RingCentral call recording: How it works, its limits, & what to know

Looking for a business phone that offers phone call recording? With RingCentral, you’ll get access to call recording in all of its plans. On-demand recording is available on every plan, and automatic recording is available on the Advanced plan and higher. 

But there’s a catch you should know: recording storage retention. On the Core and Advanced plans, recordings are kept for only 90 days before they’re permanently deleted. Even in its most expensive tier, this data retention period applies. If you’re a business that needs permanent access to your call recordings, you should look for a different business phone provider.

In this article, we explain how RingCentral’s call recording features work and how they fall short for most businesses. We’ll also share a RingCentral alternative you should consider so you can build better relationships with your customers.

RingCentral call recording at a glance

Curious about RingCentral’s call recording features and how they’re distributed across its plans? Here’s an overview of its features in RingEx, its business phone offering:

Feature	Core – $20 per user per month	Advanced – $25 per user per month	Ultra – $35 per user per month
On-demand recording	✅	✅	✅
Automatic recording	X	✅	✅
Recording limit	200 recordings per user per inbox	100,000 recordings per account	Unlimited
Recording retention	90 days	90 days	90 days
AI call notes	✅	✅	✅

RingCentral uses real-time AI call transcription so that you can review what was discussed right after a call ends. Check out our deep dive into RingCentral AI tools.

For a full breakdown of what each tier costs and includes, see our RingCentral pricing guide.

How to record calls in RingCentral

Setting up call recording in RingCentral takes a few steps in your phone number settings. You can set them up the same way whether you have on-demand or automatic call recording. Here’s how:

1. Sign in to the Admin Portal.
2. Click the Phone System tab.
3. In the left panel, click Company Call Handling.
4. Under Call recording, turn on the toggles for either On-demand call recording or Automatic call recording.

Keep in mind that in many US states, you’re legally required to inform the other party that a call is being recorded. RingCentral lets you configure an automatic announcement, but you’ll need to enable it manually in the Admin Portal.

Once recording is enabled, the real question becomes how long you can access those recordings and how much storage you actually get.

How to access, listen to, and download RingCentral call recordings

You can access call recordings in RingCentral’s desktop and web apps, the mobile app, and in the admin portal. Here’s how:

RingCentral desktop & web app

1. In the navigation bar, click Phone.
2. Click the Recordings tab, then select a recording. The details will appear in the main panel.

For any recording, you have these options:

• View. View the caller’s name and phone number, with options to call, fax, text, or message the caller. You can also add the caller to your contacts list or block their number.
• Play. Click the Play icon to listen to the recording. Use the slider to fast-forward or rewind.
• Download. Click the Download icon to save the recording as an MP3 file.

RingCentral mobile app

1. In the bottom toolbar, tap Phone.
2. Tap the Recordings tab.
3. Tap any recording to view the details and access the controls.

For any recording, you have these options:

• View. View the caller’s name and phone number, with options to call, text, send a message, or view their profile.
• Play. Play or stop the recording.
• Speaker. Switch the audio source to speaker.
• Copy. Tap and hold their name to copy the phone number.
• Share. Send the recording to another person.

RingCentral admin portal

1. Sign in to the Admin Portal. If it shows Admin Portal at the top right, click the dropdown, then click My Extension.
2. Click the Messages tab.
3. In the left panel, click Recordings.

Choose what you want to do with a call recording:

• Play. Click the Play button to listen to any recorded call. Use the slider to fast-forward or rewind.
• Download. Click the three-dot More icon, then select Download.
• Forward. To send the recording through email, click the three-dot More icon, then select Forward.

RingCentral call recording limitations

Here are the biggest limitations of RingCentral’s call recording features:

1. 90-day call recording retention

If you can’t store call recordings in your business phone, should you record them at all? With RingCentral, you risk losing your recordings 90 days after you record them. Even if you upgrade to its Ultra plan, you can’t change this 90-day limit.

If you have long sales cycles or need to resolve a customer dispute six months down the road, you won’t have access to valuable context in your recordings. 

RingCentral recommends you download your recordings so you have access to them, but there are two challenges with this approach.

1. No conversation context. You don’t have the context you need in your business phone workspace. Recordings are downloaded with some metadata, but you lose context about the texts and calls you had before and after a specific recording.
2. No bulk export. You have to download your recordings individually from your RingCentral account. You can’t export recordings in bulk, which adds another task for your team. It isn’t enough to export your recordings either. You have to store, organize, and label them so your team can actually use them. 

2. Recording volume caps

RingCentral doesn’t just delete recordings after 90 days; it limits how many recordings you can store in your account. Automatic call recordings are capped at 100,000 per account. On-demand recordings are capped at 200 per user. 

For high-volume departments in sales and support, these limits can affect your team’s usage over time. Team members may skip recording calls to save workspace storage. Your CRM hygiene will be affected, which can affect your sales performance metrics too. 

3. Recording announcement friction

To stay compliant with call recording laws in different US states, RingCentral offers call recording announcements in its platform. However, these announcements are intrusive when talking to your customers. You can play a voice message to notify callers that the call is being recorded. But the only other option is a periodic audio tone, which means that callers will constantly be reminded the call is being recorded. 

Call recording limitations are just one piece of the picture. For a full breakdown of RingCentral pros and cons, see our RingCentral review.

RingCentral call recording vs Quo: A breakdown

Call recording is an essential feature for managing your customer relationships and improving your team performance. But RingCentral might hold you back. Here’s a comparison of RingCentral’s call recording features with Quo, formerly OpenPhone. Quo is a modern business communications platform that gives you access to essential call recording features without limiting your usage.

Feature	Quo	RingCentral
On-demand recording	✅ All plans	✅ All plans
Automatic recording	✅ Business and Scale plans	✅ Advanced and Ultra plans
Recording retention	✅ Unlimited on all plans	❌ 90 day limit on all plans
Recording storage cap	✅	❌ Maximum of 100,000 recordings per user per inbox
AI call summaries and transcriptions	✅ Business and Scale plans	✅ All plans
Call recording announcements	✅ Flexible options	✅ Less customizable options

Here’s where Quo call recordings have an edge over RingCentral:

• No storage limits. Quo lets you store as many call recordings as you need in our platform. You have access to your recordings as long as you maintain an active account. 
• Share recordings with other tools. With our third-party integrations, you can share your recordings wherever your team works. Our CRM integrations sync recordings with call logs in your Salesforce and HubSpot accounts. Compare this with RingCentral integrations.
• Flexible call recording announcements. Quo offers voice- and audio tone-based call recording announcements. You can upload a custom audio file to notify callers that their call is being recorded.

Don’t just take our word for it. Businesses have rated Quo the #1 business phone by customer satisfaction on G2. Here’s a Quo customer reviewing our call recording features:

“It’s fantastic. With call recordings and transcripts, we can just say, ‘Tell me where you live and what’s your email address.’ Then it records it all for us to refer to later.” – Brett Colquitt, Owner, OC Tasker

Want to see where else we excel compared to RingCentral? See the full side-by-side comparison in our Quo vs RingCentral breakdown.

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