A few months after Bon Jovi dropped ‘Living on a Prayer,’ two engineers from California founded 8×8. The company initially focused on designing integrated circuits and microprocessors for computers but later pivoted to the video conferencing and communications market.
Today, 8×8 provides unified communication tools primarily for contact centers, though it retains its roots in legacy hardware. This influence is still reflected in many of its products and services. However, one thing you won’t easily find online is transparent pricing.
If you’re trying to figure out how much 8×8’s VoIP costs, this guide offers a general estimate. We summarize its most recently available pricing, reveal hidden fees, and point out key limitations to help you make an informed decision.
What is 8×8?
8×8 is a business communications platform that provides voice, SMS, and HD video services to contact centers and help desks. While it primarily targets enterprise brands, it offers two plans designed for growing small businesses.
8×8 pricing and plans at a glance
8×8 pulled the plug on public pricing in late 2023, shifting to a sales-led approach. Additionally, the company has recently introduced several new plans:
- Contact Center
- CX Beyond the Contact Center (8×8 Engage)
- Communications APIs
- Unified Communications (8×8 Work)
You’ll need to contact them directly to request a quote.
To give you an idea of 8×8’s pricing structure before this change, we’ve rounded up the last publicly listed prices for its unified communications plans:
X2: All-in-one voice, video, and chat
For $24 per user per month, you unlock all-in-one voice, video, and chat tools. You can also make unlimited calls in 14 countries, including the US, UK, Australia, and Canada.
However, you’ll notice the X2 plan is missing several key features, including CRM integrations. You can’t tap into IVR, turn on call monitoring tools, or set up 8×8 Frontdesk for receptionists or operators.
| Key features | What’s missing |
|---|---|
| Unlimited voice calling in 14 countries (excludes mobile, special, and premium numbers) | Call whisper, barge, and monitor |
| Video conferencing for 500+ participants | 8x8 Frontdesk |
| Basic call queues | Post-call surveys |
| SMS, MMS, and team messaging | Intelligent interactive voice response (IIVR) |
| Document sharing | Auto-dialer |
| Temporary storage (long-term requires add-on) | Omnichannel call routing and skills-based routing |
| Voicemail transcriptions | Long-term storage (AKA cold storage) |
| Web, desktop, and mobile apps | Contact center reporting and analytics |
| Microsoft Teams integration | CRM integrations (including HubSpot and Salesforce) |
| Basic integrations | AI quality management and speech analytics (requires upgrade) |
X4: Advanced call handling and analytics
8×8’s X4 plan was listed at $44 per user per month — nearly twice the cost of most VoIP mid-tiers. In return, you unlock advanced call handling such as call barging, monitoring, and whispering, as well as call activity and supervisor analytics.
Keep in mind you can’t access all analytics on this plan. Quality management and speech analytics, for example, require an undisclosed add-on. Plus, agent analytics and status reports require an upgrade to the X6 plan, which is designed for contact centers rather than growing small businesses.
| Key features | What’s missing |
|---|---|
| Everything in X2 | Advanced analytics |
| Unlimited voice calling in 48 countries (excludes mobile, special, and premium numbers) | ‘Out-of-the-box’ CRM integrations |
| 8x8 Frontdesk for receptionists and operators | IIVR |
| Call handling functionality | Post-call surveys |
| Supervisor and call activity analytics | Auto-dialer |
| Skills-based routing | |
| Omnichannel routing |
8×8 also offers contact center-specific plans:
X6: Voice contact center
The X6 plan starts at around $85 per user per month for skills-based routing and voice-centric advanced reporting. Users also have access to the 8×8 Agent Workspace, which includes advanced features such as automated workflows, AI summaries, and a Microsoft Teams integration.
Unfortunately, the X6 plan requires you to pay for this Microsoft Teams integration — previous plans offered the same feature for free. This isn’t the only feature that comes with unnecessary limitations. Omnichannel routing, for example, is only available for voice messages (not text).
| Key features | What’s missing |
|---|---|
| Everything in X4 | Full omnichannel routing |
| Omnichannel routing (voice only) | 8x8 Contact Center for Microsoft Teams |
| Skills-based routing | Key CRM integrations |
| 8x8 Agent Workspace | Contact center solutions |
| Advanced reporting |
X7: One interface for voice and digital interactions
For $110 per user per month, the X7 plan unlocks integrations with chat, email, and social media channels, omnichannel routing, and co-browsing tools. This plan also unlocks ‘additional’ CRM integrations, although the company doesn’t specify what platforms you get.
You should also know the X7 tier still requires expensive add-ons. Want quality management and speech analytics tools? These still cost extra until you upgrade to the next plan.
| Key features | What’s missing |
|---|---|
| Everything in X6 | Auto dialers without add-on fee |
| Omnichannel routing (voice, team chat, email, SMS, social media, and messaging) | Quality management and speech analytics without add-on |
| 8x8 Contact Center for Microsoft Teams solution certified | |
| Integrations with ‘key’ apps (CRMs, productivity tools, service platforms, and support apps) | |
| Chrome Enterprise Recommended (CER) contact center solution |
X8: Advanced contact center with QM and interactions analytics
8×8’s most expensive plan, X8, costs around $140 per user per month to unlock auto-dialers, quality management, and speech analytics. You can also access specific add-on features for free, including predictive and progressive auto dialers.
Key features:
- Everything in X7
- Auto dialers (no add-on required)
- Quality management and speech analytics (no add-on required)
Keep in mind you’ll still have limited integrations, which means you can’t connect with every tool in your tech stack. Plus, even at this tier, you still need to purchase add-ons for:
- Media cold storage (longer than a few months)
- 8×8 Secure Pay
- Intelligent customer assistants
- Intelligent interactive voice response (IIVR)
- 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams integration
On top of its hidden prices, 8×8 charges the following hidden fees:
- Training courses: 8×8 offers free on-demand training, as well as paid training courses (which can be self-paced, instructor-led, or on-site). As you might imagine, there’s no public pricing for this, so you’ll have to contact 8×8 for a quote.
- International calling: 8×8’s base plan comes with unlimited calling to 14 countries, although additional countries and metered plans require per-minute fees. These aren’t included in the price of your plan, so be prepared to pay a minimum of $0.02 per minute per outbound and inbound call.
- Calling limits: Calls to mobile, special, and premium numbers are not included in 8×8’s ‘unlimited calling’ feature. Considering most of your customers likely use mobile numbers, this ‘unlimited’ calling plan might not save you much money.
- Call center plans: Ready to upgrade beyond the X2 and X4? You should know you’ll have to purchase metered or unmetered call bundles on all of 8×8’s call center plans. There’s no way to know how much minutes cost until you contact sales — which isn’t ideal if you’re a busy business owner.
7 things to keep in mind before committing to 8×8
Here are a few more reasons to consider 8×8 alternatives:
1. Limited integration capabilities
8×8 touts its ‘integrations’ on every plan — although it never specifies exactly what these are. The pricing page only states it offers ‘integrations with key CRM, productivity, service, and support applications,’ which doesn’t provide enough information to know what you’re getting (and what you’re not).
To make matters more confusing, 8×8 lists ‘out-of-the-box integrations with key CRM, productivity, service, and support applications’ as an upgrade for the X7 plan. This means it may or may not connect with the tools you’re already using.
The only way to be sure is to contact sales for a quote.
2. Clunky call recording
Although 8×8 offers call recording on every plan, you should know you’ll need to manually adjust the settings for every single user on your team. Every user has access to on-demand, automatic, or no-call recordings, but these settings only apply to the user, not the number. The more people you have on your team, the more annoying this issue becomes.
You should also know that call recordings are not available after 90 days. The only way to get more bandwidth is to pay an add-on fee for ‘cold storage,’ which isn’t transparently listed on-site.
3. Outdated user interface
8×8 launched its VoIP services in March of 2000, so it’s no surprise its user interface leaves much to be desired. Users say it’s confusing and clunky, and there’s a steep learning curve to set up certain features and navigate to reporting.
Unfortunately, 8×8’s recent attempts to ‘modernize’ have been largely hit or miss. Users say its recent AI update made navigation more confusing and less intuitive.
See for yourself:
“…It feels and seems like 8×8 was built for yourself and your coders and not for your customers. Navigating to find [simple] things that should be done with one or two clicks is literally impossible. [They] have designed UIs with layer over layer of admin tasks that make it completely unfriendly and unusable. I have used over 400 SaaS-type platforms over 20 years, and I can safely say that 8×8 is the worst platform I have ever come across. It shows that it was built by developers who have no understanding of the customer journey.” — Trustpilot
4. Limited texting features
You can send SMS and MMS messages with 8×8, although it’s missing key features most businesses need to scale. For example, you can’t tap into auto-replies to respond to missed calls, texts, or voicemails. Plus, you won’t have the ability to send scheduled messages (aside from setting up workflows in Zapier).
5. Customer support is slow to respond
When you run into technical snags, you need responsive customer support to resolve issues quickly. This isn’t always the case with 8×8 — many past users complain about frustrating wait times.
Take a look:
“I have been an 8×8 Virtual Office customer for over 2 years now. For 3 weeks, our phone system has been only partially working, causing major business disruption. A “support ticket” was opened on the 12th of January; since then I’ve chatted with their “support” 4 times, and had one email from a technician. Absolutely nothing has been fixed.” — Reddit
“…For a communications company, you would think they have better customer service. 8×8 constantly leaves support cases pending for days only to say that they are “escalating” or moving the case to another team. If you have any problems with your account, do not expect the issue to be resolved for at least 2 weeks.” — Trustpilot
6. Limited plan details
8×8 is unnecessarily sneaky about how much you’ll pay for a plan. Since there are no exact prices, it’s not clear what your true costs will be — or exactly what features you’re getting in your plan — until you talk to sales.
Unfortunately, past users say that talking to sales involves back-and-forth negotiations and pushy marketing tactics. If you’re a growing small business, you likely don’t have time for this.
And you might risk getting locked into a plan that’s almost impossible to cancel.
7. May be hard to cancel
Trying to cancel your 8×8 plan? Read the fine print, or risk getting stuck with high fees.
First, you need to submit a written notice of intent at least 30 days before your contract ends. Then, you’ll need to open a cancellation case, speak with a cancellation agent, and confirm receipt of your cancellation email.
Don’t forget to consider early buyout and termination fees, which may or may not apply depending on your contract.
OpenPhone: A more effective alternative to 8×8
8×8 has a knack for upgrading legacy phone systems — but beyond that, its offerings fall short in several areas. Even if you look past its limited integrations, outdated features, and clunky interface, you’ll still have to contend with its frustratingly opaque pricing.
The good news is that 8×8 is an outlier, and the best VoIP platforms are much simpler and easier to use. This includes modern VoIP systems like OpenPhone: the best business phone system for fast-growing teams.
See how we compare to 8×8 below:
| Features | OpenPhone | 8x8 |
|---|---|---|
| Price per month | $15 per user per month | $24 per user per month (last known) |
| Unlimited calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited SMS, MMS to US & Canada | ✓ | ✓ |
| Toll-free numbers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Additional phone numbers | $5 per number | Undisclosed |
| Number porting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Call recording | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shared phone numbers | ✓ | Shared extensions only |
| Group text messaging | ✓ | X |
| Shared contacts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-replies | ✓ | Requires upgrade |
| Text message templates | ✓ | ✓ |
| Slack integration | ✓ | Requires Zapier |
| AI features | ✓ | Requires upgrade |
| Gmail integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Zapier integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| iOS and Android apps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Web-based apps | ✓ | ✓ |
1. Transparent, small business-friendly pricing
You should never have to guess what your monthly phone bills will be. This is why OpenPhone designed our pricing to be simple, clear, and transparent.
We offer three distinct plans so you can upgrade (or downgrade) whenever you need:
- Starter: $15 per user per month for unlimited calls and texts in the US and Canada, voicemail transcripts, AI message responses, manual call recording, auto-replies, and more
- Business: $23 per user per month for group calling, AI call summaries and transcripts, auto-attendants, analytics and reporting, automatic call recording, and more
- Scale: $35 per user per month for AI call tags, dedicated onboarding, and priority chat and email support
Additional phone numbers cost just $5 per month. You can find international calling prices on our rates page.
2. Easy to set up and customize your phone system
In contrast to paying for training courses with 8×8, OpenPhone’s platform is simple and intuitive. It’s easy to add phone menus, set business hours for your team, or configure call recordings on as many business numbers as you need.
We also integrate with more than 7,000 third-party apps so you can connect to the tools you’re already using. It only takes a few minutes to connect tools like Gong, Slack, or HubSpot, then import contacts and add team members in 15 minutes or less.
See how easy it can be to set up your business phone system.
3. Save time texting
You need more than basic text messages to scale your business’s SMS program — and with OpenPhone, you can tap into automations to do just that.
We make it easy to set up:
- Scheduled messages in your customer’s time zone so you never send a message outside of business hours
- AI-generated message suggestions so you can save time responding to incoming texts
- Auto replies for missed calls, texts, and voicemails so you can set clear expectations for customers
4. Keep your team on the same page with collaboration tools
Collaboration tools with 8×8 require expensive add-ons and multiple upgrades. With OpenPhone, you can tap into collaboration tools on every plan.
For example, you can use call summaries and transcripts to quickly get context on past calls. Then you can create custom contact notes to record addresses, URLs, and other key customer traits.
Need to delegate tasks to other members of your team? With internal mentions, you can tag them directly in your contacts’ message inbox. This makes it easy for you to ask for help, hand off work, or get clarification so you can take the next steps with confidence.
5. Provide better service with shared numbers
Need to split responsibility for incoming conversations? With OpenPhone’s shared numbers, you can respond to calls, texts, and voicemails as a team so no conversation falls through the cracks.
Everyone on the number gets notified of new messages, which means someone’s always around to pick up the phone. Plus, it’s easy to set up a specific ring order so you never miss an important call.
You also get analytics for each user on your number so you can see which team members are taking which calls. You can also see who said what in conversations, including real-time updates when someone drafts a new message to a customer.
💡Related: How to share a business phone number with your team
Pros and cons of 8×8 pricing plans
8×8 stands out as a UCaaS solution for legacy contact centers. However, its dated interface and limited integrations make it far less suitable for growing small businesses.
Pros:
- Unlimited voice: The base plan offers unlimited voice calls in 14 countries.
- Unified features: You can access voice, SMS, and video meetings on every plan.
- APIs available: 8×8 sells its API as a separate add-on from its business plans.
Cons:
- Dated user interface: Many past users report problems navigating the clunky UX.
- No transparent pricing: You can’t estimate pricing without contacting 8×8’s sales team.
- Limited integrations: 8×8 also doesn’t explain what integrations you get on which plan.
- Underwhelming features: Capabilities for tools like texting and call recording fall significantly behind other VoIP providers.
See why OpenPhone is the best virtual phone service provider
Enterprise businesses may not mind 8×8’s sales-led pricing, but for growing small businesses, the lack of transparency creates roadblocks. Plus, its dated, clunky interface could make it harder to get work done, which could set you back rather than push you forward.
The better solution is to start with OpenPhone, the #1 business phone system as rated on G2.
It’s easy to set up your OpenPhone system in 15 minutes or less. Purchase or port in your number(s), configure your settings, and invite individual team members to claim their own free US, Canadian, or toll-free number. Our transparent prices are available right from the start so you never have to worry about nasty surprises.
See why 50,000+ customers trust OpenPhone for business communications by signing up for a seven-day free trial.
