Insight

Five9 review: Features, pricing & what users wish they knew

Five9 review: Features, pricing & what users wish they knew

Written by

Eloisa Mae

Reviewed by

Paul Dornier

Published on

Feb 12, 2026

Five9 handles call routing and outbound dialing for big contact centers, but could it also work well for your high-volume B2C sales team? This Five9 review looks at the features, what real users say, and pricing to help you decide if it's right for your inside sales team.

Quick verdict

Five9 manages call routing, multi-channel conversations, and outbound dialing well for large teams. The platform offers solid reliability at scale. The 50-seat minimum and tiered pricing lock many features behind expensive plans.

Five9 works best for inside sales teams with 50+ reps who need reliable dialing and are ready to commit to annual contracts.

What’s Five9?

Five9 is a cloud contact center platform that thousands of organizations use for inbound calling, outbound dialing, digital engagement, and AI-powered analytics. The platform connects with CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics.

Five9 serves sales, service, and blended teams. This review focuses on how it performs in high-volume B2C sales operations targeting consumers rather than businesses.

Five9 features

Five9 organizes its product into four main categories:

Core Cloud

  • Global Voice: Handles voice infrastructure across regions

  • Agent Desktop Plus: Gives reps a unified workspace for calls and customer data

  • Supervisor Plus: Lets managers monitor calls and coach in real time

  • Engagement Workflow: Automates call routing and task assignments

  • CRM Integrations: Connects with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and others

  • UC Integrations: Links with unified communications tools

  • APIs & SDKs: Allows custom development and integrations

AI & Automation

  • AI Agent Assist: Provides reps with real-time suggestions during calls

  • AI Summaries: Generates call summaries so managers don't review every recording

  • AI Insights: Surfaces trends and patterns across conversations

  • GenAI Studio: Builds custom AI workflows

  • Workflow Automation: Automates repetitive tasks

  • Reporting & Analytics: Tracks performance metrics and call data

Employee Engagement

  • Quality Management: Scores calls and tracks QA metrics

  • Workforce Management: Handles scheduling and forecasting

  • Interaction Analytics: Analyzes conversations for trends

  • Performance Management: Tracks rep performance over time

  • Gamification: Adds leaderboards and challenges to motivate reps

Customer Engagement

  • Inbound, Outbound, Blended: Handles all call directions

  • Digital Engagement: Covers chat, SMS/text, social, and email

  • Voice, Video, Mobile: Supports multiple communication channels

Many features sit in higher pricing tiers. AI Summaries and AI Insights start at the Core plan ($159/user/month). Quality Management and Workforce Management require Pro tier or above with custom pricing.

Five9 reviews: What real users are saying

Five9 lists impressive features on paper. How does it actually perform for teams running thousands of calls daily? Here's what users report:

Five9 pros from users

  • Smooth implementation, strong AI integration: One Five9 review says their switch went smoothly. The AI tools worked well with their existing systems and helped them launch faster, spend less money, and keep staff happier.

  • Easy to use for QA and agent monitoring: Users say it's simple to review call recordings and find what they need. Managers can watch agents work in real time, and scoring how well agents perform is easy.

  • Custom dashboards and automated reporting: Another Five9 review says building dashboards to track important numbers is simple. It connects well with Outlook, and automated reports handle the tracking work for you.

  • Reliable for high call volumes with remote flexibility: Users say Five9 handles lots of calls without problems. Supervisors can see what's happening, and it works just as well for remote workers as office workers.

Five9 cons from users

  • Steep learning curve and dated interface: Users say the features are hard to learn without training. Setting things up takes extra work, and the design looks old.

  • Report setup complexity and slow peak-hour performance: Users find it hard to customize reports the way they want. Reports take longer to load during busy times.

  • Frequent agent issues and expensive add-ons: Users say agents run into technical problems often. Building reports takes manual work, and important features cost extra money.

Five9 pricing

Plan

Price

What you get

Digital

$119/user/month

Chat, email, SMS, social, core tools (no voice)

Core

$159/user/month

Voice plus digital, AI summaries, transcription

Plus

Custom

Full AI (Agent Assist, AI Knowledge)

Pro

Custom

QM, WFM, Analytics

Enterprise

Custom

Everything plus advanced AI

Important details:

  • 50-seat minimum required

  • Annual contracts required

  • Many advanced features (Quality Management, Workforce Management, Interaction Analytics) require Pro tier or custom pricing

For a deeper breakdown, see our full guide on Five9 pricing.

Our take on Five9 for B2C sales teams

Five9 handles what B2C sales teams need most: reliable infrastructure at scale. The dialer processes high call volumes without dropping connections, CRM integrations keep customer data accessible, and AI Summaries let managers review performance without listening to every recording.

There are real access barriers, though. Smaller teams get blocked by the 50-seat minimum, teams needing Quality Management face Pro-tier pricing, and new admins wrestle with configurations for weeks before feeling comfortable.

Five9 manages your call flow but doesn't coach your reps. Alpharun integrates directly to analyze recordings, identify what your top closers do differently, and coach every agent in real time.

Is Five9 right for you?

Five9 works well if you:

  • Run a high-volume inside sales operation with 50+ reps

  • Need reliable outbound dialing that handles thousands of calls daily

  • Have the budget for annual contracts and can commit to seat minimums

  • Want a mature platform with strong CRM integrations

  • Have admin resources to handle configuration and optimization

Five9 may not fit if you:

  • Have fewer than 50 agents

  • Need advanced QA and analytics without paying for Pro tier

  • Want month-to-month flexibility instead of annual contracts

  • Need a platform that reps can learn quickly without extensive training

Scale what your top performers do with Alpharun

Here's the reality: you could double your team size tomorrow and still have the same problem. Most of your reps will underperform while a handful carry the revenue load. Hiring more bodies doesn't fix the performance gap.

Your top performers handle objections differently. They read hesitation better. They know when to push and when to back off. That knowledge sits in their heads and in thousands of Five9 recordings nobody has time to analyze properly.

What you get:

  • Custom playbooks from your actual top performers: Not generic sales tips. The real tactics that work for your team when selling to your customers.

  • Real-time coaching during calls: Reps see what to say next when prospects hesitate, right in that moment.

  • Automatic scoring on every call: You don't sample a few calls per week and hope you catch problems. Every call gets scored.

  • Compliance built in: SOC 2 Type 2 compliant with all your recording notices and rules baked into the scoring.

  • Clear reports for managers: Weekly reports show exactly where each rep struggles, so you coach the right people on the right things.

Alpharun integrates directly with Five9 to turn your call recordings into coaching that scales what your winners do to everyone else, while AI agents handle the scheduling and qualification calls your reps shouldn't be spending time on anyway.

Schedule a demo to see how Alpharun turns your Five9 recordings into custom playbooks that scale your top performers' tactics.

Turn every rep into your best rep

AI sales coaching purpose-built for healthcare, insurance, and financial services.

Uncover your highest-converting sales playbook

Coach in real-time so reps close with top-10% consistency

Boost conversion with 24/7 AI voice agents

Turn every rep into your best rep

AI sales coaching purpose-built for healthcare, insurance, and financial services.

Uncover your highest-converting sales playbook

Coach in real-time so reps close with top-10% consistency

Boost conversion with 24/7 AI voice agents

The new frontier of performance is waiting

The new frontier of performance is waiting

The new frontier of performance is waiting

The new frontier of performance is waiting