8×8 Work Review: VoIP Plans, Prices and Benefits

After testing its 8×8 Work platform, we believe 8×8 is one of the top VoIP providers for UK 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 features available, only RingCentral beats it in our view. In the 8×8 review below, we’ll dive into all its relative benefits and drawbacks compared to 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’s Interface

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 inter-related 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 either 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. Previously, it was called the X-Series, with plans including X2, X4, X6 and X8, however, these are no longer publicly advertised, suggesting this has changed.

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 organisations. 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.

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 where businesses can 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 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. Similarly, we found the absence of automatic voicemail screening and AI-driven nuisance call filtering, which RingCentral includes in its Advanced plan, is something of a shame. 8×8 relies on basic caller ID and manual call handling rules, by comparison, which could be less effective against spam calls.

Another standout strength of 8×8’s VoIP packages is their international calling allowance. You can include unlimited calls to up to 48 countries included on 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 on certain plans, too.

It’s worth highlighting that 8×8 Work also offers unlimited domestic calls, as it’s not something all VoIP providers in the UK offer at present. For instance, RingCentral has a broad but still limited calling allowance that varies by plan from 100 to 4000 inclusive minutes per user, each month. This can be a major edge for businesses with extensive calling needs, such as call centres.

8×8 Work also offers training features for staff, including call recording and storage, call monitoring and, most advanced of the lot, call whisper and call barge. These final 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 matched by RingCentral Premium and Vonage Max could also offer these two features (although, notably, you’ll need to pay more for these features with 8×8, as it’s primarily a feature of its Contact Centre software).

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 to be 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). Customisation 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.

Of course, it’s worth remembering that the full breadth of these features won’t be available on every 8×8 Work package. The sophistication of your system will depend on the exact package configuration you plump for.

Internal communication tools

8×8 Work also includes unified communications functions – most notably video conferencing and team chat.

Video conferencing

We found, 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. In comparison, lots of other providers limit you to a certain number of video calls per month, and/or cap your calls at around 250 participants.

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

The key features of 8×8’s video conferencing include:

• 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 people from outside the business using a browser link
• Meeting screens that can be customised with your own branding
• Secure end-to-end encryption

8×8 Work’s participant capacity is among the highest we’ve seen. 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.

Team chat

Like its video features, team chat proved responsive too, with its one-click call escalation found within an individual chat window being a useful feature for hybrid teams.

8×8’s team chat platform comes with the features you’d expect from a modern messaging platform, including:

• One-to-one instant messaging
• Private, invite-only, and public group chat rooms
• Document and file sharing in one-to-one chats and group chats
• One-click voice or video calls
• Mobile access via the 8×8 Work app

8×8’s team chat also comes with a few business-minded features that you may not find on general consumer chat tools:

• Integration with your global directory to automatically add all your staff
• Integration with other popular chat platforms, such as Slack and Skype
• The ability to reply to messages directly from your smartphone notification screen, without having to open the app

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

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

You can also email within 8×8 Work either by setting up a workplace email in the admin console or integrating with a relevant provider (for instance, you can sync email and calendars with Google and other tools).

Unfortunately, 8×8 lacks text messaging (SMS/MMS) support in the UK since only US and Canadian phone numbers are supported on its platform, unlike alternatives such as GoTo Connect.

Similarly, native social media integrations (for platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok) aren’t supported in 8×8 Work or many other VoIP provider platforms for that matter.

Nextiva Engage is an option that has native support for these channels, although with both SMS and social media channels, you may be able to program an API integration to do the job instead (this can be a little complex for some businesses, however). Similarly, you can use 8×8 Contact Center to process chat requests via Facebook and X, though this is somewhat limited functionality and is only applicable to Contact Centre plans (a separate software from 8×8 Work).

Customer support

When we tested 8×8’s customer support options, we were thoroughly impressed at their extent. Offering complete coverage including 24/7 live support, a user forum, and a thorough knowledge base, we think it’s an outstanding range of options to get help when you need it.

Especially via its quick access to live support via chat and phone, where we had minimal wait time to get talking to an agent. Equally, using its helpful guidance, we could sort out any problems ourselves.

Overall, we’d argue 8×8 Work delivers one of the most complete support experiences. RingCentral Advanced also offers 24/7 support and a strong knowledge base, though competitors such as GoTo Connect (24/7 but primarily through email or support tickets) provide more limited support options.

Meanwhile, Nextiva Engage also provides strong support at any time of the day, but limits chat support to Monday through Friday from 5:00 AM to 6:00 PM MST, and Saturday through Sunday from 5:00 AM to 4:00 PM MST. ​It also focuses more on in-app performance updates than round-the-clock agent access.

Hardware via 8×8 or third-party

8×8 has 76 pieces of hardware it can provide its customers directly, including conference phones, cordless phones, desk phones, headsets and standard ATAS 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 certified hardware. Albeit, it offers less flexibility than providers like GoTo Connect, which has wider 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.

Software integrations

8×8 is a strong option for software integrations, supporting interplay between at least 73 applications at the time of writing, including CRMs, external video conferencing and via 8×8’s iOS/Android apps. 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 Premium. That’s down to 8×8 lacking live chat integration, such as with applications like WhatsApp, which could impact businesses that rely on this form of communication integration

Security protections

As an international company with over 3 million active clients across 160 countries, security is a core strength for 8×8 Work. Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) encryption, with multi-factor authentication and regular vulnerability scans. Data is stored in Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE 16)-compliant data centres.

Compliance certifications include International Organization for Standardization 27001 (ISO 27001), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA, for healthcare clients). However, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) certification is limited to certain services, meaning businesses handling card payments should verify coverage applies to them.

As a result, 8×8 offers one of the more robust security frameworks. RingCentral Advanced is the only close match according to our research, with similarly strong encryption and compliance credentials. In fact, it beats 8×8 Work by offering additional HITRUST certification for healthcare. Plus, with 8×8 Work, support for certain controls, like FINRA alignment, requires additional configuration.

It’s always worth checking with your prospective providers exactly what their latest security coverage is, as this is frequently updated and sometimes unclear.

8×8 Review: Other Tools

While the features described above are 8×8’s core functionality, there is another software that 8×8 provides besides its Work platform, which could be even more powerful depending on your requirements.

Contact Centre Software

8×8’s unique Call Centre Software (CCS) simultaneously increases business productivity and enhances the customer experience. It is essentially a specialised suite of tools for handling customer interactions and, as the name implies, contact centre operations, beyond those available in 8×8’s Work application.

Key features include:

• Multi-channel compatibility – the web is the first point of contact for most customers. 8×8’s CCS allows you to easily integrate telephony, email and web chat channels to streamline the sales process and boost conversion
• Smart routing – skills-based routing matches callers with the agent who can best meet their needs. Qued callback allows waiting callers to opt-out of the queue without losing their place in line
• Reporting and monitoring – spot trends and monitor employee performance against key metrics
• Agent tools – arm yourself with important customer information before answering calls to provide a personalised service. Centralise knowledge with an FAQ knowledge base
• CRM integration – CCS is compatible with a number of major CRM platforms, including Zendesk, NetSuite and Salesforce
• Disaster recovery – duplicate your business operations and continue taking calls in the event of natural disaster, regional pandemic, or human-error-related outage

8×8 Review: How Much Does 8×8 Cost?

While exact pricing is difficult to judge since its prices are kept private, 8×8’s starter packages are reasonably priced from our experience.

8×8 offers several plans overall – namely, Express, X2, X4, X6 and X8 – with our favourite being for most businesses being its X4 plan. It balances cost (around £35/mth per user from our testing) with a wide range of communication features from SMS and MMS to audio/video conferencing for up to 500 participants and even internet fax.

However, it has to be said that the X6 and X8 packages can be expensive. These packages do come with extensive contact and call centre features, so you do get plenty of bang for your buck.

Despite 8×8’s strengths, each plan’s pricing is not clear – you’ll need to contact 8×8’s sales team directly to get a quote for your business – and potentially high from our experience, which may be a consideration for smaller businesses or startups.

Let’s take a look at its packages and prices from our experience. These prices are rough estimates and will inevitably vary in actuality, given that 8×8 now employs a bespoke pricing structure.

So, how do these figures compare to the pricing offered by 8×8’s competitors? Let’s compare:

As you can see, 8×8 Work is not the cheapest VoIP phone system out there. However, it is a very comprehensive system that offers a generous array of features that will empower you to scale up your business.

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

To work out whether 8×8 Work is for you, it can be helpful to compare it to other VoIP platforms. Let’s look at the competition at a glance before diving into some deeper comparisons.

➡️ RingCentral Ultimate – RingCentral remains one of the most well-rounded VoIP solutions in the UK, particularly on its Ultimate plan. Priced at £29.99 per user/month (billed annually), it delivers extensive features across call management, video conferencing, and integrations.

In our tests, RingCentral stood out for its CRM integrations (300+ apps), including Salesforce and Microsoft Teams, plus advanced live chat support for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It also offers premium training tools like call whisper, barge, and real-time analytics dashboards – features that businesses with large customer-facing teams will find invaluable.

That said, RingCentral caps its call minutes (4,000 inbound, 2,000 outbound per user), meaning businesses making significant international or high-volume calls might find 8×8’s unlimited international minutes more flexible.

➡️ GoTo Connect Phone System – GoTo Connect is a great alternative for UK businesses needing hardware flexibility alongside a robust feature set. At £18 per user/month, it supports Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) with broader hardware compatibility than any other provider we tested, including Polycom, Yealink, and Cisco devices.

GoTo Connect also impressed us with communication channels not possible with 8×8 Work in the UK, in the form of SMS and MMS, as well as those that are like video conferencing, and team messaging. It includes international calling to 50+ countries, which is competitive at this price point and has a slightly wider allowance than 8×8 Work in total.

However, GoTo lags behind 8×8 on training tools, missing advanced features like whisper and barge. Its CRM integrations are also more limited making it better suited to businesses prioritising communication breadth and hardware compatibility over deep software integrations.

➡️ bOnline Unlimited – For small businesses or budget-conscious teams, bOnline’s Unlimited Calling & Video plan is the UK’s most affordable option at just £13.95 per user/month. It includes unlimited UK calls, team messaging, and video conferencing, making it an excellent choice for businesses setting up their first VoIP system.

Our testing found bOnline super easy to set up and use, with solid call management tools like call routing and queues. However, it lacks advanced features: there’s no call whisper, no barge, limited hardware compatibility, and no multi-factor authentication for security.

8×8 Review: What Businesses Is 8×8 Best Suited To?

To help summarise what businesses we think 8×8 could be most useful for, we’ve created the below table. Have a read through it to see if your organisation is a contender.

How We Reviewed 8×8