Cisco Unified Contact Center Express vs Five9 comparison

Cisco and Five9 are both solutions in the Contact Center Infrastructure category. Cisco is ranked #3, while Five9 is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Cisco holds a 10.5% mindshare in CCI, compared to Five9’s 11.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Five9 users who would recommend it.

Cisco Unified Contact Cente...

Read 1 Cisco Unified Contact Center Express review

662 Views
258 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Five9

Read 24 Five9 reviews

2,161 Views
259 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Unified Contact Cente...

Five9

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

3rd

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IVR Systems (3rd)

Five9

Ranking in Contact Center Infrastructure

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Contact Center Platforms (2nd), Workforce Engagement Management (2nd), Sales Force Automation (4th), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Contact Center Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Cisco Unified Contact Center Express is 10.5%, down from 23.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Five9 is 11.6%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Contact Center Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Five9	11.6%
Cisco Unified Contact Center Express	10.5%
Other	77.9%

Contact Center Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

Gamil Radman

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)…

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Pedro Pulido

Workforce Manager at Aprende Institute

Seamless integration with our CRM gives our agents all the information in one place

In my role, the admin tools are most valuable, such as using the UI to configure all the campaigns and all the settings that we use. Also, the monitoring panels it has are very good. Our supervisors and sales managers build dashboards in the solution so that we can understand how our operation is performing throughout the day. That is very useful. We have implemented workflows, and the Five9 WorkFlow Automation feature works very well. We're very happy with the tool. Five9 offers a very reliable solution, and that's why we are aiming to implement the new technologies in which AI is involved. We use Five9 with Salesforce, and it works very well. It's seamless. We practically never have problems with that integration. The information comes and goes without a problem. The Salesforce integration helps agents a lot. It's easy to use, so they get familiar with it very quickly. Because of the way it integrates, it's like looking at one platform; it's all on one screen. They can see the call information and the information about the lead. It's very easy to read and very user-friendly. On the side of the workforce that I am on, we are constantly working on improving our costs. We have to understand how long our calls are taking, and we are able to do all that analysis because of how Five9 presents all the information in the dashboard and how quickly we can analyze it. It's very useful to have a practical way to see the information and understand it. Also, making changes is not that hard. For example, maybe we don't want to make that many calls; we want to make fewer. That's easy to do. It's a tool that allows you to make decisions and implement them very quickly.

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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."

"The reporting is the most valuable feature in Five9."

"Five9 has a lot of AI tools, which I find valuable. It offers transcription services and a power dialer for outbound dialing. I like that Five9 is built for outbound and suitable for that purpose."

"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 most valuable feature is the simplicity of making scripts within the contact center solution itself."

"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."

"It helped reduce costs in our organization. We've saved on staffing and we've saved on software by 10% to 15%."

"I rate the overall Five9 solution a nine out of ten."

"Overall, Five9 has made my job easier compared to before, and I do not struggle with it."

More Five9 pros

Cons

"This solution could be improved with better support for higher education and healthcare."

"Integration with third-party solutions can be difficult and has room for improvement."

"Five9 has an active-passive high-availability model. I would prefer active-active."

"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."

"For Five9, I would like a feature where reports such as AHT or workforce-related reports can be generated automatically without starting from scratch"

"What would make Five9 better is a partnership with an SMS AI solution, which would make Five9 pretty powerful."

"Maintaining the original DNS on Five9 across campaigns is difficult."

"During training and demos, resiliency tests failed, which was not ideal. This is a concern for stability."

More Five9 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Five9's pricing wasn't quite as flexible as I'd hoped, but it ended up being reasonably priced overall."

"I prefer Five9's licensing model."

"Their license structure, out of the box, is better than that of other providers and their pricing is much less than other vendors we've looked at."

"The product's pricing is flexible and reasonable."

"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."

"The product is not the most expensive, but it's not cheap."

"The cost is not at the lower end of the market, but it's worth it."

"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."

More Five9 pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	6

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 ...

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What needs improvement with Five9?

Five9 ( /products/five9-reviews ) should improve its omnichannel feature, allowing partners to manage all tenants with a single account rather than needing multiple accounts for each customer. Addi...

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What is your primary use case for Five9?

We deploy Five9 ( /products/five9-reviews ) for our customers who use it as a contact center solution.

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Comparisons

Genesys Cloud CX vs Cisco Unified Contact Center Express

Compared 21% of the time

Verint IVR and Voice Self-Service vs Cisco Unified Contact Center Express

Compared 13% of the time

NICE CXone vs Cisco Unified Contact Center Express

Compared 13% of the time

Syntellect Communications Portal vs Cisco Unified Contact Center Express

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise vs Cisco Unified Contact Center Express

Compared 10% of the time

More Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Competitors

Amazon Connect vs Five9

Compared 29% of the time

Genesys Cloud CX vs Five9

Compared 17% of the time

NICE CXone vs Five9

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Webex Contact Center vs Five9

Compared 8% of the time

Avaya Infinity Platform vs Five9

Compared 4% of the time

More Five9 Competitors

Product Reports

No data available

Buyer's Guide

Five9

September 2025

Download Five9 product report

Also Known As

CCX

No data available

Overview

Cisco Unified Contact Center Express provides a secure, available, and sophisticated contact center software solution for up to 400 agents and interactive voice response (IVR) ports that is easy to deploy and manage. This omnichannel solution is ideal for formal and informal small to medium-size contact centers.

Cisco

Five9 is a comprehensive cloud contact center and customer service solution offering a broad range of features and benefits designed for effective contact center operations. Its virtual contact center products encompass inbound, outbound, and multichannel contact center software features, distinguishing it among cloud contact center software vendors. Five9 is recognized for its constant innovation, which has led to its position as a leading cloud contact center software vendor.

Five9 provides a feature-rich cloud contact center platform designed to streamline and enhance customer engagement. The solution offers a comprehensive suite of features including:

Omnichannel routing - Intelligently routes interactions across voice, email, chat, social media and SMS.
IVR and self-service - Sophisticated IVR applications and self-service options powered by natural language processing.
Workforce optimization - Tools for tracking metrics, monitoring interactions, coaching agents, and enhancing productivity.
APIs and integrations - Open platform to connect Five9 with ACD, CRM, workforce management and other business systems.
Flexible deployment - Public, private or hybrid cloud deployment options.

Five9 aims to transform customer experiences with AI-powered interactions, actionable insights, and seamless integration between channels. With advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, Five9 helps businesses improve customer service and increase operational efficiency.

According to our interviews with Five9's users, Five9's solution emerges as a highly scalable and adaptable contact center platform that seamlessly integrates with Salesforce and provides valuable real-time reporting and analytics. Its AI-powered features and omnichannel capabilities further enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Users praise Five9 for its efficient inbound/outbound calling, reliable voicemail and messaging, and easy remote agent access. However, some cite issues with call quality, interface design, system stability, and customer support responsiveness. Mobile app availability and social media are seen as areas for improvement. However, there is really little info on the mobile app.

Below are several quotes from Five9's users:

"Five9 is a highly flexible and adaptable solution that can handle increased workloads and accommodate growth without any issues."
- Business Operations Manager, Retail Industry
"Five9's real-time reporting and analytics are incredibly valuable. They give us insights into agent performance, customer interactions, and overall call center operations."
- Contact Center Manager, Retail Industry
"Five9's AI-powered features, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, have helped us to improve customer satisfaction and reduce handle times."
- Customer Service Manager, E-commerce Industry

Overall, Five9 provides a robust, innovative contact center platform with extensive features and flexibility. It's a strong option for organizations seeking to optimize customer engagement across channels within a secure, scalable cloud environment.

Five9

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

See our list of best Contact Center Infrastructure vendors.

We monitor all Contact Center Infrastructure reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.