Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review For Insurance agencies, small practices, small call centers, anyone that need call forwarding or work with his number remotely while away from office. I can't list all the things I'm gaining as a Fonality customer. From the installation process, the configuration phase with the technicians, the account managers, every Fonality employee was professional and savvy. I was a contact center specialist for more than 10 years and I can tell you that I've never been this happy with a service! Never! Probably if you need a more complex solution and you have an enterprise level company having your own hardware gives you more control over your calls and how to manage them. But again, I think that Fonality can cover most scenarios without the need of a huge investment.
Read full review Pros 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 Read full review From an administrator's perspective, Fonality makes administering the company's phone system easy. Configuration menus and setup options are logically structured and easy to understand. Technical support has been very good. Early on in our deployment, we had some nagging voice quality issues which were network related. Fonality provided exceptional support even though it was not technically their issue. It is important to know ahead of time how well your vendors work with other vendors for integrated services like a VOIP telephone system. Fonality support demonstrated their patience and perseverance in helping us resolve our issues. Although we don't use remote office capabilities much, the ability to set up phones on the system in remote locations has been a significant help to several of our departments. Read full review Cons 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 Read full review Bugginess - Some things just really need some tweaking. I had to get very creative with my call routing and hold music, because the in-queue announcements don't work right at all. For example, even set to 'play once' it would loop the 'you are the first caller' announcement over and over, and cause call drops. Or my caller-name ID, which shows the registered user's name on each line on outgoing calls, even though it's not set to such anywhere in the CP settings. Support - I'll give them 50/50 on this. My experience with Verizon VCE was everyone playing hot potato with issues and saying it was the responsibility of another department, meaning several phone calls and lots of hold time. Fonality doesn't have that issue, I've never really been passed around or blown off. However, some of the 'offshore' CS reps are... wow. I spent about half a dozen emails back and forth with two of them, trying to figure out why queues I deleted from the CP randomly and consistently reappeared in the HUD. Most of those emails were spent trying to explain that no, my issue was NOT that I wanted to create those queues again in the CP. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review We've already made a deep investment in the system hardware. We wouldn't be interested in another system at this point! And by the look of my colleagues faces when they see the HUD, I don't think we'd want to switch to a system that would limit us or take away any of these features! We may look at putting the server in the cloud, should internet outages prove to be such a common issue that it is preventing our other locations from functioning smoothly
Read full review Usability BE6K [is] not just a bare metal server ,it is [a] complete solution with its own management tools.
Read full review Overall excellent usability, with a few adjustments I feel this is the absolute best VoIP system out there. Just a clarification on the licences and limit the interface to reflect what licence we have. There should be a back or redunancy feature to Fonality Server, If there was a mistake we should be able to resort back to a usable state asap. Before implementing changes to the server, there should be a trial or sample of the changes to make sure it behaves as intended before effecting customer experience. It would be nice to have a demo version of Fonality interface so possible clients can truly evauluate the system. Because of the quality, it would have made it easier to convince the owners to make the transition sooner
Read full review Reliability and Availability Fonality has been available to us 99% of the time. There have rarely been any lengthy outages. If any issues do occur, their support staff is available around the clock to help. This is important, since communication is a big part in our company and availability of the phone system is important in maintaining this reliability
Read full review Performance Fonality's performance is excellent. The phones work flawlessly and the calls are clear. It is a well put-together system that does not need daily support. It is not complex from a user standpoint, as most of our staff are quick to learn how to use the phones. More systems should strive to work as well as Fonality's
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Because of their customer support and their attention for details in our problems that we face during our initial stage. We simply love fonality just for the way we are treated when we reach them with our fonality issues - they take it seriously and resolve it as early as possible and the most important part is we dont need to keep on insisting them to do so.
Read full review In-Person Training Training was provided by the in-house IT administrator. Fonality was able to provide support to the admin, who then assisted the users. It went smoothly and all the details and functions of the system were made available to the office staff. Any questions were answered promptly and if any issues did arise, Fonality was available to answer them
Read full review Online Training Training was excellent, but most of what they had was webinars and not real world situation for our company's need. It would be better to have them remote in my local computer and test my system using inbound / outbound calls. This would have made it easier to learn and more relevant
Read full review Implementation Rating Everything from the installation to the implementation has been great with Fonality, there is a lot of freedom to how the system will operate but the freedom comes at a cost of more technical experience to make sure it is configured correctly. The staff is very helpful can will make sure that the system is setup correctly and work perfectly.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review I have not used any other VoIP system that I have been paying for. I hope that Fonality proves itself enough to where I will not have to switch. So far, for the price and the functionality, this is my recommendation for small businesses. I might recommend going with a more high end phone to increase functionality, but other than that, the system is one I would definitely recommend.
Read full review Scalability It is easy to scale this system, as long as you have the proper technical staff available to support it. Adding users and phones is straightforward. The main work involves having the physical network in place and configuring the networking equipment. Overall, it is not that difficult as long as all of this is in place.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Read full review We are still new to Fonality, but having the flexability has proven quite successful thus far. The management of incoming calls and voicemail messages has really helped us to be able to follow up with potential clients. The service at Fonality helped our new business take a leap into 2017, and we expect much growth with the continued use of Fonality. Read full review ScreenShots