RingEX Review

Why RingEX Is Best for Collaboration

RingEX is a reliable business communications platform for messaging, video chatting and phone calls with easy access via web browser, desktop and mobile apps. RingCentral utilizes 34 data centers around the world and direct peering with more than 45 carriers and 200 internet service providers (ISPs) to provide a 99.999 percent uptime, ensuring hybrid and remote employees enjoy uninterrupted access and connectivity. 

For companies particularly interested in team collaboration, we love that the team chat and messaging feature operates like a digital workspace. This workspace provides immediate access to your past communications, pinned documents and shared files. It also makes it easy to reach colleagues through chat or an impromptu video call from the same application. With plans that include video conferencing, users can hold video meetings with screen sharing and in-meeting public and private chat capabilities on any internet-connected device. 

In addition to its built-in tools that fuel collaboration between remote employees and teams, RingEX also works well with third-party applications. Notably, there are more than 300 pre-built integrations available, and nearly endless potential for developers to add more customization with application programming interfaces for voice, short message service/multimedia messaging service (SMS/MMS), team messaging, video, fax, data and configuration. If collaboration and synchronicity are your goals, this is the business phone system for you — and it’s still a great fit if you’re using relatively little software overall.

The extensive app marketplace offers more than 100 CRM integrations. Source: RingEX

Usability

RingEX is relatively simple to implement and use for administrators and employees. Navigating between communications options on the lefthand sidebar is straightforward with a similar look and feel between the desktop and web browser experience. While the dashboard isn’t as sleek and intuitive as Ooma, which feels more like a consumer-oriented product than an office tool, it’s far from a clunky experience. 

Much of this platform’s ease of use comes through its extensive list of more than 300 prebuilt integrations that can connect your communication workflows with the tools you use the most. With integrations for highly rated CRM, SMS marketing, customer service and marketing automation platforms, you can conduct all of your customer-facing communications with the benefits of a UC platform and save time jumping between software applications for each task. This can help you start to build out your software infrastructure.

[Related article: Best CRM Software for Small Businesses]

RingEX is built on RingCentral’s highly reliable network, ensuring uninterrupted use. Source: RingCentral

With administrator permission, end users can modify their call-handling settings to plan ahead for vacations or reroute for sick days, including which devices, such as desk phones or mobile phones, should ring. New features included with RingSense AI make meetings easier with automatic note-taking and the ability to provide post-interaction insights. With accurate and searchable transcriptions, RingEX makes it easy to find information quickly across all past interactions.

RingEX Features

All RingEX plans include dozens of business call-handling features like a multilevel auto attendant and interactive voice response (IVR) menus. While it’s a capable phone system for general business purposes, we discovered a few additional features that set it apart as a communications platform built to support collaboration. 

Team Chat and Messaging

Whether inside or outside a physical office, online messaging is often the go-to method for workplace communication. RingEX’s team chat is a convenient way to keep in immediate contact with fully remote teams since employees can hop on a call or video conference directly from the app. The team messaging app also helps you stay organized with dedicated folders and threads for projects, topics and teams. 

You can send files, pin documents and manage projects by assigning tasks and updating stakeholders with built-in task management tools. We like that the in-app search function lets you find key details from old conversations or meetings, jump to contacts to make a call or connect with hundreds of integrations, including Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. The latter two might be among the only integrations you need this early in your business’s lifecycle, but RingEX’s numerous integrations clear an easy pathway for eventual growth.

Large Video Meetings

RingEX offers unlimited video meetings with HD video and audio and support for up to 200 video participants for Ultra subscribers (Core and Advanced subscribers are limited to 100 participants.) Each meeting is protected with end-to-end encryption, passcodes, waiting rooms and other host controls with or without the app. Users can flip seamlessly from mobile to desktop and enjoy advanced meeting insights with recordings that include AI-powered video summaries and highlight reels for easy recall and sharing. 

With remote and hybrid work taking employees to noisy environments, tools like AI-powered noise reduction automatically filter out unwanted background noise like lawnmowers and barking dogs to ensure a professional level of communication. Other collaborative tools include breakout rooms, team huddles, participant reactions and whiteboards. RingEX has a separate webinar platform with custom

Increase meeting engagement knowing the conversation is being written down automatically by your AI assistant. Source: RingEX

Real-time Note-taking

Included as part of RingSenseAI, RingEX’s automatic note-taking feature can capture call notes instantly, provide key updates, track decisions taken and memorialize action items for later use. As a real-time note-taker, everything is displayed during the call, keeping details at your disposal if you need to recall an important item or reference a specific figure during a conversation. 

With an AI assistant for everyone at the meeting, your team members can focus their attention on the conversation at hand instead of racing to jot down every important detail they’ll need to address. This increased focus will lead to superior employee productivity after the meeting as everyone works on their tasks. And when there’s only a small team working for your company, maximum productivity is of the utmost importance.

RingEX’s automated note-taking tool includes smart notes to surface important details in any conversation. Source: RingEX

Reporting and Analytics

With RingEX, you don’t need a separate contact center for live reporting on employee and group phone activities to help optimize workflows, empower teams and anticipate opportunities. While reporting tools vary by plan and available add-on, RingEX offers real-time call queue performance data to track trends across a wide variety of metrics. 

The easy-to-use dashboard has many prebuilt templates and opportunities for customization to display the data that matters to you. You can also project your dashboard onto a shared TV screen to provide real-time performance rankings in sales and support settings. The system also lets you set data-driven alerts and work with interactive reports that cover your devices, rooms, endpoints and network.

Admittedly, this is a feature that not all small businesses need. For example, if you run a boutique marketing agency that serves a handful of clients, the reports you generate for them might have little to do with business phone usage. Consider the extent of reporting and analytics you need, if any, as you choose among RingEX pricing plans.

RingEX Costs

RingEX recently trimmed its offerings from four to three available plans, starting at $20 per month with an annual subscription. Businesses can save up to 33 percent with an annual plan, and volume discounts are available when purchasing more than 50 user accounts.

Paid add-ons are available for additional vanity numbers, toll-free numbers, high-volume SMS and push-to-talk. Other paid add-ons include licenses for other RingCentral products to support webinars, events, AI contact centers and AI sales support. 

Among the plans below, we feel that Core is the best fit for most small businesses. Unless your organization has a sales team or plans to host especially large meetings, you might be overspending on higher-priced plans.

RingEX Setup

Downloading and installing RingEX is a fast and straightforward process. Once you receive your welcome email, you can log into your account and begin sending messages, initiating video meetings and placing calls. Mobile users can find the app on Android and iOS app stores. 

For administrators, we like that the Express Setup tool walks you through the steps to set up users, company greetings, operator extensions, dial-by-name directories, call forwarding and other basic communications features. Most of the basic configuration is accomplished through drop-down menus, providing a limited number of options to ensure your phone system operates correctly. 

If this isn’t your first time setting up a business phone system, you shouldn’t have any surprises implementing RingEX. However, we believe the visual call flow builders provided by many companies including Aircall and Dialpad are a bit easier to navigate for first-time admins. Check out our Aircall review or our Dialpad review to learn more.

We love that you can find helpful training courses for basic and advanced skills through RingCentral University. The vendor’s self-paced, video-guided tutorials designed for users and admins provide great instruction on all aspects of the system, including Express Setup for new users. For any new task that feels complicated, you are likely to find a helpful training course through a RingCentral University learning module.

RingEX Customer Service

When RingEX reorganized its plans, going from four unified phone service offerings to three, it updated its customer service availability. RingEX now offers unlimited 24/7 customer support by phone and chat with all its cloud-based business phone plans. Professional implementation help is also available to assist new users with planning, designing, implementation, optimization and ongoing support.

RingCentral University offers a small set of video lessons geared toward new users and administrators. The free training videos last between three and 30 minutes, covering basics like the platform introduction and essential setup. It also offers more advanced courses on adding new features and optimizing sales with RingSense, but new and small businesses might not benefit from these advanced features until later in their life cycles. You’ll also find a searchable self-help center with quick answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) and articles covering every aspect of RingEX’s features and capabilities.

RingEX Drawbacks

Part of running an efficient organization is controlling costs by allocating resources in the most efficient way possible. While some employees work heavily with customers or collaborate with teams, others have more of a siloed role with limited communication requirements beyond email and occasional video conferencing. The ability to mix-and-match calling plans, which is not offered with RingEX, ensures businesses can provide the right tools to the right people without overspending for some or underdelivering for others. A few competitors including Nextiva and 8×8 allow customers to pair different plans with different users under the same account.

When RingEX with RingSense AI launched in 2024, it only included its essential AI features for live transactions, closed captioning, video summaries and video highlights. Its premium AI features are still in early preview mode for select customers. As a result, not everyone will have access to higher-end AI features like real-time note-taking for calls, generative AI search, AI writer for team messaging and AI recap for unread messages. If you’re interested in a fully realized AI-powered business phone system, you might want to consider Dialpad, our choice as the best phone system for voice intelligence. 

Methodology

To find the top business phone systems, we researched and analyzed more than a dozen solutions on the market. These investigations included thorough evaluations conducted through paid and free trial accounts. We also participated in vendor demos whenever possible. With each product, we examined the features, ease of use, implementation process, integrations, costs and customer service options. We selected RingEX as the best business phone system for collaboration because of its ample integration options, large video meetings, digital workspace for past communications and globally diverse data centers for reliability around the world. 

Overall Value

We recommend RingEX for …

• Businesses with a significant number of full-time remote or hybrid employees.
• Businesses looking for basic AI productivity tools.
• Businesses with at least some software integration requirements.

We don’t recommend RingEX for …

• Businesses that need to provide different calling features or plans to different employees or office locations.
• Businesses looking for advanced AI productivity tools.
• Anyone looking for a low-cost business phone system.