RingCentral vs. Zoom Comparison

RingCentral vs. Zoom Highlights 

Who Is RingCentral for? 

RingCentral provides cloud-based public branch exchange (PBX) systems for companies of any size, from small to large enterprises. The UC platform is purpose-built for deskless frontline workers — the managers, service technicians and sales representatives that comprise an estimated 80% of the global workforce. 

We appreciate the unified inbox, which puts voicemails, texts and faxes in a single location. Likewise, remote and hybrid teams can use the RingCentral app to make and receive calls or collaborate with video conferencing, task management and team messaging tools. For this use case, we love the customizable softphone menu. You can shrink or expand the app and display your most-used icons. 

This flexibility makes RingCentral fully functional for diverse workforces. All RingCentral subscriptions include unlimited domestic calling (U.S. and Canada), video meetings of up to 200 and audio conferencing with up to 1,000 attendees. 

Indeed, even the smallest teams, companies with fewer than 10 employees, can take advantage of advanced features, unlimited calling and unmetered video conferencing. In comparison, Zoom limits meetings to 40 minutes unless you purchase a minimum of 10 Business Plus licenses. However, if they want, businesses can choose to purchase Zoom Phone + Zoom One Pro for under 10 users if they want to remove the 40-minute meeting restrictions. And Zoom audio conferencing requires a paid add-on package.

RingCentral also scales with enterprise-level capabilities. Its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered call queueing and routing tools adapt to wait times and agent availability, while the enhanced business analytic suite provides real-time and historical insights. Learn more in our full RingCentral review.

Who Is Zoom for? 

With pay-as-you-go plans starting at $10 per month, Zoom Phone is an affordable business phone service for companies with a low volume of outbound calls. We like how every subscription includes advanced features like call recording, automatic call distribution groups (ACD) with call queueing and unlimited auto attendants. We appreciate the call monitor and whisper functions since most VoIP services, including RingCentral, lock these tools behind higher-priced tiers. 

Also, independent contractors and freelancers wanting an inexpensive business phone number are a good fit for Zoom’s metered package. Zoom Phone is an excellent solution for businesses that want to lower their international calling costs. Zoom Phone Global Select offers unlimited domestic calling in one international location, or you can add unlimited calling to 19 countries to U.S. & Canada Unlimited or Global Select plans.

Mix and match Zoom plans to save money with an international workforce and clients. Source: Zoom

Zoom Phone plans have team messaging and 40-minute video meetings. Users receive all free Zoom Meetings features, such as screen sharing and automated captions. Companies looking for more expansive video conferencing tools, such as polling and recording transcripts, can select the Zoom One Business Plus package — but there’s a caveat: you need to purchase 10 licenses. 

We like that you can mix and match paid plans, which can help small businesses lower overall costs. And the live streaming capability (available for all users) is a valuable marketing tool that RingCentral lacks. Explore more features in our full review of Zoom.

RingCentral vs. Zoom Comparison  

Although RingCentral and Zoom offer advanced video conferencing and telephony features, both providers have unique capabilities. Learn how the business phone systems differ when it comes to pricing, features and more.

Pricing 

RingCentral Pricing

RingCentral has four product categories — intelligent phone solutions, intelligent meetings, contact center solutions and AI solutions. Of these, intelligent phone solutions (formerly RingCentral MVP) offer three plans with voice calling. RingCentral provides volume discounts for companies with 50 or more users, and you can save up to 33% with annual billing. 

RingCentral’s business communication plans range from $30 to $45 per user, per month, or $20 to $35 with annual billing. All subscriptions include unlimited domestic calling, mobile apps, a business phone or toll-free number, team messaging and unlimited video conferencing calls. Since RingCentral uses a tiered pricing model, higher-priced plans have additional features and capabilities. 

Many small businesses will find RingCentral Core sufficient unless they want customer relationship management (CRM) integrations or call center tools like call whisper or barge. RingCentral adds these features to the Advanced and Ultra subscriptions. 

Zoom Pricing

Zoom offers six product categories — Zoom One, Zoom Phone, Zoom Events & Webinars, Zoom Rooms, Zoom Contact Center and Zoom Whiteboard. Of these, Zoom Phone has three plans with voice calling and Zoom One has two. Zoom does not offer discounts for annual billing.  Zoom offers discounts of up to 21 percent when paying annually.

* Can purchase a Zoom One Pro subscription to host meetings longer than 40 minutes

Zoom subscriptions with voice calling services range from $10 to $25 per user, per month. All packages have the same phone system features, including an interactive voice response (IVR) system and automatic call distribution groups (ACD) with call queuing. 

The main differences between subscriptions are if you want metered or unlimited domestic calls, access to the optional add-on for unlimited calling to 19 countries and free or paid Zoom Meetings. We like that companies can mix and match plans to give each employee the right tools without breaking the budget. However, Business Plus requires a minimum of 10 licenses. 

Winner

With its $10 pay-as-you-go U.S. & Canada Metered plan, Zoom Phone’s price and mix-and-match option can’t be beaten. Even the U.S. & Canada Unlimited package costs $5 less than RingCentral’s base plan (when paid annually) or $15 less with monthly billing. However, businesses that want full-featured video calling tools will pay $25 monthly through Zoom vs. RingCentral’s $20 (monthly with annual billing).

Phone System Features

RingCentral and Zoom provide full-featured business phone systems. Here’s how the services stack up. 

RingCentral Phone System Features

• UC: The RingCentral app works on desktop and mobile devices, incorporating voice calling, internet faxing and chat into a single platform. We found it easy to flip calls between devices or switch to a video meeting with one click. 
• Call management: RingCentral’s multilevel auto attendants, IVR system and call queues enable small businesses to provide seamless experiences to every caller. We liked the voicemail-to-email feature, which also includes email alerts for text messages. Plus, users can share voicemails via text, email or direct message.
• Multisite support: Advanced and Ultra users can connect branch offices and add employees from different networked locations to a single call queue. Additionally, RingCentral offers localized voice prompts, multilingual IVRs and 18 app language settings for international users. 

Zoom Phone System Features

• Cloud platform: Zoom provides a unified phone, meeting and team chat platform. It works on Apple, Windows, Android and Mac hardware. We appreciated Zoom’s Slack integration, which let us make calls without leaving the Slack app.
• Call handling: With unlimited auto attendants, you can establish rules for business hours, holidays and more. Zoom supports supervised and blind call transfer capabilities, ensuring clients get to the right person every time. 
• International capabilities: Choose the Zoom Phone Global Select plan or add the international calling package to Global Select or U.S. & Canada Unlimited. The former lets you make unlimited calls within one of the 48 countries and territories while the latter allows unlimited calling to 19 countries.

Use your desktop or mobile device to begin audio and video conversations without leaving Slack. Source: Zoom

Winner

We call it a tie for the Zoom vs. RingCentral VoIP feature comparison. Both solutions work on multiple devices and provide advanced call-routing tools. The differences come down to a couple of questions. First, decide whether you want toll-free minutes, included with RingCentral plans, or prefer fewer limits on SMS usage (available with Zoom). 

Also, determine if your business needs international calling. Zoom’s add-on may be more affordable than paying as you go through RingCentral. In addition, if your company hosts large audio conferences, every RingCentral subscription supports audio conferences with 1,000 attendees while a similar capacity is only available as an add-on to Zoom.

Video Conferencing and Collaboration 

Whether your staff uses RingCentral or Zoom, they can interact through video and chat in real time. Explore the top features available with each platform.

RingCentral Video Conferencing and Collaboration

• Video conferencing: We love RingCentral’s AI-powered features, which help small teams get more out of every meeting. It creates highlight reels and displays real-time transcripts. Users can search meeting recordings by keywords or speaker and replay specific moments. 
• Task management: It’s easy to turn any task into a message and organize it with RingCentral’s color-coding system and drag-and-drop functionality. Plus, you can start a new video meeting or chat from a task, set up recurring tasks and upload attachments. 
• Collaboration tools: An integrated team calendar, file sharing and messaging features keep co-workers on the same page. We especially liked RingCentral’s collaborative notes tool, which lets multiple meeting attendees capture action items and continue interacting after the conference.

Tag co-workers in meeting chat and drop notes into team messaging to keep everyone on the same page. Source: RingCentral

Zoom Collaboration Capabilities

• Virtual meetings: Zoom’s user-friendly platform supports all the functions businesses require, like screen sharing, breakout rooms and in-meeting reactions. But it also adds a bit of fun with personalized avatars, virtual backgrounds and video filter overlays.
• Team chat: With Zoom’s persistent chat rooms, co-workers can stay connected before and after meetings. Zoom supports one-on-one or group messaging and document sharing and Business Plus includes cloud storage.
• Whiteboards: Zoom’s interactive whiteboarding feature is accessible on a desktop or web browser. It lets teams add sticky notes or comments and share boards with others. Best of all, Zoom saves them automatically, so you’ll never lose important ideas. 

Winner

RingCentral takes the lead with its video calling and collaboration features. It offers unlimited video meetings with 100 to 200 video-calling participants and 24-hour meetings. The Ultra plan includes unlimited storage. Zoom restricts users to 40-minute sessions with 100 attendees unless using the Business Plus plan (10-license minimum). Zoom One Enterprise does offer unlimited storage, however there is a 250-license requirement for that plan.

We appreciate RingCentral’s AI capabilities and, like Zoom, it has breakout rooms, screen-sharing tools, whiteboards and in-meeting chat. However, Zoom lets users live stream to social media channels, a unique capability that RingCentral doesn’t offer.

Third-party Integrations

An integrated business phone system saves your employees time while offering greater insights into your customers. RingCentral and Zoom sync with many business applications.

RingCentral Third-party Integrations

• Popular integrations: Core users can sync the RingCentral app to Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google Workspace. The Advanced plan connects users to many CRMs, including Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics. With the Ultra subscription, you can access more than 350 prebuilt integrations with CRMs and industry-specific tools.
• API access: All RingCentral subscriptions include access to RingCentral’s developer platform and APIs. Its API ecosystem has more than 80,000 developers and SDKs in 11 languages.

Zoom Third-party Integrations

• Zoom Phone integrations: Zoom integrates seamlessly with Slack, Microsoft Teams, monday.com, Salesforce and more. It features 91 Zoom Phone integrations while the video system syncs with more than 2,000 applications.
• Zoom stack SDKs: Zoom offers video, meeting, Android phone and contact center SDKs. The developer accounts are either pay-as-you-go or API subscription plans. 

Winner

Our vote goes to RingCentral. We appreciate that Zoom offers CRM integrations for all users. Whether you pay $10 or $25 monthly, you can connect Zoom Phone to Salesforce and monday.com. RingCentral provides far more integrations for team chat, phone and SMS while Zoom has the most video integrations.

Reporting and Analytics

Both VoIP providers let companies view usage statistics and call quality data. However, reporting features differ between RingCentral and Zoom. 

RingCentral Reporting and Analytics

• Call logs: View records of incoming and outgoing phone calls, including caller names, numbers or extensions, dates and call durations. We appreciate that we can automate report delivery and listen to phone call recordings from the call logs.
• Essential and Pro Analytics: RingCentral’s business analytics provide advanced capabilities, allowing business owners to track dozens of key performance indicators and trends. The dashboards are highly customizable. We found the predefined templates valuable and creating reports and dashboards from scratch was easy, even for tech novices.
• Device and service reports: We like that all subscriptions provide quality of service dashboards with real-time quality scores at the individual user and call level. Advanced and Ultra users can access adoption analytics and information technology (IT) reports. 

Choose how to visualize your data by selecting circle, graph or table widgets. Source: RingCentral

Zoom Reporting and Analytics

• Usage reports: Zoom Phone displays call logs and usage data (for phone users or call queues) for specified time frames. Like RingCentral, you can receive reports automatically by email or export them to a comma-separated values file. 
• Dashboards: View service quality for phone calls, meetings and webinars or review data across the Zoom stack. We liked the team chat report, which shows what content types employees send. You can also drill down into how staff use Zoom Meeting features. 
• Power Pack: This add-on includes a real-time call queue dashboard with call handling time, call volume, wait times and more. It displays user and performance reports, giving leaders access to real-time analytics and historical trends. 

Make data-driven decisions by analyzing call queues in real time. Source: Zoom

Winner

RingCentral and Zoom supply enough reporting features for most small businesses. Both are easy to use and automate report delivery. But RingCentral edges out Zoom because it includes Essential and Pro Analytics with Advanced and Ultra plans while Zoom requires the Power Pack add-on. 

RingCentral vs. Zoom Summary 

Zoom and RingCentral provide essential features that every small business owner needs. Both are reliable and user-friendly. Use the following insights when choosing a business phone system.

RingCentral is best for multilocation businesses wanting to unify remote and hybrid teams. 

RingCentral’s unlimited domestic calling, video conferencing and messaging tools make it an excellent platform for interacting in real time. We loved how the AI-powered assistant captured details, making every meeting more actionable. Employees at multiple branches can answer phone lines, view company directories and work together. Its multilevel auto attendants help small businesses improve caller experiences, while advanced analytics features let leaders evaluate communications, usage and quality data. 

Zoom is best for small businesses needing phone service for field and on-site staff. 

Zoom’s flexible pricing structure and mobile apps allow companies to equip every team member with a phone number without breaking the budget. Since internal calls are free, users can connect to anyone with a Zoom account via video, voice or chat. We were impressed with the Zoom app and pleased to find key features like an IVR and business hour routing with all paid plans. 

FAQs 

Can I use Zoom Meetings or RingCentral Video for free?

Zoom and RingCentral have free video conferencing software. RingCentral Video Pro supports 50-minute sessions for 100 attendees. It includes 10 hours of recording, AI insights and whiteboards. Zoom One Basic allows 40-minute meetings with 100 participants. It has local recording, team messaging and screen sharing. Both services work on mobile devices, tablets and desktops.

Will 911 work with RingCentral and Zoom?

Both VoIP providers support enhanced 911 services, allowing users to dial 911 from their softphone app or IP desk phone and reach the closest emergency response call center. Administrators can enable nomadic emergency services to automatically update locations. Zoom also offers added 911 call management with features like the ability to bridge in security personnel to live 911 calls, call recording and notifying personnel via email, SMS and chat

Do clients need to download apps to join RingCentral or Zoom video meetings?

Neither video conferencing tool requires users to download an app to join a meeting. Zoom and RingCentral offer web browser versions, accessible by clicking a link from a calendar or email invitation. 

Does RingCentral offer international calling plans?

RingCentral charges per-minute rates, which differ by location. Companies can purchase an international calling credit bundle if they wish to disable unlimited global calling from one or all accounts. The package covers international phone calls, faxes and SMS messages.