MiCloud Connect, or ShoreTel, was a business communications solution for contact centers that included features like IP PBX telephony service, desk phones, softphone, and collaboration tools. It was acquired by RingCentral in early 2026, and discontinued, with customers being moved to RingCentral's MVP platform.
N/A
Talkdesk
Score8.2 out of 10
N/A
Talkdesk® helps organizations operate a human-AI hybrid workforce with enterprise CCaaS and Customer Experience Automation (CXA). Both support omnichannel engagement across voice and digital channels. CCaaS provides routing, workforce engagement, agent guidance, collaboration, and analytics for human teams. CXA enables organizations to build and manage agentic AI agents using natural language and orchestrates work across AI agents, people, data, and enterprise systems. CXA can also work with an…
$85
per month per user
Twilio
Score7.7 out of 10
N/A
Twilio offers a CPaaS and CCaaS solution, with the combination of its programmable Voice, Video, and Messaging APIs, as well as the Twilio Flex cloud contact center. Additional capabilities include Twilio's Elastic SIP Trunking, as well as API for WhatsApp.
$0
per min per participant
Pricing
MiCloud Connect / ShoreTel (discontinued)
Talkdesk
Twilio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Digital Essentials
$85
per month per user
Voice Essentials
$105
per month per user
Elite
$165
per month per user
Elite
$165
per month per user
Industry Experience Clouds
$225
per month per user
Programmable Video
$0.0015
per min per participant
WhatsApp Business API
$0.0042
Per WhatsApp Template message sent
WhatsApp Business API
$0.005
Per WhatsApp session message
Elastic SIP Trunking
$0.007
Per min for termination
Programmable Messaging
$0.0075
per message sent or received
Programmable Voice
$0.0085
per minute to receive a call
Programmable Voice
$0.013
per min to make a call
Elastic SIP Trunking
$0.045
Per min for origination
Twilio Conversations
$0.05
per active user per month
Twilio Authy
$0.09
per authentication
Programmable Wireless
$0.1
per MB
Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
$1
per active user hour (5000 hours free)
Programmable Wireless
$2.00
per SIM card
Twilio SendGrid Email API
$14.95
per month up to 100k emails. (Up to 40k emails free for 30 days)
Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns
$15
per month for 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails. Your first 2,000 contacts are free
Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
$150
per named user per month (5000 hours free)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MiCloud Connect / ShoreTel (discontinued)
Talkdesk
Twilio
Free Trial
No
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
—
*Talkdesk also offers per hour login consumption pricing and concurrent pricing. Prices are based on a minimum 3 year commitment to these Editions. Additional telco and usage fees not included. Due to foreign exchange rate approximation, list price is not the exact price that will be quoted.
1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing without contracts.
2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as usage grows.
3. Free trial credit that includes full API access.
We switched to Talkdesk because Dialpad could not handle the scale of our company. We were most impressed with Talkdesk compared to other companies because of how modern their product line was, how quickly they iterate on products, and because they had the best API on the market.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose Talkdesk
Talkdesk is far superior when it comes to the interface for every day users and managers. Better analytics and integration with other software we use. ShoreTel was unreliable for call recordings. Talkdesk reporting is easy to understand and set up for managers and admins. …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose Talkdesk
We used ShoreTel when I first started working there. It didn't have nearly as many of the features Talkdesk has. Our new hires are now able to shadow phone calls at their desk rather than having to run over to another specialist's desk to listen to their call. We also have …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Cutomer Success in Customer Service at BoomTown (Real Estate, 51-200 employees)
Chose Talkdesk
it was not very easy to use - the transferring was not seamless there were constant issues with the service being down. Connections were poor at times and I felt like it was truly just a desk phone - no click-to-call and no real way to see agents who were live etc.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Director of Client Services in Customer Service at Sema4 (Biotechnology, 201-500 employees)
Chose Talkdesk
Compared to the other contact center options, Talkdesk was affordable and was easy to setup. What set Talkdesk apart was easy integration with other software. Including Slack, Zendesk, and Salesforce. The new enterprise app center should make some great add-ons available. …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Mitel is excellent at allowing me as a user to setup up custom call routing in response to rapidly changing work flows. If I need to work from home for a period due to medical or other reasons, logging into Mitel and setting my office phone to ring through to my home or cell is quick and simple. Changing back is just as quick.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
As a growing company, we did not have customer service contacts set up like a traditional contact center, even though we were trying to operate like one. Talkdesk made the transition simple to orchestrate the new setup, allowing customers to have their contacts answered quickly. As Talkdesk has continued to roll out new products such as Copilot and AI Autopilot, we are implementing and continuing to realize the benefits.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I have tried other competitors. But I always end up going back to Twilio because I feel like it is dependable, easy to use, and, has competitive pricing. The only time I wouldn't recommend Twilio to someone as if they are completely inexperienced about using webhooks or APIs. Because you can't really just sign up and start using Twilio without connecting it to another platform first.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
With separate systems and two locations we used to have to fake the system into 4 digit dialing by forwarding all remote extensions to DIDs. Now with Shortel extended to the remote location we have true 4 digit dialing.
The Shortel desktop application makes managing calls and call routing a breeze for even our most novice users.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Talkdesk excels at reporting. It offers a wide range of reports, such as Aux, AHT, and productivity reports, which are great for monitoring performance.
Talkdesk has speech-to-text analytics. This is an AI transcript system. The AI detects speech and transcribes it.
Talkdesk is easy to integrate with other apps. Such as Calabrio and Zendesk.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
From experience, customer service is terrible, we've had 5 account executives over 18 months, extremely difficult to get timely answers to pressing issues.
Integration with other tools, such as ServiceNow, is not truly integration (in my opinion). There was a marked difference between what the salesperson communicated during the evaluation period and what we actually got once we purchased and implemented the product.
We continue to have stability issues which force our agents to restart the Talkdesk client. I frequently receive vague error messages ('something went wrong') that can be frustrating as there's no actual detail to what happened. To be fair, it has improved since we implemented the tool, but if you were to ask our agents what frustrated them, Talkdesk would be at the top of their list.
Being a multi-channel platform was one of the things that drew us to Talkdesk; however, the chat channel lags way behind voice in customization and reporting.
Lack of training resources. The 'Talkdesk Academy' is often very out-of-date. Would be nice to have actual webinars or online training (even paid training) for various functions of the tool like reporting, WFM, IVR, etc.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Although the price is higher than some of the other Hosted systems out there, the value is definitely worth a renewal. Everything is relative: there are some companies out there who need phones, but don't necessarily care how they work, the functionality/features available/durability etc., they just care that they have phones that make and receive calls. There are other companies that are completely reliant on phones and certain functionality that is provided by the system. There are even some companies who are straight up dependent on the phone system and are losing tons of money anytime they are down, ShoreTel is the perfect fit for theSMB client who sees value in a solid,robust, reliable and high functioning phone system
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
One of the best tools our there to tackle alot of our needs or issues within the organisation's and is value for money as you find alot of the features already in bedded and the Ai features are user friendly no need for additional training and Talk desk support when any issues arise is amazing
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Unless we can get this handled quickly -- less than 1 week -- we will likely switch to another provider who, in my opinion, we'll have to spend close to $3,000 in development time to build a new integration for texting. Our clients need texting and I feel Twilio has failed us miserably.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I have not used a wide array of communication software, but this far ShoreTel/MiCloud has been the simplest and easiest to get into. My work employs several temps at certain points throughout the year, and they use this piece of software frequently, and new hires seem to have little to no issue using this software. Additionally, this is our primary telephone communication infrastructure, and I have yet to encounter any issues when signed in and regularly using it handling external calls to our department.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
As a user, the Talkdesk system is pretty easy. However, as a leader or an admin, the system can be difficult to navigate. Talkdesk appeared to integrate different solutions into their environment. While the overall skin of the environment is pretty seamless, it's easy to see that some solutions are segregated off into their own area of the Talkdesk ecosystem. This is pretty evident with Identity, WFM, and System Analytics, where you have to navigate to their respective areas to pull reports and gather data. Where many other reports are available in Explore
Twilio has well documented APIs and examples. There are several tutorials, videos and Q&As regarding their services. So, usability is very good. I must say that advanced knowledge of telephony, API/Programming and error-handling is essential to make good use of Twilio. It's not just plug-and-play unless you are integrated with a system that has all of the programming built for it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The system has gone down on us MULTIPLE times. We asked them to move us to a different cluster. Shoretel declined. Basically we had problems or outages every month of the year from June 2012 to date. Our old phone system was just that: OLD, no bells or whistles. But it was up every day and I never had to think about it much until it was time for an upgrade. That's how I want Shoretel to be. I want it so reliable that I never have to think about it.
Talkdesk is very handy but, sometimes we do face issues were the system can just kick you out and not be able to do calls or receive calls but, what I like about the system once you start refreshing or troubleshooting, everything becomes normal it is a unique system and very modern we don't usually have system issues with Talkdesk.
Even though the system uses a lower bandwidth connection we have experienced a higher call quality than our previous system which required a T1 line and back up broadband connection.
reports are good until a report is a big one in size then the wait is longer and some call reports delay by an hour or so which is not ideal as we pull these hourly and need them from Work force management perspective and Quality reports are perfectly fine
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Twilio executes what it is designed to do: send SMS messages at scale while providing very good deliverability. I believe that Twilio is very good at what we use for adding SMS messages to our comms strategy. We can see those messages get opened and replied to, which is exactly what we are looking to achieve.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
ShoreTel Sky's support is amazing. The only reason why I didn't give it a 10 is that we still need to contact them for stuff that we should be able to do, for ourselves, within the management portal. I know their portal is being worked on, so hopefully they will get the "little things" included for self-management.
If Talkdesk had a dedicated phone support line I would have given this rating an overall 10. Their knowledge base is absolutely HUGE and at times very helpful. It's easy to search through and their customer support chat system works perfectly fine, but there are just some times that you need to speak to a human on the phone to ensure you are always on the same page.
I have not had to communicate with Twilio support in the last 3 years but my past experience with them has been very positive. They replied to my previous requests promptly and kept me well informed to resolve my inquiries. With their documentation that's available, I hardly imagine why anyone would need to contact support since it's all there in a concise and easy to understand format. It would probably take you longer to type out a support ticket than to just open their doc websites.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I attended the first ShoreTel installer class in Austin,TX. It was a week of intensive study with a live lab and having hands on experience made the class worthwhile. I have taken all of the sales courses and remaining technical courses either online or self study to keep costs down. I send my techs to the first installer course in Austin as I feel it gives them a solid foundation and most of teh other courses they have taken have been online.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The training that was given to us was very smooth and professional. I give my trainer 10/ 10 rate the training was so smooth and very helpful she would make sure we also watch videos of how to use the system which made it very easier for us and what was interesting it is because, the system is also easy.
The training identified some things M5 (ShoreTel's cloud division) could provide, however it was only using it every day and asking the Shoretel support several questions that I got the hang of it. The training was able to highlight functions but I did not learn how to use the phone from the training.
Nothing is perfect!! Needing the ability to repeat the training so everyone was on board was important. Not real sure how many people had to repeat the training as they trained on their own and given 30 minutes at a time.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Each of our locations has a dedicated ShoreTel router and managed QoS. With full management, it provides us a breath of space and bandwidth to use our resources in other means. Strongly consider the managed solution as you have to maintain more technical issues when hosting with your ISP. You have to make sure your ISP can provide you the best service for voice and data. Plug and 'hope' doesn't work with just routing your phones over any Internet connection....especially when your handsets run int he 100's
We were very satisfied with the implementation of Talkdesk. The team was able to gather all the data and information about the system we had in place at the moment and delivered us a Talkdesk plan that suited our needs. We had a few calls after implementation where our questions were answered and gave us the confidence to continue using the system.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Aptela. I chose M5 (ShoreTelSky) because their platform puts call quality first. Their system also uses Cisco endpoints, which are very compatible with the rest of my Cisco network. I also liked the fact that ShoreTelSky uses the internet only as a backup for transport; I use MPLS as my primary connectivity.
Call recordings, quality assessments, feedback, coaching, and monitoring, the call flow is effortless and painless, changing statuses from after-call work is updated to be qued so you cannot change after aftercall work is finished, shows you the company metrics, SLA, abandonment, number of calls taken and record occupancy for you and the team. Many more features make Talkdesk an innovative software compared to its competitors.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We evaluated many fundraising-based text-to-give programs and found the subscriptions prohibitively expensive for our small scale and uncertain first few years of development. While we may be willing to invest that kind of money after discovering how things work, we're happy with Twilio now and have no desire to start over.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I believe that ShoreTel can be used by a minimum company size of about 25 to almost any size of a company and this can be achieved while the company grows, hence makes it pretty scalable when required. For companies which are smaller in size i.e. smaller than 25, I am not sure how useful it would be, it may be depending upon the type of business
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
talk desk has helped us massively with flexibility of one system giving us all the relevant information we need to be able to drive improvement and also good service from work force management to quality improvement to the reporting of the work and inputs going in and assess outputs to determine the success of our work and remaining development areas
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
At my branch alone, we are saving over $500 a month using Shoretel Sky versus the phone company we were using before them.
Shoretel Sky has increased customer service by allowing our employees to easily transfer a call to the proper department or branch no matter where they are located instead of giving the caller a phone number to call.
Most of our locations did not have caller ID before Shoretel Sky. That feature has increased employee efficiency because when they know who is calling before they answer allows them to professionally greet their caller and have their info up on their computer as they answer.
Reduced hold times with callback feature = better CX
Easy transfer option between teams where we can talk rep-rep first before bringing the caller in = less repeated information the customer has to provide = better CX
Modified call dispositions allows for better call management & organization = less work on our end!
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We found that associates who had the opportunity to respond to a survey about their assigned job were 37% more likely to return to a job site
We were able to reduce the number of resources required to manually respond to associates using Twilio Studio, so those resources could have more time to complete other tasks
We were able to scale the number of associates who received survey messages at least by a factor of 8 without increasing our resource demand
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
