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Cisco Unified Contact Center Express vs Five9 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Unified Contact Cente...
Ranking in Contact Center Infrastructure
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
IVR Systems (3rd)
Five9
Ranking in Contact Center Infrastructure
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Contact Center Platforms (3rd), Workforce Engagement Management (3rd), Sales Force Automation (8th), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Contact Center Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Cisco Unified Contact Center Express is 9.6%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Five9 is 12.0%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Contact Center Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Five912.0%
Cisco Unified Contact Center Express9.6%
Other78.4%
Contact Center Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

GR
Operation Director at Dammam University
Interactive voice response and automatic call distribution help to improve our customer service
Our primary use case is for customer service, in higher education and healthcare This solution provides uni-channel service support and is fully integrated with our DB. The new Cisco Finesse is really amazing. The most valuable features of this solution are the IVR (Interactive voice response)…
Has enabled seamless integration and simplified setup for client services with minimal technical requirements
The system is easy to manage. End users do not need to provide much technical support. They just rent the necessary number of users, and that's it. End users don't need a dedicated IT person to manage the system as it is a serverless service. Five9 provides powerful CRM integration capabilities with platforms like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Oracle Service Cloud, making it highly valuable for large companies. Additionally, omnichannel capabilities, such as web chat and social media integration, offer a customized experience.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This solution provides uni-channel Service support and is fully integrated with our DB."
"This solution provides uni-channel service support and is fully integrated with our DB."
"The admin platform is easy to use and navigate. That has been incredibly useful for us because it has given us the ability to self-provision in a lot of situations. The ability to create and track data elements has also been a valuable addition."
"The reporting is the most valuable feature in Five9."
"I like the capability of call and screen recording. It has helped us to hold our agents accountable to the expectations for the role. It creates a clearer picture than giving feedback that is just based on calls that we may have listened to, but we do not have anything to show the agents themselves."
"Before using the WFO and its analytics, our quality teams would listen to only 5 percent of contacts a week, per employee, which is a very small part of what an employee is doing... Now, this tool does an automatic evaluation of 100 percent of their calls. It has certainly helped the QA teams in their training, and that, in turn, helps our clients."
"Overall, Five9 has made my job easier compared to before, and I do not struggle with it."
"The tool enables easier management."
"I rate the overall Five9 solution a nine out of ten."
"I have been using Five9 for nearly 10 years now with multiple clients, and I don't think there is any other product out there which is even comparable to the usability and functionality that Five9 has."
 

Cons

"This solution could be improved with better support for higher education and healthcare."
"This solution could be improved with better support for higher education and healthcare."
"Maybe they could do better on how we access all the data if we want the data to work outside of Five9. Sometimes, that's not the easiest process. It's not bad, but if there's an area for improvement, that could be one."
"There are several audio issues that need attention. Whenever I disconnect a headset after connecting to the VDI, the station connection in Five9 disconnects automatically, requiring a VMware restart."
"There are certain issues around features that Chrome has deployed that we have to figure out. When we bring them to Five9's attention, they are usually able to help us navigate them. It seems that sometimes they already know about an issue, so it would be helpful if they more proactively engaged with us first..."
"Five9's stability needs to be improved."
"Five9 should provide free training resources for end users, including agents, supervisors, and admins."
"What would make Five9 better is a partnership with an SMS AI solution, which would make Five9 pretty powerful."
"Integration with third-party solutions can be difficult and has room for improvement."
"There are some minor issues with some of their filtering that I'd like them to handle on their back end. The only limitation I can think of is that I'm always looking backward and can't look forward. I can't see how many calls are scheduled for tomorrow based on our system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Five9 is expensive, but most companies would find that using it is worth the cost."
"I prefer Five9's licensing model."
"The cost is not at the lower end of the market, but it's worth it."
"The product's pricing is flexible and reasonable."
"Five9's pricing wasn't quite as flexible as I'd hoped, but it ended up being reasonably priced overall."
"The pricing seems reasonable. I had anticipated that whatever solution we went with would be more expensive. I was actually pleasantly surprised that the features that we had in Evolve IP, one-to-one, did not cost significantly more in Five9."
"Five9 is a little expensive because of our company's size. That said, it scales pretty well. The daily usage costs and monthly fees seem about right. It's not out of line with what we'd expect from other companies. However, they seem to have a one-size-fits-all implementation fee. Most of their clients have hundreds if not thousands of seats in the call centers, so $5,000 or $10,000 is not a huge cost. It would be nice if they had a sliding scale for smaller companies."
"The product is not the most expensive, but it's not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Insurance Company
24%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Five9?
I like the capability of call and screen recording. It has helped us to hold our agents accountable to the expectations for the role. It creates a clearer picture than giving feedback that is just ...
What needs improvement with Five9?
The reporting suite needed improvement. I saw recently that Five9 released a new platform for reporting, as the reporting was not great previously.
What is your primary use case for Five9?
I was using Five9 in the senior living space.
 

Also Known As

CCX
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, BC Hydro, City of Biel, Houston Methodist, Linz AG, Logicalis, London Hydro, Pirelli, SickKids Foundation, Sony Corporation, Sony Marketing (Japan) Inc.
Agilysys, BISSELL, From You Flowers, SumUp, Kyndryl, PING, Alaska Airlines, Omaha Steaks International, NextRep, AdventHealth
Find out what your peers are saying about Five9, Cisco, Mitel and others in Contact Center Infrastructure. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.