Great system that has all features that any business would need....phone, fax, text, video meetings.
The system also allows you to grow and add users easily. You get access to all the behind the scenes set-up features and can be very self-sufficient.
Integration with Outlook is also very helpful when scheduling meetings.
We saved thousands per month by switching to 8x8 and were able to consolidate 25 separate phone services and bills into one. We got amazing pricing on per user licenses and a great price on desk phones. Their support was lackluster at the beginning (4 years ago) but has really improved lately. Their mobile app and softphone solutions are solid and simple to use. Their admin site is easy to use as well though there could be some more bulk functions added for my liking. We are definitely not looking to move away any time soon.
One great app for seamlessly managing calls and texts between your office phone and cellphone is the 8x8 app. This powerful communication tool allows you to stay connected and productive no matter where you are.
you can make and receive calls from your office phone number on your cellphone. This means you don't have to give out your personal number to clients or colleagues – they can reach you at your office number even when you're on the go. This enhances your professionalism and helps you stay organized by keeping all your communications in one place.
In addition to calls, the app also allows you to send and receive text messages from your office
8x8 Support was extremely helpful in reaching out to one of our users who could not receive any calls in 8x8 Work. The technician reported back in a timely manner that the issue was resolved. I am very satisfied with the response time and the ease of submitting a case online for the issue.Thank you so much!
STAY AWAY!!! I booked in yesterday with agent John Acre and within 5 minutes I had a phone. No one helped me start it or login, I asked the agent multiple times on what to do. When I asked about messaging he told me to contact support. I contacted support and was told it would be an additional $80 but no one stated that in the contract I signed. I told him I want the account cancelled and closed. He said that was fine and an agent would contact me within 24 hours. Its been over 24 hours AND NO ONE CONTACTS ME. I contacted their support service online and was told to wait 48 hours. When I said that would not happen I was told that cancellations take 30 days!!!! Excuse me, I cancelled within an hour of opening the service and they want me to wait 30 days to cancel. These posts will get worse and I am contacting BBB and Ive contacted my bank.
The 8x8 system has a user friendly interface for the account administrator. If there is any issue I come across, I can reach out to 8x8 support and they always resolve the issue and provide great knowledge base articles to assist.
I also receive great feedback from staff on the available features that 8x8 provides that help to ensure they can do their job with ease.
This is the first time I've used this software and it's amazing. Knowing how much I am needed in the front office not just to greet customers and guest but to get these calls coming in. It really helps that I can muliti-task and still be able to get these in-coming calls. Having meetings through video is also a neat tool.
I don't do the purchasing so, I'm assuming the price is good, being that we purchased this software.
Look, I've been through all the options. 8x8 is the leader in the global industry for a reason.
Some of the reporting options PAY for the entire system for years when used in reengagement say on the abandoned call - CALLBACK!
The softphone is ridiculously EASY to use, yet VERY robust for anyone seeking more.
8x8 is simply, the best.
Our company uses their services. I had a couple questions about making changes to the phone system such as greetings, forwarding calls, ring group and other. The two techs support I spoke to were awesome to work with. They were patient, answered all my questions and resolve all changes. It was a great customer service experience!
8x8 has great support for when I need some help, or if something goes wrong because things happen, but with a quick call to their support team, the issue is always quickly resolved. This service has been extremely reliable, and I definitely recommend it for anybody who needs a business phone number line.
8x8 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, 8x8 recently announced its new deployment model, “XCaaS” (Experience Communications as a Service).
8x8’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 8x8’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 8x8 Express. Additionally, all 8x8 customers benefit from 8x8’s advanced, secure video conferencing and team messaging platforms.
Find out more about the key features of 8x8’s XCaaS platform, along with pricing, plans, customer service, and pros and cons below.
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Some of 8x8’s key features are listed below.
All 8x8 XCaaS customers have full access to 8x8 Meet, 8x8’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, 8x8 meetings can be live streamed on YouTube.
Participants can join an 8x8 meeting using a desktop browser, iOS or Android mobile app, or through the 8x8 platform. There is also an option to dial in from over 50 countries. 8x8 plans include up to 11 toll-free numbers that can be sent to participants for dial-in purposes.
8x8 video conferencing has all of the essential features needed for effective business meetings, including:
8x8 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. 8x8 Meeting analytics offer insight into connection issues, participant information, and engagement levels.
8x8’s video conferencing really shines when it comes to security.
8x8 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.
8x8’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 8x8 Team Chat features include:
One unique time-saving feature of 8x8’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.
8x8’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 8x8’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.
8x8’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 8x8’s virtual office solution are empowered to provide their customers with customized follow-ups and relevant offers.
8x8’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. 8x8’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.
8x8’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.
8x8 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.
8x8’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.
8x8’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.
| 8x8 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 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8x8 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 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8x8 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 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8x8 Agent Workspace delivering a tailored and intuitive experience for contact center agents | X | X | X | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8x8 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 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8x8 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.) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
8x8 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.
8x8 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, 8x8 includes a native CRM. 8x8 CRM is included in all contact center plans (X6, X7, and X8). It consolidates all customer data and 8x8 contact center tools into one unified interface to increase agent productivity while reducing customer frustration.
8x8 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.
8x8 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 8x8’s platform.
| 8x8 Pros | 8x8 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 |
8x8’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, 8x8 has a knowledge base with tutorials and FAQs that can be accessed here: https://support.8x8.com/.
The knowledge base includes articles and user guides organized by product and topic. There is also an 8x8 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.
8x8 customers can also open up a customer support case online or through the 8x8 Application Panel.
8x8 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 8x8 drawback, however, is its price.
With contact center plans ranging from $85-$140 per mo/user, 8x8 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 8x8 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 8x8 alternatives known for their ease of use, like RingCentral, Ooma, and Dialpad.
For SMBs that are looking to scale, 8x8 might be a perfect fit, as they can gradually move through the X-Series plans and choose add-ons as needed, taking advantage of 8x8’s flexibility and customization.
