrations include third party team collaboration platforms such as Teams, Slack, and GroupMe, security tools such as Okta, CRMs such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Hubspot, and productivity tools such as Google, Outlook, and NetSuite.
In addition to integrating with third-party CRMs, 8×8 includes a native CRM. 8×8 CRM is included in all contact center plans (X6, X7, and X8). It consolidates all customer data and 8×8 contact center tools into one unified interface to increase agent productivity while reducing customer frustration.
8×8 CRM automatically displays customer records at the beginning of every interaction. Information can be added directly by agents or funneled in from other systems. As a native tool, every department has equal access to customer histories, eliminating data silos.
8×8 CRM can also route calls to the most suitable agent. It includes advanced customer experience analytics such as detailed customer journey maps and a targeted search function to identify pain points.
Below are some of the pros and cons of 8×8’s platform.
| 8×8 Pros | 8×8 Cons |
| Enterprise-Grade security for all plans and 99.999% uptime SLA included with almost every plan | Hidden fees for advanced contact center features such as Intelligent IVR, Speech Analytics, Secure Pay, Auto Dialers, etc, which are not included and must be purchased as an add-on for most plans |
| Unlimited Calling to 14 countries in the X2 Plan and 48 countries in X4 and higher plans | Not as many integrations as competitors |
| Video Conferencing is available in all plans with up to 500 participants in the X2 plan and above | Lack of user-friendly setup plus a steep learning curve, especially since many many advanced features aren’t useful to startups and SMBs |
8×8’s 24/7 live customer support team (voice and live chat) is available to all business customers with an X series plan, with the exception of the Express plan.
For Express plan users and those that prefer self-service, 8×8 has a knowledge base with tutorials and FAQs that can be accessed here: https://support.8×8.com/.
The knowledge base includes articles and user guides organized by product and topic. There is also an 8×8 community where users can connect with each other for assistance, view customer questions and answers, and join virtual live product demos. Finally, there is a chatbot/virtual assistant called Otto, which customers are encouraged to interact with before calling customer service. If Otto is unable to help, he can transition customers to a live chat rep.
8×8 customers can also open up a customer support case online or through the 8×8 Application Panel.
8×8 is a secure, reliable, and feature-rich platform that’s an excellent choice for high-volume contact centers.
Advanced contact center features such as queued callback and post-call surveys, along with cutting-edge AI-powered features like Intelligent IVR and Quality Management, are most valuable to large enterprises with global and hybrid teams.
The main 8×8 drawback, however, is its price.
With contact center plans ranging from $85-$140 per mo/user, 8×8 isn’t cheap compared to other VoIP providers. Plus, the most cutting-edge AI features must be purchased as add-ons. Still, it’s a solid investment for large/global contact centers that need to streamline operations, improve CX, and gain deeper insight into customer behavior.
On the other hand, the 8×8 Express plan is a great value for startups and SMBs.
The Express plan is only $15 per month/user, and it comes with powerful voice features like voicemail transcription, call routing, ring groups, team collaboration tools, and unlimited video conferencing for up to 100 participants.
For some small businesses, however, these features are overkill–and the lack of live customer support on the Express plan doesn’t help. They may wish to consider popular 8×8 alternatives known for their ease of use, like RingCentral, Ooma, and Dialpad.
For SMBs that are looking to scale, 8×8 might be a perfect fit, as they can gradually move through the X-Series plans and choose add-ons as needed, taking advantage of 8×8’s flexibility and customization.
