Cisco Business Edition 6000 (discontinued) vs. Grasshopper

Cisco Business Edition 6000 (BE6000) is well suited on small and medium sites that need entry-level voice and IP telephony capabilities, together
with powerful, easy-to-use collaboration tools. However , if a single user interface or VMware servers are deal breakers for you, I suggest another call system will likely be a better fit.

Grasshopper is well suited for basic needs of texting in and out as well as calling out if you would like to avoid using your personal line. It also eliminates the need to have a dedicated land land in your office or business. You can obtain a vanity number and forward calls through grasshopper.

Incentivized

• provides phone support for many models of phones and conferencing devices
• provides full telephony support for pretty much any phone requirement including call centre options
• 911 service dialing options and tracking
• bundle pricing on voice, phone and server licensing

Incentivized

• I like that there are differing voicemails for each extension, to keep up with the image of calling a separate line.
• I love the voicemail text emails. I believe we pay a little extra, but worth every penny for those urgent calls while I am in a meeting.
• The cost is very reasonable for the value added to our company.

Incentivized

• Include tools for inter-cluster migration, currently these are provided by 3rd parties
• Improve the software upgrade process by automating the pre-upgrade and post-upgrade checks

Incentivized

• It would be nice to have the ability to transfer some calls to another Grasshopper IVR, for those customers who mistakenly dial the wrong number (we have two incoming numbers, one for corporate and one for sales).
• Likewise, it would be nice to have the ability to forward to a toll-free number, which would have allowed us to work around the inability to transfer between IVRs (see above).
• Lastly, it would be great to have an 'emergency' switch setting (default off but could be toggled on) that would let us override all IVR settings and transfer all incoming calls elsewhere (either to a direct dial or toll free number) for those rare times when we cannot take any calls (such as a weather emergency OR the one time each year we take all of our staff on a retreat) - that would allow us to send all calls to a backup answering service rather than just voicemail.

Incentivized

Happy with Cisco Business Edition 6000 (BE6000); works great for us and costs to maintain it are well in hand. it also fits our current and future requirements going forward.

Incentivized

BE6K [is] not just a bare metal server ,it is [a] complete solution with its own management tools.

Incentivized

The admin functions are kind of confusing in the old interface which was my most recent experience on the admin side.

Incentivized

Overall, the product provides excellent value for money. Our employees may interact at the same time on the Cisco Business Edition 6000 without disrupting the conversation. We have a significant number of employees that perform the same thing with calls, texting, and presence, and none of them have an issue.

Incentivized

When I was setting up my account I contacted support a couple of times. They were also very professional, personable, and helpful. Their response is prompt and thorough. I'm confident I can get any question answered as well as help with any issue I might have. That's pretty important to me.

Incentivized

Both Mitel and [Cisco Business Edition 6000 (BE6000)] allow the benefit of virtualization. If desired you could have an entirely virtual system. Cisco handles the virtualization a little better, however Mitel MiCollab is easier to integrate presence and calls. Cisco underlying architecture seems to be a little more stable, Mitel seems to be a little more user friendly. There are pros and cons and both are good solutions.

Incentivized

I have not used any other phone services like Grasshopper. I know that there is another option out there called Ruby, which is more like a virtual receptionist but since I did not try it out I cannot compare the two. When I started my company I found the services that Grasshopper offers to be perfect. It still works for us and we have no need to change to anything else right now.

Incentivized

• Been easy to scale as our business has grown and from acquisitions
• Been pretty easy to maintain the software and upgrade it over its lifetime to date
• Software and license renewals are pretty straight forward
• Adding newer model hardware to the system is pretty straight forward

Incentivized

• It's allowed us to keep cost down. Other phone systems can seriously get outrageous in implementation and monthly fees!
• It's allowed our team the confidence to work in locations outside of the office and still be seen as professionals.
• It's decreased the amount of time spent on unwanted sales calls via the call screening application.

Incentivized