10 Best RingCentral Alternatives and Competitors (2026)
Teams rarely leave RingCentral over the monthly bill. They leave when their calls start showing up as spam, when texting goes dark for days, and when the fix starts with a 40-minute hold.
The quick answer: The best RingCentral alternative is Carly. It answers your business line, texts from the same number, books callers on your real calendars and follows up with every lead, the same way on every call. It connects to thousands of apps, so a call can update your CRM, create the job and ping your team without anyone touching it. You can set it up on carlyassistant.com in minutes, or just ask ChatGPT or Claude to set it up for you.
How we ranked them
Every phone system costs money. What separates them is everything else, so we ranked on four things and left price out of it:
- Setup. How long until your line actually works, and whether you need a sales call, an IT person or a porting queue to get there.
- Reliability. What paying customers report when something breaks: dropped calls, texts that don’t send, numbers flagged as spam, and how long support takes to fix it. We read the most recent 1- and 2-star reviews on Trustpilot and each vendor’s own community forum.
- How good the AI is. Whether it can answer a call, book the caller, call a new lead back and text, or only transcribe.
- What it connects to. Whether a call can reach your CRM, calendar, inbox and the rest of your tools, or stops at the phone.
RingCentral alternatives compared
| Tool | Setup | What customers report | AI on calls | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carly | Minutes, on the site or by asking ChatGPT or Claude | Follows your rules the same way on every call | Answers, books, calls leads back, texts | Any business that wants every call handled |
| RingCentral (baseline) | Sales-led, set up in an admin portal | Spam-flagged calls, texting outages, long holds (1.7/5) | AI Receptionist add-on | Multi-site teams that want video bundled |
| Quo | Self-serve app | Lost message history, texting broken after porting (4.2/5) | Sona answers inbound and texts a booking link | Small teams in shared text threads |
| Dialpad | Self-serve with admin settings | Fast pickups going to voicemail, slow SMS activation (4.1/5) | Transcripts and coaching | Sales and support teams |
| Nextiva | Onboarding team | Slow porting, an AI add-on that never went live (4.5/5) | XBert add-on, answers only | Teams that want chat and phone together |
| Zoom Phone | Zoom admin portal | Dropped-call threads on Zoom’s own forum | AI receptionist answers, doesn’t call out | Companies already on Zoom |
| Grasshopper | Self-serve | Calls going straight to voicemail, hard port-outs (3/5) | Live human receptionists as an add-on | Solo owners |
| Google Voice | Inside Google Workspace | A week-long texting outage in January 2026 | Phone menus and ring groups | Teams already on Workspace |
| Vonage | Sales-led | ”All circuits are busy,” SMS that never worked (2.1/5) | Sold with its contact-center products | Offices buying a line per employee |
| Aircall | Sales-led | An app that never worked right, no support line (3/5) | AI Voice Agents | Sales and support call teams |
| 8x8 | Through sales or a reseller | An 8-hour outage with no updates (2.7/5) | Contact-center AI | Large, multi-country companies |
Trustpilot scores checked October 25, 2026.
Why teams leave RingCentral
RingCentral has a 1.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot, and the newest reviews are about the phones themselves, not the invoice.
- Calls get flagged as spam. An October 2026 reviewer says outbound calls from their RingCentral number keep showing up as potential spam, and that every support call starts with at least 40 minutes on hold.
- Texting goes dark. A financial advisory firm moving to RingCentral’s texting add-on couldn’t send or receive client texts for three days. Another small business never got its SMS approval at all.
- Updates break the setup you had. One admin woke up to a pile of tickets because nobody’s mobile app was ringing after RingCentral changed how desktop and mobile ring together.
- Calls drop. Another office describes calls that dropped mid-sentence, or answered calls with nobody on the line, and tech support that never resolved it.
- Integrations are on you. A customer who asked in writing whether RingCentral would set up their CRM integration says they ended up doing it themselves.
RingCentral’s AI Receptionist is an add-on, and a March 2026 post in RingCentral’s community describes it interrupting callers mid-answer and not hanging up after booking. More in our RingCentral review and RingCentral AI Receptionist breakdown.
The 10 best RingCentral alternatives
1. Carly: best overall, and the easiest to set up
Carly runs your business line with an AI that’s reliable and endlessly customizable. You tell it how calls should go in plain English, and it does exactly that on every call, not whatever it decides to improvise.
Setup takes minutes. Start on carlyassistant.com, or paste Carly’s setup prompt into ChatGPT or Claude and let it set everything up for you, phone number included. No hardware, no onboarding call, no IT ticket. Keep your current number and forward the calls you miss, or grab a new number right in the chat.
On every call, Carly:
- Rings your team first in business hours and answers when nobody picks up. After hours it answers right away.
- Books callers during the call on your team’s real Google and Outlook calendars.
- Calls new web leads back within about a minute of a form fill (how it works), and texts back every missed call from the same number.
- Knows who’s calling. Callers already in your CRM are greeted by name, and every call, text and voicemail is logged.
- Speaks English and Spanish, picked from how the caller talks.
- Hands callers to a person through ring groups or a phone menu when it should.
It connects to everything. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so a call can create the job in your field-service app, update the deal in HubSpot or Salesforce, or drop a summary in Slack. Set it up the way you’d say it: “when a new lead calls, text them our intake form and add them to the CRM.” Those run as free Zapier-style workflows, every time, without anyone watching.
It runs from your AI chat. Add the Carly connector in Claude or the Carly plugin in ChatGPT, then place calls, send texts, or watch and steer a live call from the chat (see how). The same Carly works your Gmail and Outlook inboxes and calendars, so the phone is one part of what it handles, not the whole job.
Best for: Any small or mid-sized business that wants every call answered and followed up without babysitting a phone system.
Get started, or watch the 2-minute video.
2. Quo
Quo, renamed from OpenPhone in 2025, is the friendliest of the traditional phone apps: shared numbers, shared text threads and a clean mobile app. It works well right up until something breaks, and then support is mostly chat and email.
What customers report:
- A business owner says Quo erased their contacts and conversation history more than once, and support wouldn’t get on the phone.
- After porting a primary business number in, another customer couldn’t text most of their clients and says talking to a person requires the top Scale plan.
- Another calls the numbers “always glitching out and shutting down”.
Its AI: Quo’s Sona answers inbound calls only. In Quo’s own words, booking means Sona texts the caller a scheduling link, and Sona stops answering when your monthly credits run out. More in Quo AI.
Best for: Small teams who mostly text customers. More in Quo vs RingCentral and Quo alternatives.
3. Dialpad
Dialpad is built around its own AI: live transcription, call recaps and coaching for sales and support teams. Long-time customers like the product and are losing patience with the support.
What customers report:
- A team that has used Dialpad for years says picking up a call quickly sends it to voicemail, so staff now count to five before answering.
- One customer’s SMS took three months to get activated.
- A three-year customer’s simple downsizing request went through 9 reps across 5 tickets.
Its AI: Strong on transcription and coaching. Its AI agents that handle calls on their own are sold through sales.
Best for: Sales and support teams that want call analytics. See RingCentral vs Dialpad and Dialpad alternatives.
4. Nextiva
Nextiva has the best Trustpilot score of the big phone systems at 4.5 out of 5. Its 1-star reviews cluster around getting started.
What customers report:
- A month in, one customer’s numbers still hadn’t started porting.
- Another signed up for Nextiva’s AI in March and says it still didn’t work in October.
- A third says the service keeps dropping calls and support takes two days to reply.
Its AI: XBert, an add-on to a Nextiva plan, answers calls, texts and chats. Calling a new lead back is a separate job. More in Nextiva AI Receptionist.
Best for: Teams that want phone, chat and a support team to set it up. See RingCentral vs Nextiva.
5. Zoom Phone
Zoom Phone adds a phone system to your Zoom account, which makes sense if your company already lives in Zoom and has someone to run the admin portal.
What customers report:
- On Zoom’s own community forum, a business reports a lot of dropped calls over three weeks. The suggested fix was to file a problem report from the app after each drop.
- In another dropped-calls thread, the answer was to run Zoom’s network test and try calling from a different connection to see whether the customer’s own network is to blame.
Its AI: Zoom’s AI receptionist answers and routes calls. It doesn’t call new leads back, and changing how it works runs through Zoom’s virtual agent builder. See Zoom AI Receptionist.
Best for: Companies already paying for Zoom with an IT person to set it up.
6. Grasshopper
Grasshopper gives a solo owner a business number on their cell. It has been around for years, and its 3 out of 5 Trustpilot score reflects a product that hasn’t kept up.
What customers report:
- A 15-year customer says calls frequently go straight to voicemail instead of ringing, and that trying to port out cost two weeks.
- A CEO who paid for two toll-free numbers and seven extensions describes years of login problems and missed calls.
- A sole proprietor was told the service would work, then couldn’t be verified for texting.
Its AI: Grasshopper’s receptionist option is live human receptionists, sold as an add-on.
Best for: Solo owners who need a second number. See Grasshopper alternatives.
7. Google Voice
Google Voice is business calling inside Google Workspace. If your team already lives in Gmail and Google Calendar, it’s the path of least resistance.
What customers report:
- From January 8 to 14, 2026, Google’s own status page tracked Google Voice MMS messages not reaching recipients, almost a full week.
- It needs a Google Workspace subscription, and the plan you pick decides whether you get phone menus and ring groups.
Best for: Teams already on Workspace. See Google Voice for business.
8. Vonage
Vonage Business sells a line per employee. Its 2.1 out of 5 on Trustpilot is mostly about reliability and reaching support.
What customers report:
- One business gets an “all circuits are busy” message daily, and customers say they can’t get through.
- A new customer’s texting never worked, and voice took a week to set up.
- Another says the app never works consistently and replies can take 72 hours.
Best for: Offices that want a traditional line per desk. See Vonage alternatives.
9. Aircall
Aircall is a calling platform for sales and support teams, with lots of CRM and helpdesk integrations and AI voice agents you add on.
What customers report:
- One customer says Aircall’s mobile app never worked correctly in over 12 months, and there’s no published support number.
- Another couldn’t receive authentication texts on their ported numbers and got locked out of accounts, including their bank.
Best for: Call-heavy sales and support teams. See Aircall alternatives.
10. 8x8
8x8 runs phone and contact-center software for large, multi-country companies, usually bought through sales or a reseller.
What customers report:
- During an August 2026 outage, one long-time customer’s phones were down for more than 8 hours with nobody contacting them.
- A newer customer describes call quality drops and busy signals.
- Another can’t make account changes except through their reseller.
Best for: Large companies with an IT team. See 8x8 alternatives.
For a wider field, see best small business phone systems and AI receptionists.
How to switch off RingCentral without missing calls
- Get your new line working first. With Carly, that’s one prompt, below.
- Check your term end date. RingCentral contracts renew for the same term unless you give notice at least 30 days before it ends. Our cancel RingCentral guide has the steps.
- Port your number before you cancel. Keep the RingCentral account active until the port finishes.
- Forward calls in the meantime. Point your RingCentral number at Carly so nothing gets missed while the port runs.
Carly business setup prompt
Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude or any AI. It walks you through the rest.
Help me connect Carly Teams so I can work with my organization's business texts, phone calls, voicemail and voice/text agents from this chat. I'll add it to you myself: tell me exactly what to click for the app you are, one step at a time, and wait for me to confirm before moving on. If a step doesn't match what I see, ask me what's on my screen. If you can do the setup yourself (Claude Code, Codex, Muse, Grok Bot), go ahead, and ask me for any key in your secure credential prompt, never in the chat. Don't tell me it's connected until list_phone_lines works, and if I have several teams, ask which to use. Before sending a text or making a call, confirm the team, recipient and message or task with me. The steps are below.
# Connect Carly Teams to an AI app
> Carly Teams works a team's business phone lines through the team's AI agents: business texts, phone calls, voicemail, the voice and text agents, and the team's CRM.
MCP server: https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp (streamable HTTP, OAuth)
## Setup
Carly Teams isn't in any plugin or connector directory yet, so it's added as a custom connection by URL.
1. Add Carly Teams:
- ChatGPT: open https://chatgpt.com/plugins, click Add, and choose Create MCP App (not Create plugin or Upload plugin archive). If Create MCP App isn't on the menu, turn on Developer mode first in Settings > Security and login. Name it "Carly Teams" with the description "Work with my team's business texts, calls, voicemail and voice/text agents," paste https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp as the server URL, choose OAuth, create it, and sign in. Then in the message box open the + menu, choose Developer mode, and pick Carly Teams. No plugin needs to be built, packaged or uploaded.
- Claude (claude.ai, Claude Desktop, or Cowork): Customize > Connectors > Add custom connector, name it Carly Teams, paste https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp, and sign in.
- Claude Code: `claude mcp add --transport http --scope user carly-teams https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp`, then /mcp, pick carly-teams, and authenticate.
- Codex: `codex mcp add carly-teams --url https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp`, then `codex mcp login carly-teams`.
- Cursor: add {"mcpServers": {"carly-teams": {"url": "https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp"}}} to ~/.cursor/mcp.json, then sign in to carly-teams from Customize.
- Muse: a custom connector to https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp with a Carly API key as its bearer token. The key comes from carlyassistant.com/account (API key under Carly Teams) and goes in Muse's connector settings, not in a chat message.
- Grok: grok.com/connectors > New Connector > Custom, paste https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp, and sign in.
- Grok Bot: a custom remote MCP server named carly-teams at https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp. Approve it and sign in.
- Perplexity: Plugins in the sidebar (or Customize > Connectors), then Add custom > Connector > Add MCP connector. Choose Remote, name it Carly Teams, paste https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp, pick OAuth, check the box and click Add, then click the Carly Teams card to sign in.
- Anything else: a remote MCP server (streamable HTTP) named carly-teams at https://carlyassistant.com/team/mcp. It signs in with OAuth.
Sign in with the Carly account that belongs to the organization.
2. Once it's added, the Carly Teams tools show up in the chat, including list_phone_lines. If they don't, turn Carly Teams on for the chat or start a new chat.
3. To check it worked, call list_phone_lines: it returns the teams and phone lines the account can reach. A team with no phone line yet can get one with find_numbers (optionally by area code) and get_number, which may return a checkout link to finish.
4. Something to try first: "Review our missed calls and voicemail and help me reply to customers." Carly Teams also reads and answers business texts, has the team's agent make calls, and edits the voice and text agents. Texts and calls go out at once from the agent's number and can't be taken back. Team permissions apply.
## Email, calendars and workflows
Email, calendars, files, booking pages and workflows are the regular Carly connector, added separately. It's listed in ChatGPT's plugin directory (https://chatgpt.com/plugins/plugin_asdk_app_6a67a26316b88191860222f918d4ec54) and Claude's connector directory (https://claude.ai/directory/carly), and connects anywhere else at https://carlyassistant.com/mcp/. Its setup is https://carlyassistant.com/mcp.txt.Get started, or watch the 2-minute video.
FAQ
What is the best alternative to RingCentral?
Carly. It answers your line, texts from the same number, books callers on your real calendars, calls new leads back and connects to thousands of apps. You can set it up in minutes on the website, or ask ChatGPT or Claude to set it up for you.
What is the easiest RingCentral alternative to set up?
Carly. There’s no hardware and no onboarding call. Paste one prompt into ChatGPT or Claude, describe how calls should go, and grab a number in the chat, or forward the number you already have.
Which RingCentral alternative is the most reliable?
The one that does the same thing on every call. Carly follows the rules you set, so a call at 9pm gets handled the way a call at 9am does. Among the traditional phone systems, Nextiva has the strongest Trustpilot score (4.5 out of 5), while RingCentral (1.7) and Vonage (2.1) have the weakest.
Which alternative has the best AI receptionist?
Carly, because it does more than answer. It books callers on real calendars during the call, calls new web leads back within a minute, texts both ways and updates your CRM. Quo’s Sona and Zoom’s AI receptionist answer inbound calls only. More in AI receptionist.
Can I keep my RingCentral number if I switch?
Yes. Business numbers can be ported. Keep RingCentral active until the port completes, and forward the number to Carly in the meantime so no calls are missed.
Who are RingCentral’s main competitors?
Carly, Dialpad, Nextiva, 8x8, Zoom Phone and Vonage, plus Quo, Grasshopper and Google Voice for small teams and Aircall for sales and support call teams.
Ready to automate your busywork?
Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.
See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
