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The Aircall vs RingCentral Guide: Which Is Better?
When choosing a cloud-based phone system for your organization, you may be considering Aircall vs RingCentral. Both are popular platforms that offer powerful business phone systems and a range of features designed to streamline contact center and business communications. However, the right one for your business will depend on your unique needs.
Whether you’re a small startup or a larger enterprise, understanding the key differences between RingCentral vs Aircall can help you choose the one that’s right for your business. In this blog post, we break down the differences between the two platforms, comparing pros and cons of each. We also talk about some of the top alternatives to both to help you in your decision.
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Aircall vs RingCentral
At first glance when comparing Aircall vs RingCentral, both platforms are quite similar, providing VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service that allows you to make and receive calls over the internet. However, each platform has its unique features and offerings.
Aircall is a cloud-based phone system designed to improve both customer engagement and business communication. It provides voice calling using VoIP technology so you can make and receive calls from just about anywhere. Aircall is particularly popular with sales and customer support teams because it integrates with a wide variety of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems and other business tools, making it easy to track interactions with customers.
Some of Aircall’s key features include:
- Call management features like call routing, call forwarding, and call queues
- Call recording for quality assurance and training purposes
- Integrations with over 100 platforms, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and Zendesk
- Detailed reporting and analytics on call volume, duration, and performance metrics
- Collaboration tools like shared call inboxes, which allows teams to collaborate on managing customer communications
On the other hand, RingCentral’s platform provides a whole lot more. In fact, RingCentral is a UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), which means it provides voice, video, business texting, and team messaging. With RingCentral, you handle all your communication and collaboration needs in one platform. RingCentral helps your team communicate and collaborate more efficiently, whether you’re working in the office, remotely, or in a hybrid setup.
Some of RingCentral’s key features include:
- Unified communications, with voice calling, video conferencing, messaging and team collaboration, and business texting
- Integration with over 300 business apps, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, Zoho CRM, Zendesk, and Zapier
- Call analytics and reporting tools to monitor call metrics, performance, and customer interactions
- Call management features like call forwarding, voicemail transcription, call queuing, and call recording
Pros of Aircall
Aircall is popular for a number of reasons, including its intuitive user interface and feature set. Some of the top pros of Aircall include:
- Easy setup: With Aircall, there’s no need for physical hardware or complex installation. Users can quickly set up the system and start making calls via desktop or mobile apps.
- User-friendly interface: Aircall’s user interface is easy to learn, allowing teams to adopt it quickly without extensive training.
- Seamless integrations: Aircall integrates with over 100 CRM and helpdesk applications, which can help with automatic call data logging and enhanced productivity.
- Flexibility: Aircall works on mobile and desktop devices, allowing your team to work flexibly, whether in the office or from home.
- Real-time collaboration: Agents can assign, comment on, and tag calls in real-time, making it easier to collaborate on customer issues or sales leads.
- Comprehensive call center tools: With features like IVR, call queuing, call whisper, smartflow call routing, and both warm and cold call transfers, Aircall has the tools call centers need to better engage with customers.
Pros of RingCentral
RingCentral is a comprehensive platform that can handle just about all of your business communication needs. Some of the pros of RingCentral include:
- All-in-one communication platform: With voice, video, messaging, and fax services in one place, RingCentral can help you reduce costs by handling all your business communication needs.
- Robust feature set: RingCentral offers a robust set up features like call recording, call analytics, team collaboration tools, and more.
- Advanced integration: RingCentral provides over 300 integrations with third-party apps, which is much more than Aircall. Plus, it offers API access for custom integrations.
- Enterprise-level video conferencing: Unlike Aircall, RingCentral enables video conferencing with up to 200 participants. AI features like auto-generated summaries, notes, and live transcriptions improve the efficiency of your meetings.
Cons of Aircall
When it comes to RingCentral vs Aircall, both platforms have a lot to offer. However, they each have their downsides. While Aircall is a powerful and user-friendly cloud-based phone system, it has some cons, including:
- Limited advanced call center features: While Aircall offers basic call center functionalities like call routing, queuing, and IVR, it lacks some advanced features found in other contact center solutions. For example, if you need predictive dialing or advanced AI features, Aircall might not be sufficient.
- Limited channels: Because Aircall is a voice-focused platform, it lacks video conferencing and team collaboration tools. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution to reach customers on multiple channels, you may need to go with an alternative.
- Inconsistent call quality: One thing noted by numerous users is the inconsistency of Aircall’s call quality, including issues with dropped calls and choppy sound.
- Basic reporting: Although Aircall provides call reporting, the analytics tools are less advanced compared to other competitors like Nextiva. Teams that rely heavily on data-driven insights may find Aircall’s reporting features limiting.
Cons of RingCentral
While RingCentral is a robust, cloud-based communication platform, like any service, it has its limitations. Here are some of the cons of RingCentral:
- Pricing: RingCentral’s pricing can get expensive, especially as your business scales or needs more advanced features like call center functionality, advanced reporting, or high-level integrations. Small businesses or startups with limited budgets may find the pricing prohibitive compared to more affordable alternatives.
- Steep learning curve: RingCentral offers a wide range of features that can take care of complex communication needs. However, this also makes the platform complex to navigate for new users. Setting up all features, especially advanced ones like integrations and custom workflows, can take time and may require technical support.
- Occasional software glitches: Some users report encountering occasional software bugs or system glitches, especially on the desktop app. Common problems include call drops, latency, and problems syncing contacts.
- Customer support: While RingCentral offers 24/7 live chat and phone support, it can be difficult to reach an actual human. Most support inquiries start off dealing with AI, and the AI doesn’t always provide thorough answers.
Aircall vs RingCentral: Which Is Better?
Now that we’ve looked at Aircall vs RingCentral in depth, which is the better platform? The answer will depend on a number of factors, including the features you need and your budget. Aircall is an easy-to-use platform that’s focused heavily on voice calls, with all the contact center features you need to handle sales and customer support. However, Aircall has limited channels, basic reporting, and inconsistent call quality.
On the other hand, RingCentral is a robust UCaaS provider that can handle so much more than just your voice communication needs. RingCentral provides voice calling, video conferencing, team messaging, and business texting all in one platform. However, for some organizations, the sheer number of features offered can be overwhelming, especially if you don’t have an IT department.
If you find that neither Aircall nor RingCentral is the right fit for you, you may want to consider some of the alternatives down below.
Nextiva
Our number pick for alternatives to both RingCentral and Aircall is Nextiva. Nextiva offers a versatile set of communications and customer experience tools for businesses of all sides. Like RingCentral, Nextiva provides a unified communications platform that combines VoIP calling, video conferencing, team messaging, and more. Nextiva is also known for being particularly easy to use while still offering a robust feature set, making it appealing for businesses that need a full suite of tools without a steep learning curve.
Nextiva’s platform is designed to scale with your business as it grows. It offers customizable plans that can support everything from small teams to large enterprises. Plus, Nextiva offers advanced analytics and call reporting tools to provide deep insights into call performance, team productivity, and customer service metrics. Unlike Aircall and RingCentral, Nextiva includes a built-in CRM system at no extra cost, which can help you manage customer interactions without spending more on separate software. Essentially, when considering Aircall vs RingCentral vs Nextiva, Nextiva offers the best of both worlds, with robust features like RingCentral, the ease of Aircall, and excellent customer support.
The Nextiva vs RingCentral Guide
8×8
Another strong alternative to Aicall vs RingCentral, 8×8 is a feature-rich communication solution with a particularly strong global presence. Like RingCentral, 8×8 offers a complete unified communications platform with added strength in its contact center features. This makes it a powerful choice for businesses that need communication, collaboration, and advanced contact center features like omnichannel support, intelligent routing, and AI-driven insights.
8×8 is also a great choice if you make a lot of international calls. It offers international calling in up to 48 countries, with local numbers in over 100 countries, and has built-in global compliance tools. 8×8 also places a strong emphasis on security and regulatory compliance, offering features like end-to-end encryption, HIPAA compliance, and global data residency options.
Dialpad
Dialpad is another great alternative to Aircall and RingCentral, especially if you’re looking for a platform with native AI that integrates seamlessly with modern productivity tools. Dialpad’s built-in AI tools include real-time transcription, voice intelligence, and sentiment analysis. While both RingCentral and Aircall have some AI offerings, Dialpad’s AI is some of the best on the market, providing real-time recommendations and actionable insights to improve performance.
Like Aircall, Dialpad is known for its user-friendly interface, making it easier to set up and use compared to platforms like RingCentral. For small to medium-sized businesses that want quick deployment and intuitive operation, Dialpad provides a less overwhelming experience than RingCentral while still offering more advanced functionality than Aircall.
The Dialpad vs RingCentral Guide
CloudTalk
CloudTalk is another strong alternative to both Aircall and RingCentral, especially if your business needs a call center-focused platform with strong international capabilities and advanced call management features. It offers advanced call routing, automated call distribution (ACD), IVR, call queuing, and power dialing features to help you manage high call volumes efficiently. While RingCentral offers similar features, CloudTalk excels in its specialization for outbound and inbound call center operations.
CloudTalk also provides more advanced analytics and performance tracking than both Aircall and RingCentral, with detailed reports on call quality, agent performance, and customer satisfaction. And while CloudTalk offers robust call center features, its pricing remains affordable for businesses that need call center capabilities but want to avoid the higher costs of RingCentral’s premium plans.
How to Choose
Whether you’re choosing between Aircall vs RingCentral or looking at alternatives like Nextiva, finding the right business phone system can be difficult. Aircall has an easy to use platform with contact center features that make sales and customer support easier to manage. RingCentral offers unified communications with tons of options for customization.
But how do you choose which business phone system is best for you? If you need help finding a business phone system or managing any other business telecom needs, you can count on OneStop Communications. We’ll help you compare multiple providers and plans so you can find the right solution for your organization.
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