The Best Gong Alternative If You Use Aircall

If your sales team runs on Aircall and you have been researching conversation intelligence, Gong is probably the first name that came up. It dominates the category. It has strong brand recognition. And it is almost certainly the wrong choice for your team.

The reasons are straightforward: Gong does not natively integrate with Aircall, it was built for video meetings rather than phone calls, and its pricing model starts well above $100,000 per year. For an Aircall-based team of 5-15 reps, that is a mismatch on every axis.

This article compares Gong against a purpose-built alternative for Aircall users, covering features, pricing, setup, and the fundamental difference between meeting-native and phone-native conversation intelligence.

Why Gong Does Not Fit Aircall Teams

No Native Aircall Integration

Gong's core integrations are built around video conferencing platforms -- Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Webex. It joins meetings as a bot, records the audio and video, and processes the conversation.

For phone calls, the picture is different. Gong supports some VoIP providers through its dialer integrations, but Aircall is not among its natively supported platforms. Getting Aircall calls into Gong typically requires workarounds: manual uploads, third-party connectors, or middleware solutions that add complexity and cost.

For a tool you are paying six figures for, requiring workarounds to connect your primary phone system is a red flag.

Built for Meetings, Not Phone Calls

Gong's product design reflects its origins in video sales. Features like visual engagement scoring, slide tracking, and multi-participant meeting analysis are central to the experience. These capabilities are powerful for teams that sell through scheduled video demonstrations.

They are irrelevant for teams that sell over the phone.

Phone-first sales teams need different things: fast turnaround on call analysis (calls happen back-to-back, not in scheduled slots), integration with high-volume dialling workflows, and analytics built around the cadence of outbound calling rather than the structure of a 45-minute demo.

Enterprise Pricing for Enterprise Teams

Gong's pricing is not publicly listed, but industry reports and user accounts consistently place it above $100,000 per year for most implementations. Per-seat costs typically range from $1,200 to $1,600 annually, with minimum seat requirements and annual contracts.

For context, that is the entire annual budget many small sales teams have for all their tools combined. Gartner's research on sales technology adoption confirms that pricing remains the primary barrier to conversation intelligence adoption for teams under 20 people.

Gong vs Coldread: Feature Comparison for Aircall Users

The feature sets overlap significantly on core conversation intelligence capabilities. The differences lie in focus (meetings vs. phone calls), integration (native Aircall support vs. workarounds), and accessibility (monthly self-serve vs. annual enterprise contracts).

Where Gong Wins

To be fair, Gong is a more mature product with capabilities that Coldread does not attempt to replicate:

• Revenue forecasting -- Gong's Forecast product uses AI to predict deal outcomes based on conversation patterns across thousands of data points
• Multi-stakeholder deal tracking -- for complex enterprise sales with 5-10 stakeholders, Gong maps relationships and engagement across all participants
• Video meeting features -- screen share analysis, visual engagement metrics, and meeting bot recording
• Massive data set -- Gong has processed billions of interactions, giving its models a significant training advantage

If your team sells through scheduled video demos to enterprise accounts with long sales cycles and large deal values, Gong's premium pricing may be justified by its premium capabilities.

Where Coldread Wins for Aircall Users

For Aircall-based teams, the advantages tilt sharply the other way:

Native Integration

Coldread connects to Aircall through its API with no middleware, no manual uploads, and no third-party connectors. Calls are automatically ingested and analysed as they happen. Setup takes minutes, not weeks.

Phone-Native Design

Every feature in Coldread was built for the cadence of phone sales. High-volume outbound teams making 50-100 calls per day need different analytics than teams running 3-4 scheduled demos per week. Call scoring, rep metrics, and coaching insights are all calibrated for phone-first workflows.

Pricing That Matches Team Size

Coldread uses team-based pricing rather than per-seat enterprise contracts:

A 10-person Aircall team gets full conversation intelligence for $79/month -- less than $8 per user. The equivalent on Gong would cost roughly $12,000-$16,000 per year.

Custom Tags & Compliance

Define what matters to your team in plain English — objection handling, pricing mentioned, compliance violations — and Coldread applies your rules to every call automatically. Combined with stage detection and 15-word call outcome summaries, managers get a complete picture without reviewing every call. No other tool in this price range offers this level of configurability.

Self-Serve Everything

There is no sales call, no demo, no onboarding specialist, and no annual contract negotiation. You sign up, connect Aircall, and start getting insights. If it does not work for your team, you cancel. The barrier to trying it is effectively zero.

Who Should Still Consider Gong

Gong remains the right choice if:

• Your team primarily sells through video meetings, not phone calls
• You have a dedicated RevOps team to manage the platform
• Your deal sizes justify six-figure tooling costs (typically $50K+ ACV)
• You need revenue forecasting across a large sales organisation
• You are already invested in Gong's ecosystem and workflows

The Bottom Line

Gong is a powerful platform built for a specific type of sales organisation -- large teams selling high-value enterprise deals through video meetings. It is not built for Aircall users, and its pricing reflects a customer profile that does not include 5-15 person phone-first teams.

If you use Aircall and you want conversation intelligence from your calls, you need a tool that integrates natively with your phone system, is designed for the pace and pattern of phone sales, and costs an amount that makes sense for your team size.

That is exactly the problem Coldread was built to solve.

Related reading:

• Coldread vs Gong
• Coldread for Aircall
• Gong Alternatives for Small Teams
• Why Gong Costs $100K+ Per Year
• Best Third-Party Call Intelligence for Aircall
• Aircall Analytics: Native vs AI