Aircall headquartered in Paris provides a VOIP system for business designed to support contact centers, featuring IVR and automated call routing, conference calls, shared call inbox and call notes, unlimited concurrent calls and call queuing, and many integrations with CRM or marketing systems to support a variety of support or sales purposes.
$30
per user/per month
Google Hangouts (Classic)
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
The classic version of Google Hangouts is a communication platform that includes messaging, voice, VoIP, and video call capabilities. It was part of Google’s G Suite offering and integrated with applications such as Gmail and Google+. Users of the classic version of Hangouts will be migrated to the new Hangouts Chat collaboration tool, and Google continues to support conferencing via the new Hangouts Meet.
Aircall is a great fit for any SaaS organization for sales and support groups. Since I come from sales, I cannot talk about support, but for the sales team, it's a great help. It's intuitive and user-friendly. No need for formal training as it's very easy to access all the features you need. I particularly like the option of taking calls on my mobile phone while I am away from my desk or traveling, and also how I can easily manage my working hours and schedule. I also like its ability to interact with different CRMs and other useful tools like Slack, etc.
Had I completed this review a couple years ago, I would have given a rating of 9 or 10 as Hangouts (Classic) is an excellent product. However, now that Google Chat has succeeded Hangouts, I would not recommend that any new users begin using it where other more modern options are available. Android users who want an internet based instant messaging that also supports calling and video calling could benefit from using Hangouts (Classic) as Google Chat requires the user to also have Google Meet installed to make video calls and there is no voice only calling option.
Aircall's integration with HubSpot is fantastic. I can call from anywhere in HubSpot and know that my call is logged automatically. During my call, I have easy access to a contact's record and can pull up any information I need in just the click of a button. The only limit I've found is that it doesn't (yet?) auto-log to tickets. This seems to be pretty common among other integrations so it wasn't seen as a con in our buying decision.
I really like the Aircall dashboard and being able to customize who has access to what number. We even have the ability to give outbound calling privileges only to certain team members. It's also great that you can set up each individual number's answer tree to ring to the correct person.
There's a lot of cool features that don't make sense for our particular business, but I think Aircall's metric tracking and coaching abilities would be really useful for a lot of teams. I remember in my first call hearing about a feature where a manager can listen in and "whisper" tips to a rep during a call that only the rep would be able to hear. I can see how this would add value in a coaching situation.
No feature to update more than one phone line at the same time
Admins don't have access to the timeline of a call to see with which agent it rang
Missing agent-specific stats when your phone lines are organized in teams
If calls are setup to ring to a first group and then a second, if the whole first group is already busy, it does not go to the second group but puts the customer on hold
I would like to see improved video support, so that saved videos can be sent back and forth via Hangouts more easily, without having to start a separate meet chat
More pronounced notifications of messages would be helpful; pop up notifications are good, but once there is one, additional messages do not pop up
Custom muting times would be great, so that if I am in a 90 minute Zoom meeting, I can set it for that time; right now, it is 1 hour or 2 hours. Easy to forget.
The tool is almost self-implemented. It is likely to be available in every pc or mobile device a user or potential user might have, and all you need to do is adding the company's account and you are done. Once you are setted up, you have almost all actual communication methods available in one tool
We've enjoyed using Aircall so far and have had no issues with it. The platform is easy to use, looks nice, and makes it easy to keep track of everything.
Google Hangouts works great and does not require a lot of work to troubleshoot. Everything is simple and easy to use. Google provides all of the tools that one requires to utilize Google Hangouts and any information can be found in the built-in help tools. There is also a forum for users to report issues and typically, Google responds well and will try to work out any issues.
We used to answer phone calls on our fix line when at the office. The quality was very bad but we had in mind that a VOIP solution would be too expensive. When lockdown began last year, I had to redirect calls on my own mobile phone which was not efficient. Also I couldn't receive voicemails, have a history of calls or choose working hours.
Google is the white cotton socks of the conferencing world. It’s a great ad-hoc tool, but not too much more. If you are not looking to spend money or operate completely on WiFi (without data charges), it’s a great free option as well. The benefit of being free and open is also the liability. It doesn’t have a great integration story with other corporate tools, but [it doesn’t have to] if you aren’t looking for that. All in all, it’s as helpful and ubiquitous as a public payphone…without the pay…and with a video capability.
Because of the lack of local partnerships with South African telecoms companies, calls to South Africa is very expensive. This was not originally apparent when opening the Aircall account.
Not having the option to display a local South African number in the CLIP, means that people are not always eager to pick up the phone when they see an overseas number ringing.
The only positive impact has been the collaborative experience and being able to maintain a virtual office
I believe it was part of the google suite that was purchased. It was worth the cost as it was cheaper. I believe it is now free, but also becoming deprecated. It is much better to use Teams, Discord, Telegram, etc. Google does not provide enough support or features to make using hangouts worth it these days.
