8×8

8×8 is one of the longest-standing names in cloud communications, and its current lineup is built around a single idea: every business conversation in one place. The unified-communications product, 8×8 Work, combines voice calling, video meetings, team chat and messaging in desktop and mobile apps that the company pitches as trusted by small teams and built to scale. Around it sit 8×8 Contact Center for service teams, 8×8 Engage for customer-facing staff outside the contact center, and a set of Communications APIs for SMS, voice, video and authentication.

8×8 Work covers the UC fundamentals: business phone numbers with unlimited calling options, HD video meetings, team messaging, voicemail and call handling rules, plus apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. The company has been leaning into AI, most recently with 8×8 AI Routing, announced on its homepage, which directs incoming customer interactions to the right expert automatically. For developers, the CPaaS portfolio under Communications APIs exposes no-code and programmable building blocks for high-volume SMS, voice, video and fraud prevention. For service teams, 8×8 Contact Center adds omnichannel routing, agent and supervisor workspaces, analytics, workforce engagement management and secure payment processing, while 8×8 Engage equips customer-facing staff outside the contact center with advanced queue management, conversational intelligence and global coverage.

Pricing is the big change longtime buyers will notice: 8×8 no longer publishes plan prices. The pricing page now presents its four product families with Chat with Sales and Request a Quote buttons on each, so every plan is quoted individually after a conversation with sales, and the page invites buyers to mix and match offerings into a custom plan. There is no self-serve free plan or free trial advertised on the site. That quote-only model suits mid-market and enterprise buyers but makes quick budget comparisons harder for small teams, which previously had published per-user rates.

Where it falls short: the lack of transparent pricing is the main drawback; founding year and headquarters are not stated on the company’s own pages; support runs through a published phone line (1-866-879-8647) and the support portal with no published support email; and the official YouTube channel exists but carries no current product demo we could verify for this listing.

Overall, 8×8 remains a credible one-vendor choice for businesses that want UC, contact center and CPaaS under one roof with a long track record behind it. Small teams that want to see a price and start a trial in minutes will find the quote-first model slower than rivals with published rates.