Grandstream UCM series IP PBXs vs. Zoom Phone

As a PBX the UCM PBX can be cover the needs of all companies without exception. We think it is really a great and flexible solution that covers all the IP telephone needs a company may have. When we were researching the market to buy our pair of UCM 6308, we had also hoped to use it as a replacement for our Skype for Business installation, so to say to use it as our main solution for video conferencing. After trying to do this for a couple of years we would say that you can use Wave for video conferencing and I personally like it, but it is not well suited for bigger companies for using it as the main video conferencing solution. On the other hand, there are very few PBXs even offering a video conferencing solution and their solutions are not better that the UCM's solution!

Incentivized

I think it works well for offices that have multiple locations. Being able to give each person and office their own extension makes it easier for colleagues to connect with each other, plus it's a costs savings for each of the offices

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• Solid, reliable products
• Simple to configure and manage
• Compatible with ONVIF for use with 3rd party systems

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• Having our Phone system all in onc place. Call, Text, Voicemail. with live transcript
• Zoom Meeting AI companion - taking notes, creating action items, and summarizing the meetings then email immediately afterwards
• Scheduler - being able to send links to team members or vendors to book a time that works best for them that is linked and synced to my calendar.

Incentivized

• The cluster implementation does not work on all network modes. Would be great if this was improved.
• Wave on mobile phones works in a different way than on desktops and this makes it hard to set it up for use on the firewalls, as it requires different and more permissions than the desktop app. For example is one receives an invitation per email on the mobile phone and wants to participate in a Wave meeting as a guest, the still need access to the network ports needed to login the extension (while they only need / want to join the meeting as anonymous users). On the desktop app this is not needed.
• There is a limit on the number of 1 device per connection type. We have an extension used in the maintenance department and is shared by 6 users. We were able to install it on 1 PC, 1 Wi-Fi phone and 1 Android shared mobile phone. We would like to install it on a second shared mobile phone, but this is not allowed by the UCM policy. We could use anther extension to do this, but the maintenance department does not want this. They want to accept calls with problem reports only on one extension. Would be great to be able to install the same extension on more than 1 Android devices.

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• We needed to link each of our team members' personal emails to the Zoom account so we have to filter VM notifications out of our personal accounts.
• It'd be nice if you could set business hours through the webpage to include a lunch break so that you don't have to manually go in to edit.

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We are very happy with our UCB 6308 pair. We have some issues that we would like to see improved, but the UCM 6308 does more than cover the main functionality it is intended for and has given us the needed solution for our remote workers.

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Integrated into our network. System wide access. Staff are comfortable with the product

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Although we are very happy with our pair of UCM 6308, we still think there are some things that can be improved to make this a prefect product! Have mentioned the main points we think that should be improved on other parts of the review.

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Zoom Phone has a very sleek design which makes it very easy to operate and use both in the setting up of and interacting in a meeting space. That being said, certain features can seem a bit crowded while trying to screen share or display video which somewhat defeats the purpose of the application as compared to a standard conference call.

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Grandstream almost always have a first response on any ticket within 24 hours, which is impressive. They do care to listen about customer problems and needs and are open suggestions / feature reuests, as long as there is a potential for the suggested change to benefit a big enough number of customers.

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I haven't had any sort of issues with Zoom as of yet to have to call Support. That right there makes me think it's a good product. Simple and easy to use. Nothing confusing or glitchy that would make me have to get in touch with them. Straightforward so I'm not trying to figure out a specific workflow.

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The implementation was concluded very fast, with minimal downtime.

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We were considering a solution from Alcatel at first. Very stable implementation for sure, as there are no frequent updates and no new features. Also no conferencing solution was included. A separate solution was offered for extra cost. So the choice was between a very stable PBX which would be pretty much unchanged for ever and a dynamic solution that would constantly grow. Without any doubt we opted for the ever growing / changing solution, knowing this would cost us in minor problems / instabilities. We did NOT regret this decision. So having opted for a growing and constantly developed solution we also look into the solution provided by Yeastar. By comparing the 2 solutions it was obvious that the Grandstream UCM 6308 was the best solution for us.

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The main reason why we switched to Zoom Phone is because our VOIP system inexplicably went down for almost a month and no one could figure out what was wrong. Lumen was charging way more than Zoom Workplace, but could not get the system to work.

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• Low-cost initial investment, minimal recurring costs
• Used by everyone in our company and easy to adopt
• Runs 24/7 and is reliable
• Allows our school to manage access control easily and efficiently

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• Calls actually come through, resulting in our users trusting our phone system again
• Improved internal communication
• Users can be reached anywhere, so they do not have to stay at their desk to wait for important calls
• Voicemail is processed faster because it is translated to text

Incentivized