Fuze is a cloud-based unified communications platform that includes IP PBX voice service, video conferencing, and collaboration tools such as content sharing and instant messaging capabilities. It also integrates with a wide range of popular CTI, CRM, and click-to-call solutions.
$15
per month
Google Voice
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Google Voice is a free IP telephony service that provides users with one phone number that can be forwarded to multiple phones or devices. It includes features such as call forwarding, voicemail translation, text messaging, and voice calls. Fees may apply for international calling.
Fuze has way more capability than we need for our small office so it might be best suited for large installations, call centers, and complex environments. Our office is small and our needs [are] minimal, so when we need support we are challenged to understand the support person due to our lack of technical sophistication. We sometimes feel like we should switch to a solution more geared for consumers or SOHO. Nevertheless, Fuze provides reliable service at [a] reasonable cost that meets our needs, and because support is rarely needed we are happy with them most of the time, i.e. when support isn't needed.
In the past, I would have happily recommended this for small business use cases. Due to its affordability, versatility, and low barrier to entry as well as its simplicity to use. Google Voice was integrated into the Chrome Browser, it was easily accessed from Gmail, and integrated into Gmail and could even be leveraged in such a way to when phone numbers were clicked on, Google Voice was the tool used. However over the past few years and more, in the past couple of years from 2021 to current, this tool seems to have lost favor with the Alphabet suite of tools. With the lack of integrations, it's becoming less stable, and people are just opting more for Google Meet Voice. The biggest area where this is less appropriate and where opportunity has opened for others is its lack of features, like virtual attendants, call recording, call transcription, SMS, MMS, CRM integration, and other key features even 1 or 2 person business really needs in this day and age
Support Team - the best I have ever worked with. They help 24/7 on any issue I could come across. Usually it is an item I could fix myself and they fix it and show me how to fix the same issue if I have it in the future.
Contact Center - We do Commercial Collections involving Sales and Collections. We have 50 people on the phone at one time. Contact Center lets a Manager listen live and gives help if the rep needs help selling or collecting.
Pandemic 2020 - without Fuze we would have been unable to work for 3 months. They saved our "rears" since we already had all their services up and running for years.
Fuze is a solid application that is a great asset to the business for our sales staff to make daily calls to clients and candidates. Managers can monitor call data and times to keep up to date with team performance, as well as monitor calls for users on their team. The Fuze/MS Teams integration is an exciting prospect that would be very beneficial to us as a business, for seamless integration between the 2 platforms.
It's user friendly, how to use it is self explanatory, they support all their own options while someone like Phone Booth uses a third party. I can cancel Google Voice anytime and I choose how much I spend with Google Voice
Fuze was built with the end-user in mind. It was built to have a common interface on mobile and desktop. Fuze Web is new, and it also has the exact same interface as the desktop and mobile, and they are still working on the ability to make phone calls from the browser itself, currently it can do meetings just fine. Everything about Fuze was built with the end-user in mind.
I haven't had problems with dropped calls, bad reception, lost recordings - everything works the way it should. The iOS app is easy to use, and the process is easy to explain to other people. It's also the cheapest way I've found to call internationally - I've used it to interview people from London and Austraila.
We've had a few outages over the past year. More than other vendors I've used. They usually have outages fixed within an hour. The downside is they do not provide root cause of outages. If they do at takes them at least a month to get it to you
Since Fuze runs across multiple devices and platforms they really strived to make a lightweight interface that is optimized for phone calls, chat, and collaboration. The web client loads fast, the chat is always up-to-date, phone calls arrive on-time. The desktop client is the most feature rich and basically it just adds desktop sharing functionality as well as VoIP for calling, and the mobile client doesn't consume a lot of battery, and it stays running to get phone calls, chats, and can do meetings over Wifi, Cellular Data, or Cellular voice.
Our experience with Fuze support has been overall very positive. Their technicians seem to be well trained and able to handle a variety of requests and issues without unnecessary delays or extensive troubleshooting. Fuze allows enough customer access to avoid the need to call support for every little issue but is ready to assist when issues are beyond our capabilities to resolve.
They do not offer support unless you have the Business account for Google Voice under G Suite. This is tough, because Google doesn't really have a customer support team for this service, so when it gets shut down for a few hours, we have no choice but to wait it out. But this doesn't happen that often, which is great.
At many of our sites with more than 50 users, Fuze sent someone onsite to train. This worked surprisingly well, as the trainer allowed the users to set the pace and answered TONS of questions. Fuze has a very streamlined training process, their staff is very professional, very knowledgeable and very engaging.
Fuze has vast amounts of training videos and guides on how to use its products and services. There are literally endless-hours of training and I often point end-users to a particular video which addresses the specific needs of the user, for example: how to check voicemail. Or, how to share your desktop, etc.
Personally, I didn't have any trouble getting started with Fuze. It was installed on my computer on my first day and I was good to go! Little to no hiccups. I was not with the company when they first adapted Fuze so I can not speak to the implementation as a whole.
It is a pretty seamless program to transfer to, even for people who either have little experience with these programs or people who were stuck on Skype
Fuze was far more expensive and more complicated to set up. Our current platform took a few days to set up with SSO. Our contact center took a bit longer but works amazingly.
The integrations of Google Voice with all our devices are flawless, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac. Also, the call performance is far superior on wifi as well as on mobile data. With Skype, we had several problems with personal accounts, performance issues, and in general, it felt awkward to use it.
Google Voice should be also be use to those who have difficulty in speaking English. So the contract term will need to be a little strict as Google Voice is used in navigations as the part of GPRS navigation is personal. The private data need to be in control much more securely and safely.
Fuze does have scalability limits but most of that is how many end-points they can put on a virtual PBX, or VCX as they call them, I THINK its limit is somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000, but we've not had issues with that because we have put users into various VCXs some by location, some by department or function. Either way, we have 7,000 currently deployed, and are going to end up with over 15,000 when we are done, Fuze is VERY scalable.
It help to connect with the products that we use as a part. We need to get in touch with our professional world. It is like a tool that helps us to get in touch with everything from A to Z in our professional careers. So we need to be in touch with everything as linearly as the jpb can be done.
Cost for Google Voice is stellar, starting at $10/mo per user.
While it doesn't offer a new Audio/Video conferencing solution it does integrate with GSuite so it makes use of Google Calendar and Hangouts/ Google Meet.
Gets the employee's to use their company phone numbers more as texting is easy and deployment is simple.
The cell phone app is reliable and easy to deploy.
