When you run a sales team, you know how important efficiency and time management can be. The success of a sales team depends on the amount of deals they are able to close—and, the more leads a salesperson can contact, the more potential there is for converting leads into paying customers.

Making sales calls takes time. In antiquated systems, members of sales teams would look up numbers of potential leads, dial the number, wait for an answer, have a conversation (or, leave a message) then hang up. Each of these steps of the process took time, when time was of the essence.

Luckily, today there are technological solutions that sales teams can rely on to make the process of making sales calls simple and more efficient. One of those tools is a sales dialer.

There are many companies that make sales dialers today. So, how do you choose the right one for your business?

If you follow a tried and true method of comparing features and reading online reviews, you can determine which sales dialer is the right fit for your team.

Instead of making you do the work, we’ve done a deep dive into whether 8×8 is a good choice for your company, or whether Kixie is the best choice. Take a look at which platform and service is right for your company.

The Options: 8×8 and Kixie

If you’re choosing a sales dialer, two of the most popular options are 8×8 and Kixie. Read on to find out more about each sales dialer and which one is the best choice for your team.

Table of Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Things to Consider
  3. CRM Integration
  4. Plan availability
  5. Voicemail Drop
  6. Local number options
  7. Dialing Capabilities
  8. Service, Support, and Coaching
  9. Conclusion

Overview of 8×8 and Kixie


8×8 is a sales dialer that offers a host of VoIP services and cloud phone solutions. People use 8×8 for audio conferencing, video conferencing, fielding customer service calls, video collaboration, and more.

Dr. Chi-Shin Wang and Dr. Y.W. Sing founded 8×8 as Integrated Information Technology, Inc. in 1987. They changed the name of the company in the early 1990s. From the start, the company sold semiconductor parts of the math coprocessor and graphics chipsets markets. The company shifted focus to VoIP in 1999.

8×8 is a company that focuses on products and solutions for other businesses. While they can service large enterprises and brand new startups, they do not create products for residential customers or individuals.

Capterra shows 131 reviews of 8×8, but the platform receives a rating of 4 stars.


One of the most popular options for a sales dialer today is Kixie. Kixie’s focus is sales calls, and they offer features that sales teams love: like CRM integrations, powerful sales dialers, and more. Because Kixie is sales-centric, the service offers a slew of features that help sales teams contact more leads and close more deals.

The company is a relatively new, exciting venture founded in Los Angeles in 2013. The company has grown steadily since their launch, and they’ve cemented themselves as a standout sales dialer option since their creation.

There are many reviews for Kixie on sites like Capterra and G2Crowd, showing a solid reputation and notable brand in the sales world. On Capterra, Kixie receives a perfect rating of 5 stars.

Things to Consider for Sales Dialers

Sales dialers are a great solution for anyone who works in sales. The technology makes calling potential leads simple and automatic. They also make keeping track of information (about customers and employee progress) simple and streamlined.

Before you select a sales dialer, think about why your business needs one. Do you want to lower the costs of your phone services and the labor it takes to make calls? Alternatively, are you mostly focused on increasing call volume and revenue? By prioritizing what you need to get out of a sales dialer, you can hone in on an option that best suits what you’re looking for.

Consider what type of technology will make your process as efficient as possible. Automatic dialers will simply dial a number you select automatically. An even more powerful solution is a predictive dialer, which will call a group of numbers at once—selecting that group based on the likelihood that someone will answer. Choose the power of dialer that will benefit your company most. To figure out whether you need a more powerful sales dialer or a less powerful one, think about the size of your potential customer base. If you’re only selling to a handful of people, you won’t need a predictive dialer. Also, think about the size of your sales team. You won’t need a particularly powerful solution if there are only a couple of people making sales calls. Before you choose to use a predictive dialer at your business, make sure you understand how to do so legally.

Finally, having a CRM is critical for a sales team that wants to nurture leads appropriately and effectively. If you need a sales dialer to improve the process of your sales team, you may want to look into whether your sales dialer can integrate with your CRM. This would allow you to pull lead contact information seamlessly, then record all necessary information in one place. You can select a sales dialer option that links to your existing CRM. Alternatively, you can choose a type of technology that incorporates a sales dialer and a CRM into one platform.

There are sales dialers that are simple to use. Then, there are those that are complicated and require training. Think about how tech savvy your team is, and choose a sales dialer that fits their skill level. If you don’t have the time or resources to train your salespeople to use a new, in-depth solution, chances are you should select a simpler, more straightforward dialing solution.

CRM Integration

8×8 CRM Integration

8×8 integrates with Salesforce. Sales teams can link the two programs to have the two work in tandem However, 8×8 does not integrate with other popular CRMs available.

Kixie CRM Integrations

You keep all of your most important sales and customer data in your CRM. It should integrate with your sales dialer. Luckily, Kixie offers CRM integration with a whole host of CRMs, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Zoho. When Kixie integrates with your CRM, you can take advantage of services like exhaustive number match, SMS logging to the CRM, direct sync C2C, and more.

Mojo dialer

Client Stephen C. uses Kixie with his CRM, Pipedrive, and he raves about the integration, saying:

“I use the Kixie integration with Pipedrive, and the built in integration is phenomenal.Then I started playing with the webhooks and zapier automation to really take my business to the next level. If you have a sales team and making calls is how you make money, you need to make sure that you implement Kixie into your business.”

Plan availability

8×8 Plan Options

8×8 has three basic plans available for potential customers. They can choose a standard plan, pro plan, or ultimate plan. All 3 of these plans include options for unlimited minutes, but none of them include call recording.

Kixie Plan Options

Customers who choose Kixie can select the plan that fits in their budget and suits their sales dialing needs. Kixie has multi-tiered pricing plans, as well as a price for unlimited minutes. If you run a call center, having access to unlimited minutes can be crucial. Please see the pricing page for full details.

Kixie user Jake B. explains,

“Lastly, Kixie offers some fantastic features. We save hundreds of dollars each month with their unlimited minutes plan… Kixie provides reliable service with affordable prices, top notch support, and fantastic features. You really can’t do much better.”

Voice Mail Drop

8×8 Voice Mail Drop

8×8 doesn’t offer a voice mail drop features. So you have to record a voice mail each time you want to leave a message for someone you called that didn’t answer. Manual voice mails take place in real time but they require human energy, expression, and personality.

Kixie Voice Mail Drop

You don’t have to stay on the phone to leave a lead your own voicemail message when you’re using Kixie. Kixie’s voicemail drop feature lets you leave a message with the click of a button.

Kixie customer Jessie O. Uses voicemail drop to save time and make processes more efficient. They explain

“With the simple click of a button, as soon as you hear the voicemail begin, it can be dropped. Eliminating the need to continually say the same message.”

Local number options

8×8 Local Number Options

When you call a number using 8×8, there is no local presence feature. This means that your phone number will show up on the call recipient’s caller ID with whatever area code you’re calling from, and they’ll know you’re not someone located in their area.

Kixie Local Number Options

When you call a number out of state, Kixie makes your number look like it’s a local one. That encourages people to answer. This can be powerful for your business, since potential leads may have otherwise ignored your calls.

Kixie user Jake B. experienced tangible success when implementing local presence. He explains

“The success of our campaigns saw an 8% bump in connection rates when we enabled local presence to always show a local area code when placing outbound calls.”

Customer William A. who uses Kixie also talks about how great local presence is with Kixie, and the fairness of the pricing. He writes,

“I also like how kixie only charges one price for local presence. I have spoken with and used several phone providers in the past. All of them charge you on a per area code bases. Kixie gives us the ability to get a better overall connection rate, but with out all the extra cost that would usually be associated with it.”

Dialing Capabilities

Kixie Dialing Capabilities

Use the power dialing feature of Kixie to call long lists of leads at once. Speak to the ones that answer and save time.

Customer Mark Firehammer explains how sales customers can particularly benefit from the power dialer feature by describing his experience:

The number of calls that you can make in a minute is far beyond any other dialer that I’ve used, and certainly far faster than using your finger or even clicking on numbers. All we have to do now is queue up a group of numbers, push a button and it starts dialing. Once each call is finished you ad the call disposition details and it instantly and automatically add those details to the record and then moves onto the next number, until you reach the bottom of the list. Bravo!”

8×8 Dialing Capabilities

8×8’s sales dialing services include a predictive automated outbound dialer. A predictive dialer calls numbers automatically then sends leads to available representatives as they answer.

Service, Support and Coaching

8×8 Service, Support, and Coaching

8×8 provides customer support over the phone and email to help to customers who use the platforms and have issues. Representatives from the company respond in order to help troubleshoot anything that goes wrong. While customer services teams are responsive, the platform often has issues that just aren’t fixable (like echos, dropped calls, or blocked calls from local numbers, etc.) While representatives from 8×8 acknowledge that these are problems, they can’t always offer solutions. This can feel frustrating to paying customers.

Kixie Service, Support, and Coaching

Your reps—especially the green ones—may not be experts at making sales calls yet. You can use the Kixie coaching feature to instruct sales team members how to make calls. Lifetime recordings also enhance this process, because you can review employees’ progress as they get better and better.

The customer service team at Kixie is onshore, so they’re in the right time zone and available when customers need. Clients praise the customer service offered by Kixie.

Marketing professional Jason Miani, who makes more than 100 calls per day, says that in addition to loving Kixie’s dialing perks:

“their customer service team is also phenomenal. When I call or send Kixie an email, a tech-savvy rep from the US answers my calls answers the phone or replies. They don’t have an outsourced service team and they actually care about my business which is hard to do for any size company.”


There’s no question that companies invest a lot of their money into a sales dialer. It is an in-office tool that allows companies to reach leads, nurture them, then convert them. This is the process that allows them to make money and grow.

When it comes to choosing the right sales dialer for your business, you should take the time to look at the most important features of the sales dialer—from the technical capabilities of the tool to the service offered by the company to help your team when you need support.

8×8 and Kixie are tool sales dialer solutions that appeal to slightly different markets. 8×8 has a lot of bells and whistles, and it can serve business large and small in a variety of different ways.

If you’re looking for a sales dialer that specializes in doing just that—dialing for sales—consider using Kixie.

Ultimately, Kixie is a sales-focused option that can do an excellent job at its main function. It does not get weighed down or lost in features that aren’t relevant to sales teams. So, while customers who are looking for a more comprehensive communication solution for a large enterprise may enjoy a service like 8×8, it’s not as good of an option for a sales focused organization or team as Kixie allows you to harness the power of technology to make better human connections between salespeople and leads, and ultimately close more deals to grow your business.

Categories: CRM

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