MiVoice Business vs. Rakuten Viber

As a phone system, MiVoice Business is absolutely fantastic. It's equipment and even virtual appliances are extremely stable. Simple auto attendants and making/receiving calls is where the strength is. Where is needs help is the Windows-based software. Upgrading this can be extremely difficult and it frequently fails for no reason. Services stop running and needs frequent reboots. The client has improved greatly with newer releases but can be buggy. Sadly, the old ways of a traditional desktop phone is dying and I think MiVoice Business isn't as good as some other options that provide more. The end user client just isn't as stable as something like Microsoft Teams or Zoom Voice that can provide a more stable soft phone experience.

Incentivized

As mentioned previously, it is easy to use and access since the you can chat, send voice memos or stickers in a conversation. So in overall it's very entertaining. But throughout that, the audio quality can seem to be a bit off. (Could be personal headset issue) Overall that is the only issue that is present or consistent.

Incentivized

• Virtual appliances if you have a strong VM infrastructure
• The user client is decent and has improved since earlier versions of MiVoice Business
• Extremely easy to setup new extensions/users
• For the most part, it's an extremely stable system with just making and receiving phone calls.

Incentivized

• Viber is a cross platform product. It does not matter if someone uses Android or iOS device, it will work exactly the same.
• Also the desktop version is very good. You can switch between the desktop and mobile versions within a conversation and see updates right away.
• It's a very international product. It has been available for very long time, which makes it very wide spread - it has a good user base.
• You can see the status of your messages.

Incentivized

• Softphone working through a VPN/Work-From-Home has always been a struggle
• While I'm told an upgrade is near, the Contact Center is outdated and needs work
• The upgrade process is very flakey and regularly fails on a Window server.

Incentivized

• When someone sends a file in Viber, the program automatically saves it in your phone memory. This means that you must delete them manually and it really annoys me, as it takes a lot of time to do that.
• It contains enormous amounts of adds.
• There is file sharing limit.

Incentivized

I have not frequently used the support for Viber as I have not had many problems with it on my phone. I did use support one time for problems with the computer application and used the forums to solve my problems. They were fairly easy to follow and I appreciated the online help in that format.

Incentivized

I've used MiVoice Business at multiple employers. Once of them was moving from a very old Avaya PBX, another was with an NEC phone system that was slightly newer. MiVoice was far more easier to setup phones, setup users, manage voicemail, ETC. While we had consultants perform any upgrades with Avaya and NEC, MiVoice we did more collaborative with our support partner but we ran into far more issues with upgrades of MiVoice. My last 2 companies have discussed moving their phone system to Microsoft Teams and my current position they've already done that. All the issues with MiVoice relating to upgrades and issues with the Connect client are not existant with Teams. Teams is the bar, sadly MiVoice Business - while a very good product - falls short. They just haven't yet resolved issues that have long existed and in a pre-covid world it was OK. Now that people are displaced, the office environment has changed and end users are not isolated to a desk with a physical phone. MiVoice Business needs to catch up.

Incentivized

End-to-end encryption scrambles my messages and delivers them as a scrambled code to my friend's device, whether mobile or desktop, so that only their device can decode them into plain text. If my friend's phone is turned off or they don't have access to the internet, my message will be stored on Viber's servers (for a limited time) until their device is ready to receive it.

Because Viber can't access or read my private conversations in the first place, Viber can't sell them.

Incentivized

• Was able to replace our old dying PBX system
• Softphone, when it's working, allows users to answer phone calls from home
• Can leverage our existing VM infrastructure to use virtual appliances instead of physical appliances

Incentivized

• Viber saves me financially since I am now able to communicate with my international clients for free.
• Viber helps keep my clients engaged by the fact that I can so easily share photos, which is important as a freelance photographer.
• Viber allows me to make my messages to clients appealing in a visual way, which I have noticed helps drive actions of my clients, such as remembering to book their next session or pay for their photo order.

Incentivized