8x8 Work vs. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
8x8 Work
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
8x8 Work is a collaboration hub for phone, video, and messaging. It brings secure unified communication and collaboration experiences to every employee.
$24
per month
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.N/A
Pricing
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Considered Both Products
8x8 Work
Chose 8x8 Work
In my opinion, Cisco is just way to hard and over priced for the features we needed. I believe Comcast was a good system, but required additional onsite hardware and their mobile and desktop app needed some improvement.
Chose 8x8 Work
8x8 has a considerably lower upfront cost and is much easier to manage than an in-house VOIP system, such as Cisco UCM.

In my case the subscription cost was less than RingCentral.
Chose 8x8 Work
Solely based on first impression of sales person. Never tested RingCentral phone system.
Chose 8x8 Work
Although RingCentral and 8x8 provider similar offerings, I find the pricing and ease of use more appealing to 8x8. I also like the US-based customer support that 8x8 offers. I feel the feature set for Vonage for Business is not as strong as either RingCentral or 8x8. For …
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Cloud PBX
Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.7
342 Ratings
6% above category average
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
7.5
40 Ratings
9% below category average
Hosted PBX8.3194 Ratings9.919 Ratings
Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)10.049 Ratings6.029 Ratings
User templates8.3213 Ratings8.238 Ratings
Call reports8.3272 Ratings5.337 Ratings
Directory of employee names8.7307 Ratings8.138 Ratings
Call Management
Comparison of Call Management features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.5
389 Ratings
1% above category average
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
7.4
43 Ratings
13% below category average
Answering rules8.8348 Ratings7.841 Ratings
Call recording8.7300 Ratings5.626 Ratings
Call park8.8279 Ratings8.037 Ratings
Call screening7.5264 Ratings7.534 Ratings
Message alerts8.7336 Ratings7.838 Ratings
VoIP system collaboration
Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.7
283 Ratings
5% above category average
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
7.8
39 Ratings
6% below category average
Video conferencing8.6180 Ratings9.329 Ratings
Audio conferencing8.6245 Ratings8.839 Ratings
Video screen sharing9.0126 Ratings6.215 Ratings
Instant messaging8.8181 Ratings6.718 Ratings
Mobile apps
Comparison of Mobile apps features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
9.0
338 Ratings
8% above category average
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
8.8
23 Ratings
6% above category average
Mobile app for iOS8.9274 Ratings8.423 Ratings
Mobile app for Android9.1223 Ratings9.121 Ratings
Best Alternatives
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Small Businesses
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(408 ratings)
9.1
(44 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(24 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(54 ratings)
8.7
(4 ratings)
Availability
9.2
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.7
(139 ratings)
8.0
(14 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(13 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.2
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.6
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.8
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Likelihood to Recommend
8x8, Inc.
8x8 is well suited for our small private practice. Even though we are close to each other, it makes managing and transferring calls effortless. Concurrent calls are also a strong suit. Even if two people are logged into the same user account, being able to answer two lines at the same time and flip between devices is a great feature to have.
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Cisco
The Cisco Unified Communications Manager platform would be most suited for the below scenarios. 1. An organization with very restricted policies and compliance where can't move to cloud-based solutions for data security. They can install the CUCM on-premises. 2. An organization that is still on a legacy phone system could adopt CUCM to save costs and have better services.
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Pros
8x8, Inc.
  • Automatically routes incoming calls to the available agent with the appropriate skills, ensuring that customers are served promptly.
  • Integrates with email systems to provide a unified view of customer interactions.
  • Allows sales representatives to share their screens with customers and prospects, demonstrating products and services effectively.
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Cisco
  • This solution is extremely stable and has been running in our environment for several years without (unscheduled) downtime.
  • The ability to have voicemails automatically sent as an email message is extremely helpful in helping us to keep in touch while away from the desk.
  • The Call Manager provides us very granular settings to route our calls as we want.
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Cons
8x8, Inc.
  • 8x8's emails with billing info or auto-payments does not attach a pdf copy of the invoice for reference; you have to log in to your dashboard and navigate through several links to obtain a copy of your invoice, which is frankly just inconvenient.
  • While 8x8 is very feature rich, a lot of it appears to be oriented towards call centers and therefore may not be required or useful for small offices (like ours).
  • While 8x8 is very responsive to issues affecting its system, the frequent update alerts can become distracting.
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Cisco
  • Administration web page is little bit hard to understand at the beginning specially if you are not familiar with naming convention and GU Interfaces.
  • Call Detail Record interface is fine but would be desirable to include more options that fit organization needs in terms of reporting purposes.
  • Self Care Portal interface could be more useful to the end user if it includes options to manage some features without administrators involving.
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Likelihood to Renew
8x8, Inc.
All our employees love this product. No one has ever had an issue, whether it be the phone or fax. Great during the winter when employees have to work from home because of the snow. Never had an issue with the phone app. Highly recommend this product
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Cisco
We have been using this product for 20+ years and will continue too. This is a great product and new features are always coming out.
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Usability
8x8, Inc.
Again for a large call center with many needs, and full time people to manage this may be a good system, but for a small business needing a phone system in my opinion it is overly complicated and difficult to manage without multiple calls on support.
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Cisco
Although it's very easy to use, once you understand the concepts of IP telephony, as I said before, I think Cisco could have improved the management interface of the platform, adding modern technologies and the design language of the other platforms like DNA Center, etc. This interface hasn't had a substantial improvement for about 10 years
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Reliability and Availability
8x8, Inc.
As mentioned before, we have not had an outage with the phone system per say, There was an issue with the call center where we did have an outage, but it was quickly and promplty handled by 8x8 support, they got us up and going again within 24 hours. The 8x8 hard phone and softphone side of things have been rock solid, I couldn't ask for anything more seeing we are in health care and it's exactly what we were looking for. When and if there is an issue 99% of the time it's user error
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Performance
8x8, Inc.
None of the features that are available slow down the application. The reports (even the ones with hundreds of records) complete very quickly and the web interface as well as the mobile application never struggle to load or complete a task. The analytics will sometimes take some time to reflect the online status of users but it is to be expected due to connection speeds.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
8x8, Inc.
8x8 support can be phenomenal. After getting in touch with a support member, all of my problems are either solved right away or throughout a small time frame, fine-tuned to my circumstance/issue. Whether they are following up via phone call or email, I have full confidence and faith that any matter will be resolved. Trying to contact the support team is where things get a bit tricky. Raising an issue in the chat can be taxing as we are mostly referred to the general FAQ section of the site. Although it may be helpful to some, it does nothing for those of us that have very specific problems. If each account holder can receive access to a customer service line that differs from non-member account holders, I think we'd have a higher level of trust and a lower level of frustration.
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Cisco
CUCM is supported by most third-party vendors for related products, so it makes finding solutions to specific needs easy. Also Cisco TAC is very knowledgeable, and we have never run into a problem they have not been able to resolve. Usually they are resolved without the need to escalate tickers either.
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In-Person Training
8x8, Inc.
The person giving the training was very engaged, He also listened and answered all the questions. He created a video for our company while he was training in case we needed to reference it again in the future. The questions he could not answer were answered within 24 hours via an email to the IT support staff here so we could share the answers with the rest of the group
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Online Training
8x8, Inc.
online (video) training is good. No issues.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
8x8, Inc.
The implementation of 8x8 X was rather smooth. We had training prior to getting the system. The IT company did a good job on the training. The whole system is wonderful. Saves me so much time with the faxing, as i can just let it go by itself and not have to make sure pages don't get skipped, as with a regular fax machine.
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Cisco
This was the first phone system we implemented that could span multiple locations. We were very satisfied once fully implemented
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Alternatives Considered
8x8, Inc.
Hands down 8x8 is superior to the Spectrum Ring Central that we had tried. Interestingly, they supplied the same phone hardware but were unable to suggest an adapter for wifi for the phones. Cost wise very similar but customer experience very different. Above all else, the quality of customer service has made all the difference
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Cisco
We have been a Cisco based shop and have looked at other cloud voice options such as MS Teams pbx, and others, but ultimately, the features, endpoints, and reliability of Cisco has been the common factor in staying with them as our voice provider. Their integrations, room systems, and hybrid design allows for us to be flexible and keep a high up time vs reliance on 100% cloud.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8x8, Inc.
At this time, we’re very happy with the pricing model that we have worked out and they have provided for us. Just be sure to do your homework, and use your comparisons to work out your cost with 8x8. They will be very straightforward with you on what they can
adjust for you.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Scalability
8x8, Inc.
8x8 100% suits Business needs to connect with from anywhere and everywhere. The Softphone features is very light and very easy to use also very reliable with Zero Downtime. Can also be set personal Voicemail over softphone at anytime and logs everything is very easy to find.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
8x8, Inc.
PS had all the users etc. set up by our go-live date. All hard phones were activated and when we received them, all we had to do was set them up and punch in the activation code to activate them.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
8x8, Inc.
  • It's been amazing. We used to have so many complaints about call quality, phone calls cutting in and out, tons of calls where it was dead air, dropped calls etc. Since switching back to 8x8 we have not had one complaint, which is great for business! Being able to communicate with our clients is the only way for us to have a positive ROI!
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Cisco
  • Communication and collaboration - Our offices are able to communicate both internally and externally due to this system.
  • Down time - Struggles with CUCM has caused a lot of down time due to the instability of the system.
  • High Costs - the cost of both the license and the maintenance was much higher than other systems.
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ScreenShots