If your team uses 8×8 inside Salesforce, the Open CTI retirement affects you directly. 8×8 has now laid out what comes next, and it is not a single answer. The company has confirmed two different replacement integrations, and each one trades off cost, user experience and channel coverage in its own way.
Key facts at a glance
- Open CTI has been in maintenance mode since 2020, with no new features.
- New Agentforce Service orgs cannot implement Open CTI (effective February 16, 2026).
- Open CTI retires with the Spring ’28 release; legacy connectors stop working on February 28, 2028.
- Salesforce recommends moving to Salesforce Voice, through a partner contact center or Agentforce Contact Center.
Here is what 8×8 has published, what each option means in practice, and how to decide between them.
What 8×8 has confirmed
In its FAQ on the Salesforce Open CTI retirement, 8×8 confirms that Open CTI is the framework its current 8×8 for Salesforce integration runs on. Existing customers can keep using the integration without disruption until Salesforce retires Open CTI on February 28, 2028. 8×8 says it will maintain full support for Open CTI until that date.
New customers are a different story. The 8×8 Work for Salesforce admin guide now carries a warning that the current integration is only available to existing customers, including those who installed the package before February 4, 2026. New Salesforce customers cannot set it up.
8×8 also notes that its other CRM integrations, such as NetSuite, Zendesk and Microsoft Dynamics, are not affected.
Option 1: the 8×8 for Salesforce Chrome Extension
The first replacement is a browser extension. According to 8×8, it needs no additional Salesforce license, keeps existing 8×8 Professional Services customizations, and supports voice plus other media channels. Core features include screen pop, click to call, interaction logging and automatic record creation when no match is found.
8×8 is upfront that the experience changes. The extension opens in its own window rather than inside Salesforce. Screen pops open in a new browser tab instead of a Salesforce console tab. And there is no “possible match” feature, so if an agent creates a new record during an interaction, they have to link it manually.
8×8 has opened an Open Beta for the Chrome Extension, with enrollment linked from the same FAQ page.
Option 2: the 8×8 Salesforce Voice integration
The second path is Salesforce’s preferred model. 8×8 describes it as natively embedded, with Einstein capabilities, screen pop, click to call and interaction logging. Its published feature list includes voice call records, softphone controls, agent status sync, real-time transcription, warm transfers and conferences, after-conversation work, supervisor flag and whisper, and standard reporting.
There are two catches. First, it is voice only. 8×8 says other media would require Bring Your Own Channel (BYOC). Second, it needs an additional Salesforce license that 8×8 lists at $50 per user per month, bought directly from Salesforce and available only for Service Cloud and Sales Cloud. 8×8 also says Professional Services customizations do not carry over to this path.
Timing
8×8 targets the Chrome Extension for Q2 of its FY 26/27 and the Salesforce Voice integration for Q4 of FY 26/27. Both targets are on 8×8’s fiscal calendar, and 8×8 states that all dates are subject to change.
What this means for your contact center
- Budget-sensitive teams may lean toward the Chrome Extension, since it avoids the extra Salesforce license. Test the separate-window workflow with real agents first.
- Service teams that want Omni-Channel, transcription and Agentforce will likely need the Salesforce Voice path, and should budget for the license.
- Heavily customized orgs should list every Professional Services customization now. They survive on the extension but not on Salesforce Voice.
- Mixed teams can split: sales on one path, service on the other. Plan reporting so both feed the same dashboards.
The bigger takeaway is that “stay with my vendor” still involves a real decision. Whichever path you choose, the Salesforce-side work (routing, reporting, agent training) has to happen anyway, which also makes this a natural moment to compare vendors. If you want a second opinion, see how Vonage Contact Center for Salesforce handles voice and digital channels in one Salesforce Voice workspace.
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