Looking for Voice AI Agent alternatives to RingCentral? See how Telnyx and others stack up for customer support at scale.
Customer expectations have shifted. Voice interactions need to feel natural, respond instantly, and scale without breaking the bank. While RingCentral has entered the Voice AI space with offerings like AI Receptionist and AI Agent Assist, businesses are discovering these solutions weren't built for the demands of modern Voice AI at scale.
Legacy unified communications platforms face a fundamental problem: they're trying to add AI capabilities on top of infrastructure designed for traditional phone systems. The result? Higher latency, fragmented vendor relationships, and pricing that quickly spirals as your call volumes grow.
If you're evaluating for Voice AI Agents, you need a platform purpose-built for conversational AI. Here's what to consider and which providers deliver.
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RingCentral built its reputation on unified communications, but Voice AI Agents demand different infrastructure priorities. Businesses moving away from RingCentral for AI-powered customer support cite several limitations:
Latency issues from fragmented architecture
RingCentral layers AI capabilities on top of third-party infrastructure rather than owning the full stack. When your voice agent needs to route between separate systems for telephony, speech recognition, and AI inference, each handoff adds milliseconds that compound into noticeable delays. Contact centers report significantly higher hang-up rates when voice agents take longer than one second to respond.
Pricing complexity and unpredictable costs
RingCentral's pricing structure requires businesses to piece together multiple add-ons: the base RingEX plan ($20-45 per user/month), separate RingCX contact center licensing ($65+ per user/month), and additional charges for international numbers, toll-free lines, and AI features. This fragmentation makes it difficult to forecast costs as you scale Voice AI deployments.
Limited developer control
Businesses building custom Voice AI workflows need direct access to the underlying infrastructure. RingCentral's platform prioritizes ease of use for standard UCaaS deployments over the flexibility developers need to build sophisticated multi-turn conversations, custom routing logic, or fine-tuned models.
Customer service challenges
RingCentral holds a 2.2 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot, with user reviews consistently highlighting frustrations with support quality, particularly around implementation complexity and troubleshooting. When deploying business-critical Voice AI Agents, responsive technical support becomes essential.
Not every provider claiming Voice AI capabilities can deliver production-grade performance. Businesses deploying Voice AI at scale need platforms that address these core requirements:
Providers that own their telephony infrastructure, compute resources, and AI tooling eliminate the latency and coordination problems that plague multi-vendor setups. Colocating GPUs with telephony points of presence reduces round-trip time to under 200ms, delivering conversations that feel natural.
Look for providers with straightforward per-minute pricing that includes speech-to-text, text-to-speech, AI inference, and telephony costs. Avoid platforms requiring separate add-ons for core Voice AI functionality.
Production Voice AI deployments need access to open-source models, custom fine-tuning capabilities, and programmable APIs that give you control over conversation flows, agent handoffs, and integration with your existing systems.
Voice AI Agents handling customer support can't afford downtime. Choose providers with carrier licensing, redundant network architecture, and SLAs backing 99.99% uptime.
Telnyx delivers the only true full-stack Voice AI platform, combining carrier-grade telephony infrastructure with colocated GPU compute and flexible AI tooling. Unlike providers that layer AI on rented infrastructure, Telnyx owns its private global MPLS network and operates as a licensed carrier in 30+ markets.
Why Telnyx stands out
Ultra-low latency through infrastructure colocation
Telnyx colocates dedicated GPUs directly with global telephony points of presence, reducing the physical distance between speech recognition, AI inference, and voice synthesis. This architectural advantage delivers sub-200ms round-trip time, powering conversations that feel genuinely human. Other providers relying on third-party telephony must route traffic across multiple networks, adding latency that breaks conversational flow.
Dramatically lower pricing
Telnyx Voice AI Agents run at $0.05 per minute, including speech-to-text, text-to-speech, open-source AI models, and PSTN connectivity. That's 10x cheaper than most cloud AI providers and eliminates the pricing complexity of platforms requiring separate charges for each component. Businesses can forecast costs accurately as they scale from pilot to production.
Complete developer control
Choose from Telnyx's open-source LLM library or bring your own API keys. Swap models anytime without vendor lock-in. Build sophisticated multi-agent workflows with seamless call transfers and conversation handoffs. Access real-time media streaming, programmable call control, and webhooks for deep integration with your existing systems.
Direct PSTN connectivity
As a licensed carrier with global voice infrastructure, Telnyx connects Voice AI Agents directly to the phone network without relying on third-party telephony providers. Provision phone numbers, configure SIP trunks, and manage call routing on the same platform running your AI agents.
Best for: Businesses building production Voice AI deployments that need predictable economics, developer flexibility, and carrier-grade reliability. Particularly valuable for healthcare providers requiring HIPAA compliance, financial services with strict latency requirements, and e-commerce brands handling high call volumes.
Dialpad offers cloud communications with built-in AI features including real-time transcription, sentiment analysis, and coaching suggestions for contact center agents. The platform focuses on augmenting human agents rather than fully autonomous Voice AI.
Strengths: Strong integration with business tools, good call quality for traditional VoIP use cases, real-time agent assistance features.
Limitations: Voice AI capabilities are primarily agent-assist tools rather than autonomous conversation agents. Pricing starts higher than purpose-built Voice AI platforms, and businesses need to build their own infrastructure for fully automated voice interactions.
Best for: Teams wanting AI-enhanced calling features to improve human agent performance rather than deploying fully autonomous Voice AI Agents.
Five9 provides contact center software with conversational AI capabilities integrated across voice and digital channels. The platform uses advanced speech recognition and natural language processing for handling routine customer interactions.
Strengths: Mature contact center feature set, omnichannel support, strong CRM integrations with Salesforce and ServiceNow.
Limitations: Pricing is per-agent rather than usage-based, making it expensive for businesses wanting to scale Voice AI deployments without proportional increases in software costs. Geographic failover features help with reliability but don't address latency issues inherent in non-colocated architectures.
Best for: Enterprises with existing Five9 deployments looking to add AI capabilities, or organizations needing comprehensive omnichannel contact center features beyond Voice AI.
Retell AI offers no-code builders and robust APIs for deploying Voice AI Agents. The platform provides auto language detection across 10+ languages, custom voice cloning, and real-time analytics dashboards.
Strengths: Quick time to deployment with drag-and-drop builder, multilingual capabilities, HIPAA and PCI compliance options for regulated industries.
Limitations: Retell depends on third-party providers for telephony infrastructure, requiring businesses to coordinate between multiple vendors. This introduces potential points of failure and makes troubleshooting more complex when issues arise.
Best for: Businesses prioritizing quick prototyping and deployment over long-term scalability, or teams comfortable managing relationships with multiple infrastructure providers.
Plivo delivers Voice AI Agents with customizable language models, text-to-speech providers, and multilingual support. The platform hosts agents on Plivo's voice platform with 99.99% uptime and competitive per-minute pricing.
Strengths: Lower pricing than many enterprise platforms, well-documented APIs, responsive support team.
Limitations: Voice AI capabilities are newer additions to Plivo's core telephony offering. Some reviewers note the dashboard could be more intuitive, and the platform lacks some of the advanced AI orchestration features available from providers focused exclusively on conversational AI.
Best for: Growing businesses looking for cost-effective Voice AI with solid telephony infrastructure, particularly those already familiar with programmable voice APIs.
| Platform | Infrastructure ownership | Latency performance (RTT) | Developer flexibility | PSTN connectivity | Primary focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Telnyx | Full-stack (telephony + GPU colocation) | Sub-200ms | Complete control, open-source LLMs + BYOK | Direct carrier connectivity (30+ markets) | Production Voice AI at scale |
| Dialpad | Third-party infrastructure | Standard | Pre-built AI features | Third-party | UCaaS with AI assistance |
| Five9 | Third-party infrastructure | Standard | Moderate | Third-party | Contact center platform |
| Retell AI | Third-party infrastructure | ~800ms | High (no-code + API) | Third-party | Rapid voice AI deployment |
| Plivo | Telephony platform | Varies | Moderate | Programmable voice API | Voice infrastructure provider |
Your choice depends on where you are in your Voice AI journey and what you're optimizing for:
Choose Telnyx if:
Consider Dialpad if:
Evaluate Five9 if:
Look at Retell AI if:
Explore Plivo if:
Voice AI Agent platforms differ fundamentally in how they're architected. Providers layering AI on top of third-party telephony infrastructure face inherent constraints around latency, cost structure, and operational complexity.
Telnyx built for Voice AI from the infrastructure up. By colocating GPUs with carrier-grade telephony and operating a private global network, Telnyx eliminates the architectural compromises that limit other platforms. This translates to faster conversations, more predictable costs, and simpler operations as you scale.
Businesses deploying production Voice AI need platforms purpose-built for real-time conversational experiences. RingCentral's legacy UCaaS architecture wasn't designed for this use case. The alternatives that succeed long-term will be those with the infrastructure fundamentals to deliver human-like conversations at scale
Ready to see the difference infrastructure makes? Try Telnyx Voice AI Agents and experience reduced latency, transparent pricing, and carrier-grade reliability in a platform built specifically for conversational AI.
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