Nextiva is an incredibly popular provider in the business communications space. Its flagship products include an all-in-one customer experience platform and a standard business communications system.
It also offers SIP trunking, online faxing, and social/reputation management solutions.
You can use the links above to jump ahead to the products you’re interested in. Otherwise, keep scrolling for a high-level overview before we get into the details.
High-Level Overview: Nextiva’s Our #1 Pick Across the Board
Aside from the fact that Nextiva has more than 100,000 customers, one million users, a 94% customer satisfaction rating, and a proven track record that dates back to 2006, it’s a user-friendly and versatile business communications provider we recommend for just about everyone.
Whether you use its business phone system, call center platform, SIP trunking services, collaboration suite, or reputation management tools, there’s a lot to love.
Excellent User Interface
If you like minimalist, clean, and modern interfaces, you’ll love using Nextiva. Everything’s where you expect it to be and regular users aren’t burdened with administrative controls. Its desktop and mobile apps are highly rated, too.
You’ll also be able to use NextOS, which brings together standard phone, customer experience, and collaboration suite users into a centralized system.
Even if you have users on all sorts of different Nextiva plans, admins can manage them all in one location.
You’ll be able to set up automations, leverage APIs, and view company-wide analytics in a modern and clean interface without having to jump around to different applications.
Highly Customizable
Nextiva offers a ton of different products and is continuously adding more functionality to its list of offerings. From social media management to advanced business texting, it offers a ton of unique modules you won’t find with similar brands.
The best part is that it’s all entirely customizable. All you have to do is reach out and they’ll help you put together a tailored plan that includes everything you need with nothing you don’t.
Nearly Infinite Scalability
Nextiva works with brand new businesses and enterprises, including Taco Bell, Pac-12, YMCA, and United Way with well over 10,000 users a piece.
No matter how much your company grows, you’ll never have to worry about outgrowing Nextiva. It has standard phone systems, lightweight call center solutions for small teams, and a full customer experience platform for midsize to enterprise companies.
Services for Every Business Size
Nextiva’s standard business phone pricing is lower than many of its competitors, despite its wide range of features, excellent reliability, and five-star customer support.
If you’re looking for something more advanced, Nextiva offers a call center solution for smaller teams as well as a full contact center and customer experience platform if you have hundreds of agents across social, email, SMS, and other digital channels.
99.999% Uptime
That’s not a guarantee, it’s real-life data across eight data centers. Paired with 24/7/365 active monitoring, you get an ultra-reliable platform you don’t have to think twice about.
Anytime Customer Service On Every Plan
No matter how much (or little) you pay, you get 24/7 customer support via phone, email, or live chat. It’s never a struggle to get in touch with a human.
Wide Range of Hardware Options
You can use devices you already have (BYOD), rent hardware, or purchase outright from Nextiva. It offers a wide range of brands, including Yealink, Poly, Cisco, and Snom. You’ll be able to buy desk phones, conference phones, adapters, and headsets directly. Alternatively, you can purchase them elsewhere and configure them to work with your Nextiva system.
Nextiva’s Omnichannel Contact Center Solution: A Complete AI-Powered Customer Experience Platform
Nextiva offers call and contact center plans for sales and service teams. Whether you’re just getting started or have hundreds of agents and are unhappy with your current system, it’s a modern, cloud-based solution that’s a joy to use.
With its wide range of options, it’s suitable to all business types and sizes.
We don’t say that often and we try not to claim anything’s the best for most people because the true “best” usually doesn’t exist. But that’s not the case, here—Nextiva’s commitment to ongoing improvement, scalability, customization, dedicated customer service, and overall capabilities of its call and contact center solutions make it truly standout as an top-tier choice for just about anyone.
Check out our full list of call and contact center recommendations to learn more about how it compares.
Nextiva Customer Experience Platform: The Good
Lightweight option for smaller teams: Nextiva’s full omnichannel contact solution is expensive and advanced, making it better for midsize or large teams with hundreds of agents. However, Nextiva also offers a call center solution for smaller teams. It’s an affordable choice if you have fewer than 100 agents and are only focused on managing calls, rather than inquiries from multiple channels.
Recent acquisition: Nextiva acquired Thrio, an enterprise contact center solution focused on leveraging AI throughout the customer journey, in January of 2024. This is a clear indicator that they’re serious about growing, expanding, and future-proofing their contact center offerings.
Powerful workflow engine: You’ll be able to set up custom workflows to automate repetitive tasks, update contact records, sync with your other systems, generate reports, configure notifications, send follow ups, initiate surveys, trigger automated replies or escalations based on keywords and sentiment, and more. It’s entirely customizable using a drag-and-drop builder. Other providers tend to make automations really hard to configure, but that’s not the case here.
True omnichannel: The platform routes live chat, voice, email, texting, social, and messaging app inquiries to the right agents. No matter the channel customers prefer, Nextiva centralizes it all and ties it to contacts for full interaction histories in a few clicks. Simpler alternatives only focus on voice or are missing critical channels, so it’s great that you get it all in one.
Advanced inbound routing: From skills-based, time-of-day, and auto attendant routing to speech recognition IVRs and a drag-and-drop call flow builder, you’ll be able to route inquiries however you’d like. Nextiva also includes a unique feature that automatically reroutes callers to the agent they previously spoke to, letting them reconnect without having to start over with a new agent.
Outbound campaign management: Nextiva offers dynamic scripting, click to call, smart dialing, and outbound automations for more efficient campaigns. You’ll also be able to monitor campaign performance with custom reports and real-time dashboards.
AI-powered voice, chat, and text bots: With Nextiva’s powerful conversational AI, you’ll get call summaries, transcriptions, AI insights, and even compliance audits without lifting a finger. Many other contact center solutions stop there. However, Nextiva also lets you use it to answer voice, chat, and text inquiries automatically or to offer a range of self-service options to free up agents for more complex situations.
Quality assurance and monitoring: From automated threshold notifications (not something we’ve seen elsewhere) and performance analytics to customer satisfaction surveys, live monitoring, and call recording, managers and supervisors can keep tabs on quality across every interaction.
Dynamic workforce management: You won’t have to worry about scheduling or forecasting for different skills, channels, and availabilities. You’ll get all the tools you need to allocate and optimize your workforce. With more affordable solutions, workforce management is often left out entirely.
Real-time dashboards and customizable reporting: Nextiva pulls together detailed interaction data across every channel you use to help you visualize the full picture. You can also build custom reports, schedule them in advance or at regular intervals, and even start with templates you can update as needed. From agent-specific and real-time reports to historical, comparative, and location data, you can easily get all the information you need (and more).
Potential Drawbacks of Nextiva’s Contact Center Solution
Pricier than simpler alternatives: Nextiva’s lightweight call center solution starts around $50 per agent per month and the full contact center platform starts around $129 per agent per month. These are far from the cheapest rates out there, but it’s justifiable given how much power, customization, and functionality you get. Compared to similar omnichannel solutions, Nextiva is extremely competitive–most of their plans also include unlimited texting and faxing, which can be hit or miss with other providers.
Cheaper options often forego non-voice channels, customizable reporting, workforce management, and other capabilities midsize or large teams need.
Confusing pricing: Different pages on Nextiva’s website show different contact center plans with varying names, features, and dollar amounts, so it’s not all that clear what you can expect to pay. However, you’ll be able to work directly with Nextiva’s sales team to put together a plan and price point that matches your needs.
Steeper learning curve: Because of the sheer power of the platform, there’s a lot to it. Getting everything set up how you need it can take time and agents likely will need some training to understand how everything works.
To help smooth the transition, Nextiva offers 1,000’s of self-implementation tools including an in-app setup wizard, an extensive (and up to date) knowledge base, tutorials, daily webinars, and an active community forum. Plus, there’s a dedicated implementation team and 24/7 in-house support you can get in touch with at any time. If you need additional help, Nextiva offers premium professional installation for complex setups and advanced training.
Potential to over automate: With so many automation and integration opportunities, it’s easy to daydream about the endless ways to utilize Nextiva’s API, workflow builder, and AI capabilities. However, Nextiva’s thoughtful consultation process helps isolate the most important areas to introduce automation without going overboard. In most cases, they recommend automating mundane and repetitive tasks, like answering common questions, processing payments, and verifying caller information.
Omnichannel Contact Center Plans and Pricing
Many brand new call centers can start with Nextiva’s standard phone system and upgrade whenever they’re ready.
The Enterprise plan starts at $31.95 per month and comes with auto attendant, ring groups, and recordings, making it on par with other small business call center solutions like Aircall or Cloudtalk.
Once you move to the lightweight call center plan at $50 per user per month, you’ll be paying the exact same amount as Aircall and Cloudtalk’s higher tiers.
However, Nextiva offers superior scalability so you’ll never have to worry about outgrowing it. With the others, you’ll be at the very top of what they can offer you and you run the risk of having to switch to something else.
Once you get to the omnichannel contact center solution, it becomes more comparable to RingCentral, TalkDesk, and Dialpad.
At this level, Nextiva’s a bit more expensive. However, it offers an unparalleled agent experience plus a more powerful and customizable platform overall. There are also no hidden fees or unexpected costs. More importantly, you’ll never outgrow Nextiva–it can handle everything you need as you grow, which isn’t something we can say about cheaper Nextiva alternatives.
Avoiding the nightmare of having to switch providers (again) makes it worth the extra investment.
Nextiva Business Phone and Communications Platform: Best Balance of Functionality, Affordability, and Ease of Use
Nextiva’s business communications solution is more than just a phone system. It covers video, text, faxing, team chat, and lightweight CRM functionality.
It’s a great choice for any sized businesses that need a full suite of collaboration tools on top of a business phone system. If you’re unhappy with your existing system or looking to centralize internal and external communications, it’s the way to go.
Compared to similarly priced products, Nextiva delivers more value per dollar and is far easier to use.
It offers a superior interface and an overall user experience that just works. Even from an administration standpoint, there’s virtually no learning curve—that paired with excellent documentation means you can have your new system up and running in less than an hour.
Check out our full list of business phone providers to learn more about how it stacks up.
Nextiva VoIP Phone Services: The Good
Streamlined implementation: You can have your entire system running in around 15 minutes. Obviously this is only true for small, simple configurations. But Nextiva is definitely one of the easier systems to set up.
Bulk user importing: In March of 2024, Nextiva added bulk user importing, which lets you upload a spreadsheet of users, settings, and devices you purchased elsewhere. This is great if you’re switching from another provider or need to update information/settings across a bunch of users.
Free local or toll-free numbers: Every plan includes a complimentary local or toll-free number. You can purchase extra numbers if you need them or port over existing phone numbers if you want to keep the numbers you’re already using.
Includes toll-free minutes: You get a ton of complimentary toll-free minutes every month. It ranges from 1,500 to 12,500, depending on the plan. Most providers give you far fewer minutes for free.
Internal collaboration: Video, voice, contact management, team presence, scheduling, and team chat are included at every level. You get every collaboration channel your team needs, whether they’re in the same office, distributed around the country, or working from home.
Unlimited faxing on every plan: Other providers don’t include fax on their cheaper plans, or only include it as an add-on that costs extra. With Nextiva, you get it no matter what plan you choose.
Up to 2,000 monthly texts per user: RingCentral limits you to 200 per user per month (on its most expensive plan) and Cloudtalk charges per message. Nextiva gives you 1,000 or 2,000 messages per user per month depending on the plan, which is a massive step up from other VoIP solutions.
Advanced business texting add-on: As of March 2024, you can upgrade business texting starting at $10 per user per month. This add on lets customers text a single phone number to access your entire team. Incoming texts are routed to the right person, but anyone can jump in and take over the conversation, answer questions, or schedule appointments from the same message thread.
Lightweight call routing: There’s a multi-level auto attendant you can use to route calls to the right department or person. Ring groups ensure someone always answers and callers aren’t sent to voicemail. Features like these are suitable for brand new or small call centers who can’t afford full-fledged call center software.
Built-in CRM functionality: You’ll be able to manage up to 500 contacts, take notes, log interactions (including email and calls), and create conversations around contacts on every plan.
Call recording: This feature, along with single sign-on and premium CRM integrations, is only available on the top tier. But it’s not something that typically comes with standard VoIP phone systems—it’s usually only an add-on or requires a separate subscription.
Volume discounts: Once you have more than four users, you’ll quality for per-user discounts—you can save up to $6 per month per user. The steepest discount occurs when you surpass 100 users.
Potential Drawbacks of Nextiva’s VoIP Software
Not suitable for high-volume international: Unlike other providers, Nextiva doesn’t offer international phone numbers. There are also no unlimited international calling plans. You can make outgoing calls to other countries, but they’ll be charged per minute. With that said, pricing is very competitive–click here to check out their international rates.
45-minute video meetings: No matter what plan you choose, you’re limited to 45 minutes for video calls. There is an addon that gives you unlimited time on video calls plus unlimited texting–it’s called the Productivity Plug-In (PPI). Other platforms, like Zoom and RingCentral, give you more time without having to buy an add-on, but they limit the number of participants you can have.
You can’t sign up on your own: If you have a very small team, you can sign up on your own via Nextiva One. There, you’ll find specialized small business plans for three, ten, or unlimited users. But for Nextiva’s main plans, you have to fill out a short form and talk to the sales team to get started. While this may feel frustrating, it’s actually a good thing that ensures you get all the features and functionality you need on day one.
No texting on the entry-level plan: RingCentral and Dialpad offer texting on every plan, but you’ll have to be on Nextiva’s middle tier or higher to use it. However, Nextiva gives you far more free texts every month.
Business Communications Plans and Pricing
Nextiva’s cheapest plan is $17.95 per user per month (if you have more than 100 users). It goes up to $23.95 per user per month for four or fewer users.
In terms of actual dollars you’ll spend, it’s not the most affordable option—but it’s really not far behind the cheapest. It’s in the same ballpark, but a few dollars more per user per month.
There are a few more budget-friendly solutions out there, including Zoom, Dialpad, OpenPhone, and Google Voice.
However, Google Voice and OpenPhone are both far simpler and come with fewer voice features. They also don’t include video, faxing, or team chat. Zoom’s able to offer cheaper phone plans because it charges a monthly fee plus per minute—this can work well for light usage, but this pricing model adds up quickly.
It also doesn’t include Zoom video, so you’ll need to purchase it separately or use Zoom One’s Business Plus plan, which is more expensive than Nextiva.
Going with Dialpad will save you a few dollars per user per month, but it charges $10 per user per month for faxing, doesn’t let you purchase additional phone numbers on its cheapest plan, and doesn’t include extensions until you reach the most expensive tier. Overall, it costs more to get the same functionality.
Additional Nextiva Products and Services
Aside from its main contact center and business communications systems, Nextiva offers a few other products and services to help businesses that don’t need an all-in-one.
Just Need Online Faxing? Nextiva Has That
Don’t need phones or a full UCaaS solution? You can purchase online faxing as a standalone service to share across your business. Rather than paying for users, plans are based on the number of pages you send and receive.
500 monthly pages starts at $7.95 per month and 1,000 pages is $13.95 per month. There’s also a HIPAA compliant plan, too.
If you go over your limit, you’ll pay $0.03 per page.
Users can send faxes from any device, including existing fax machines and smart phones.
Anyone on your team can log into the portal, see every fax you’ve sent or received, and search the log with a range of filters and other options. Alternatively, you can have incoming faxes sent directly to your email.
Check out our other online faxing recommendations, here.
A Closer Look at Nextiva’s SIP Trunking Services
If you’re using a legacy PBX phone system, you can bring it to the cloud with Nextiva’s SIP trunking services. With it, you’ll be able to add a new layer of online management, fraud mitigation, and redundancy to your existing system.
Despite the complexity of old systems, you’ll be able to get started in less than a day. Plus, you can keep your existing numbers.
Metered plans start at $14.95 per month plus $0.008 per minute after your first 100 minutes every month. Alternatively, you can avoid usage-based pricing for $24.95 per month—it includes unlimited calls, a free toll-free number, and volume discounts as you grow.
Nextiva’s Also Great for Social and Reputation Management
Nextiva recently started offering reputation, review, and social management tools with automation, digital listening, and monitoring capabilities.
You’ll be able to set up automated AI responses so no review goes unanswered plus analyze customer sentiment, send satisfaction surveys, and estimate CSAT scores so you always have the full picture. Not only that, it also centralizes reviews and all of your social channels in one inbox with full routing and queueing capabilities.
On the social media side, you can schedule content and view centralized analytics across all your profiles to help you spot trends and stay on top of your reputation with ease.
Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and LinkedIn are all currently supported with Pinterest coming soon.
Regardless of the channel, you can tag reviews, messages, and content to keep things organized. You can also use tags to filter analytics to monitor campaigns, topics, or anything else you need.
On higher tiers, you’ll be able to see competitor analytics, utilize queue management tools, and access custom integrations.
Plans start at $149 per month plus $99 per month for each additional user.
Check out our full list of reputation management software to see how it stacks up against its competitors.
How Nextiva Compares to its Closest Competitors
Nextiva’s closest business communications competitors include Aircall, Cloudtalk, RingCentral, Dialpad, and TalkDesk. Whether you’re looking for a standard phone system or a contact center solution, you can’t go wrong with any of these providers.
However, we recommend Nextiva for most people across the board. It offers the best balance of ease of use, price, and functionality on all its plans.
Plus, its user interface is terrific, it has five-star anytime customer service, and infinite scalability.
Reach out to Nextiva to learn more or check out our Nextiva vs RingCentral comparison for a more in-depth look at the two side by side.
