Dialpad Review and Pricing 2023: The Best Business Phone System for Conversational AI

Our researchers analyzed twelve of today's top business phone systems and ultimately determined that Dialpad's VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system offers superior conversational AI capabilities.

Enhanced with natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning features, your phone system will be smart enough to analyze your conversations and help you get better engagements with your team and clients. So, delve into this Dialpad review, and discover more about its list of features.

If you're canvassing a phone system for your business, you should consider five key factors: inbound and outbound communications features, integrability (external connections), scalability, pricing, and customer support. As you read further, you'll find out where our team of experts places Dialpad against its competitors in these categories.

At Expert Market, we have been comparing the best phone systems for over a decade. So if you want expert recommendations, try our free quote-comparison tool for tailored prices from the best phone systems that meet the needs of your business.

Dialpad’s Pros and Cons

✓ 24/7 Reliable Customer Service

Dialpad comes in second out of 12 competitors with an outstanding 4.5/5 customer support score. This is because Dialpad caters to various customer support channels to help you resolve any issues with their system.

You can find easy fixes to common system problems on its online community forum and insightful knowledge-based articles.

If that's not enough, Dialpad's Pro and Enterprise plans provide reliable 24/7 live support through chat and phone. So, if you experience any system issue, you can easily reach its customer support team at any time, on any day of the week. For Standard plans, you can still call its 24-hour customer service on weekdays — which is still quite dependable, especially for companies that only operate five days a week.

If you want better customer support, check out our 8×8 review. What gave 8×8 the perfect 5/5 customer support score was its 99.99% uptime guarantee and 24/7 live support across all plans.

✓ Impressive List of Features

Scoring 4.2/5 in our features analysis, Dialpad doesn't scrimp on inbound and outbound communication features. Even with a standard account, your team will enjoy a barrage of inbound communication capabilities, including a virtual receptionist, spam prevention, ring groups, and localized toll-free numbers.

For outbound communication features, Dialpad provides HD-quality external video calling and call conferencing. This allows you to converse with multiple people at the same time in and out of your team.

Transparency and organization are also easier to achieve with fancy management features, like call recording, call transcripts, and reporting capabilities.

Moreover, it's packed with smooth collaborative features, such as team messaging and task management, to help your team work seamlessly.

These features are all powered by AI-based Voice Intelligence (VI), so you'll have highly efficient communication tools when interacting with your team and clients.

However, Dialpad lacks call barge and call whisper, which can be found on 8×8's plans. Because these features affect your business phone system's scalability, 8×8 gets a perfect features score of 5/5.

✓ Stellar Customer Reviews

With an overall score of 4.4/5 across G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and TrustRadius, it's easy to say that Dialpad is a highly reliable business phone provider. If you want to see actual customer reviews, scroll down below.

✘ Limited External Connections

Dialpad offers limited external connections, earning a low score of 2.4/5 in this category.

Dialpad doesn't come with desk phones. Regardless, you can still connect its system to third-party handsets, including Cisco, Yealink, and Polycom. You can also download Dialpad's high-rated mobile app for iOS and Android, which helps you communicate with your team on the go.

However, Dialpad still offers fewer ready-made software integration than its competitors. CRM and helpdesk integrations are possible but limited to Salesforce, Zendesk, and Hubspot. Plus, live chat integrations are only available for Slack, while analytics and email integrations are missing.

On a positive note, Dialpad has an open API, making way for any software integrations as long as you have the technical know-how

If you want more comprehensive software integrations, RingCentral has the highest external connections score of 4.3/5. With up to 250 software integrations, you can easily adapt RingCentral to your daily work operations. 

✘ Low scalability

Another drawback you should note is its scalability. Dialpad got an aggregated scalability score of 3.3/5, which is not bad. However, when compared with the other twelve providers, Dialpad only takes seventh place.

Dialpad offers unlimited users and local numbers across all plans, which will be fantastic if you want your business to scale. Nonetheless, Dialpad is short on advanced features, such as call barge and call whisper, which you can get on all Zoom Phone plans. 

Meanwhile, Dialpad offers excellent collaborative features like team messaging, task management, and video conferencing. Still, it would be better if it offered document sharing – a crucial collaborating feature other providers, like RingCentral and 8×8, have.

The good thing about Dialpad is that it is complete in security-compliant certificates and provides user permissions and strong encryption. However, Dialpad provides few software integrations unlike RingCentral, so it will take much tweaking for the system to adapt as your business grows.

Dialpad's Pricing

In our research, Dialpad ties up with Google Voice in fourth place. This is because Dialpad offers excellent value for your money with superior features at a reasonable price.

Dialpad's Standard plan is $15 per user, per month and includes communication features, like conversational AI. Plus, you'll get unlimited user limits, unlimited inbound and outbound domestic calls, and number porting. Meanwhile, our research found Zoom Phone ranked 1st with a perfect pricing score of 5/5. For their cheapest plan, you'll get unlimited user limit, unlimited domestic inbound calls, and a pack of advanced features (e.g., call queue, call barge, and call whisper) for just $10 per user per month. That's the most affordable plan rate we have!

In the middle range, we have Dialpad's Pro plan at $25 per user per month. For the added cost, you'll also get 24/7 support, a call queue, local numbers in 50+ countries, and software integrations, including CRM, Helpdesk, API, email, and workspace integrations. On the other hand, we have Zoom Phone's Unlimited plan. At $15 per user per month, you'll get unlimited outbound calls, and Salesforce and Zendesk integrations. Plus, you'll get Team, Zoom, Outlook, Gmail, and SSO integrations.

Finally, at a tailored price, the Enterprise plan gives everything in the above, plus unlimited office locations, SSO integrations, and a 100% Uptime guarantee for enhanced phone system performance with no downtime. Zoom Phone's Select plan will also add unlimited inbound minutes to more than 40 countries.

Other competitors that offer better value for your money include Net2Phone US in 2nd place with a 4.5/5 pricing score. Net2Phone is in the middle pricing range, starting at $19.99 per user per month. But the reason why it ranks higher than cheaper brands is that it offers unlimited user limits, unlimited domestic calls, and free international calls across more than 40 countries. Goto Connect comes in at 3rd, starting at $24 per user per month, with a 4.3 /5 pricing score due to its high security and scalability functions.

Dialpad's Standout Features

Conversational AI

Dialpad's advanced deep learning and AI technology take your traditional chatbox up a notch. Dialpad's Conversational AI searches databases, FAQ pages, and unstructured resources (e.g., PDF documents and past customer conversations) to give your clients appropriate answers. It can also generate intricate dialogues and integrate rich media content into your website.

Voice Intelligence (VI)

Dialpad's Voice Intelligence (VI) features go beyond your traditional VoIP system. Its machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities offer to transcribe and analyze your calls automatically. So, there's no need to jot down minutes when speaking with your team or clients; the live transcription feature will do all the note-taking for you, which you can send to all meeting participants. And, if you want something off the record, it's easy to switch this feature off.

Real-Time Assist Cards

Dialpad's advanced Vi feature can detect trigger words from your conversation and automatically populates Real-Time Assist (RTA) cards. These RTA cards will give your call support and sales team customized tips to communicate effectively with your clients. These suggestions are tailored to your situational needs, helping you satisfy your clients' needs.

What Kind of Business is Dialpad Best For?

Dialpad may not be as feature-packed as the other VoIP systems in our research, but there's one thing Dialpad does best: powerful software-driven communication. With innovative deep-learning and conversational AI capabilities, Dialpad is perfect for any organization that embraces modern AI communication technology. It will thrive in businesses that value communication for a more collaborative work environment and high customer satisfaction. Equipped with reliable multi-language support, Dialpad will do well in organizations that outsource or have offices abroad. So, if your team is looking for a VoIP system that offers ground-breaking communication tools, Dialpad will undoubtedly impress you.

How Does Dialpad Compare with Other Phone Systems?

Let's take a deep dive and see how well Dialpad fares against its 11 competitors: 8×8, RingCentral, Vonage, Zoom Phone, Ooma, Nextiva, Go To Connect, Net2Phone US, Nuacom, and Google Voice.

1. Dialpad's Inbound and Outbound Communication Features

Boasting an impressive set of inbound and outbound communication features, Dialpad ranked third out of 12 phone system providers with a 4.4 /5 features score.

You can enjoy multiple advanced inbound features across all pricing plans, including a virtual receptionist, voicemail-to-text, and ring groups. You will have to upgrade to either the Pro or Enterprise plan to gain the call queue functionality. Other than that, you can get the complete inbound communication feature pack with its Standard pricing plan. Not even 8×8, which got the highest features score, can offer a better features list for inbound communications.

Dialpad also offers seamless outbound communication features, such as external video calling, SMS/chat, custom call lists, and call conferencing. However, some features are missing. This is where 8×8 shines, earning a 4.8 /5 features score. 8×8 offers advanced features, including power dialer, predictive dialing, and auto dialing for its higher plans at an additional cost. 

That said, one unique thing about Dialpad is that its communication tools are enhanced by AI-based Voice Intelligence (VI), giving you more productive interactions with your team and clients. It has the best voice intelligence out of 12 business phone providers.

2. Dialpad's Integrability and Scalability

Minimal integrability and scalability is where Dialpad's rank takes a dip. For example, Dialpad only offers four ready-made software integrations, whereas RingCentral has up to 97 CRM integrations. RingCentral also offers various external live chat integrations, such as Whatsapp and Facebook, while Dialpad offers none. Moreover, Dialpad doesn’t have analytics platforms, while RingCentral has 57. 

Since scalability factors include software integrations, Dialpad's capability to scale is compromised, too. 

3. Dialpad's Customer Support Channels

Dialpad's customer support ranks second among twelve business phone system brands in the US. That's because of various customer channels, including user forums, knowledge base articles, and live chat across all plans, so you can easily find answers to your phone system questions. You'll also get a phone line and 24/7 support when you avail its Pro or Enterprise plans. However, RingCentral and 8×8's customer service tied in the first rank because they offer 24/7 live support across all pricing plans.

Does Dialpad Have Good Customer Reviews?

To back up our research, we look at reviews from real-life users of the product. With an accumulated customer review score of 4.4/5 from G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and TrustRadius, we know how the positives outweigh the negatives. The negatives we did see mostly revolved around technical glitches where some features failed. But most reviews are promising and make you look forward to what Dialpad has in store for your business.