What is RingCentral used for?

RingCentral is a cloud communications platform that combines business phone, SMS, team chat and video meetings with AI voice agents and a contact center. It is a good fit for replacing a traditional office phone system; combining phone, chat and meetings; and automating call answering with AI agents.

How much does RingCentral cost?

RingCentral is a paid product with no free plan.

Is RingCentral open source?

No. RingCentral is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to RingCentral include Linphone, Asterisk and FusionPBX.

What are some alternatives to RingCentral?

RingCentral competes with 8x8, Dialpad and Nextiva. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source RingCentral alternatives.

RingCentral: features, pricing and alternatives

About RingCentral

RingCentral is a commercial unified communications provider that sells business phone service, messaging and video meetings from the cloud. Its RingEX product bundles business phone, business SMS, team chat and meetings, and the company has built an agentic voice AI platform around that foundation.

The AI offerings include an AI Receptionist, an AI Virtual Assistant and an AI Conversation Expert, with options to deploy ready-made AI agents or build custom ones, plus an AI contact center and AI meetings and events. The vendor says RingCentral can connect to large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, and it offers separate pages for small businesses, enterprises and developers.

RingCentral is a hosted service available in many countries, with a pricing page and a sales line. It suits businesses that want telephony, chat and meetings from one vendor, from small offices to large enterprises.

Key features

Cloud business phone service
Business SMS and team chat
Video meetings and events
AI Receptionist and virtual assistant
AI contact center
Developer APIs and LLM connections

Good fit for

→Replacing a traditional office phone system
→Combining phone, chat and meetings
→Automating call answering with AI agents

Tags: unified-communications; business-phone; team-chat; video-meetings; contact-center; ai; saas

RingCentral: questions and answers

What is RingCentral used for?: RingCentral is a cloud communications platform that combines business phone, SMS, team chat and video meetings with AI voice agents and a contact center. It is a good fit for replacing a traditional office phone system; combining phone, chat and meetings; and automating call answering with AI agents.
How much does RingCentral cost?: RingCentral is a paid product with no free plan.
Is RingCentral open source?: No. RingCentral is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to RingCentral include Linphone, Asterisk and FusionPBX.
What are some alternatives to RingCentral?: RingCentral competes with 8x8, Dialpad and Nextiva. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source RingCentral alternatives.