Five9 alternatives: The top 8 contact center platforms

Over the course of your search for a contact center platform, Five9’s name has probably come up more than once (which is why you’re here). The company has been in business since 2001, so it’s safe to say that they do have experience in the contact center space and have customers in various industries.

That being said, it might not be the perfect solution for everyone.

Five9 does have its strengths and weaknesses. In this blog, we’re going to compare Five9 and its top competitors, and review them using learnings from what their own website says and from what our own customers have told us.

Let’s get started!

What is Five9?

Five9 is a cloud-based contact center solution that offers features such as automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, skills-based routing, and workforce management. Five9 is used by businesses of all sizes, including Fortune 500 companies, SaaS providers, and e-commerce platforms. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in San Ramon, California.

Why you might want an alternative contact center solution to Five9

Five9 can be a good fit for certain businesses,, but there are certain scenarios where it may be better to look for an alternative contact center platform. For instance:

You need a unified communications solution

Five9 specializes almost exclusively in providing contact and call center solutions, as opposed to internal communications features for your team members.

Need an office telephony solution to go with your customer service and help desk lines? You’ll have to buy a separate solution and integrate with it.¹ Interested in an internal team messaging platform? That’s a separate app, too. Even meetings are restricted to conference phone calls (not video meetings like you’d have in a UCaaS platform). All that adds up to a potentially bloated tech stack.

Paying for multiple apps will add to your operational budget, yes; but it could also cost you more than just cash.

Employees will have to be trained on using multiple apps. Agents will have to spend precious time switching between different programs from minute to minute. Data won’t be synced across the different app databases. These minor inefficiencies build up over time and can have a significant impact on contact center performance.

None of this is a problem with a truly unified communications platform. With an all-in-one solution, both your customer-facing and non-customer facing employees will get the functionality that they need—all from the same app.

You need more value for your money

Even if you get Five9’s Core plan (which starts at $149 per user per month²) and the basic plan of another UCaaS platform, that’s still two separate applications that you have to scope out, implement, integrate, train people on, and maintain.

If you go with a unified communications platform (like Dialpad), however, then you get all the features of both UC and CC platforms in a single app. Best of all, the two halves are seamlessly integrated in ways that make it easy and intuitive for agents to use and fits your workflow.

You need a reliable and robust solution

When Dialpad customers come over to us from Five9, one of the most common compliments we get is on the reliability and quality of our calls. We’re quite proud of that (in fact, we offer a 100% SLA uptime for our Enterprise plan customers).

Top 8 competitors and alternatives to Five9, ranked

When it comes to cloud-based contact center software, Five9 is a popular option on the market. But it’s not the only one. Here are eight of the best alternatives to Five9 that are suited for small businesses and enterprises, along with a brief overview of each.

1. Dialpad: An Ai-powered customer intelligence platform

Dialpad is the leading Ai-powered customer intelligence platform that's making it easy for contact center teams to work from anywhere. We’ve created one beautiful workspace that seamlessly combines the industry’s most advanced contact center solution with award-winning UCaaS capabilities that will help you provide a better customer experience.

Dialpad Ai Contact Center offers all the basic CCaaS features that Five9 offers, as well as built-in artificial intelligence capabilities that streamline agent workflows, help supervisors manage their teams, and reduce friction for IT. With functionality like Ai Agent Assist, QA scorecards, live transcriptions, sentiment analysis, and Real-Time Assist (RTA) cards, Dialpad is an ideal partner for contact center teams of all sizes.

What makes Dialpad a good alternative to Five9?

Supervisors are more effective with Dialpad Ai Contact Center

Supervisors can’t be everywhere, but Dialpad provides the next best thing through a combination of features that make it easier for them to coach agents and review performance.

Dialpad Ai can analyze a customer interaction in real-time and scan for words that indicate either positive or negative emotions. It then displays the sentiment analysis results (and the likely reason for it) on a dashboard for the supervisor to review:

The supervisor can quickly catch up to the conversation with the live transcriptions (Dialpad also transcribes call recordings and voicemail) or listen in on the call in whisper mode. They can also opt to use call barging if they need to step in to help the agent.

Dialpad can also help supervisors after the call during post-call performance review by using QA Scorecards to drastically reduce the time it takes to review calls and helps steer agents towards specific areas of improvement:

What's unique about these scorecards is that they're powered by Dialpad Ai to scale call reviews and provide objective feedback to agents quickly.

Supervisors and admins can easily create a QA Scorecard from their online dashboard, and as agents are handling calls, Dialpad Ai listens to each interaction and automatically suggests when the scorecard behavior is met.

For example, the scorecard behavior might be “Agent asked the customer for their email ID.” If the agent asks for the customer’s email, whoever grades that call will immediately see that the activity was completed, without having to listen to the entire call recording or read the transcript.

This allows contact center teams to scale QA reviews across a much wider range of calls than would otherwise be possible—in turn, this means more effective agents, happier customers, and much improved customer satisfaction metrics.

Empower agents to do their best work

Customer service representatives are on the spot every time they pick up the phone, which is why Dialpad Ai Contact Center is designed to help them respond to customer requests quickly and efficiently so they can power through long call queues.

One way Dialpad does that is by providing agents with timely and accurate information. When an agent is on a call, Ai Agent Assist and RTA cards connect agents to the right information in real time.

Supervisors can create RTA cards and set them to pop up on agents’ screens whenever a specific keyword is mentioned on a call, like “price” or “warranty.” The RTA card can contain any information you want: pricing details, information on the competition, or even a recommended script:

Ai Agent Assist listens for specific keywords, same as the RTA card. But instead of pulling up a pre-written pop-up, it searches all available connected knowledge such as the company website or internal wiki for relevant information—without agents or supervisors needing to lift a finger.

This reduces average handle time, cuts down on training needed, and ramps agents faster (plus it makes it much easier for agents to answer customer questions quickly).

QA scorecards remind agents of what they need to do to offer the right levels of service to improve customer satisfaction. Personalized greeting? Check. Polite and respectful tone? Check. It can all be added right to the scorecard.

Dialpad also has robust integrations to CRM systems that help reduce manual work like data entry. The Salesforce integration is especially effective at streamlining an agent’s workflow thanks to click-to-call and power dialer functionality, as well as call log automation:

Real-time customer intelligence at your fingertips

Most businesses have a tough time getting customers to fill out CSAT surveys.

Dialpad’s Ai CSAT feature is able to collect CSAT scores on 100% of your calls—and your customers (and agents) don’t have to lift a finger. This is a far cry from the typical 5% (or less) response rate most customer satisfaction surveys get:

How does it work? Well, remember how Dialpad Ai is transcribing customer support calls in real time? Ai CSAT uses that transcription power to infer customer satisfaction and predict a CSAT score with a high degree of accuracy.

That’s not all Dialpad Ai can do either. Besides transcribing calls, it can also pick up on keywords or “Custom Moments.” For example, if a supervisor wants to see how often a competitor’s name is mentioned on sales calls, or how frequently customers are asking for “refunds” or “money back,” they can create Custom Moments to track each of these keywords, right from the intuitive analytics dashboard. If they notice any anomalies, they can easily dig into the call transcripts or recordings to get more context:

Beyond that, Dialpad also has a real-time analytics dashboard that shows key metrics like call volumes and average speed to answer for easier scheduling and staffing.

2. Genesys Cloud CX

What makes it a good Five9 alternative?

Genesys Cloud CX is the contact center-focused platform of Genesys, a legacy telephony and digital communications brand.

Genesys, like Five9, offers contact center capabilities such as automatic call distribution (ACD) and self-service IVR routing options. It also has a workforce engagement management (WEM) platform and integrates with CRMs such as Salesforce.

Where Genesys differs from Five9 is how it handles UCaaS needs. You can also sign up for Genesys’ unified communications functions such as PSTN voice, SMS, and virtual meetings and keep things on one platform, whereas Five9 cannot.

Pricing

Genesys prices are divided into the following tiers: Genesys Cloud CX1 ($75 per user/mo), Genesys Cloud CX2 ($110 per user/mo), Genesys Cloud CX3 ($150 per user/mo), and Genesys DX, which requires a talk with Sales.³

3. RingCentral Contact Center

What makes it a good alternative to Five9?

RingCentral is a legacy business communications platform that offers both voice and video calls, as well as cloud contact center solutions.

It should be noted that RingCentral Contact Center markets itself as a “UC+CC” product, but isn’t genuinely unified—they have a partnership with NICE (formerly known as NICE inContact) in which they are whitelabeling NICE CXone.⁴

This partnership allows RingCentral to provide features like real-time agent coaching, integrations to other third-party enterprise and contact center applications, and other features, but because RingCentral doesn’t own the CCaaS side of the business it’s unclear how much influence they have over tech issues and product roadmaps.

Pricing

RingCentral Contact Center’s pricing is divided into four tiers (Essentials, Standard, Premium, and Ultimate), but you’ll have to ask for a quote for each of them.⁵

4. Avaya Experience Platform

What makes it a good Five9 alternative?

Avaya is a combination of contact center and unified communications features with its roots in telephony and PBX. Its contact center offering is called the Avaya Experience Platform. In addition to the standard communication channels like voice, email, and web chat, it also allows contact centers to set up IVRs and support chatbots. It also has some workforce optimization (WFO) features similar to Genesys Cloud CX.

It’s worth noting that Avaya’s platform is built in partnership with RingCentral, which provides all the UCaaS functionality while Avaya provide the on-premises telephony, service, and migration.⁶ As of the moment, it's unclear how well the CCaaS portion of the offering is integrated with the rest of their digital ecosystem. We can tell you, however, that even RingCentral has marketed themselves against Avaya’s on-prem PBX, on the argument that it costs too much.⁷

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Avaya Experience Platform is priced according to channel type. Digital channels such as email, web chat, and text messaging are in a different tier from voice channels, and have different prices and features. (More on the best Avaya alternatives.)

Pricing

The Avaya Experience Platform has three tiers and starts with the Digital tier at $48 per user/mo. There’s also the option for you to construct your own solution in the “Create Your Own” package.⁸

5. Talkdesk CX Cloud

What makes it a good alternative to Five9?

Talkdesk CX Cloud is a cloud-based contact center solution that offers features like call routing, automatic call distribution, and call monitoring. Talkdesk provides an API that lets businesses integrate the software with existing systems, including CRMs and other communication platforms like Microsoft Teams.

Talkdesk CX Cloud also provides AI-powered features like Agent Assist, however Basic plans are only allowed to use “Starter” versions that function like an in-app demo. You’ll have to subscribe to a higher plan to get access to the full capabilities of Talkdesk’s Agent Assist.⁹

Like Five9, Talkdesk CX Cloud is primarily a CCaaS platform, not UCaaS. Should your organization need both a UCaaS and CCaaS solution, Talkdesk may not be a good alternative.

That being said, Five9 is costlier than Talkdesk CX Cloud, with its lowest plan “Core” being almost twice as expensive as its Talkdesk counterpart.

Pricing

Talkdesk’s pricing has four tiers and starts with the CX Cloud Essentials at $75 per user/mo.⁹

6. CloudTalk

What makes it a good Five9 alternative?

CloudTalk is VoIP call center software that provides digital VoIP services. It’s a decent low-cost alternative to Five9 for both small business and enterprise companies that have relatively simple needs. Although it isn’t as feature-rich as some of the other options on this list, it does provide predictive dialing for agent convenience and a virtual phone system for inbound and outbound call services. Supervisors can also coach agents live through call monitoring.

Pricing

Cloudtalk is priced along four tiers beginning with the Starter plan at $25 per user/mo.¹⁰

7. Aircall

What makes it a good alternative to Five9?

Like Five9, Aircall is a platform built specifically for call centers. It doesn’t provide UCaaS features such as video conferencing and internal chat functionality (though it does say it has AI voice transcription).

The contact center technology it does have include call whispering, which helps managers offer agents advice during calls, call analytics (which are currently locked to higher tiers), integrations to popular CRM tools such as Salesforce and Zendesk, and power dialers.

Pricing

Aircall divides its pricing into three tiers: Essentials ($30 per user/mo), Professional ($50 per user/mo), and Custom, which requires a conversation with their sales team.¹¹

8. JustCall

What makes it a good alternative to Five9?

JustCall is quite similar to Aircall in that it markets itself as a call center solution for customer-facing teams. You'll get your sales dialers and call management features, but it doesn’t give you unified communications for internal team convos—if you want to host video meetings or message teammates, you'll need to pay for, and manage, a separate tool.

What is different is that JustCall markets itself as having speech analytics, although it isn't clear if the AI feature is built in-house or provided through a third-party software vendor that JustCall has a partnership with. (Learn more about the best JustCall alternatives.)

Pricing

JustCall's pricing starts at $24 per user per month for the Standard plan, then goes up to the Premium plan at $48, then an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.¹²

Choosing between the top Five9 competitors on the market?

Every option has a range of pros and cons, and you’ll have to determine how each one affects your business’ customer experience.

However, if you want the most value for money, we recommend that you equip your contact center with a customer intelligence platform that can solve multiple business needs without compromising on quality, agent experience, and customer engagement.

Why not get a product tour of Dialpad Ai Contact Center to see how it compares?

¹ five9.com/products/capabilities/ucaas-unified-communications

² five9.com/products/pricing

³ genesys.com/pricing

⁴ ringcentral.com/whyringcentral/company/pressreleases/ringcentral-and-nice-expand-and-extend-partnership.html

⁵ ringcentral.com/ca/en/office/plansandpricing.html#cc

⁶ avaya.com/en/about-avaya/newsroom/pr-us-200203b/

⁷ ringcentral.com/ca/en/replace-on-prem/avaya.html

⁸ avaya.com/en/products/experience-platform-pricing/

⁹ talkdesk.com/pricing/

¹⁰ cloudtalk.io/pricing/

¹¹ aircall.io/pricing/

¹² justcall.io/pricing/