Home / Answer the Phone & Book / Nextiva

Nextiva

A full business phone and customer-experience platform — voice, SMS, video and inboxes in one per-user subscription

Solo Founder AgentsChecked
Solo-fit verdictSmall-Team Ready

A consolidated phone-plus-CX platform at $15–$25 per user on annual terms — the catch is the 12-month lock behind the headline price and a $99/month add-on for true AI answering.

True solo cost · low$15/mo$15/month (Core, billed annually, 1 user)
True solo cost · typical$25/mo$25/month (Engage, billed annually, 1 user — the tier with live chat, chatbot and call recording)
Rank #20 of 22 in Phone & BookingFree start No free plan or trial publishedSetup Same dayControl Acts + logs everythingNo-code 4/5Checked · prices checked 2026-11-08

Visit Nextiva ↗ Compare all answer the phone & book agents

The short version

Nextiva is a per-user business phone and CX platform: unlimited voice, video and SMS with shared inboxes and AI transcription from $15/user/month on annual terms, scaling to a full contact-centre tier at $75.

Buy it if

You want phone, texting, video, team chat and light customer messaging in one subscription and are happy to sign a 12-month term for the $15 Core or $25 Engage rate.

Skip it if

You only need a number that answers and books — Nextiva sells you a platform, and autonomous AI answering is a separate $99/month XBert add-on.

What Nextiva does — the jobs it finishes

Workflows are built only from verified capabilities in our listing research — no vendor copy, nothing invented.

Every call, text and video call in one app

Starts A customer calls or texts the business number during the day

  1. The call or text lands in the same Nextiva app as your team chat and video meetings
  2. Routing rules send it to you or a shared inbox instead of a personal mobile

You get One place to answer, text back and meet, on any device

The personal-mobile / business-number split disappears

Calls that summarise themselves

Starts A customer call ends

  1. The plan's AI allowance transcribes and summarises the call (50 items per category on Core, 200 on Engage, unlimited on Scale)
  2. AI Answer Assist helps handle the follow-up conversation

You get A transcript and summary attached to the conversation

Follow-up stops depending on notes you took while driving

An AI employee on the helpdesk (add-on)

Starts You add XBert AI Employee, from $99/month, to your plan

  1. XBert answers customers across phone, chat and text
  2. It takes action in your systems and routes to you with full context when it counts

You get 24/7 answered conversations with a usage bill per conversation beyond the package

Approval Review XBert's actions and conversation log before letting it act unsupervised in customer systems

After-hours coverage without hiring — at a platform price, not a receptionist price

Where it stops

  • Not a standalone AI receptionist on the base plans — autonomous answering is the paid XBert add-on
  • No published calendar-booking feature was verified on the official pages checked
  • No free plan; the headline prices require a 12-month term

Getting started

Before you start

  • A business that fits the annual-price conditions: new small-business customer, 1-100 employees, willing to sign 12 months or longer

The ongoing admin

  • Watch text and AI allowances against your tier each month
  • Review XBert conversation logs if you enable the AI Employee add-on
Step 1

Price the term, not the headline

Decide annual versus monthly first: Core is $15 versus $23 and Engage $25 versus $50, so the term choice is the biggest price decision you make.

Step 2

Start on Core, watch the allowances

Core's 100 texts and 50 AI items per category are the real limits; if texting volume is your growth channel, Engage's 500 texts and live chat are the planned step up.

Step 3

Add XBert only with a job for it

At $99/month plus $1.50 per conversation beyond the package, XBert needs a measurable missed-call problem to pay for itself.

Time to first useful result: Same day · no-code 4/5

Full pricing — checked 2026-11-08

Core $15/user/month on annual small-business pricing (12-month minimum term, new customers with 1-100 employees) or $23 billed monthly; Engage $25 annual / $50 monthly; Scale $75 annual (monthly price via sales). No free plan. XBert AI Employee add-on from $99/month.

Solo pick

Core (annual)

$15/user/month billed annually — 12-month minimum term, new small-business customers with 1-100 employees

Per seat / month · $15/mo for one person

  • Unlimited voice and video
  • 100 business text messages per user per month
  • Team collaboration and team chat
  • Skills-based routing
  • Basic CRM and ticketing
  • Shared team and personal inboxes
  • 50 AI transcriptions, 50 AI summarizations and 50 AI Answer Assist conversations

Allowance 100 texts/user/month; 50 AI transcriptions, summarizations and Answer Assist conversations

Limit Annual prices require a 12-month or longer term

Limit Texting beyond 100 messages per user is not included at this tier

Core (monthly)

$23/user/month billed monthly

Per seat / month · $23/mo for one person

  • Everything in Core at the month-to-month rate

Allowance Same Core allowances as the annual tier

Limit $8/user/month more than the annual rate

Engage (annual)

$25/user/month billed annually

Per seat / month · $25/mo for one person

  • Everything in Core, plus live chat and chatbot
  • 500 business text messages per user per month
  • 2,000 toll-free inbound minutes
  • Call recording and virtual fax (per the vendor's product info page)
  • Single sign-on (Okta, Microsoft Entra ID)
  • 200 AI transcriptions, summarizations and Answer Assist conversations

Allowance 500 texts/user/month; 2,000 toll-free minutes; 200 AI items in each AI category

Limit Annual term required for this price

Engage (monthly)

$50/user/month billed monthly

Per seat / month · $50/mo for one person

  • Everything in Engage at the month-to-month rate

Allowance Same Engage allowances as the annual tier

Limit Double the annual rate — the steepest monthly premium of the three plans

Scale (annual)

$75/user/month billed annually (month-to-month price available from sales)

Per seat / month · $75/mo for one person

  • Everything in Engage, plus unlimited business text messages
  • 10,000 toll-free inbound minutes
  • Unlimited AI transcriptions, summarizations and Answer Assist conversations
  • Supervisor monitoring and dedicated onboarding team
  • Directory sync

Allowance Unlimited texts and AI items; 10,000 toll-free minutes

Limit Priced and packaged for larger CX operations, not a one-person business

PlanPublished priceSolo monthlyBilled byLimits & overage
Core (annual)Solo pick$15/user/month billed annually — 12-month minimum term, new small-business customers with 1-100 employees$15/moPer seat / monthAnnual prices require a 12-month or longer term · Texting beyond 100 messages per user is not included at this tier
Core (monthly)$23/user/month billed monthly$23/moPer seat / month$8/user/month more than the annual rate
Engage (annual)$25/user/month billed annually$25/moPer seat / monthAnnual term required for this price
Engage (monthly)$50/user/month billed monthly$50/moPer seat / monthDouble the annual rate — the steepest monthly premium of the three plans
Scale (annual)$75/user/month billed annually (month-to-month price available from sales)$75/moPer seat / monthPriced and packaged for larger CX operations, not a one-person business
Add-onXBert AI Employee — From $99/month for packages starting at 100 conversations/month; additional conversations $1.50 each (vendor blog figure). The pricing page itself shows XBert at $99/month; it answers customers across phone, chat and text and can take action in your systems

What could make the bill jump?

Two jumps matter: Engage billed monthly is $50 — double its $25 annual price — and the XBert AI Employee add-on starts at $99/month, more than six Core seats, before its $1.50 per extra conversation.

Billing unitper user per month
Free tier / trialNo — no free plan is published
Pricing clarityClear flat price
SourceOfficial pricing page ↗
Checked 2026-11-08

Price record · 2026-11-08: Checked 2026-11-08 on nextiva.com/pricing: the plan feature lists and the XBert price ($99/month) were read directly on the page this run, but the three plan dollar figures do not extract as text from the rendered pricing page. The figures recorded (Core $15 annual / $23 monthly, Engage $25 / $50, Scale $75 annual, with Scale monthly via sales) are corroborated by multiple dated reads of Nextiva's own official pages this run — the vendor's company/product info page (nextiva.com/company/llm-info, updated November 2026) and its official blog plan tables — which agree exactly, including the annual-price conditions (new small-business customers, 1-100 employees, 12-month minimum term) and the SMS allowances (100 / 500 / unlimited). No directories or third-party reviews were used as price sources.

At a glance — the standard checklist

The same fields on every deep listing in this job, so agents compare field by field. “Not verified” means our research has not confirmed it yet — it never means “doesn't have it.”

Best for

  • Solo founders whose phone, texting, video and team chat have sprawled across separate tools
  • Growing one-to-three-person businesses that will use live chat and a chatbot as well as voice
  • Buyers comfortable with a 12-month term in exchange for the published low rates

Not for

  • Anyone who only needs an AI receptionist — that layer is a $99/month add-on here
  • Month-to-month buyers: Engage at $50 monthly is poor value against its own annual price
  • Very price-sensitive solos who need nothing beyond a number, routing and voicemail

Our assessment of Nextiva

Nextiva is what a solo founder buys when the phone number has quietly become a whole communications department. One per-user subscription carries unlimited voice and video calling, business texting, team chat, shared inboxes and call routing, and the higher tiers keep layering on the customer-experience machinery: live chat and a chatbot, toll-free minutes, call recording, AI transcription, AI summaries and an AI Answer Assist allowance on every plan. For a one-person business the honest entry point is Core at $15 per user per month on annual pricing — but read the conditions, because that price is for new small-business customers with 1 to 100 employees signing a term of 12 months or longer, and the month-to-month price is $23. Engage at $25 a month billed annually is where most growing solos will actually land, because it adds the customer-facing pieces — live chat, chatbot, 500 texts a month, 2,000 toll-free minutes and recording — while its monthly-billing price doubles to $50, the steepest term penalty in the range. Scale at $75 is a contact-centre product wearing a small-business badge: unlimited texting and AI allowances, supervisor monitoring and journey tooling that a business of one will rarely touch. The optional XBert AI Employee, from $99 a month, is the genuinely agentic piece — it answers across phone, chat and text and takes action in your systems — but it costs more than six Core seats before overage. Nextiva's strength is consolidation: one vendor, one app, one bill for phone, messaging and light CX. Its weakness for a solo is the same thing — you are buying a platform roadmap, priced per user and term-locked at the good rates, when your actual job may only be answering calls and texts reliably.

Pros — our take

  • One subscription replaces a separate phone system, team chat and video tool
  • AI transcription and summaries are included from the cheapest tier, in stated allowances
  • Published per-user prices with the term conditions stated on the vendor's own pages

Cons — our take

  • The good prices are term prices — Engage doubles from $25 annual to $50 month-to-month
  • Scale and the contact-centre tiers are built for teams far larger than a solo business
  • XBert, the autonomous layer, starts at $99/month on top of the plan
Solo Fit input · no-code4/5 — can a non-technical owner run it?
Solo Fit input · setupSame day to the first useful result
Solo Fit input · human controlActs + logs everything
Solo Fit input · pricing clarityClear flat price

Solo Fit stays the public score: the qualitative roll-up of these four published inputs under the How We Rank method. Published per-user pricing and included AI allowances carry it; the term lock behind the headline prices and the platform's team scale keep it at Small-Team Ready.

Three to compare before you decide

Quo (formerly OpenPhone)$64/mo · Solo-Ready

The difference: Quo is the lighter phone app at the same $15 annual entry, with its Sona answering agent included in small credit allowances — Nextiva is the broader CX platform, with autonomous answering sold separately as XBert.

Dialpad$25/mo · Solo-Ready

The difference: Dialpad is the AI-meeting-and-phone platform whose summaries and transcripts are its headline; Nextiva bundles more CX channels (live chat, chatbot, shared inboxes) into the same per-user tiers.

Aircall$134/mo · Small-Team Ready

The difference: Aircall is the sales-and-support call-centre phone system built around CRM integrations; Nextiva aims wider, at the whole business's communications in one subscription.

Questions buyers ask about Nextiva

What does Nextiva cost for one person?

Core is $15 per user per month billed annually (a 12-month minimum term for new small-business customers) or $23 billed monthly. Engage, the tier with live chat, chatbot and call recording, is $25 annually or $50 monthly, and Scale is $75 annually. The directory's True Solo Cost is $15 low (Core annual) and $25 typical (Engage annual).

Is there a free Nextiva plan or trial?

No free plan is published, and the vendor's own guides state there is no free tier. This listing records a free trial as not verified from the official pages checked on 2026-11-08, so confirm any demo or trial offer with sales before relying on it.

What does the XBert AI Employee add-on cost?

XBert is priced from $99 per month on the pricing page, for packages starting at 100 conversations a month; the vendor's own blog puts additional conversations at $1.50 each. It is optional on the phone plans and is the part that answers autonomously across phone, chat and text.

How many text messages are included?

Core includes 100 business text messages per user per month, Engage includes 500, and Scale includes unlimited texting, per the vendor's published plan tables. Engage also includes 2,000 toll-free inbound minutes and Scale 10,000.

Stacks & next steps

Nextiva is not in a published stack yet — stacks are edited buying guides, and memberships are added only when the combination has been worked through.

Compare all answer the phone & book agents → · How we rank → · Get a weekly shortlist →

Provenance — where this page’s facts came from