Comparison
Modernizing Legacy Call Centers: Bigly Sales vs Add-On AI in Five9 and Genesys
If you run a dialer floor and your platform just shipped an AI module, you are being asked to buy voice AI as a feature of the system you already own. That can be the right answer. It is often the slowest and least measurable one. This page compares the two shapes of purchase honestly, using each vendor’s own published rates, and tells you where Bigly Sales is the wrong choice.
DisclosureBigly Sales is our own product and this is our ranking of the market. We sell the service in the first column. Everything stated about Five9 and Genesys below is drawn from what those companies publish themselves or from published buyer reviews, and it is dated September 2026. Prices and product names change. Verify current terms with each vendor before you sign anything.
Start Here
These are not the same purchase
Most comparison pages pretend two products are interchangeable so the scorecard reads cleanly. This one does not, because the difference is the entire decision.
Bigly Sales is a managed AI calling service
You bring a script, a lead source and a definition of a qualified conversation. Our team builds the voice agent, runs the numbers, works the calls and hands you recordings, transcripts and CRM records. There is no seat count because there are no human agents on our side of the line.
Five9 and Genesys are contact center platforms
They are the system of record for a workforce. Routing, queues, omnichannel, quality management, workforce management, reporting and now AI modules that sit on top of that foundation. You are buying infrastructure for human agents, and the AI is one layer inside it.
Put plainly, a CCaaS platform is where a call center lives. A managed AI calling service is a way to make and answer a specific set of calls without building a call center at all. Those solve different problems, and plenty of companies genuinely need the first one.
The Grid
Side by side, with the gaps left visible
Where a vendor does not publish a number, this table says so rather than guessing. Every figure here is a published list rate, not a quoted price, and enterprise contracts rarely match list.
Comparison of published information as of September 2026. Rates are list prices published by each vendor and are not quotes. On a narrow screen the table scrolls sideways.
| What you are comparing | Bigly Sales | Five9 with its AI layer | Genesys Cloud CX with its AI layer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shape of the purchase | Managed AI calling service, delivered for you | CCaaS platform with AI capabilities layered on the same subscription | CCaaS platform with AI capabilities metered separately from licenses |
| Published entry price | $2,999 per month on the Launch plan, with call usage on top | $119 per seat per month on Digital and $159 on Core, with a stated minimum of 50 seats | $75 per user per month on CX 1, rising to $115, $155 and $240 on CX 2, CX 3 and CX 4, billed annually |
| How the AI itself is metered | Per connected outbound call, from $0.061 to $0.12 depending on plan, or per inbound minute from $0.08 to $0.15 | Bundles list 3,000 minutes per bundled seat plus usage. Pricing for Intelligent Virtual Agent and AI Agents is not publicly disclosed | AI Experience tokens at roughly $1.00 each, with 250 named or 350 concurrent tokens included per organization each month |
| Published token or usage math | Rate card is on the pricing page, so a monthly bill can be modeled before you sign | Not publicly disclosed for the AI agent tiers. The higher Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans are quoted by sales | Published consumption rates, for example one token per 17 voice bot minutes, 0.5 tokens per virtual agent interaction and 1.2 tokens per agentic virtual agent interaction |
| Named AI capabilities the vendor advertises | Outbound AI sales and follow up calling, AI receptionist and answering, speed to lead callback, appointment setting, CRM sync | Voice AI Agents, Intelligent Virtual Agent, AI Agent Assist, AI Summaries, AI Insights, AI Knowledge, workflow automation | Voice bots, digital bots, virtual agent, agentic virtual agent, Agent Copilot, predictive routing, AI scoring, AI translate |
| Who builds and tunes the agent | Our team builds it on your script and keeps tuning it, with a dedicated account manager | Your admins or professional services. Five9 describes natural language design and shipping new use cases in days | Your admins or an implementation partner. Buyer reviews frequently cite partner dependency |
| Typical time to first live calls | Days, because there is no platform migration in front of it | Reviewers commonly report weeks to months of implementation work, with roughly 60 percent in one review roundup calling implementation lengthy | Reviewers commonly cite implementation complexity and change management effort, especially around predictive features |
| Human seats required | None on our side. You keep whatever human team you already have | Yes, and the published floor is 50 seats | Yes, licensing is per user |
| Workforce management and omnichannel routing | Not offered. This is a genuine gap and it is the main reason to buy a platform instead | Yes, a core strength, with workforce engagement offered on a named basis | Yes, a core strength, with journey management on the top tier |
| Contract shape | Monthly plan plus usage | Preconfigured bundles, custom quotes, or pricing based on concurrent users, named agents or pay per use | Per user per month billed annually, with several capabilities sold as separate add-ons |
| What the vendor says about calling compliance | We publish that the AI discloses it is an AI, that consent is verified before a dial connects, that lists are scrubbed against the National Do Not Call Registry, that calling windows are enforced by the platform and that traffic runs on registered numbers under STIR SHAKEN | Publishes its own trust, security and compliance documentation. Review the current statements directly with the vendor | Publishes its own trust, security and compliance documentation. Review the current statements directly with the vendor |
| Who carries the legal risk of the call | The business placing the call | The business placing the call | The business placing the call |
On the compliance rows we describe only what each company publicly says about its own product. We make no assessment of any other vendor’s legal or regulatory posture, and we do not claim any competitor lacks a control. Under the TCPA and related rules, responsibility for a call sits with the party on whose behalf it is placed, whichever tool dials it. Take your own counsel’s view before launching any campaign on any platform.
Honest Limits
When you should buy a platform and not buy us
If any of the following describes your operation, a CCaaS platform is the correct purchase and Bigly Sales is not a substitute for it.
- You employ hundreds of human agents and need scheduling, forecasting, adherence and quality management in one system. Workforce management is not something we offer.
- Your customer conversations span voice, chat, email, SMS and social, and they need to route as one queue with one interaction history. We run voice.
- You are the system of record for regulated interaction archives across an enterprise, and procurement requires a single vendor of record for the whole contact center estate.
- You need deep custom telephony control, carrier level routing decisions or on premise and hybrid deployment models.
- Your buying committee requires a formal analyst position, a global support footprint and a partner ecosystem. Those are real requirements and we do not pretend to meet them.
The narrower case where Bigly Sales usually wins is different. It is a company with a specific high value call flow, inbound speed to lead, outbound follow up, appointment setting or after hours coverage, that wants those calls handled well starting this week without a platform migration and without hiring a floor. That is a real problem and it is the one we are built for.
The Model
Total cost per qualified conversation
The per seat and per token numbers below are published list rates. The conversion assumptions are illustrative inputs chosen to make the arithmetic visible. Swap in your own numbers before you use this for anything.
Model A: Bigly Sales managed outbound
Scale plan, published rate card, 40,000 dials in a month
- Platform fee, Scale plan$4,999
- 40,000 outbound calls at $0.083$3,320
- Agent build, numbers, account managerIncluded
- Human agent seats needed0
- Monthly cost of the calling program$8,319
- Connect rate assumed at 22 percent8,800
- Qualified at 12 percent of connects1,056
- Cost per qualified conversation$7.88
Model B: Platform license plus metered AI
Genesys published list rates, 50 users, same 40,000 dials at 1.5 minutes average
- 50 users on CX 3 at $155 each$7,750
- 60,000 AI voice minutes at 1 token per 17 minutes3,529 tokens
- Less 250 included tokens, remainder at $1.00$3,279
- Implementation, integrations, partner servicesNot disclosed
- Known monthly cost before the gaps$11,029
- Same 1,056 qualified conversations1,056
- Known cost floor per qualified conversation$10.44
Read this before you quote the numbers above. This is a model, not measured results. It is arithmetic on published list prices and assumed conversion rates, and it is not a report of what any customer achieved. Nobody’s real campaign converts at exactly 22 percent and 12 percent.
Model B uses Genesys published rates because Genesys publishes both a license price and a token consumption rate, which makes the math checkable. The equivalent Five9 line cannot be modeled the same way, because Five9 publishes $119 and $159 per seat with a 50 seat minimum but does not publicly disclose pricing for its Intelligent Virtual Agent and AI Agents tiers. Treating an undisclosed number as zero would be dishonest, so it is left as a gap.
Two more things the model deliberately leaves out, and both of them cut against us. Neither column includes human agent wages, which is the largest real line item in a staffed contact center and one a platform buyer carries and a Bigly buyer may not. And neither column includes the value of the platform capabilities you get with a CCaaS license, such as workforce management, omnichannel routing and quality management, which are worth real money if you need them.
The takeaway is not that one number beats another. It is that the Bigly figure can be computed from a public rate card in about a minute, and the platform figure cannot be completed at all without a sales conversation. If predictable unit economics matter to how you plan a quarter, that difference is the finding.
Speed To Lead
Why bolt-on AI struggles on the clock
Speed to lead is the one metric where the architecture of the purchase shows up directly in the result.
The AI sits behind the queue
In a platform deployment the AI module usually lives downstream of routing rules, dispositions and campaign schedules that were designed for human agents. Every layer between the form submission and the dial is latency you have to engineer away.
Change control is real
Contact center configuration is shared infrastructure. Tuning a script means a change request against a system the whole floor depends on, which is why buyers report that new capability tends to arrive through professional services rather than an afternoon of edits.
Consumption is discovered late
When AI is metered by tokens or usage that is quoted rather than published, the first honest read of cost per conversation often arrives after a quarter of live traffic. That is a slow feedback loop for a program you are trying to optimize weekly.
None of this means platform AI does not work. It means the constraint on a modernization project is rarely the model quality. It is the number of committees, integrations and change windows between a lead arriving and a phone ringing. A managed service removes most of them by not touching your contact center at all.
Migration
What buyers actually report about the switch
These are recurring themes in published user reviews rather than our own findings, and individual experiences vary widely.
- Implementation length is the most common complaint on both platforms. Review roundups describe multi week to multi month deployments, with one summary reporting that around 60 percent of users found implementation lengthy and multi step.
- Professional services dependency comes up repeatedly. Reviewers describe advanced configuration and upgrades needing vendor or partner involvement, and in some cases describe projects being shelved on services cost and timeline.
- Genesys buyers frequently raise partner dependency and change management effort, particularly around predictive and AI features that need training to operate well.
- AI consumption cost is a live concern. Reviewers note that tokens beyond the included allotment add up, and that the economics look better at smaller user counts than at large ones.
- Total cost of ownership is widely described as difficult to pin down before signing, because module based pricing and services fees sit outside the published per seat rate.
Both Five9 and Genesys hold strong analyst standing and high aggregate review scores. The criticisms above are about deployment effort and cost transparency, not about whether the platforms work. A large enterprise with an internal contact center team absorbs that effort routinely.
Decide
A short test for your own situation
- Write down the single call flow that is costing you the most money right now. If you cannot name one, you have a platform problem, not a voice AI problem.
- Ask each vendor for a fully loaded monthly figure at your volume, including AI usage, telephony and implementation. Compare the ones you can actually get in writing.
- Ask how long until the first real lead is called, not how long until the first demo environment exists.
- Ask who edits the script when it is not converting, and how long that edit takes to reach production.
- Ask what the audit trail looks like for a single call, including consent basis, recording, transcript and outcome.
FAQ
Whichever platform you land on, the FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule sets the floor for abandoned call rates, calling windows and the two second live rep connect, and it applies to the business placing the call rather than the vendor supplying the software.
Questions buyers ask us
Is Bigly Sales a replacement for Five9 or Genesys?
Can Bigly Sales work alongside a platform we already own?
How much does Five9 AI cost?
How do Genesys AI Experience tokens work?
Which is cheaper per qualified conversation?
Do we have to migrate anything to try Bigly Sales?
What about compliance, and who is responsible?
Is this comparison independent?
How current are these numbers?
What do we need to bring to get started?
Model it against your own volume
Bring your monthly lead count and your connect rate. We will build the same arithmetic with your numbers and tell you honestly if a platform is the better buy.
