Cisco Business Edition 6000 (discontinued) vs. OpenPhone

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.

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.

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

• It's great for texting.
• It's great for making phone calls. You get a new, unique phone number and can text/call from phone or desktop.
• UI is great and really intuitive.

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

• Web app could work better in my experience
• Pricing could be lower
• Somehow connect with whatsapp or / and other messaging apps that people commonly use

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

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.

For me, there have been too many outages to rate this higher than "1 worst".

I think the platform is buggy and confusing. There are numerous outages. And the call quality, according to my customers, is atrocious.

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

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".

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

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.

Incentivized

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.

In my experience, I can't even scale up to sending messages from a single number because of their broken and messed up "trust registration" system.

• 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

• Provided us with a simple, yet robust phone system for our small business
• Price can be lower for premium, and for multiple users

Incentivized