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.
N/A
RingEX
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
RingEx is a cloud-based VoIP solution available via computer mobile application. It features video and audio conferencing, desktop phone rentals, collaboration tools, and integrations with other business applications. Plans are available on a monthly, per user subscription basis.
As stated, I inherited the Fonality on-premise server(s) I support. The organization's principals have requested staying with this system due to its low cost of ownership. Comparing to other on-premise systems, such as a generic Asterisk system, it offers some support …
Fonality had the features and functions we were looking for in a competitively priced bundle. We weren't looking for phone hardware and wanted a simple to use the soft phone function, and we appreciate the collaboration and call monitoring tools that were included in the …
If you can [get] over the initial install, Fonality is right up there with the best, with some improvements it can be even better than ones I have had used in the past.
We looked at 8x8 and RingCentral but ultimately opted to move our existing Fonality PBXtra installation to the Fonality cloud because the call queue monitoring features offered the most for the money. The HUD application is also a big selling point in favor of Fonality. Also, …
At the time Fonality was a great fit for our company due to the size. The price was excellent. Ring Central has more features if you need them but it comes at a price. The same can be said about Nextiva.
I had initially looked at 8x8 as I'd read great reviews and have a few other clients that use it as well. Unfortunately, they didn't offer the integration with our CRM that I needed. They told me, "We work with any CRM." But after really digging in, they weren't able to offer a …
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.
RingCentral is generally good for business calls, as its mobile features, combined with landline office options, are great for communication on the go. It is also an affordable option to have a mobile cellular device if you have a lot of staff. Setup especially for multilevel authorization can be a hassle but it works well if well set up, you would have to get help in rectifying this if not calls might be redirected to the wrong extensions and changing it is not very straight forward.
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.
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.
We can use the RingEx in our Mobile to use for Basic calls and messages, but sometimes the mobile application lags or disconnects while using video calls or screen sharing.
we can easily configure in our laptops.
The Meeting recording option is really helpful for our organization
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
We are grandfathered into our unlimited toll-free minutes plan. We are very unlikely to switch because of that. It has been the major factor saving us a lot of money compared to switching to other solutions. I don't know any other company that still offers these unlimited plans.
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
They were working on updating a few of the modules while we were going live, so this made usability difficult to train on once they did go live with those changes. Now that the changes are in place, we have really enjoyed the usability of the platform
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
RingEx is reliable I have not had any issues as of yet. I use both plants we have, and the service is fair to good. The service as a whole is solid and a great method to get in contact with anyone. I know the service also involves Wi-Fi and cellular service, or, in other words, how good your signal is.
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
Occasional bandwith issues. In addition to this, I have one individual whose calls are blocked. We were not able to determine whether this was a RingEX or a carrier issue.
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.
Call-in support is fantastic. I have never called in and had it taken more than 30 minutes to resolve our issue. Email support is terrible. You will likely go 24+ hours until you hear back and the response is likely a canned one. I personally prefer the email or chat support option, but find myself calling instead because the email support experience is so poor.
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
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.
If someone has an existing system I tell them to keep that running initially and keep RingEX separate initially until the system is configured and tested to one's satisfaction. After testing and configuration is completed, then roll over the main phone numbers to the new RingEX system. I've seen one person who immediately flipped over to RingEX without properly configuring/testing the software and had many issues with missed customer calls until I helped him sort out his configuration.
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.
We switched from GoTo's platform with pieces of Teams. At that time, the complexity and difficulty of integrating all of the features and connecting them to get a simple platform that was stable and easy to train weren't available elsewhere.
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.
We have 75 users and 85 phones on the system and have yet to have any noticeable outages. The system just works all of the time without issues. Our old VOIP system on Voyant would go out all the time for multiple hours. RingEX is much more stable and reliable.
Enhanced patient accountability, we can track all calls - incoming and outgoing - patients tend to state that they called and left a message, but they either never called or did not leave a message. With RingEX, we can track whether they really did. It saves us quite a bit of time and aggravation.
Faxing is more accurate and usually very quick. Because it's accurate, it saves us time with phone calls about faxes we never received and having to refax items. Also, faxing via the system instead of printing and scanning is a time-saver.
