Top Five9 Alternatives: Why Enghouse Leads in CCaaS

Five9 holds a significant market share in the Contact-Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) sector, ranking third among vendors in 2024.This prominent ranking reflects its widespread adoption and advanced features like the customer sentiment score, which many users appreciate.

However, Five9 is not without its critics.

Some users search for Five9 alternatives due to insufficient support, high omnichannel capabilities costs, and limited call history storage. If you’re among them, you’re in the right place.

This blog post consolidates extensive research into a dependable list of alternatives. Each option offers unique advantages, but Enghouse CCaaS stands out. We recommend Enghouse for its user-friendliness, competitive pricing, versatile deployment options, advanced AI capabilities, and nearly four decades of building customer trust.

Let’s now take a deep dive to explore the top Five9 alternatives that businesses are considering to improve customer interactions efficiently.

Why You Need a Five9 Alternative

There is no denying that Five9 is a decent CCaaS platform. It offers powerful voice features, high-quality audio, useful reports, and effective workforce management capabilities.

Many Five9 users have abandoned Five9 for the following reasons:

1. Complex Setup and Hit-and-Miss Support

According to verified user review sites, many of Five9’s clients struggled with the setup and reported inadequate support.

Source – Capterra

That’s bad news because the wrong configuration can disrupt the customer experience, raise new technical issues, compromise data security, and increase contact center operation costs. And it’s even worse that Five9 customers don’t even receive proper support when they need it most.

In contrast, customers love the 24/7 support offered by Enghouse.

2. Limited Historical Data Storage

Retaining call recording is a must for organizations in regulated industries for legal compliance. For example, call recordings can be used to prove HIPAA compliance. Therefore, many companies prefer to keep call recordings for some time.

Unfortunately, Five9 doesn’t retain call recordings for more than 30 days. That can be a big deal breaker for many.

However, due to Enghouse’s extensive clientele in industries that demand strict compliance, it recognizes the need for longer recording periods and, therefore, offers a 90-day retention period for audio recordings.

3. Omnichannel Plans are Expensive

Five9’s most affordable plans come at $149. There are actually two separate plans at this price point. Both plans include the same features, but with one key difference: one plan handles only digital communication channels like chat and email, while the other focuses only on voice calls.

If you want to engage in omnichannel communications and multichannel outreach and you have a limited budget, this is probably not the best option for you.

In contrast, Enghouse offers an omnichannel plan for just $139. This plan allows customers to use the communication channel of their choice – voice, email, chat, SMS and social messaging. All queued interactions are then routed to the agent best able to deliver a positive customer experience.

What to Consider Before Selecting a Five9 Alternative

A CCaaS platform isn’t easy to replace. You need to think about data security, new workflows, compatibility, and other big changes. If you are an existing Five9 user ( or considering Five9 as your first CCaaS platform), consider the following before you reach out for your wallet.

Requirement

There is no “one-size-fits-all” CCaaS platform out there. What works best for you is highly subjective. Therefore, a clear understanding of your requirements is the first recommended step.

To have a deep understanding of your requirements, start by asking the following questions:

• Do your agents mostly deal with informational queries on diverse subjects? Or does your contact center also act as a revenue center?
• What are your top success metrics – Customer satisfaction? Revenue generated? A total number of calls attended?
• What kind of security and legal compliance do you have to follow?
• How many agents have you employed?
• What features does your business absolutely need?
• Do you have a dedicated IT team and a budget?
• Would you prefer to have a hybrid solution over a complete cloud-based solution? (Note: Unlike many CCaaS providers, Enghouse Interactive can help you with both cloud-based solutions and hybrid solutions.) 

Current Setup

Your new CCaaS platform must integrate seamlessly with your other business applications. Otherwise, data silos can form, which will lead to inaccurate reports. To fix that, you will need extra resources to update information across all the applications.

Therefore, look for solutions that cover your existing tech stack. For example, Enghouse CCaaS integrates well with popular applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Freshdesk, WhatsApp and WeChat.

Also, you should consider the impact of new workflows. If workflows change drastically with your new contact center platform, a good chunk of resources will go to retraining your agents.

Cost

The total cost of making a switch exceeds what meets the eye. It includes subscription fees, migration costs, add-on costs, agent training costs, and revenue loss due to technical difficulties. Unfortunately, many users don’t think about this and end up getting surprised when the final invoice arrives.

Therefore, before selecting your provider, you need to calculate your cost.

Also, if you already use a UCaaS, you may not want to pay for similar functionalities that come with your new CCaaS platform.

CCaaS partners with extensive industry experience, like Enghouse, know how they can help their clients minimize the total cost of ownership.

Security

Data security is crucial, especially if you handle sensitive user data like credit card information and social security numbers. Pick a CCaaS platform that prioritizes seamless and secure data migration while providing robust safeguards for ongoing operations.

Also, depending on your business, you may be obligated to comply with rules and security regulations. Your preferred Five9 alternative should help you meet those. For example, Enghouse Interactive is designed to meet PCI-DSS, MiFID II, and GDPR. 

Support

You would be surprised that bad support is one of the top reasons why people ditch their existing CCaaS provider. Considering how much loss a contact center must bear during downtimes, it’s not surprising.

Therefore, choose the Five9 alternative with responsive, knowledgeable support reps who can fix issues fast and minimize downtime. Performing regular maintenance should also be on their to-do list. CCaaS platforms, like Enghouse, with an obsession around customer service, also help their clients by providing training resources and customizing features according to their needs.

To understand how good a provider’s customer service is, always check trusted third-party review forums.

Top Five9 Alternatives, In Our Opinion

In terms of product capabilities, no provider is too ahead or too behind than its peers. Usually, support, pricing, and the provider’s specialty are the biggest factors that separate a good provider from a mediocre one.

We have come up with a list that highlights great Five9 alternatives for different categories:

• Mid-to-large companies: Enghouse CCaaS, 8X8
• Companies switching from traditional call centers to the cloud: Enghouse CCaaS
• Small companies: Nextiva, Enghouse CCaaS
• Support: Enghouse, Nextiva
• AI capability: Dial pad, Enghouse CCaaS
• Customization: Nextiva, Enghouse CCaaS, Talkdesk

In the following section, you will find the detailed breakdowns of these Five9 alternatives.

Please note this evaluation is entirely based on our research. We have asked Enghouse’s most knowledgeable folks and extensively researched available online data to reach our conclusions. We only considered reviews posted after October 2023.

Enghouse CCaaS

Enghouse has been around since 1985. During this 38-year journey, companies of all sizes have worked with Enghouse. This vast collective experience ensures smooth deployment, robust security, and seamless customization of the platform based on specific requirements.

We recommend Enghouse CCaaS as a great Five9 alternative because it truly has some advantages over others.

• Unlike its competitors, Enghouse offers cloud and hybrid solutions. That means if you want to keep recordings or sensitive date on-premise and have more control over security, Enghouse can help.
• Enghouse has been a highly profitable company for years. It’s not in a hurry to capture the market at the cost of quality of service. Therefore, you need not to worry about declining service in the future.
• Security is top-notch. Enghouse CCaaS prioritizes data security and quality assurance through compliance with PCI-DSS, HIPAA, MiFID II, and GDPR.

Features

Let’s talk about its most impactful features:

• Omnichannel self-service: Once you set up your call flows, this feature will guide your customers through a seamless self-service experience.

• Voice of the Customer: It’s an AI-based feature that analyzes customer calls to understand customers’ needs, sentiments, and objections. Based on this insight, you can improve your agent training to achieve maximum customer satisfaction and/or revenue generation.

• Flow designer: It is a no-code designer that allows your admins to design new call flows and tweak existing ones.

• Real-time chat translation: This AI-based feature translates customer calls in real time, helping your agents respond to customer questions swiftly and effectively.

• Custom reports: Enghouse CCaaS generates reports on everything–from customer calls to agent performance to queue performance.

In addition to these, you will also get IVR, ACD, web/video chat, call recording (storage up to 90 days), workforce management, call analytics, and many more features. See the Enghouse CCaaS product page for the full list of features.

Some of these features are available only if you opt for them. This flexibility ensures that you pay only for the features you need.

Why Customers Love Enghouse CCaaS

• Enghouse reps offer reliable support and are always ready to help customers utilize the full capacity of the platform.One of the spokespersons of our client, Cyprus Airways, says,” The company’s dedicated team of support professionals work closely with us to ensure that we are leveraging the platform’s full capabilities and providing the best possible customer experience.” (Full case study)

• Enghouse is a great choice for organizations that are trying to consolidate their entire contact center operation (spread across multiple call centers) onto a cloud-based CCaaS platform. Once consolidated, maintaining customer experience becomes much easier.Take the example of the State of Louisiana. After adopting Enghouse CCaaS, the state authority managed to respond well to all citizen queries during floods, even when a few call center sites went down. (Full case study)

• Enghouse can make 24/7 multilingual support a reality thanks to its call distribution tech and AI capabilities. The former ensures calls are routed to a native speaker, while the AI translation empowers non-native agents to chat with customers speaking different languages.Hitachi is a great example of how companies can offer 24/7 support with Enghouse ( Full case study). Previously, customers could get local language support only during normal business hours for the local Hitachi call center.After Enghouse CCaaS implementation, the system automatically routes voice calls to proficient agents in other regions if native speakers are unavailable. Even when there is no voice support available, agents use AI translation and provide chat support.

Why Some Customers Might Not Choose Enghouse CCaaS

• Enghouse CCaaS may not be suitable for super-small-sized businesses.
• Enghouse CCaaS is entirely browser-based. No mobile apps are available yet.
• According to public reviews, some users feel there are some minor limitations to set up and functionalities.

Source – Capterra

Pricing

Enghouse CCaaS has two pricing plans– Standard ( $109/per concurrent agent) and Advanced ($139/per concurrent agent). The first one offers a voice-centric CCaaS platform with advanced routing capabilities. If you want, you can get additional features such as AI insights, WFM, voice bots, and voice branding as add-ons. With the Advanced plan, you unlock the omni-channel platform.

8×8

8X8 is another reliable Five9 alternative out there. It offers a complete platform that combines the contact center, unified communication, APIs, and integrations.

8X8 covers everything a decent CCaaSS platform should have. Most medium and large business customers are satisfied with the overall quality of the service and ROI. However, we also found some serious customer complaints that are concerning.

Features

• Intelligent customer assistant: A conversational AI-based solution that ensures your customers have a satisfactory self-service experience across all channels.
• Contact center analytics: It helps your contact center managers understand overall customer experiences, identify areas of improvement, and train employees for efficient performance.
• Auto dialer: An automated dialing solution that increases your agents’ productivity by presenting qualified connected calls.
• Speech text analytics: This AI-powered solution sorts calls into different predefined categories. It helps you easily understand which issues to focus on and where your agents need help.

Apart from these, 8×8 also offers IVR, omnichannel routing, payment processing, and many more.

Why Customers Love 8×8

Based on our research across various third-party review sites, 8X8 users like the following:

• The quality of the calling features is a big plus. The audio quality is decent. Users also extensively use features like autodialer, call recording, and call tracking.
• Many users mentioned their likings of 8X8’s extensive reports.
•  Overall, users are happy with 8X8’s feature lists.
• Some feel that 8×8 listens to customers and updates its offerings on a regular basis.

Why 8X8 Might Not Be the Right Choice

Like any other tool, 8×8 falls short in some cases.

• From a technical perspective, We found some complaints about call quality and CRM integration issues.
• Some users think their onboarding experience wasn’t very smooth.
• However, the biggest red flag is the cancellation policy. According to some recent reviews on ConsumerAffairs, cancellation is a big headache, and customers don’t receive adequate assistance.
• Some reviews on Trustpilot indicate people lose money because of silent autorenewals.
• For small businesses, 8×8 is pretty expensive.

Pricing

8X8 has five pricing plans, yet it doesn’t disclose the exact pricing of any of those. You need to talk to sales for more information. The basic plan( X2) includes unlimited voice calling to 14 countries, HD audio/video conferencing for up to 500 participants, Microsoft Teams integration, and some other functionality.

Talkdesk

The next entry on this list is Talkdesk, an AI-powered CCaaS platform for businesses of different sizes. According to the data available on the official site, it relies on its AI tech capabilities to offer users smooth, effective, and low-code experiences.

Overall, Talkdesk meets user expectations. Users feel that the platform delivers what they expect for the price they pay, the support they receive, and the features it offers. However, we found some complaints that you want to pay attention to.

Features

• Talkdesk Studio: It’s an interactive visual designer that lets admins manage simple and complex flows. With this admins can visually design customer journeys without any coding knowledge.
• AI features: Several AI-based features—for example, automated customer response, conversation summary, and instant knowledge recall—improve agents’ work efficiency.
• AI trainer: This feature allows users to teach AI to recognize customer intent based on previous interactions, add new words to its vocabulary, and more.
• Talkdesk Guardian: This feature empowers admins to remotely keep a tab on every aspect of their agents’ performances – from login/out time to their IP addresses. It helps admins optimize their agent allocation for maximum quality output.

Apart from these, Intelligent call routing, AI assistance for agents, Call tracking, and others deserve mention.

Why Customers Like Talkdesk

We looked at recent public reviews ( not older than 5-6 months), and here is what we found:

• Calling is a strong suit of Talkdesk. Call quality, call tracking, call monitoring, and ticket tracking—these features make users happy.
•  Some users find Call flow builder and IVR customization to be useful.

Why Talkdesk Might Not Be the Right Choice

• We have seen many negative reviews about Talkdesk’s customer service. According to some G2 reviews, some clients even ditched Talkdesk because of poor customer service.
• Talkdesk reports are pretty behind. Many users think reports don’t come with even standard filter options.
• Chat channels are way behind the call channel in customization and reporting.
• Some users have difficulties while accepting customers’ credit card info.

Pricing

Talkdesk subscription plans start from $85/user/month. The basic CX Cloud Essential plan offers intelligent routing, customizable voice features, API access, Workspace design, Conversation mobile app, and many other features. You get more features with higher plans (CX Cloud Elevate and CX Cloud Elite).

Nextiva

For many users, Nextiva can be a good Five9 replacement. The company claims it powers over 100k businesses and billions of conversations every year. Anyway, it’s a reliable CCaaS platform that has received good ratings from its users.

Features

• Advanced IVR: Nextiva offers multiple features that run on advanced IVR technology. Automatic Call Flows utilize voice recognition and text-to-speech tech to guide your customers. Virtual agents handle routine and repetitive transactions. These features free up human agents and let them focus on crucial tasks.
• Call Analytics: Intuitive and informational reports on call duration, call volume, agent availability, and other related metrics. Based on these reports, admins can get actionable insights to optimize agents’ performance.
• Call center threshold: This is another tool in Nextiva’s toolbox that alerts users about unusual call volume in a queue.
• Desktop and mobile apps: The desktop and mobile versions of the Nextiva app ensure managers stay connected from their home PC or smartphone.

Other notable Nextiva features include Intelligent Call Routing, DNIS, Automatic Call Distribution, Customer Service Survey, and Call recording.

Why Customers Like Nextiva

• Nextiva’s call quality is excellent. Users have experienced almost no dropped calls, fuzzy connections, or sound distortions.
• Many users like the customization options Nextiva has to offer. They are using these to tailor call flows and call analytics reports.
• Nextiva’s administrative portal is full of useful features. Users also have the flexibility to customize it based on their needs.
• Some reviewers have praised Nextiva’s customer service.

Why Nextiva Might Not Be the Best Choice

Overall, Nextiva is a good choice. However, if you are considering Nextiva, you want to keep a few downsides in mind:

• Yes, Nextiva is quick to set up. However, that can lead to several complications ( not being able to set up call flows, for example) in the future. If you want to do the configuration right, expect some difficulties if you are not a tech person.

Source – G2

• Best features are often reserved for pricier plans (Optimum Plan and Ultimate Plan).
• The mobile app( especially iOS) is disappointing. It’s clunky and crashes often. Users also report bugs such as missed calls that don’t ring, voicemails that don’t go away after being deleted, etc.

Source – G2

• Some users don’t find the platform intuitive. They struggled to understand different functions and had to contact support for answers repeatedly.

Pricing

Nextiva Contact Centre has four plans: Core, Premium, Optimum, and Ultimate. The core plan is pretty limited—you will only get basic voice features. If you need all the features, opt for higher-end plans. The exact amount of any plan is not listed and can only be found by contacting sales.

Dialpad Contact Center

Dialpad Contact Center is another great Five9 alternative that deserves your attention.

Please note unlike some other entries on this list, Dialpad Contact Center doesn’t combine voice, chat, video, and email communication. It supports only voice-based inbound-outbound. You need to purchase additional Dialpad services to have an omnichannel experience.

Features

• Robust calling features: The Dialpad Contact Center platform comes with all the standard calling capacities, such as IVR, call recording, call transcription, and ACD.
• Real-time agent assist: This feature assists agents in dealing with tricky customer questions in real time by showing pop-ups with notes written on them.
• Sentiment analysis: Admins can see whether calls are going positively or negatively in real time right on their screen, thanks to Dialpad AI’s sentiment analysis.
• Post-call summary: After each call, Dialpad provides agents with an automated post-call summary. This summary includes the recording, transcript, action items, discussed topics, and key moments. Both agents and supervisors can search through each transcript at any time.

Apart from these, Dialpad’s capacity can be increased through various third-party integrations.

Why Customers Like Dialpad

To understand what is making Dialpad users happy, we turned to recent public reviews again. Here is what we found.

• The generated call summary function has proven to be very useful. It has empowered users to understand what is being discussed in a customer call without listening to the full recordings.
• AI subtitles come in handy while interacting with customers with heavy accents.
• Many users find the admin panel and reports to be intuitive.
• Unlike many other CCaaS solutions, Dialpad Contact Center offers a free 14-day trial.
• Financially, it’s a good five9 alternative for small businesses.

Why Dialpad Might Not Be the Best Option

• The biggest problem with Dialpad is the pricing structure. It’s hard to understand, and users might pay more than they initially thought. According to some reviews, downgrading one’s account plans can be challenging. Things move slowly from the Dialpad side, which can lead to higher fees.

Source: Getapp

• Occasional technical glitches are another big issue. Users have experienced subpar call quality, dropped calls, and calls not ringing through to the user.

Pricing

Dialpad Contact Center has three separate pricing plans: Essential( USD 95/user/month), Advanced( USD 135/user/month ), and Premium (USD 170/user/month). The Essential plan offers standard voice features and basic AI capabilities. Users can add more features based on their needs. Higher-priced plans unlock more AI features and superior support.

Last but not least, a free trial is available.

Enghouse: Your Dependable Contact-Center-as-a-Service

Five9 is a decent solution for some businesses. But if you are not one of those businesses, Enghouse CCaaS can be a great solution.

Enghouse CCaaS offers powerful voice features, extensive reports, workforce management, and AI capabilities. These help organizations in different verticals transform their contact center operations into robust and adaptive cloud contact centers. For more information, read our detailed case studies.

Enghouse Interactive also takes customer support seriously. From deployment to consistent support — we ensure that our clients can count on us at any time.

Overall, you can’t go wrong with Enghous CCaaS. Here is what one customer has to say:

“Enghouse had the best fit for all of our needs. Enghouse is just a great partner of ours!”—Nicole Reininger, GVTC Communication

If you want to know more, please contact us here.

FAQs

Investing in a CCaaS solution is a big decision, whether it’s your first time or you are switching from Five9. To assist you in decision-making, we have answered some of the frequently asked questions. Should you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team.

1. How long does it typically take to switch CCaaS providers?

The timeframe can vary depending on the complexity of your setup and your CCaaS provider. Simple migrations might take a few weeks, while large-scale implementations with extensive customization could take several months.

2. What should I do with your existing call recordings after switching from Five9?

This depends on your legal requirements and data retention policies. Some providers might offer data migration services for call recordings, while others may require you to download and store them yourself.

3. How can you enhance data safety within your CCaaS platform?

Activate Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA enhances security by adding an additional verification step on top of login passwords.

Enforce Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Limit user access to data and features according to their job roles and duties. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches.

Monitor User Actions: Routinely review user activity logs to detect any abnormal login attempts or unusual data access patterns.

Educate: Provide your agents with training on data security best practices. You want to cover topics such as password management, recognizing phishing emails, and promptly reporting any suspicious behavior.

4. What is a good cloud-based contact center solution?

Enghouse. Enghouse is a top choice for cloud-based contact centers due to its seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, strong focus on security, continuous innovation in cloud analytics, and industry recognition, ensuring a reliable and advanced solution for modern businesses.

5. What are the CCaaS trends for 2024?

The CCaaS industry has changed a lot with the rise of AI. Here are the biggest CCaaS trends in 2024:

AI on the Rise: Expect to see a continued rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in CCaaS solutions. This includes features like Generative AI chatbots that can handle routine inquiries, sentiment analysis to understand customer emotions and AI-powered recommendations for agents.

Omnichannel Communication: Customers are using more communication channels than ever before, and CCaaS platforms need to keep up. Look for solutions that integrate seamlessly with voice calls, email, chat, social media, and even emerging channels like messaging apps.

Focus on the Agent Experience: In 2024, CCaaS providers will offer more features to improve the agent experience, such as gamification for motivation, workforce management tools, and better integration with UCaaS.

Cloud Convergence: CCaaS and UCaaS are increasingly being offered as combined solutions. This convergence can simplify your tech stack, reduce costs, and pave the way for future innovation.

Disclaimer – The insights presented in this article are sourced exclusively from publicly available information and customer reviews. Feel free to reach out if you require any modifications or updates to the content.