When comparing Five9 vs RingCentral, you're choosing between a dedicated contact center platform and unified communications across your whole business. Either way, Alpharun adds the coaching layer that turns your best reps' behaviors into everyone's playbook.

Five9 vs RingCentral vs Alpharun: What's the difference?

Five9 is a contact center platform. It handles calls, digital channels, and dialing for sales and service teams.

RingCentral is an all-in-one platform. It combines business phone, video, messaging, and contact center tools in one place.

Alpharun is an AI-powered sales coaching platform. It learns what makes your best reps close more deals, then delivers that playbook to every rep through real-time coaching.

Choose Five9 if: You only need a contact center and want tools built for agent performance.

Choose RingCentral if: You want phone, video, messaging, and contact center from one vendor.

Add Alpharun if: You want every rep performing like your top 10%. It works alongside your contact center to find what your closers do differently and turn those behaviors into coaching for the whole team.

Meet Five9: Features and highlights

Five9 is a contact center platform. It handles inbound calls, outbound calls, digital channels, AI, and workforce tools.

Core capabilities include:

• Collaborative Intelligence blends human agents with AI

• Intelligent Virtual Agent lets customers help themselves

• Agent Assist coaches reps in real time during calls

• Workforce tools for productivity and conversion rates

• Digital channels: voice, email, chat, SMS, social, mobile, video

• Pre-built integrations with Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft, Oracle, and Zendesk

Where Five9 falls short

The 50-seat minimum and annual contracts make Five9 hard to test for smaller teams. Advanced AI and workforce tools require custom pricing.

Meet RingCentral: Features and highlights

RingCentral is a unified communications platform. It combines business phone, contact center, video, and AI agents in one place.

RingCentral’s core capabilities: 

• 300+ pre-built integrations including Salesforce

• Real-time analytics for live queue monitoring and resource allocation

• AI features available across all pricing tiers

• Unified platform connects contact center with business phone, video, and team messaging

Where RingCentral falls short

RingCentral is an all-in-one platform, not a dedicated contact center. Sales teams focused on outbound calls may want more specialized tools.

Five9 vs RingCentral: Feature-by-feature comparison

Five9 and RingCentral take different approaches. This breakdown shows where each platform wins:

AI and automation

Five9 blends human agents with AI through Collaborative Intelligence. Intelligent Virtual Agent lets customers help themselves. Agent Assist coaches reps in real time during calls.

RingCentral RingCX includes AI features on all tiers. AI Receptionist handles calls but costs extra as an add-on. AI Agent Assist and AI Quality Management require Professional tier or higher.

Winner: Five9. Five9 includes Intelligent Virtual Agent and Agent Assist as core features. RingCentral charges extra for AI Receptionist and locks AI Agent Assist behind higher tiers.

Workforce optimization

Five9 offers workforce tools that help agents work faster, solve issues on the first call, and close more sales.

RingCentral includes AI Quality Management on Professional and AI Workforce Management on Elite. Managers can watch call queues live and move resources as needed.

Winner: Tie. Both platforms offer workforce tools. Five9 highlights conversion rate impact. RingCentral offers real-time queue monitoring.

Digital channels

Five9 offers voice, email, chat, SMS, and social messaging. Past customer interactions follow them no matter which channel they use.

RingCentral RingCX includes voice and 20+ digital channels on Standard. Enterprise expands to 30+ channels with advanced routing.

Winner: RingCentral. RingCX includes more digital channels at entry-level pricing.

Integrations

Five9 offers pre-built integrations with Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft, Oracle, and Zendesk. REST APIs available for custom CRM work.

RingCentral offers 300+ pre-built integrations including Salesforce. Microsoft Teams integration lets agents work in their existing tools. APIs and SDKs support custom builds.

Winner: RingCentral. Broader integration library gives RingCentral more flexibility out of the box.

Pricing comparison

Five9 pricing:

• Digital: $119/user/month

• Core (adds voice and AI basics): $159/user/month

• Plus, Pro, Enterprise: Custom pricing

• 50-seat minimum, annual contracts required

RingCentral RingCX pricing (billed annually):

• Standard: $65/user/month (voice + 20 digital channels)

• Professional: $95/user/month (adds AI Quality Management, AI Agent Assist)

• Elite: $145/user/month (adds AI Workforce Management, Interaction Analytics)

• Enterprise: Custom pricing

RingCentral offers lower entry pricing with no published seat minimums.

Five9 vs RingCentral: What we recommend

Five9 wins for teams that need a dedicated contact center. Its workforce tools and AI features help reps perform better and close more sales.

RingCentral wins for teams that want everything in one place. Phone, video, messaging, and contact center all live on a single platform.

The real question: Do you need a dedicated contact center or an all-in-one platform?

Both Five9 and RingCentral track call metrics and offer AI features. Neither analyzes why your top reps convert more than the rest. If that's the gap you're trying to close, Alpharun adds that layer on top of either platform.

Where Alpharun fits: The performance layer for either platform

Alpharun is an AI-powered sales coaching platform built to work alongside your contact center. It plugs into your existing setup in about a week and immediately starts decoding why your best reps close more, then turns those behaviors into coaching for everyone else.

What Alpharun does differently:

• Analyzes thousands of your actual sales calls to find behaviors that drive conversions

• Builds custom playbooks based on what your top performers do differently

• Grades every call against your playbook and delivers coaching notes to each rep

• Customizes scoring to match your compliance rules and sales process

Extra capabilities:

• AI voice agents for after-hours lead qualification, scheduling, and information gathering

• HIPAA and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant

• Managers get weekly digest reports; agents get coaching notes between calls

How Alpharun integrates with your contact center

Alpharun connects to Five9, Genesys, and other major call center platforms. You're up and running in about a week.

The combined workflow:

1. Five9 or RingCentral routes calls and manages conversations

2. Alpharun analyzes each call against your custom playbook

3. Reps receive coaching notes between calls

4. Managers see performance dashboards with specific improvement areas

5. The playbook updates as Alpharun learns what works

Keep your contact center running the calls. Alpharun adds the layer that turns your best reps into the blueprint for everyone else.

Your contact center is just the starting point

Most sales floors look the same. A few reps carry most of the revenue while everyone else hovers around average. Your contact center routes the calls, but it can't teach your team to sell like your best closers.

Alpharun can. It analyzes your actual winning calls to uncover what top performers do differently, then builds a custom playbook that fits your business and your compliance rules. Every rep gets sentence-level coaching in real time.

That's the coaching side. On top of that, AI agents handle repetitive tasks like scheduling, so your reps stay focused on closing.

Book a demo with Alpharun to give every rep a roadmap to quota.

FAQs

1. Is Five9 the same type of platform as RingCentral?

No. Five9 is a dedicated contact center platform (CCaaS). RingCentral is a unified communications platform (UCaaS + CCaaS) with contact center as one product among many.

2. Which is better for contact centers: Five9 or RingCentral?

Five9 focuses only on contact center operations with workforce tools and AI coaching. RingCentral offers contact center alongside business phone, video, and messaging.

Choose Five9 if contact center is your core need. Choose RingCentral if you want unified communications. Add Alpharun as your coaching platform if you want custom playbooks built from your top performers' actual calls.

3. Can Alpharun work with Five9 or RingCentral?

Yes. Alpharun integrates with Five9, Genesys, and other major contact center platforms.

The integration pulls call recordings from your existing system. Alpharun analyzes these calls and delivers coaching without replacing your contact center.

4. How is Alpharun different from Five9's Agent Assist or RingCentral's AI features?

Five9 and RingCentral provide real-time prompts and productivity tools.

Alpharun builds custom playbooks by analyzing your top performers' actual calls. The coaching reflects your specific compliance rules and sales techniques.