The RingCentral alternative, without the heavy suite or the add-on AI.
RingCentral is a full UCaaS suite (phone + video + more), billed per seat, with AI as an add-on (RingSense ~$60 USD/user) and an SMS quota. Relay does one thing simply, flat-priced per team, with AI via BYOK.
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A team of 10: RingCentral vs Relay
With RingCentral: ~$30 USD/seat (≈ $300 USD for 10), a 25-text/user quota then overage, and AI as a paid add-on (RingSense ~$60 USD/user).
With Relay: $57 CAD/mo for a team of 10, SMS at cost with no quota, AI with your own key.
Software only, team of 10. Relay Business = 8 seats included + 2 (= $57). Competitor billed per seat. Add your telecom at cost (Twilio or Telnyx). Public-pricing estimates 2026 — re-verify.
What Relay does differently.
An extra seat: $3–7
A $17–97 base that already includes your seats. The next seat costs $3–7, and it drops as the team grows.
SMS without a quota
RingCentral caps at ~25 texts/user then overcharges. With your Twilio, your texts are at cost, no trap cap.
AI without a paid add-on
Their AI (RingSense) is a paid per-user add-on. At Relay: your OpenAI/Claude key, your real usage, a few dollars.
Light, not a suite to learn
No video, no 40 modules. The dialer and texts front and center, the rest discreet.
Switching takes 5 minutes.
Connect your telecom account
Telnyx or Twilio, your call. Your credentials are AES-256 encrypted, never stored in clear.
Keep or get your number
Keep an existing number on your account, or buy one in two clicks.
Call and text
From your browser, in 5 minutes. Your team shares the number.
Relay isn’t for everyone.
Stay with RingCentral if…
- You need a unified suite (video, contact center, large fleet).
- Your organization is large and highly structured.
Choose Relay if…
- You just want to call and text, without paying for the whole platform.
- The SMS quota and the paid AI add-on cost you a lot.
- You prefer flat per-team pricing and your own telecom account.
Before you switch.
The other options, with their real strengths.
Nobody switches business phone systems on the strength of a single page. Here are the serious options on the Canadian market, what each one does better than us, and what to watch for. Relay is our product: we say so, rather than ranking ourselves first without mentioning it.
How this table was built
The listed prices come from each provider's public pricing page, in US dollars where that is how they bill. They move: check with them before signing. We publish no score out of ten, no stars and no reviews, because we have not run each product for six months and inventing a rating would be faster than earning one.
What can be compared honestly is the structure: who bills per seat, who resells the minute, who charges extra for artificial intelligence, and who owns the number at the end. That is the column that matters as a team grows, because that is the one that multiplies.
What switching providers actually costs you
There is a real cost, and it is not on the invoice. It is the time to port the number, reconfigure forwarding and business hours, and get a team used to a different interface. Budget a few business days for porting and an hour of setup. Any page telling you it is instant is selling you something.
There is also what you give up on the product side. A provider that has been around ten years has more native integrations, a native mobile app, and round-the-clock support teams. We run in the browser, with an app you install from the browser and forwarding to your mobile. If that difference is what stops you, it is real and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What we put against it: the telecom account carries your name, so the minute costs you its real price and the number stays yours. On a growing team, that is the only line in the comparison that compounds over time.
Five questions to ask your current provider
Asking these five questions beats reading ten comparison pages, ours included. The answers are verifiable, they come from your provider rather than from us, and they will keep you from switching only to land on the same model under a different name.
01Is the number in my name or yours?
This is the one question whose answer cannot be fixed later. If the telecom account belongs to the provider, so does the number, and recovering a number you do not own gets negotiated rather than requested.
02What does the minute cost, exactly?
Many plans advertise unlimited minutes then apply a fair-use policy. Ask for the per-minute rate beyond the plan, by destination. If the answer is slow to come, that is already an answer.
03What does the sixth team member cost?
The advertised price is almost always the first seat. Have them quote the bill for the team you will have in two years, not today's. That is where the models genuinely diverge.
04Is artificial intelligence included or an add-on?
Call summaries and transcription often arrive as a paid module, sometimes at the same price as the base plan. Ask for the total cost with AI switched on for the whole team.
05What is the notice period to leave?
Annual commitment, thirty days' notice, termination fees: read this before signing, not on the day you want to switch. A provider confident in its product does not need a long contract.
How to read a business phone pricing page
A phone pricing page reads across three columns that are never displayed together. The first is software, billed per seat or per team. The second is telecom, meaning minutes and texts, sometimes included, sometimes resold with an invisible margin. The third is everything that arrives as an add-on: artificial intelligence, recording, extra numbers, integrations.
The test that settles it is simple: ask for the total cost for your actual team, at your actual call volume, over twelve months. A provider billing per seat with the telecom margin baked in will quote something comfortable for three people and painful for twelve. A model that separates the two gives a duller number to explain, and a steadier one as the team grows.
One last habit: check which currency you are billed in. Many providers show US dollars to Canadian customers, which adds the exchange rate and its swings to an already monthly bill. That does not show on the pricing page, only on the statement.