Orum vs Nooks (2026) Compared

Both Orum and Nooks promise to 5x your SDR team's connect rates with AI-powered parallel dialing. The difference comes down to whether you want a pure dialer or a virtual sales floor.

The Short Version

THE SHORT VERSION

Orum is the better pure dialer for SDR teams that need maximum call volume, proven AI voicemail detection, and a platform laser-focused on phone-first outbound. Nooks is the better choice for remote SDR teams that want a virtual sales floor with built-in coaching, collaborative call blitzes, and a culture-building layer on top of the dialing technology. Both do parallel dialing well. The question is whether your team's bottleneck is call volume or SDR engagement and coaching.

Starting Price
Orum ~$250/user/mo
vs
Nooks ~$200-300/user/mo
Best For
Orum High-volume cold calling
vs
Nooks Remote SDR team culture
Job Postings
Orum 6
vs
Nooks 8
Parallel Lines
Orum Up to 10
vs
Nooks Up to 5
Virtual Sales Floor
Orum No
vs
Nooks Yes

Quick Comparison

Feature Orum Nooks
Parallel Dialing Up to 10 lines simultaneously Up to 5 lines simultaneously
AI Voicemail Detection Advanced, industry-leading Good, improving
Virtual Sales Floor Not available Core feature
Live Call Coaching Basic listen-in Built-in whisper + annotations
CRM Integration Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft
Call Recording Yes Yes, with AI summaries
Analytics Call metrics, rep performance Call metrics + team engagement
Team Collaboration Individual focus Collaborative blitz calling
Contract Annual Annual

Deep Dive: Orum

What They're Selling

Orum bills itself as the #1 AI-powered live conversation platform. Its core selling point is dialing velocity: the AI detects voicemails, busy signals, and bad numbers in milliseconds, connecting reps only when a human picks up. Orum is built for teams that believe more conversations equals more pipeline.

What It Actually Costs

Pricing is around $250/user/month on annual contracts, though volume discounts apply for larger teams. Most teams of 10+ SDRs negotiate to $200-$230/user/month. No free trial, but they offer paid pilots. Add-on costs for advanced analytics and integrations can increase the total.

What Users Say

SDR managers praise Orum's voicemail detection as the best in the market. Reps report 3-5x more live conversations per hour compared to manual dialing. The biggest complaints: it's expensive per-seat, the UI could be more polished, and the platform is singularly focused on dialing without the team collaboration features that remote-first managers want.

Pros

  • Best-in-class AI voicemail detection saves hours of wasted dial time
  • Up to 10 parallel lines means maximum call throughput
  • Battle-tested with large enterprise SDR teams
  • Strong Salesforce and Salesloft integrations

Cons

  • No virtual sales floor or team collaboration features
  • Higher per-seat pricing than most competitors
  • Purely phone-focused, doesn't help with email or multi-channel
  • Limited coaching tools compared to Nooks

Read the full Orum review →

Deep Dive: Nooks

What They're Selling

Nooks positions itself as more than a dialer. It's a virtual sales floor for remote SDR teams. The pitch combines parallel dialing with a persistent virtual workspace where reps can see each other, listen to live calls, run collaborative blitz sessions, and get coached in real time. It's solving two problems: call volume and remote team engagement.

What It Actually Costs

Pricing ranges from $200-$300/user/month depending on team size and features. Nooks has been aggressive with pricing to compete with Orum, and startups can often negotiate favorable terms. The virtual sales floor component is included in the base price, which is a differentiator.

What Users Say

SDR leaders love the virtual sales floor for remote team culture. Reps report that collaborative call blitzes create energy and accountability that's missing in remote work. The parallel dialer is competent, though some users note the voicemail detection isn't quite as refined as Orum's. Teams that use both the dialer and the virtual floor get the most value.

Pros

  • Virtual sales floor recreates office energy for remote teams
  • Collaborative call blitz mode drives team accountability
  • Built-in live coaching with whisper and real-time annotations
  • AI call summaries and automatic CRM logging

Cons

  • Fewer parallel lines (5 vs Orum's 10)
  • Voicemail detection is good but not as advanced as Orum's
  • Virtual sales floor can feel gimmicky if the team doesn't buy in
  • Newer company with less enterprise track record

Read the full Nooks review →

Which Should You Pick?

IF Your SDR team is fully remote and you're struggling with engagement
THEN Nooks. The virtual sales floor is the differentiator. If your remote SDRs are isolated and burning out, the collaborative calling environment addresses a real problem that pure dialers don't solve.
IF You're optimizing for maximum dial volume
THEN Orum. Ten parallel lines and the best voicemail detection in the market mean more live conversations per hour. If your math is purely about connect rates and call throughput, Orum wins.
IF You're a first-time buyer of an AI dialer
THEN Nooks. The combination of dialing and team collaboration gives you more value per dollar, and the learning curve is gentler. Start with Nooks, and only move to Orum if you need maximum raw dialing capacity.
IF You have a large enterprise SDR team (50+ reps)
THEN Orum. It has more enterprise deployments and the infrastructure to handle large teams with complex CRM and sequencer integrations.
IF You need coaching and call review built in
THEN Nooks. Its live coaching tools and AI call summaries are more developed. Orum's coaching features are basic in comparison.

The Honest Take

Orum and Nooks are both solid AI dialers, but they solve different second-order problems. Orum is a precision dialing machine: it maximizes the number of live conversations your reps have per hour. Nooks wraps a competent dialer inside a team collaboration platform that addresses the culture problem of remote SDR teams. If your team is in-office or doesn't struggle with remote engagement, Orum's raw dialing performance is hard to beat. If you're managing a distributed SDR org and coaching/culture is as important as call volume, Nooks offers more than a dialer.

Questions to Ask Before Buying

  1. Is your SDR team fully remote, hybrid, or in-office?
  2. What's your primary bottleneck: call volume or rep engagement and coaching?
  3. How many SDRs will be on the platform?
  4. Do you already use a sequencer like Outreach or Salesloft?
  5. What CRM do you use, and how important is auto-logging?

Frequently Asked Questions

Which has more parallel dialing lines, Orum or Nooks?

Orum offers up to 10 parallel lines versus Nooks' 5. In practice, most reps use 3-5 lines regardless of the maximum because higher parallelism can cause awkward connection delays.

Does Nooks' virtual sales floor actually work?

For remote teams, yes. SDR managers report increased calling activity, better energy during blitz sessions, and improved coaching opportunities. The key is leadership buy-in: if managers actively use the floor for coaching and collaboration, adoption follows. If it's just a passive video feed, it adds little value.

Is Orum or Nooks better for voicemail detection?

Orum has the edge here. Its AI voicemail detection has been refined over more years and handles edge cases (partial voicemail pickups, IVR trees) better than Nooks. The gap is narrowing, but Orum is still the benchmark.

Can I use Orum or Nooks with Outreach or Salesloft?

Yes, both integrate with Outreach and Salesloft. They can pull calling tasks from sequences, log call dispositions, and advance contacts through workflows. Integration depth is similar between the two.

About the Author

Rome Thorndike has spent over a decade working with B2B data and sales technology. He led sales at Datajoy, an analytics infrastructure company acquired by Databricks, sold Dynamics and Azure AI/ML at Microsoft, and covered the full Salesforce stack including Analytics, MuleSoft, and Machine Learning. He founded DataStackGuide to help RevOps teams cut through vendor noise using real adoption data.