8×8 Work Review (2025): Top VoIP for Established Businesses

After testing its 8×8 Work platform, we believe 8×8 is one of the top VoIP providers for US businesses. Teams requiring advanced call management, strong features for staff training, and unlimited domestic and international minutes will find a full-strength 8×8 Work plan a great fit.

However, 8×8 keeps its pricing – and as of recently, its plans – private, meaning it may be difficult for cost-conscious businesses to budget appropriately, as we are informed that tools like training features and international calling aren’t included in its base tiers. Plus, from what we know, prices can get expensive, too.

Still, overall, there’s little more you could want from a communications platform and, in terms of its available features, only RingCentral beats it. In the 8×8 review below, we’ll dive into all its relative benefits and drawbacks compared with the competition, noting what businesses we think its pricing, features, and customer support are best suited to.

8×8 Review: Getting Started With 8×8 Work

To get started with 8×8, you need to log in to its Application Panel using your user account. Here, you’ll find four core interconnected sections of the software at your disposal:

• Admin Console: A selection of settings to manage your 8×8 service, including various user permissions and telephony features.
• Knowledge Base: Methods of troubleshooting and contacting customer support for help using 8×8 products.
• Analytics for 8×8 Work: A platform that allows you to dive into data dashboards and reporting tools based on the information from your 8×8 Work app.
• 8×8 Work: The unified communication app for voice, video conferencing, team chat, and e-fax capabilities. You can use it in a web browser via the Application Panel, download the 8×8 Work app onto your laptop/PC, or download the mobile application onto your smartphone.

8×8 Review: What Features Do You Get With 8×8 Work?

Once logged into 8×8, there are many facets to its 8×8 Work Platform to get to grips with, some of which are included in its lowest-cost plans, ideal for smaller businesses, and others that are add-ons, designed for larger-scale organizations.

Let’s dive into each aspect of the software, starting with its cloud phone system features.

VoIP Cloud Phone System Features

The 8×8 Work app provides a powerful and modern interface that we found incredibly easy to use as a phone system. Designed to enable better inter-business communication and customer experience, it has plenty of call management and training features to enable just that.

In fact, call management is a key area where 8×8 Work shone in our research and testing, particularly for its call routing, auto-attendant, and international call handling capabilities.

Located within the “Phone System” settings of the admin portal, the multi-level auto attendant allows businesses to set custom greetings and route calls based on time schedules, departments, or caller input.

While effective, our testers found the lack of a visual IVR (interactive voice response) designer, as seen with RingCentral, made setup slightly more manual, but it’s still pretty simple overall.

The operator switchboard allows users to manually deal with calls effectively, too. During testing, we noted that call forwarding, flipping, and parking functions were intuitive and easy to manage via the desktop app.

8×8’s call queue setup was straightforward, though its detailed queue analytics felt less comprehensive than RingCentral’s Advanced plan ($25 per user, per month).

We were also disappointed by the absence of automatic voicemail screening and AI-driven nuisance call filtering, which RingCentral includes in its Advanced plan. Instead, 8×8 relies on basic caller ID and manual call handling rules, which could be less effective against spam calls.

Another standout strength of 8×8’s VoIP calling packages is its international minutes allowance. You can include unlimited calls to up to 48 countries in your plan. For businesses operating globally, this feature outshines most competitors, especially those charging per-minute rates like RingCentral or Vonage, although GoTo Connect also offers competitive international calling to 50+ countries on all its plans, to slightly better it.

8×8 Work also offers training features for staff, including call recording and storage, call monitoring, and, most advanced of all, call whisper and call barge.

These last two tools allow managers to join ongoing calls as participants or communicate discreetly with team members during live calls. Of the VoIP providers we’ve tested, only RingCentral and Zoom Phone also offer whisper and barge. They are likely to be cheaper with either provider, since these are primarily features of 8×8’s Contact Center solution.

Of course, it’s worth remembering that the full breadth of these features won’t be available on every 8×8 Work package, either. The sophistication of your system will depend on the exact configuration you choose, which requires you to discuss this with 8×8 itself.

Reporting and analytics

To assess how well your calling operations are going, you can drop into 8×8 Work’s Analytics module. Simply select from reporting options to get insights into the metrics that matter to you.

We found the real-time dashboards intuitive to use and interpret, offering large, detailed data to assess employee and company-wide call volumes, durations, and quality over time (for those with admin permissions).

Customization options felt a little limited compared to RingCentral, but you can export the data if needed as CSV, Excel, or a custom format, and take it into a software offering more granular data analysis tools.

Internal Communication Tools

8×8 Work also unifies its VoIP calling phone with other communications channels, including video conferencing and team chat.

Video Conferencing

Compared to other systems, 8×8 Work offers a super generous video conferencing package. You can run as many HD video calls as you need and, depending on the plan you choose, invite up to 500 participants per call.

That’s among the highest participant capacity we’ve used. For instance, while Zoom Phone also allows video meetings for up to 500 people, others like GoTo Connect (250 max) don’t publish the same high cap, and RingCentral Advanced caps video conferencing at 200 participants per meeting (albeit, 500 on its Ultra plan), making 8×8 a top choice for large-scale video meetings.

In our tests, video meetings ran smoothly with minimal setup, too, and the ability to join via a browser link was appreciated.

Here are some other key features of 8×8’s video conferencing:

• Moderation controls, including meeting lock
• The ability to record meetings and save them to the cloud
• Access via desktop and mobile
• The ability to invite participants from outside the business using a browser link
• Meeting screens that can be customized with your branding
• Secure end-to-end encryption

Team Chat

Like its video features, team chat proved responsive during our testing of the Work platform, with its one-click call escalation within an individual chat window being a notably useful feature for hybrid teams.

8×8’s other key chat features include:

• One-to-one instant messaging
• Private, invite-only, and public group chat rooms
• Document and file sharing
• One-click voice or video calls
• Mobile access via the 8×8 Work app
• Integration with Slack and Skype
• Quick reply from smartphone lock screens

8×8 Work holds up well in comparison to other platforms for chat. While top cloud phone systems like GoTo Connect and Nextiva Engage also offer team chat, they don’t all include features like Slack/Skype integration or quick-reply functionality from phone lock screens, making 8×8 Work a more advanced option for internal team collaboration.

Are there any other communication channels in 8×8 Work?

Yes, you can also send and receive SMS and MMS text messages inside 8×8 Work. Sending texts is only supported for North American Numbering Plan (NANP) phone numbers, however. In other words, that’s the US, Canada, Bermuda, and much of the Caribbean, ruling out mass texting on a global scale (although you can receive texts from anywhere).

Still, this isn’t unusual: all other providers on our best VoIP roundup only support US or US and Canada-based texting. 8×8 doesn’t support group SMS, however, which is something offered by the likes of Zoom Phone (up to 10 recipients).

Separately, by integrating your calendar and mail system (e.g. Google Workspace, Outlook, iCloud) with 8×8 Work, you can communicate via email. 8×8 will route and manage email conversations with customers and colleagues in the platform, so you don’t need to exit the app to check any email messages.

Like our five other top-rated VoIP provider plans, there’s also e-fax functionality with 8×8 Work, which may be relevant and crucial for companies in industries like healthcare, legal, finance, real estate, and manufacturing. Teams in these areas still frequently rely on faxing for various reasons, including transmitting records, sensitive documents, or signed contracts.

8×8 Work lacks native support for messaging on social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. You can integrate Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) via 8×8’s separate Contact Center product, but this is a more expensive solution aimed at full-scale customer service teams.

That said, 8×8 Work does support integrations like Zapier, which can automate tasks such as messaging users who complete Facebook lead forms. So, while native support is missing, workarounds may be possible depending on your needs. If direct social media integration is essential, we recommend Nextiva Engage, one of the few VoIP platforms to offer this natively.

Software integrations

8×8 is a strong option for software integrations, supporting interplay between at least 75 applications at the time of writing, including CRMs and external video conferencing. You can read the full list on 8×8’s website, but here are a few software programs worth pointing out:

• Around 15 CRM, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and more
• Microsoft Teams
• Google Workspace
• Slack

Despite still scoring highly during our testing in this area, 8×8 does fall slightly short compared to RingCentral. That’s down to 8×8 lacking live chat integration with applications like WhatsApp, which could impact businesses that rely on this form of communication integration

Hardware via 8×8 or third-party

8×8 has at least 83 pieces of hardware it can provide its customers directly, including conference phones, cordless phones, desk phones, headsets, and standard ATA VoIP adapters. These would need to be purchased as either a one-time payment or as part of a financing program over a 24 to 60-month contract. To get an exact quote, you’ll need to contact 8×8’s sales team directly.

However, should you already have existing phone hardware, our testing found that 8×8 supports a range of third-party certified hardware. Albeit, it offers less flexibility than providers like GoTo Connect, which has wider Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) compatibility. Plus, this will inevitably vary depending on the age and type of equipment you have, so do check 8×8’s compatible phones list for more details.

Security protections

As an international platform with over three million active clients in more than 160 countries, 8×8 Work treats security as a fundamental priority. Its infrastructure and policies are designed to meet the needs of businesses across various industries, including healthcare and government. Key security measures include:

• End-to-end encryption: Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP)
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Adds an extra layer of login protection
• Regular vulnerability scans: Ongoing security monitoring and risk assessments
• Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE 16)-compliant data centres: Ensures secure and standardised data handling
• Compliance certifications:
  • International Organization for Standardization 27001 (ISO 27001)
  • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-53 (NIST 800-53)
  • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – for healthcare clients
  • Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) coverage – although businesses handling card payments should confirm applicability, as it varies by service

Compared with competitors, 8×8 offers one of the most comprehensive security frameworks on the market. RingCentral is the main contender, with equivalent encryption and certifications, plus Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) certification for additional healthcare assurance. However, some controls on 8×8, such as alignment with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), may require extra configuration. Always confirm the most current security standards with your provider, as these can evolve.

8×8 Review: How Much Does 8×8 Work Cost?

8×8 keeps its pricing for its Work platform private at the time of writing. Previously, 8×8 used a tiered plan structure that, while customizable, gave some indication of costs. However, since these X-series plans are no longer advertised by 8×8, we can’t be sure they are still in use. When these tiers were advertised, we uncovered the following costs:

• 8×8 Express: $15 per user, per month
• 8×8 X2: $24 per user, per month (paying annually) or $32 per user, per month (paying monthly)
• 8×8 X4: $44 per user, per month (paying annually) or $57 per user, per month (paying monthly)
• 8×8 X6: $85 per user, per month
• 8×8 X7: $110 per user, per month
• 8×8 X8: $140 per user, per month

Compared with other options on the US market, these costs aren’t the best value for money in our view. For instance, Zoom Phone offers plans starting from $15 per user per month for its Regional Unlimited plan, featuring an identical 500 participant video call allowance and a full suite of training tools. It lacks the same breadth of integrations and screening tools for nuisance calls, however, as we’ll discuss in our comparison section, further into this 8×8 review.

That said, 8×8’s previously wide range of plans and customization options for those plans suggests there is likely to be a tailored option to your business needs. This provides a lot of scope for choosing the exact tool configuration you need today to suit your budget and technical requirements, rather than spending in areas you may not see rewards for. Equally, this also means that your business can precisely scale your package as and when you need to add or remove tools you aren’t using.

8×8 Review: What Alternatives Are There To 8×8 Work?

To work out whether 8×8 Work is for you, it can be helpful to compare what it offers (and lacks) compared with other VoIP platforms in the US.

To provide a roughly fair comparison, below is a table showing the plans we assessed for our medium-sized business criteria, so it’s worth noting that each provider will have other plans available (although in the case of 8×8, as explained above, plan-by-plan discussion is no longer possible). Here’s our at-a-glance comparison, in order of overall score ranking, followed by a discussion of how 8×8 Work compares to two other top competitors directly.

What do 8×8 Work’s competitors offer?

➡️ RingCentral Advanced – RingCentral remains one of the most complete VoIP platforms for US businesses, especially for those prioritizing advanced call control and live team coaching. At $25 per user, per month, the Advanced plan combines robust communication tools with seamless integrations across over 400 apps, including Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and Zendesk.

In our testing, RingCentral stood out for its training features – call whisper, barge, monitoring, and recording – which are built-in rather than locked behind contact center plans as with 8×8 Work. Its visual IVR designer and custom call routing based on time zones or departments give businesses full control over how calls flow, while AI-powered spam call blocking helps us cut interruptions significantly.

The main trade-offs? International calls aren’t included, unlike 8×8 Work or GoTo Connect, and there’s no native social media integration like you’d get with Nextiva Engage. Plus, it’s a little pricier than budget rivals like Zoom Phone. Still, if your business needs full-featured call management and top-tier coaching tools, RingCentral Advanced is tough to beat.

➡️ Zoom Phone Regional Unlimited – Zoom Phone came a close second in our overall VoIP rankings thanks to its impressive feature set and outstanding value.

At just $15 per user, per month, its Regional Unlimited plan offers unlimited domestic calling in the US and Canada, plus a full suite of communication tools that you’d find in higher-priced competitors, built directly into the familiar Zoom interface. For example, a business with 250 users would save approximately $7,500 per month compared with RingCentral Advanced, without compromising on calling features.

Despite its low price, Zoom doesn’t skimp on capabilities. Users get access to 500-participant video meetings, surpassing both GoTo Connect (250 cap) and RingCentral Advanced (100 cap). Built-in tools like chat, live reactions, meeting notes, and app integrations (including AI-generated coaching insights) make it a robust all-in-one platform for remote teams.

We also liked Zoom Phone’s intuitive One Portal app, which testers found easier to navigate than more traditional VoIP interfaces. Business-friendly features such as VIP call queues, which let high-value callers skip wait times, further set it apart from similarly priced providers.

The only major downside? Zoom lacks advanced analytics tools out of the box. Real-time dashboards and predictive analytics aren’t included at this tier, unlike competitors like Nextiva Engage or 8×8 Work, both of which provide deeper insights into call performance and team activity.

How We Reviewed 8×8