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 8.9 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

Features
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Cloud PBX
Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.5
463 Ratings
2% above category average
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
7.6
43 Ratings
5% below category average
Hosted PBX8.9251 Ratings9.422 Ratings
Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)8.7115 Ratings5.231 Ratings
Directory of employee names8.5422 Ratings9.141 Ratings
User templates00 Ratings6.441 Ratings
Call reports00 Ratings7.840 Ratings
Call Management
Comparison of Call Management features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
8.6
515 Ratings
2% above category average
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
8.0
46 Ratings
5% below category average
Answering rules8.7467 Ratings9.444 Ratings
Call recording8.7399 Ratings5.428 Ratings
Call park8.6369 Ratings9.440 Ratings
Call screening8.5355 Ratings8.837 Ratings
Message alerts8.6449 Ratings7.140 Ratings
Mobile apps
Comparison of Mobile apps features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
9.0
451 Ratings
6% above category average
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
7.1
26 Ratings
13% below category average
Mobile app for iOS9.1379 Ratings6.926 Ratings
Mobile app for Android8.8292 Ratings7.324 Ratings
VoIP system collaboration
Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Work
-
Ratings
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
9.1
42 Ratings
13% above category average
Video conferencing00 Ratings9.132 Ratings
Audio conferencing00 Ratings9.142 Ratings
Video screen sharing00 Ratings8.617 Ratings
Instant messaging00 Ratings9.520 Ratings
Best Alternatives
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Small Businesses
Broadvoice | GoContact
Broadvoice | GoContact
Score 9.4 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Score 8.9 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Score 8.9 out of 10
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(531 ratings)
8.4
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(38 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(175 ratings)
9.4
(7 ratings)
Availability
8.8
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.3
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(147 ratings)
8.0
(14 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(17 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
7.9
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.3
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(13 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.7
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.8
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.8
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
8x8 WorkCisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)
Likelihood to Recommend
8x8 Inc.
As per my 8x8 work experience, I will give an 8 rating out of 10. Because 8x8 work is doing very nice in the communication field. 8x8 works to provide seamless, high-quality voice connections with our customers. It has a simple, easy-to-use user interface. I can use 8x8 from my phone, desktop, laptop, and desk phone, which is great.
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Cisco
Cisco Unified Communications Manager is suited for medium to large customers who are in search for a solid call control platform with added security in mind. Cisco Unified Communications Manager also supports receptions, small groups and also a mini contact center type of set up with its Hunt Group, Pick up Group and call queuing facilities and also with set up of music on hold function while calls queuing.
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Pros
8x8 Inc.
  • 8x8 Work manages roles and permissions well. It is very simple to create permission groups needed for certain roles that may even overlap teams needs.
  • User management is fairly simple and straight forward.
  • Analytics reporting is good quality for the higher tier licenses
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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.
  • Click to dial for the web based client.
  • The ability to have specific contact lists that can be shared with certain teams only.
  • Group voicemail notification to show once a voicemail has been listened to by another member of the team.
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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.
8x8 Work is very good software for making communication easier. 8x8 Work is user friendly in use. 8x8 Work has excellent uptime. It provides HD voice quality even on mobile phone as well. 8x8 Work has excellent customer support. 8x8 customer support is knowledgeable they always resolve issues with 8x8 deep knowledge.
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Cisco
The usability part of Cisco Unified Communications Manager is very much simple from a usability point of view. Day-to-day Move Add Change Delete (MACD) can be performed by the administrators very easily with simple training. From the initial deployment point of view, some of the thing can be improved to simplify the process.
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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.
We are a USA based organization. Support was refreshingly quick (callback via phone or email, online live agents). Agents are knowledgeable, thorough in their explanations, and extremely patient when dealing with end-users at various levels of the ICT knowledge spectrum.
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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.
I prefer 8x8 Work; it has the right number of features and modes for the communication I need. I much prefer 8x8 Work meetings to zoom meetings, as it is much, much easier to transition between devices when I am on the road. 8x8 Work is also easier to manage across multiple modes of communication.
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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.
The only issue was adding licences was not via a button click but through your account admin which seems bad practice in a SaaS world as the user should be able to sign up, amend and close their account with ease
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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.
  • Getting access to emergency voicemails left on our office lines when we are at home, on the weekend, or after hours.
  • Texting clients from a dedicated office line portal, keep things private and organized.
  • The ease of installation and helpful support when needed significantly limit the time wasted.
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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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