Dialpad Connect is a cloud communications UCaaS platform that provides users with integrated voice, video, and messaging capabilities from one unified interface.
$27
per month
NetFortris (discontinued)
Score 6.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NetFortris, and the former Fonality, provided business phone systems using Polycom and Yealink IP phones. In 2022 the company was acquired by Sangoma. NetFortris and Fonality UCaaS and other services are no longer available.
It is well-suited for basic calling functionality, but has been a poor experience for us when used for texting, as it lacks some of the features of other platforms, such as Haymarket. It is also challenging to capture good analytics, as this is neither easy nor clear for users to find.
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.
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.
The only example I can list for improvement is that occasionally the message has some mistranslation(s). But I can usually figure out the missing words. The 'southern USA' dialect may be partly to blame....
The functionality is really great. It is the best app I have used for messages in all of my customer service jobs.
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.
Dialpad Talk is easy to use and no one has had a problem using it. Even when we have had questions/problems we have been able to fix it ourselves without having to go to Dialpad to ask for help, which saves everyone time. We don't have any reason to cancel our use of this product and we are very happy with how it performs for our team.
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
Dialpad Connect is good and recommended for any organization. It is a good value. It can accomplish everything that your organization is looking for, and no one will say it is outside the budget for any 50+ person organization. The AI feature is very useful. The dashboard could be a bit easier to manage, and the integration with Salesforce could be a bit smoother.
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
There have not been any outages that I am aware of and we have had consistently good coverage since the start. There can be a slight lag from the office to the mobile app, but it is not terribly noticeable and it has not resulted in any calls being prematurely hung up
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
The emails of voice transcription come very quickly after a call has been completed and except for a few fairly difficult names are pretty accurate. The ability to quickly listen to the voicemail from email without having to open the app is also a bonus. I have not noticed or heard of any slowdowns
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
The original date for roll-out, was unable to happen because there was an issue finding our existing phone lines to port them... The only reason I gave a 9 is [that] the original person we have been working with, Rolled out phones. Pro without telling anyone and then went on vacation, I only say this to explain that there is a gentleman that took over to help us named Brett and he was FANTASTIC! He allowed a ton of calls and answered all of them, walked us [through] settings, profile set up, and even emailed screen shares so we could help other members of our team! Thanks so much, Brett you ROCK~
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.
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
Simple and easy to follow, we had our branches around the country to be trained and the feedback was great. Only take if there was a desk phone training that would be great. The team provided us with video for the desk phone 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
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.
Panterra is dependable and has good support. Dialpad Connect has more features and an easier interface. AT&T has a lot of features, but Dialpad Connect's interface is easier. AT&T does not do call transcription that I know of. Comcast BVE and 8x8 services are lower quality and service is not great.
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.
Overall program is of average cost. SInce I use it simply for its phone/text capabilities. I would hazard that company that needed more options, might see it differently
So far, Dialpad has been a great improvement for our organization. It allows everyone to be on the same service and the integration with the mobile app means everyone is still using the "office" numbers even when on the go which makes it easier not having to balance multiple phone numbers from people
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.
