RingCentral is one of the biggest VoIP providers that’s been around since the 1990s. However, its pricing can be confusing and often more expensive than advertised.
With five different offers (plus 12 different add-ons) to choose from, finding the right option isn’t straightforward. You should also know there are hidden fees on almost every plan.
This guide breaks down RingCentral’s pricing, plans, and hidden fees to help you decide if it’s the right fit for your team.
What is RingCentral?
RingCentral is a cloud communication provider that offers voice, video, and messaging solutions. Upgrading unlocks advanced features such as call monitoring, CRM integrations, and internet fax— but it can get expensive fast, especially with all the hidden fees for small businesses.
Learn more about how RingCentral works.
RingCentral Business Phone plans and pricing
There are three separate RingEX plans to choose from:
Core
The Core plan starts at $20 per user per month billed annually ($30 per user per month billed monthly). It unlocks access to basic VoIP features, including unlimited calls in the US and Canada.
Keep in mind calling is one of the only ‘unlimited’ features you’ll find on this tier. Texts and toll-free minutes come with tight limits — 25 texts per user per month and 100 pooled toll-free minutes. You also won’t get unlimited storage for call recordings and conversation histories.
| Key features | What’s missing |
|---|---|
| Unlimited calls in the US and Canada | Automatic call recording |
| 25 SMS and MMS messages per user per month | CRM integrations |
| Multi-level auto-attendant | Advanced call queues |
| Shared phone lines (calling only) | Hot desking |
| 100 toll-free minutes | Advanced call monitoring and call handling |
| Visual voicemail | Advanced call routing |
| On-demand call recording | Unlimited internet fax |
| Chat and phone support | Cloud storage backup |
| Whiteboard and annotations | Business Analytics Essentials |
| Call log reports | |
| AI-powered video meetings (100 participants) |
Advanced
The Advanced plan costs $25 per user per month billed annually ($35 per user per month billed monthly). In return, you get higher limits for texts and toll-free minutes, as well as access to advanced features such as call queues and call monitoring.
But the Advanced plan doesn’t offer unlimited storage for files, messaging, and recordings. Plus, many of its most advanced features require extras and add-ons to maximize their value. For example, there’s no way to join third-party video meetings in a conference room without purchasing the Rooms add-on ($49 per room per month).
| Key features | What’s missing |
|---|---|
| 100 SMS and MMS messages per user per month | Unlimited storage |
| 1,000 toll-free minutes | Unlimited video meetings |
| Automatic call recording | Device analytics and alerts |
| CRM integrations | Custom business analytics |
| Advanced call queues | |
| Hot desking | |
| Advanced call monitoring and call handling | |
| Advanced call routing | |
| Unlimited internet fax | |
| Cloud storage backup | |
| Business Analytics Essentials |
Ultra
RingCentral’s Ultra plan starts at $35 per user per month billed annually ($45 per user per month billed monthly). With it, you can tap into RingCentral’s most impressive features, including unlimited storage, video meetings with up to 200 participants, device analytics, and more.
However, you should know this ‘unlimited’ storage doesn’t include video meetings, and all your files are subject to time-based deletion policies (more on this later). Plus, there are limits on SMS and toll-free minutes. This could get frustrating as your business grows.
| Key features | What’s missing |
|---|---|
| 200 SMS and MMS messages per user per month | Truly unlimited storage |
| 10,000 toll-free minutes | Unlimited toll-free minutes |
| Unlimited storage (doesn't include video recordings) | Unlimited SMS |
| AI-powered video meetings (200 participants) | No shared inbox |
| Device analytics and alerts | No productivity tools |
| Custom business analytics |
Add-ons for RingEx plans
RingCentral requires separate add-on fees for RingEx plans.
They include:
- Additional vanity phone numbers: $30 one-time fee plus $4.99 per month
- Additional international numbers: $5.99 per user per month
- Additional toll-free or local numbers: $4.99 per month
- Additional international toll-free numbers: $14.99 per user per month plus a $25 one-time fee
- High Volume SMS: $0.01 per message sent and received
- RingCentral Room Connector license: $49 per month per concurrent endpoint or $468 per year
- RingCentral Rooms license: $49 per room per month or $468 per year
- RingCentral Webinar™: $40 per organizer per month
- RingSense for Sales: $60 per user
- Push to Talk license: $5 per user per month
- RingCentral Events: $1,490 per license per year (starting point)
- RingCX AI Contact Center: $65 per user
RingCentral Contact Center plans
If you need a more robust business phone system, you may want a RingCentral Contact Center plan:
RingCX
The RingCX plan costs $65 per agent per month for core features, integrations, AI capabilities, and workforce engagement tools.
Key features
- Call recordings
- Predictive dialer
- AI summaries
- HubSpot integration
- Screen recording
- Speech analytics
What’s missing
- IVA for voice and digital
- CRM integrations (including Salesforce)
- Advanced real-time AI agent assist
- 30+ digital channels
- Journey analytics
- Real-time reports
Enterprise
The RingCentral Contact Center plan costs an undisclosed amount per agent per month for advanced features, virtual agents, AI, and workforce engagement tools
Key features
- IVA for voice and digital
- CRM integrations (including Salesforce)
- Advanced real-time AI agent assist
- 30+ digital channels
- Journey analytics
- Real-time reports
What’s missing
- Video meetings
RingCentral Video plans
If all you need are video conferencing tools, RingCentral offers the following plans:
Video Pro
Video Pro is a free plan that unlocks 50-minute video meetings for up to 100 participants on your plan. Keep in mind you have limited storage unless you purchase a RingCentral business communications plan.
Key features
- Unlimited 50-minute video meetings for up to 100 participants
- Five hours or seven days of video recordings
- Breakout rooms
- Collaborative notes
- AI noise cancellation
- AI live transcriptions
What’s missing
- Business app integrations
- Advanced analytics (meeting performance and adoption)
- User management
- Developer APIs
- Delegate scheduling
- Call Me/Call Out (500 included minutes only)
Video Pro+
Video Pro+ costs $10 per user per month billed annually ($15 per user per month billed monthly). You get additional meeting participants and meeting time, but you’re still subject to limited storage space unless you purchase a full VoIP plan.
Key features
- 24 video meetings for up to 200 participants
- Business app integrations
- Advanced analytics
- User management
- Developer APIs
- Delegate scheduling
- Call Me/Call Out (500 included minutes only)
What’s missing
- RingCentral Rooms
- RingCentral Rooms Connector
- RingCentral Webinar
Webinar
RingCentral allows you to host webinars for your business with the Webinar add-on ($30 per organizer per month billed annually or $54 per user per month billed monthly). This is available on either RingCentral video plan, although its features are unimpressive at best.
Key features
- AI webinar writing generator
- Registration and branding tools
- Post-event reporting
- Salesforce and Marketo integrations
- Private ‘backstage’ room
- Polling and Q&A tools
What’s missing
- Video conference room solutions (requires Rooms add-on)
Rooms
RingCentral’s Rooms add-on — $39 per room per month annually ($49 per room per month monthly) — allows you to set up a conference room solution for your existing video plan. Just keep in mind it requires the Video Pro+ plan to unlock, plus the Rooms Connector add-on if you’re using legacy desk phone hardware (which costs $49 per month per concurrent endpoint).
Key features
- Wireless proximity sharing
- Rooms as a phone system
- Join third-party meetings
- Mobile-to-room conference calls
- Voice-activated control
- Digital signage solutions
What’s missing
- Webinar tools (requires Webinar add-on)
RingCentral Events
Thinking about holding events for your business? You might want to sit down: RingCentral’s prices start at $1,490 per license per year. This only grants access to 100 attendees per event, so if you want more bandwidth, you’ll have to contact the sales team.
Key features
- Attendee engagement tools
- Registration and branding platforms
- Event management
- Onsite event capabilities (such as badge printing)
- Analytics dashboard
- 45+ integrations
What’s missing
- Phone service
- Texting capabilities
- Robust webinar tools
RingCentral Revenue Intelligence
Revenue Intelligence is essentially RingCentral’s AI platform.
There’s only one plan to choose from:
RingSense for Sales
RingSense for Sales costs $60 per user per month, with no opportunity to save with an annual plan. In return, you get AI-driven revenue intelligence features that include conversation intelligence and personalized reporting tools.
Key features
- Multi-level reporting
- Advanced search
- Deal and call scoring
- Auto summaries and highlights
- Intelligent trackers
- CRM integrations
What’s missing
- Phone service
- Texting capabilities
- Video meetings
Here are some additional fees to consider before signing on the dotted line for RingCentral:
- Texting limits: No plan offers unlimited texts. The Core plan is limited to 25 texts per user per month, the Advanced plan offers 100 texts, and the Ultra plan comes with only 200 texts (with more available at an additional cost of $0.01 per message).
- Toll-free calling limits: Like texting, no RingCentral plan comes with unlimited toll-free minutes. The Core plan gives you 100 minutes pooled across the entire account, followed by the Advanced plan at 1,000 minutes per account and the Ultra plan at 10,000 minutes per account.
- Toll-free SMS charges: You can send up to 40 messages per minute and will be charged $0.007 per message sent or received by your toll-free number.
- File storage limits: All file storage is limited — including images, videos, and call recordings — unless you upgrade to the Ultra plan ($35 per user per month). That said, even upgrading to the Ultra plan doesn’t get around time-based deletion policies, which means you only have a few short months to back up critical conversations.
- Advanced business analytics: You only have access to basic analytics unless you upgrade to the Advanced plan ($25 per user per month).
- Directory assistance (411): If you need access to National Local Directory Assistance, be prepared to pay $1 per call.
- Number setup fee: Every true toll-free (1-800 number) and vanity number requires a one-time setup fee of $30.
- The Campaign Registry (TCR) fees: To send business texts in the US and Canada, you need to register your business with The Campaign Registry through RingCentral. This will require a $4 one-time brand application fee, a $40 one-time optional third-party brand vetting fee, and a $15 one-time campaign vetting fee. You will also be subject to an extra $1.50 low-volume campaign fee (monthly with a three-month minimum commitment) or a $10 standard campaign fee (monthly with a three-month minimum commitment)
- RingCentral service plan fees: RingCentral mentions several more service plan fees, although it’s unclear how much these cost on average. Here’s a brief breakdown of what to expect:
- Emergency 911 Service Fee
- 911 Fee
- Federal Universal Service Fund
- State and Local Taxes and Fees
- Compliance and Administrative Cost Recovery Fee: This is yet another unnecessary “compliance and administrative” add-on to your bill. Keep in mind it’s not required by law and doesn’t include any Universal Service Fund fees. The price you pay will depend on your plan, so the only way to get transparency is to contact RingCentral’s customer support team.
- International SMS: While RingCentral lists its international call rates online, international SMS rates are only available in the Admin portal. This means there’s no way to know how much you’ll pay for international texts until you sign up for a plan to take the free trial.
5 things to keep in mind before committing to RingCentral
Here are a few more reasons to consider RingCentral alternatives:
1. Limited free trial
Although RingCentral does offer a free trial to users, its limits make it almost unusable.
First, you’re limited to five users and two desktop phones, and you won’t be able to send SMS and MMS.
On top of that, you only get 50 minutes of domestic calls per user. Assuming your calls last four minutes or more, you’ll only get ~12 calls per user to decide if RingCentral is right for your team.
💡Related: Dialpad vs RingCentral: Which is better for your team?
2. Can’t share responsibility for incoming texts
You can use RingCentral to set up shared phone numbers, allowing your team to share calls and contacts. But there’s no way to split responsibility for incoming texts, so you need to allocate the work to a single team member.
You also won’t find many texting automation tools with RingCentral — at least not out of the box. You may need to hire a developer to use RingCentral Automator or upgrade your plan to access third-party integrations.
3. Getting context on conversations is time-consuming
Every call, text, and voicemail in RingCentral lives in separate inboxes. There’s no way to see all these touchpoints in the same location, which could significantly increase the time it takes to get up to speed on a conversation.
To make matters worse, there’s no single contact thread to house your customer conversations. You may have to jump between tabs or message your teammates if you want the full picture of a customer’s history.
💡Related: Google Voice vs RingCentral: What’s the best VoIP option for your business?
4. Limited storage for recordings, files, and more
By far, the biggest drawback of using RingCentral is its lack of unlimited storage. All three plans (even with the ‘unlimited’ storage add-on) come with a strict data cap on:
- Automatic and on-demand call recordings (90-day expiration)
- Faxes (30-day expiration)
- Call logs (12-month expiration)
You also need to worry about limit-specific limitations, including the number of files you can store on your account. For example:
- You can only store 5,000 SMS/MMS messages per user per account
- After 200 unheard voicemails, new messages begin saving over old files
- You can only have 200 on-demand call recordings per voicemail inbox per user
Considering most VoIPs don’t impose these limitations, RingCentral’s lack of unlimited storage is a major deal breaker for growing brands.
5. Complicated user-interface
RingCentral’s interface is clunky and outdated, which makes it frustrating and time-consuming to customize to your liking.
Let’s go back to our auto-replies example. Setting them up requires the Automator app and then writing message templates for your team to use. It’s similar to how you might create templates in Gmail — and just as clunky and frustrating as you’d think.
Most business platforms, including OpenPhone, make it simple and intuitive to navigate your VoIP phone number. Setting up snippets takes a few minutes or less, and you don’t need to learn how to code or dig through YouTube tutorials to do so.
💡Related: Vonage vs RingCentral: Which is the right fit for your business?
OpenPhone: A more effective alternative to RingCentral
If you have deep pockets (or plenty of patience), you might be able to make RingCentral work for you. However, if you hate the idea of limitations and don’t have the budget for constant add-ons, upgrades, and fees, RingCentral will be more of a liability than a reliable business phone system.
This isn’t just a RingCentral problem — dozens of VoIP service providers don’t make the cut for small business owners. That’s why so many of them turn to a more efficient business phone service — including OpenPhone, the #1 small business phone service on G2.
Take a closer look at OpenPhone vs RingCentral:
| Features | OpenPhone | RingCentral |
|---|---|---|
| Price per month | $15 per user per month | $20 per user per month |
| Unlimited calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited SMS, MMS to US & Canada | ✓ | X |
| Toll-free numbers | ✓ | Minutes limited |
| Additional phone numbers | $5 per number | $4.99 - $14.99 per number |
| Number porting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Call recording | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shared phone numbers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Group text messaging | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shared contacts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-replies | ✓ | Requires Automator |
| Text message templates | ✓ | Requires Automator |
| Slack integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI features | ✓ | Requires upgrade |
| Gmail integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Zapier integration | ✓ | Requires upgrade |
| iOS and Android apps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Web-based apps | ✓ | ✓ |
1. Transparent pricing
As you can see on our pricing page, OpenPhone starts at $15 per user per month, and every plan comes with one free local US or Canadian number (or North American toll-free number) per user.
As your company starts to grow, you can tap into our Business plan to access group calling, call transfers, CRM integrations, and several other key features. When you’re ready for more, our Enterprise plan can help you keep growing with audit logs, priority support, and a dedicated account manager.
There’s no need to buy before you try — we offer a seven-day free trial you can start at any time. Our free trial has no number restrictions, texting limits, or calling caps, so you can sign up today and test our whole platform with your team.
2. Unlimited text messages and toll-free minutes
You need a phone plan that grows alongside you — not one that restricts your ability to scale. That’s why every plan with OpenPhone comes with unlimited text messages and toll-free minutes. And did we mention you can store all conversations indefinitely?
Any and all call recordings and conversations live happily in our app for as long as you’re our customer. Need to cancel your plan for whatever reason? We’ll store your conversation histories for a few weeks, just in case you need them.
3. Shared lines for texting and calling
OpenPhone makes it a breeze to collaborate with your team. Using shared phone numbers, you can split responsibility for incoming calls and share the workload so critical conversations never fall through the cracks.
Shared phone numbers alert every member to incoming calls and texts, which ensures there’s always someone around to pick up the phone or transfer a call to the right team member. You can also create a better customer experience by improving response times.
4. Easy to catch up on conversations with a unified inbox
Unlike RingCentral (and many other VoIP apps), OpenPhone offers a unified inbox for calls, messages, and voicemails. Every touchpoint appears directly under the contact’s thread, and you can add internal comments and contact notes to keep track of context.
Need to get up to speed as quickly as possible? You can find call transcriptions and summaries in the same efficient thread.
5. Speed up workflows effortlessly
The bigger your business, the less time you’ll have for hands-on tasks. That’s why OpenPhone offers simple workflow automations so you can put repetitive tasks on autopilot.
We make it easy to tap into Zapier from our base plan (unlike RingCentral, where you have to upgrade to the Advanced plan). From here, you can set up automations that push data to critical apps and create simple workflows, such as sending a text once someone fills out a form on your website.
We also make it easy to set up auto-replies and snippets in-app.
Need to start automating other necessary tasks? OpenPhone can help with extra AI functionality, such as:
- AI message responses, which can help you brainstorm the best answer(s) to tricky questions or comments
- AI contact threads, which help suggest missing contacts based on your call summaries and voicemails
- AI call summaries and transcripts, which automatically transcribe your phone calls and create a list of helpful action items
Pros and cons of RingCentral pricing plans
RingCentral might work for solopreneurs or established businesses with physical locations, but it lacks the pricing, features, and integrations most small businesses need to scale.
Pros:
- Multiple apps: You can access RingCentral on desktop and mobile apps (iOS and Android) as well as its web app.
- Unified communications: RingCentral offers VoIP calls, business texts, and video conferencing tools.
- Collaborative call management features: Team messaging and file-sharing tools are built into every plan.
Cons:
- Limited business SMS: The base plan offers 25 texts per user per month, and the most expensive plan only offers 200 texts per user per month.
- Limits on toll-free minutes: You can’t get more than 10,000 pooled minutes per month, regardless of the number of lines you own.
- Limited storage: Even upgrading to ‘unlimited storage’ comes with time and account-based retention limits.
- Costs add up: Between hidden fees and add-on costs, it can get expensive to manage a RingCentral plan.
See why OpenPhone is the best virtual phone service provider
RingCentral is a decent example of what a VoIP could be — but it’s not a great example of a transparent, accessible, and scalable platform. The good news is that OpenPhone picks up where RingCentral leaves off. Each plan comes with clear prices, scalable features, and a flexible platform designed to grow alongside you.
Curious to see how OpenPhone does it differently? Try OpenPhone today with our seven-day free trial.
