RedFlag vs. Skype (discontinued)

RedFlag is extremely helpful in all sorts of emergencies. Whether it's a fire, natural disaster, inclement weather, active shooter, or even a cyber attack, this tool can be used for emergency notifications during all these situations. It can also be used for internal communication. You can send out notifications based on location through geotargeting, message groups together, or have one-on-one communication too. It's a great tool for making business decisions as well. You can use its polling feature for the same.

Having interacted with a new replacement tool, Microsoft Teams, it is challenging to recommend Skype, as it lacks some essential features, such as being less equipped with the latest updates, and it is not platform-independent, causing issues on PCs and phones, as well as during calls that might hinder work.

Incentivized

• Inform people of critical situations
• Gain feedback and insights

• The instant chat function is great. Very straightforward, easy to use, easy to learn, no technical issues.
• Video calls are pretty easy also, user friendly and a mostly stable connection with no issues.
• Voice calls are easy also, eliminates the need for an external landline or the need to use your cell phone. Clear connections, not really any dropped calls.

Incentivized

• Integration with pagers for communication. It’s not a big concern as only a few employees have requested for it. However, it’d help if RedFlag can implement that as well. I’m pretty sure they’ll; they keep coming up with updates regularly.
• Would love to see RedFlag go completely global.

• Skype is a RESOURCE hog. People who have limited bandwidth will have poor call quality.
• It is hard to figure out how to use emojis and upload images in the chat.
• The background images do not fool anybody....it is clearly not your real background.

Incentivized

I have given this rating as this need to give more than that as it's very helpful for us and makes our work more efficient and fast.

Skype is not as good as Facetime in terms of ease to glance at it and figure out how it works. I think that's a result of Skype trying to be too many things at once. A lot of the menu and UI could be streamlined, and I would jettison some of the additional functions that have been tacked on over the years to simplify. That being said, while some options are slightly hard to find, they all work flawlessly once found.

Incentivized

The support team for RedFlag is amazing. They are always there to address my needs and my dedicated account person is always working to help me. I think this is a differentiator for the company.

I am not aware of the current support level for Skype for business, as I have never used even though I have the product. However, the support for Skype's personal paid users is not where it could be. Users who pay for Skype features do not have a clear path to reach out to support. So, rating 6, can be better as soon as I need to use Skype for business support and get a good experience. I will say that I will renew Skype for Business subscription, which is a significant inconsistency on my end. The explanation is that Skype for Business comes bundled with Office for Business, with no additional cost, so why not.

Incentivized

It can be used on the phone via mobile application as well as on the desktop by logging in to the website. Easily installed and ready to use.

Incentivized

I found the team at RedFlag to be much more responsive and the features were more in line with what I needed. I also found the pricing to be much more in-line with my budget. It was the right solution for me.

We use Skype in combination with Grasshopper. While Grasshopper acts as a routing toll free number with extensions, if we are making calls directly, we do it through Skype. Skype's desktop and mobile apps are easier to use, and provide unlimited local calls at a flat, affordable rate. Allowing our team to use their existing mobile or desktop devices without additional hardware for business office phone calls is important, and Skype makes that possible

Incentivized

The service provided is up to date, as discussed before buying.

• Positive as it has helped us reduce our emergency response time drastically. It’s also streamlined our internal communication and we’ve been able to reduce communication gaps to a great extent.
• Increased productivity due to ease of communication and quick decision making.

• Skype made keeping in touch with an advisor in Mexico very easy. The initiative there resulted in 5 new partnerships.
• Skype has helped me with account management for at least 3 customers in LATAM--usually it's a fast way to answer a question about a support renewal.
• For about 9 months Skype helped me stay in touch with a colleague in Prague. We would meet once a week to go over sales activities.

Incentivized