Quo (OpenPhone) vs RingCentral: 2026 Pricing Compared
Quo is what OpenPhone became in 2025: a phone app for small teams that lives on your cell and your laptop, built around shared numbers and texting. RingCentral is a full communications platform (calls, meetings, contact center) that small businesses buy when they expect to grow into it. The per-seat prices land within a few dollars of each other. The real differences are texting, how each sells AI, and how hard it is to leave.
The quick answer: Pick Quo if your team lives in texts, wants to be live this afternoon and wants to cancel in a few clicks. Pick RingCentral if you need video meetings, multiple sites or desk phones on one contract. And if your phone mostly rings with leads who want a quote or an appointment, you want an AI that knows the caller’s email and CRM history, qualifies them and books them on a real calendar. That is Carly Phone, and the fastest way to see it is to book a call with the Carly team.
Current US Pricing, Side by Side
| Quo (formerly OpenPhone) | RingCentral RingEX | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Starter $15/user/mo annual ($19 monthly) | Core $20/user/mo annual ($30 monthly) |
| Middle | Business $23 annual ($33 monthly) | Advanced $25 annual ($35 monthly) |
| Top | Scale $35 annual ($47 monthly) | Ultra $35 annual ($45 monthly) |
| Texting included | US and Canada texting on every plan (fair use policy) | 25 / 100 / 200 SMS per user per month by plan |
| Texting registration | $19.50 one-time carrier review, then $1.50 to $3/month | TCR registration required, fees “may apply” |
| Extra numbers | $5/month each | $4.99/month each |
| AI receptionist | Sona: 10 calls/month included, credit tiers from $25/mo | AI Receptionist (AIR): add-on from $39/mo with 100 minutes |
| AI call summaries | Business plan and up (Starter: Sona calls only) | Notes and summaries listed from Core |
| CRM integrations | HubSpot and Salesforce from Business | From Advanced |
| Free trial | 7 days | Up to 5 users, no SMS during the trial |
| Cancelling | In the app, anytime | Call or chat with support |
RingCentral charges the same per-seat price for 1 to 5 users and 6 to 100 users, and says annual billing saves up to 33%. For the full breakdowns, see Quo pricing and RingCentral pricing.
Pricing and Contracts: The Sticker Is Close, the Exit Is Not
Run a five-person team on the middle tier. Quo Business annual is 5 × $23 = $115/month. RingCentral Advanced annual is 5 × $25 = $125/month. Month to month it’s $165 against $175. At the top tier the two are identical on annual billing: $35 a seat each.
So the monthly bill rarely decides this. The contract does.
Quo is month to month or yearly, and its own pricing page says you can cancel in the app “in just a few clicks.” Your plan stays active until the end of the billing cycle, then your numbers are held for 60 days before they are removed.
RingCentral’s online terms say recurring services automatically renew for the same length as the initial term unless either side gives notice of non-renewal at least 30 days before the term ends. Its support article routes cancellation through a call or chat with support, and the account sits disabled for 30 days before it is cancelled. The complaints show up on RingCentral’s own community forum, including a customer who spent months asking to turn off auto-renewal and then found the agreement had renewed for three years. If you sign an annual or multi-year RingCentral order, put the renewal date on your calendar the day you sign. We cover the process in how to cancel RingCentral, and if you’re switching because the AI side is what you actually need, book a call with the Carly team.
Texting: Quo’s Home Turf
Texting is the reason most small teams pick Quo. Every plan includes US and Canada messaging, shared numbers let the whole team see one conversation thread, and you get snippets, scheduled messages, auto-replies to missed calls and internal comments on a thread. Reviewers on G2 and Trustpilot consistently praise how clean it feels.
The catch on Quo is carrier registration. You pay a $19.50 one-time fee for The Campaign Registry to review your business, then $1.50 to $3 a month. Users report failed registrations, long forms and paying again to resubmit after a mistake. Automated texts through the API, Zapier or Make cost 1¢ per segment.
RingCentral caps texting by plan: 25 SMS per user per month on Core, 100 on Advanced, 200 on Ultra. A shared SMS inbox, company reply templates and compliance tools sit in the Business SMS Booster, a $25 add-on, and SMS is not available during the free trial. High-volume or marketing texts are a separate product priced per message.
If texting is how your customers reach you, Quo is the better phone. If texting is how they book, read SMS appointment booking for business before you pick either, or get a walkthrough of Carly’s texting inbox.
AI: Quo Sona vs RingCentral AIR and ACE
Both vendors now sell an AI agent that answers the phone. They are priced and scoped differently.
Quo Sona answers inbound calls around the clock. According to Quo, it takes messages, answers questions from the business details you give it (hours, services, pricing, FAQs), asks new leads custom intake questions, transfers callers to the right teammate and can text a scheduling link or form while the caller is still on the line. It speaks English, Spanish and French, answers inbound calls only and works only inside Quo. Every plan includes 1,000 credits, which is about 10 calls a month. Beyond that you buy a tier: $25/month for 40 calls, $49 for 100, $99 for 250 or $199 for 600, with overage from $1.00 down to $0.45 per call. Quo is also beta-testing Sona follow-ups over text. The most common complaint is exactly what you’d expect: 10 calls runs out fast.
RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR) is an add-on to RingEX from $39/month, or a standalone plan from $49/month that works with any phone system. Both include 100 minutes, then $0.50 a minute billed in 30-second increments, with a 14-day trial. RingCentral says AIR routes calls by name, location and keyword, captures leads with intake questions, logs them to Salesforce, HubSpot or Zoho, and can schedule or reschedule appointments by connecting to your calendar. More in our RingCentral AI receptionist breakdown.
AI Conversation Expert (ACE), the conversation intelligence product RingCentral used to sell as RingSense, is a different tool entirely. It analyzes sales calls, updates CRMs and coaches reps, starting at $60 per user per month.
The cost math at 100 AI-answered calls a month, averaging two minutes each: Quo’s $49 tier covers it. RingCentral’s $39 add-on covers 100 minutes, so the other 100 minutes add $50, for $89 a month. Longer calls favor Quo’s per-call pricing. Short calls favor RingCentral’s per-minute pricing.
Either one will answer. The next step up is an agent that reads the caller’s past emails and CRM record before deciding who they should meet. That is what Carly Phone was built for, and you can see Carly Phone on a call. Compare the wider field in best AI receptionists.
Integrations
Quo keeps it tight and SMB-shaped: HubSpot and Salesforce from the Business plan, plus Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Attio, Clio, Jobber, Gong, HighLevel, Slack, Google Contacts, Zapier and Make, webhooks in beta, an API on every plan and an MCP server for ChatGPT and Claude.
RingCentral opens CRM integrations at Advanced and lists LLM plugins and MCP connectors from Core. Its integrations lean toward Microsoft Teams, contact center stacks and enterprise tools. If you want an AI assistant working your RingCentral data, see the Claude and RingCentral setup.
Setup and Admin
Quo is self-serve. Download the app, pick or port a number (porting is free) and invite teammates, with no admin portal to learn first. Phone menus, ring orders and call transfers unlock on Business.
RingCentral asks more of whoever runs it. It handles multiple sites, desk phones, toll-free minute pools and meeting rooms, and the admin portal reflects that. Reviewers repeatedly describe settings spread across many tabs with no single setup wizard. Desk phone rental is only available on a multi-year contract.
If nobody on your team wants to be the phone admin, the Carly team configures routing, after-hours rules and phone menus with you. Get a walkthrough.
Support
Quo tiers support by plan: email tickets on Starter, live chat on Business, and priority support plus inbound phone support (Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM Pacific) on Scale. The recurring review complaint is that the ticket queue feels slow when the phones are down.
RingCentral offers chat, phone and case-based support. Reviews split sharply. Some users praise fast technical fixes, while the negative reviews cluster around billing disputes and account reps who stop responding.
Where Quo Pulls Ahead
- Texting. Included on every plan under a fair use policy, with shared inboxes built in.
- Leaving. Cancel in the app, no renewal window to track.
- Speed to live. Self-serve setup from an app download, with no admin portal to learn.
- AI for real call volume. Per-call Sona pricing beats per-minute billing on longer calls.
Where RingCentral Pulls Ahead
- Everything beyond the phone. HD video meetings for up to 300 participants on every plan, webinars on Ultra, and a contact center (RingCX, from $65 per agent) when you outgrow a phone system.
- Multi-site and desk phones. Built for offices, branches and hardware.
- An AI receptionist that works on any phone system, and conversation intelligence for sales teams.
- Toll-free minutes included, from 100 on Core to 10,000 on Ultra.
See the full field in Quo alternatives and RingCentral alternatives.
Where Carly Phone Fits: When Your Calls Are Leads
Quo and RingCentral are phone systems that added AI. Carly Phone is an AI assistant that runs your phone line. For a business where the phone ringing means someone wants to buy, that difference shows up on every call.
Take Michael, who runs a roofing company. A homeowner calls at 7 PM after a storm. A message-taking receptionist would collect a name and number and leave Michael a callback. On Carly Phone, Carly picks up, asks about the roof, the insurance claim and the address, checks whether the job fits Michael’s criteria, looks at estimator Tom’s real calendar and books the inspection on the call. It texts the homeowner a confirmation, logs the call in HubSpot with a summary, and if that homeowner emailed Michael last spring, Carly already knows.
What the Carly team sets up for you:
- Your business number, new or the one you already have, with calls and texts on the same line.
- Call routing that rings your team all at once or in order, with business-hours and after-hours rules, call flows and phone menus built around how you work.
- An AI receptionist that answers when nobody picks up, answers questions, qualifies callers against your criteria, checks real calendars, books the right person and texts a booking page or application afterwards.
- A shared texting inbox where Carly answers texts and anyone on the team can take a conversation over, with photos, attachments and opt-out handling.
- Voicemail transcripts, call outcomes and summaries in one call inbox you can resolve and reopen.
- CRM logging to Carly’s built-in CRM and to HubSpot, Salesforce or Dynamics 365.
And because it is Carly, the same assistant also handles your email, calendar, scheduling and follow-ups, and connects to thousands of apps. Carly Phone is an add-on for teams, and pricing is set on a short call. The Carly team sets it up with you and you are live after one call. Book a call with the Carly team to see it on your own call flow.
Weighing a pure answering service instead? Read AI answering service or the broader best small business phone systems, then talk it through with the Carly team.
How to Decide
| Your situation | Pick |
|---|---|
| Small team that texts customers all day | Quo |
| You want to cancel without a phone call | Quo |
| Video meetings and phone on one bill | RingCentral |
| Multiple offices or desk phones | RingCentral |
| Sales team that wants call coaching | RingCentral with ACE |
| Long AI-answered calls, cost-sensitive | Quo Sona |
| An AI receptionist on a phone system you already have | RingCentral AIR standalone |
| Calls are leads to qualify and book on a real calendar | Carly Phone |
| Every call should land in your CRM with the caller’s history | Carly Phone |
FAQ
Is Quo the same as OpenPhone?
Yes. OpenPhone rebranded as Quo in 2025. It is the same business phone app with shared numbers, texting and the Sona AI agent. Older “OpenPhone vs RingCentral” articles often quote pre-rebrand prices.
Is Quo cheaper than RingCentral?
Usually by a little. On annual billing, Quo runs $15, $23 and $35 per user per month, and RingCentral RingEX runs $20, $25 and $35. The gap widens once you add texting (RingCentral’s Business SMS Booster is a $25 add-on) and narrows at the top tier, where both are $35 a seat.
Does RingCentral lock you into a contract?
RingCentral’s online terms say recurring services automatically renew for the same length as the initial term unless you give notice of non-renewal at least 30 days before it ends. Cancellation goes through a call or chat with support. Quo lets you cancel in the app at any time.
Which is the better AI receptionist, Quo Sona or RingCentral AIR?
Sona is priced per call and lives inside Quo, with about 10 calls a month included and tiers from $25 a month for more. AIR costs from $39 a month as a RingEX add-on (or $49 standalone) with 100 minutes, works on any phone system and can schedule appointments on your calendar. If you want the AI to qualify leads using their email and CRM history and book the right person, that is what Carly Phone is set up to do.
Can I keep my phone number if I switch?
Quo ports numbers in from other carriers at no charge, and additional numbers are $5 a month. Carly Phone also works with the number you already have, and the Carly team handles the setup with you.
Which is better for texting customers?
Quo. Texting is included on every Quo plan with shared inboxes, while RingCentral includes 25, 100 or 200 SMS per user per month by plan and puts its shared SMS inbox in a paid add-on. Both require carrier (TCR) registration for business texting.
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