Dialpad vs. 8x8

Dialpad and 8x8 are both cloud-based phone systems that offer a suite of products. Both platforms offer voice, messaging, web conferencing, and contact centres as well as integrations with popular apps like Google Workspace and Salesforce.

Although these two providers have a lot in common and both use VoIP technology, there are also major differences. Keep reading to learn how Dialpad stacks up against 8x8.

Finally, all your conversations in one place

Dialpad and 8x8 both dub themselves as all-in-one communication platforms. But they’re not the same.

For example, while 8x8 offers both UCaSS and CCaaS calling, they’re on two different apps. That’s two different windows with two different logins. This can get real confusing, real fast—especially when your team is just getting introduced to the product (which can cause adoption to suffer).

With Dialpad’s single app for calling, chat, contact centre, and video conferencing, onboarding and setup are a lot easier. The business messaging platform automatically syncs across all devices, providing a single source of truth for all your business conversations.

Picture this: You had a quick call with a colleague on the desktop app and sent her a business text on your mobile app. Before the call, you had an email thread going with some Google Drive attachments. All of these interactions will show up in a single pane when you access Dialpad. This makes it easy to find where the conversation left off, regardless of what device you’re using.

Integrate with all your favourite apps

Both Dialpad and 8x8 integrate with the apps you’re likely already using, like Google Workspace, CRMs (like Salesforce and HubSpot), collaboration software (like Microsoft 365), customer service tools (like Zendesk), and more.

All these integrations help to further automate the process of adding and de-provisioning users. We’re all about making things easy—like “no IT needed” easy.

Technically though, Dialpad does offer more integrations than 8x8 (and we’re constantly adding to our list). Also, all our integrations happen in the cloud, meaning both your desktop and mobile experience will flow the same. So there’s that.

Here to make your life easier: Dialpad Ai

How a phone system is built determines its ability to develop and innovate over time. Dialpad’s telephony architecture is the only one that has artificial intelligence built into the product. We call it “Dialpad Ai”—and it’s one of the most accurate out there. Although 8x8 also has AI features, they’re offered through partnerships with other vendors. These add-ons can come at an extra cost.

So why would you want Dialpad Ai in your phone system or contact centre platform? Loads of reasons. Not only does it automatically transcribe your voice conversations—in real-time—it can also detect customer sentiment on calls based on the words they use and pick out keywords and phrases so you can track them:

And if your customers are bringing up a competitor’s name or asking a lot of tricky questions about price, you’ll know.

Oh, and we include all of our Dialpad Ai features in all of our plans for all users. 8x8, on the other hand, reserves certain features for only their most expensive plans. Speech analytics, for example, is only available to contact centre users on their flagship plan (priced at a hefty AUD 200/user per month).

Also unlike Dialpad, only managers using 8x8’s contact centre product have access to most AI features. So if your sales or support rep needs to pull a transcript, they’ll need to request it from a manager rather than self-serve. Not the most efficient way to do business.

We’re always here for you

There’s a reason why Dialpad won the Stevie® Award for sales and customer service.

First off, we've made Dialpad super easy to use, without IT help. It should just work. And in the rare cases where something does come up (because, well, technology), our team is here at all hours of the day or night to help you out through the following channels:

• Live chat (with a real human!)

• Phone

• A detailed Help Centre

• Training options (in person, webinars, live online, video, documentation)

We’ll give props to 8x8 as well here though—they offer technical support 24 hours a day via live chat and phone.

Savings that go beyond just the price

Dialpad has plans starting from AUD 20/user per month while 8x8 starts at AUD 24/user per month—but here’s the thing that companies don’t talk about much. The advertised cost of software isn't always the best indicator of how much you’ll actually need to pay.

For example, we mentioned in a previous section that 8x8 only offers speech analytics in their AUD 200 plan—a far step away from their advertised AUD 24 “starting price.”

Then there’s the cost of implementing, configuring, and supporting your chosen software. If something is slightly cheaper upfront—but takes much more time, effort, and support from your vendor, just to get it up and running and configured the way you want—would you still go with it?

(That includes changes in scaling up and down later on, by the way).

Or would you rather choose something that might be a little more expensive, but makes deployment, configurations, admin, and scaling all super easy to do yourself?

That’s what Dialpad is designed to let you do. Think of how much you’re saving by not having to call in an IT person to do little things like add a user or change your voicemail settings. Or having to pay surprise implementation fees every time you want to add an integration.

But you don’t have to take our word for it

According to GetApp, folks comparing Dialpad and 8x8 found Dialpad easier to use and set up and thought it provided better value for the money, more features, and better customer support.

Not to mention Dialpad's Trustpilot rating...

¹businesswire.com/news/home/20210125005228/en/Verint-and-8x8-Partner-to-Deliver-Integrated-Cloud-Solutions-for-Organizations-Worldwide