Dialpad Review (2024): AI-Powered VoIP Solution

Dialpad Introduction Starting Price: $15 per user per month Key Features: Unlimited calls and meetings. Multi-level auto attendant. Built-in call analytics. Listen, whisper, and interrupt. Unique AI capabilities.

Dialpad offers a range of business communication tools with a focus on built-in AI. It includes a host of features for contact centres and internal collaboration – going well beyond basic inbound call handling and outbound dialling capabilities.

While the price of the entry-level plan is attractive, Dialpad can quickly become expensive, which may be difficult for businesses with tighter budgets.

Dialpad is best suited for contact centers and sales teams looking to automate and increase productivity. Small businesses looking for basic calling capabilities will get better value elsewhere.

Dialpad Pricing

Dialpad has four main products, each with its own pricing and plan tiers.

Business Communication

• standard: Starting at $15 per user per month
• advantage: Starting at $25 per user per month
• enterprise: Custom pricing

Suitable: Small businesses that need calling, texting, team chat, and video conferencing.

Artificial Intelligence Conference

• Free: $0
• Business: Starting at $15 per user per month

Suitable: Up to 150 participants can attend video conferences for up to five hours (with the Business plan). Otherwise, the Business Communications plan is sufficient for basic video conferencing at the same price.

Artificial Intelligence Contact Center

• Key points: Starting at $80 per user per month
• advanced: Starting at $115 per user per month
• High quality: Starting at $150 per user per month

Suitable: Extensive inbound customer service and customer support team.

Artificial Intelligence Sales Center

• Key points: Starting at $60 per user per month
• advanced: Starting at $95 per user per month
• High quality: Starting at $150 per user per month

Suitable: Outbound sales teams need to reach more leads, increase productivity, and maximize efficiency. It’s also a good choice for sales managers who want to improve agent training and provide field coaching.

Key features of Dialpad

Dialpad has a wide range of basic and advanced features. Most of the platform’s top features are only available in more expensive plans and in its Contact Center and Sales Center solutions.

Let’s take a look at some of the outstanding features of Dialpad.

Unlimited calls and meetings

Dialpad’s business phone system supports unlimited calling. Make as many domestic calls as you want without worrying about usage charges.

You will also benefit from:

• Visual voicemail.
• Customize call routing.
• The call is transferred to another device.
• Three-way calling.
• Call Recording.
• Ability to switch calls between devices.

All of these are standard features that come with every plan.

In addition to calls, your team can collaborate internally with unlimited meetings.

Unless you add the Business Video plan, you can only have up to 10 participants per meeting. But 10 participants should be enough for most teams — especially since Team Chat and Business Messaging are also used for collaboration.

Multi-level automatic voice response

Dialpad’s Auto Attendant is ideal for handling incoming calls. You can fully customize how calls are routed based on date, time, agent skills, caller intent, and more. In this way, the Auto Attendant acts like a receptionist that automatically answers and forwards calls for you.

You can start by customizing your business hours and agent working hours, and then define the exact times you want the Auto Attendant to be activated. You can then create custom queues to prioritize calls and route them to specific departments or teams based on your settings.

For example, a 24/7 plumbing company might want to prioritize emergency water leaks. Or, some companies might choose to prioritize new customer payments and bills over general support issues.

Some Dialpad plans come with IVR technology – taking your auto attendant a step further with more advanced options that allow callers to control their own routing path.

Built-in call analytics

Every Dialpad plan comes with powerful analytics. Even at the basic level, you benefit from real-time call transcription and reporting.

Easily track the metrics that matter most to you from just one screen. You can quickly access abandoned call rates, heatmaps of highest call volume times, missed calls, percentage of calls forwarded to other numbers, and more.

At higher tiers, analytics capabilities become even more powerful. You can unlock advanced reporting like real-time caller sentiment analysis, compliance measurement, and even workforce management capabilities for forecasting and scheduling.

Overall, Dialpad’s analytics are customizable and can help you gain insight into your team’s performance.

Monitoring, whispering and intervention

These features are only available if you’re on the Sales Hub or Contact Center plans, but the good news is that call monitoring, private chat, and barge-in are standard features for both products. This means that as long as you choose a subscription in either category, there’s no need to upgrade to a higher plan tier.

All of these features make it easier for managers to monitor agents while helping them with real-time coaching when necessary. Real-time monitoring allows managers to listen in on calls at any time. It’s an easy way to ensure reps are sticking to scripts and supports your quality assurance efforts.

Whisper is great for coaching new agents in real time or helping anyone on your team navigate a difficult situation. If necessary, a manager can chime in and completely take over the call. Customers love this feature because they don’t have to wait on hold or go through a lengthy transfer process to escalate the call.

Dialpad AI

All of Dialpad’s plans and many of its features incorporate some level of artificial intelligence, but the extent to which it’s available depends on the product you choose and the plan tier within that category.

Overall, the Contact Center and Sales Center plans have the strongest AI capabilities. But even some of the cheaper plans give you a taste of Dialpad’s AI and automation capabilities.

Some of the key features of Dialpad AI include:

• Real-time speech transcription.
• Artificial intelligence voice analysis of customer sentiment.
• Automatic call summary.
• QA Scorecard.
• Live agent assistance.
• A sales rep’s playbook.

Advantages of Dialpad

• A host of AI-driven features.
• Affordable entry-level plan.
• All-in-one communications suite.
• A specific plan for outbound sales calls.
• Each layer is analyzed.
• Modern and clean interface.
• Comply with HIPAA, GDPR, ISO, and SOC Type 2 standards.
• Member of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).
• Role-based access control.

Disadvantages of the dial pad

• Only higher tiers offer 24/7 phone support.
• Internet faxing is an additional $10 per month.
• There are a lot of bells and whistles that you may not need to use.
• The larger the scale, the higher the cost.

Dialpad alternatives

Dialpad’s rates are the cheapest on the market for its entry-level plan, but given the scale, it can end up being more expensive than other options — especially once you start paying for add-ons and realize you’re missing features you can get elsewhere for less.

Nextiva is a better value overall. It’s easier to set up and deploy, making it a better choice for small businesses. RingCentral is more advanced than Nextiva and Dialpad, but more difficult to set up.

Let’s take a closer look at how Dialpad compares to its closest competitors.

	Dial pad	Nextiva	RingCentral	Large room	8×8
Starting Price	$15 per user per month	$28.95 per user per month	$20 per user per month	$19.95 per user per month	Custom Quote
Free Trial	14 days	Demo	14 days	No	No
set up	simple	simple	complicated	so easy	complicated
International Number	More than 70 countries	No	105+ countries	No	More than 100 countries
Call Recording	Yes	Top Plan	Yes	First two layers	Call center only
AI capabilities	advanced	standard	advanced	not any	basic
videoconference	Yes	Yes	Yes	First two layers	Yes
Send SMS	Yes	First two layers	Yes	First two layers	Yes
Online Fax	+ $10 per month	Yes	First two layers	Yes	Yes
Team Chat	Yes	Yes	Yes	First two layers	Yes
integrated	70+	20+	300+	10+	Over 65 years old

Nextiva

Dialpad has the edge when it comes to AI-driven contact center solutions, but Nextiva is more comprehensive. It offers simple and affordable small business plans that cover all your needs, as well as infinitely scalable contact center plans for businesses of all sizes. Plus, it offers 24/7 support, no matter how much you pay.

RingCentral

If you want a full-featured solution, look no further than RingCentral. It has similar AI capabilities to Dialpad, but its contact center plans go a step further. With RingCentral, you’ll get workforce optimization, agent engagement, scheduling, performance management, and full customer journey mapping.

Large room

Need some simple, streamlined in-person office equipment? Ooma’s DIY plug-and-play setup process is the easiest of them all. No technical expertise required.

8×8

Dialpad offers local phone numbers in more than 70 countries, but 8×8 gives you unlimited international calling to up to 48 countries (depending on your plan). If you handle a lot of global communications, this is a great way to save money.

method

In writing this review, I relied on my own experience, customer reviews, and a core set of criteria that I use when reviewing each business communications solution.

Standard and advanced features

I looked at the basic tools you need for a phone system, as well as additional features like video conferencing, voicemail, text messaging, call forwarding, virtual receptionists, mobile apps, desktop apps, and more.

Customer Support

I would consider customer support hours, customer support method (phone, live chat, knowledge base, etc.), and how helpful the customer support team actually is based on customer reviews.

Third-party integrations

I check each platform’s ability to connect seamlessly with other business tools, such as CRM software, SMS, fax, cloud storage, ERP, and more.

Security and Privacy

I evaluated the tool’s encryption, redundant architecture, account management capabilities, server locations, data center audits, authentication capabilities through SSO and MFA, and more.

Uptime Percentage

This number is an assessment of the SLA, technical infrastructure that may result in unplanned outages or any other cause of downtime.

Demo or free trial

I would check if I can test or try the software before going through a live demo or free trial.

total cost

Here’s a general overview of the plans, extras, add-ons, the difference between monthly and annual payments, user costs, and installation costs.