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
OpenPhone
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
OpenPhone, a business phone service from the company of the same name in San Francisco, adds work phone numbers to existing devices. No new hardware required; all that's required is an app. Extended services include a lightweight contact management CRM, and customer service team management (e.g. shared inbox) features.
I believe that 8x8 Work is well-suited for any organization, whether it employs 1-2 users or thousands. It is so easy to deploy and use. We are mainly a MS Teams house, and we want our Users to use this for Meetings and Chats. The fact that 8x8 has the flexibility to disable this within the client, so that it forces our users to continue working in Teams for meetings and chats, and then use the phone element in 8x8 Work, is brilliant. Our company finds it extremely easy to use, and the fact that we have different departments using it, with each department having the ability to change their outbound CLI to reflect the area of the business they are calling from, is excellent.
If you have more than 2 people in your organization, then this will save you so much time. Delegation is the key to starting a business. Even when you're a 1 person show, being able to present to your user base the differentiation of options for client communications is critical. As a founder, feeling compelled to be always on is something I strive not to be. OpenPhone gives you that flexibility. I have found it to be less appropriate in complex HIPPA compliant areas, but that is it. OpenPhone really does seem to suit an open array of use cases.
The auto attendant has built in text-to-speech, but this same engine should be put to use for individual and ring group voicemail messages.
Call forwarding in the mobile app should be relocated for easier access. Instead it's buried somewhere under the generic "account settings"
The default user template disables voicemail text transcription. Why???
One fax number should be accessible by app for more than 1 user. Responsibility for faxes is usually distributed among a few people in a typical small office setting.
Ability to receive and send SMS messages from a shared "main company number" would be awesome. Ability to assign this to certain users would rock!
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
I'm not using it to its full capacity like a Zoom or teams Workspace. I use the service for phone calls, hate application on my cellphone and the voicemail apparatus. This we like because it gives us the feel of a large firm when we aren't.
In my experience, App features are buggy and confusing, and they often don't match the descriptions and screenshots in their documentation. In fact, many of their help links go to 404 "page not found" errors. In my experience, there are frequent outages and quality issues. My customers prefer to talk to me on a different line, because they find it difficult to understand me on OpenPhone.
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
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.
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.
In my experience, their support feels like the opposite of support. They send you in circles, never directly answer questions, provide vague suggestions with unwanted platitudes, and they often take days between responses to provide that. For me, it's a frustrating experience that leaves you with a net loss of time and energy versus before you reached out to them. In my opinion, you definitely don't get "support".
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
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.
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.
OpenPhone has an easier user interface than Grasshopper. Years ago when I was using Grasshopper, I recall that their user interface looked antiquated and full of complications. They would also update the interface just as everyone was getting used to using it. OpenPhone has many more functions. Grasshopper's app did not offer basic functions such as in-app texting between team members, and its call transfer function was incredibly complicated to use. In my opinion, Grasshopper was an inferior service/product in almost every way.
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.
In my experience, Billing lacks transparency, and they have made billing errors (overcharging me) since I started using them. I think the "trust registration" is an insane ripoff charging around $20 for every attempt. Crazy.
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
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.
