Overview
What is NetFortris?
NetFortris provides business phone systems using Polycom and Yealink IP phones. They offer three subscription-based pricing plans, all including unlimited VoIP and desktop phone options. Advanced plans include other features such as video collaboration, softphone, and on-demand recording.
Play with the cloud (communication)
Fonality Review
Low-cost on premise IP PBX with less than stellar support
My year and a half with Fonality
It truly is the Hud!
Disappointed User
My happy experience with Fonality
Small Business - First Phone System
A great (but not perfect) hosted VoIP option
Great!
Great product. I can't imagine by business without Fonality.
Fonality on campus at SEA
TAC loves Fonality!
Upgrade to Call Center
Fonality Cloud based PBX worth a look
Popular Features
- Directory of employee names (78)10.0100%
- Call reports (78)9.090%
- Message alerts (78)9.090%
- Answering rules (89)7.070%
Pricing
Hybrid Software Subscription (Required with Hybrid Premise)
$14.99
Essentials Edition
$19.99
Professional Edition
$24.99
Entry-level set up fee?
- $5 per userRequired
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $30 per month
Product Demos
NetFortris Product Spotlight - Comm-unity HUDWeb Demo
Features
Cloud PBX
A cloud PBX system is based on cloud computing technology where data is stored and transferred over the intenet without any need for on-site PBX equipment
- 7Hosted PBX(58) Ratings
Hosted telephony infrastructure obviated the need for local PBX hardware
- 6Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)(46) Ratings
IVR is a phone menu allowing callers to interact with the system through voice and keypad
- 6.8User templates(2) Ratings
Create and apply batch configurations to multiple users at once
- 9Call reports(78) Ratings
Historical call analysis and trending metrics
- 10Directory of employee names(78) Ratings
Voice directory of all employees for self-service dialing
Call Management
Customized phone system settings
- 7Answering rules(89) Ratings
Ability to enter rules to route calls to main number or other extensions in case of absence
- 7Call recording(67) Ratings
Automatic recording of inbound and outbound calls
- 6Call park(73) Ratings
Ability to hold calls in virtual location and subsequently access from any phone in system
- 8Call screening(67) Ratings
Ability to block numbers or send calls directly to voicemail
- 9Message alerts(78) Ratings
Receive SMS and email message notifications for voice and fax messages
VoIP system collaboration
Team collaboration via cloud phone system
- 7Video conferencing(17) Ratings
Built-in video conferencing capabilities
- 8Audio conferencing(54) Ratings
Audio conferencing credentials for all on the system.
Mobile apps
Apps are compatible with mobile devices.
- 9Mobile app for iOS(46) Ratings
App for iPhone and iPad
- 9Mobile app for Android(33) Ratings
Android app
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is NetFortris?
Rated PCMag's Editors' Choice for Business VoIP 2016, NetFortris (formerly Fonality) is a leading business phone system provider that bundles its unified communications software for a complete business communications solution. NetFortris says it is known for:
- Innovating with Heads Up Display (HUD) so users can see who's available, chat, audio and video conference, record calls on the fly, and more
- Building in fundamental call center features like simple queues
- Offering advanced features that make enterprise-level call center available at the fraction of the price
- Including a web phone and mobile app at no additional cost
- Lowering costs with unlimited calling plans between the U.S. and more than a half dozen other countries and territories
- Providing 24/7 support - even on holidays
- Transparency: if there is an issue, they'll tell users
NetFortris Features
Cloud PBX Features
- Supported: Hosted PBX
- Supported: Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
- Supported: Call reports
- Supported: Directory of employee names
Call Management Features
- Supported: Answering rules
- Supported: Call recording
- Supported: Call park
- Supported: Call screening
- Supported: Message alerts
VoIP system collaboration Features
- Supported: Video conferencing
- Supported: Audio conferencing
Mobile apps Features
- Supported: Mobile app for iOS
- Supported: Mobile app for Android
Additional Features
- Supported: Heads Up Display (HUD) UC applications
- Supported: 100+ Business Phone System Features
- Supported: Softphone (Included)
- Supported: Voicemail Transcription
- Supported: Call Center Software (Built-in)
- Supported: On Demand Recording / Record All
- Supported: Paperless Fax / FaxLync
- Supported: 24/7 Support
NetFortris Screenshots
NetFortris Video
Watch What is NetFortris?
NetFortris Integrations
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Box
- Twilio Zipwhip (discontinued)
- Intellinote
- Snap Recordings
- Allstate eAgent
- Blitz Lead Manager
NetFortris Competitors
NetFortris Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Mac |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
Supported Countries | Global (99 countries and territories) |
Supported Languages | English |
Frequently Asked Questions
NetFortris Customer Size Distribution
Consumers | 0% |
---|---|
Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 40% |
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 50% |
Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 10% |
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(162)Attribute Ratings
- 8.8Likelihood to Renew16 ratings
- 8Availability4 ratings
- 8Performance2 ratings
- 7.6Usability8 ratings
- 9.1Support Rating7 ratings
- 7.2Online Training4 ratings
- 8In-Person Training2 ratings
- 9.8Implementation Rating4 ratings
- 9.7Configurability3 ratings
- 8.1Product Scalability2 ratings
- 8Ease of integration1 rating
- 8Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 8Vendor post-sale1 rating
Reviews
(76-100 of 108)Terrible Service: Run Away While You Can
- Call queues: ring different departments in different ways, like round robin vs. all ring.
- Multiple devices: phone, soft phone or cell phone
- Ability to connect with a CRM: although this really only works with Salesforce, the concept is good.
- Phones are poor quality: Our poor call quality was being blamed on the batch of phones we received. After waiting almost 4 weeks to receive new ones, the quality did not improve.
- Set up: This was a disaster from the beginning. Our numbers did not port together and it took me many extra hours to sort out that Fonality made an error on the request which caused this. We were stuck using 2 phone systems at the same time. Our "live date" never happened and no one took responsibility for the grievous error.
- Support: Numerous things went wrong, for example our queues stopped working and crashed resulting in us getting no phone calls. When we called the support line they would spend a long time confirming that yes, the problem we were reporting could be replicated by them, but they couldn't fix it and it would be passed on to be dealt with. Anytime we would follow up on the ticket it seemed that no one knew what was happening on our account- there was no communication between their departments at all.
- Dropped Calls: This was never resolved. All of a sudden one of our phones could not receive phone calls, but could dial out. This caused major disruptions in our business, which in turn costs us money.
If you are not the company described above this company is not going to work for you as they are unable to troubleshoot and fix problems that occur. The call quality with the phones is poor, which ultimately seems to be linked to their server.
Fonality - great features on paper, marred by substandard support
- Ease of configuration
- Proper handling of software updates (particularly security fixes). In the ~9 years that we had our original servers, there was *never* an update to the underlying Linux system. We were running a very old Linux kernel, with numerous available exploits.
- Speed of configuration changes. Any configuration changes take a very long time to complete. When you change a single item, the whole page needs to reload, which takes between 10 and 30 seconds. This is quite unusable when you have hundreds of changes to make. This would be fixed by having the configuration be done on the local server rather than have to rely on Fonality's overloaded servers that they refuse to upgrade.
- Stability. We have had issues in functionality that could never really be explained by Fonality's support. They would poke around in the config for a while and eventually fix the issue, but no one ever would know exactly what the fix was. We have had several issues recur multiple times.
- Choice of hardware. For the servers, we were given a choice of a woefully underpowered server, or one that was grossly overkill. Nothing in the middle. These are standard Dell servers, so I do not understand why there is no option for something in the middle. We were forced to pay for the high-end server.
The main issues I see are lackluster support and lack of proper engineering to support updating the software components. The biggest problem with that is that the Fonality employees do not seem to be concerned with these major issues.
Best Mac-friendly Powerful VoIP PBX
- We like the Heads Up Display (HUD) for our receptionist.
- Advanced call routing for our multiple divisions allows our receptionist to correctly answer the phone based on the number that the caller dialed.
- Currently, when making change or additions to our onsite PBXtra, you make the actual changes to the Fonality hosted site and then those changes are pushed to the onsite PBXtra. Sometimes those changes don't make it all the way to the onsite server. It doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. A call to Fonality support fixes the issue. I would rather see a direct connect to the onsite server and push the changes to the cloud.
Fonality hosted PBX is a solid choice
- Their support has been very good.
- The communication with sales reps has gone well, very good response to product questions and quotes for additional hardware.
- The hosted PBX solution has turned out to be solid and it is nice to not have the hardware located in a datacenter environment.
- Having multiple linked servers has issues with call transfers between phones on servers other than the primary server.
- Reporting also has limitations when using multiple linked servers.
Great Service once you finally get it up and running!
We started using a CRM program (RepairShopr) that has some great integration with being able to associate inbound phone calls with our customer records and shows a live pop-up of the ticket status of the customers as they're calling. Fonality was one of the providers that supports the integration so we decided to make the switch.
- The call quality is outstanding. I do a fair amount of small business consulting and have used a variety of VOIP providers in different roles. The call quality with Fonality has been the best of any service I've used.
- Ticket Response Time is great. I've had to make a few phone calls for minor issues after deployment and I usually get somebody on the phone within a few minutes and they've been knowledgeable and helpful.
- Abundance of useful features. I'm sure a lof of VOIP Providers have similiar features, but the integration that Fonality's Hudweb provides has been very useful. For our business, if I hear a call ringing at a co-workers desk and he's away, I can literally just drag the phone call to my own extension and answer the call for him without having a specific ring group in place to ring both phones.
- Onboarding. I spent 8 hours getting our system setup with tech support. EIGHT HOURS of actual time on the phone with support. It took their support staff 7 of those hours to basically determine that my router was blocking a required port and preventing activating my system. Even after reaching out to their sales team to impress upon how frustrating this was, the sales associate helping me (Dan Halloran) offered me a measly two weeks ($35 equivalent) of free service for the time I wasted on the phone and had my own customers waiting an extra day for service. I understand a 2 or even 3 hour onboarding, but it was pretty ridiculous. Honestly, I probably would have just cancelled the service if it wasn't for the unique integration they provide with our CRM Provider.
- Communication. During the course of signing up, Fonality called 1hr before my scheduled install because an employee had called in sick and they didn't have anybody else to help me. They were able to get another technician to help, but he was (obviously) not very knowledgeable as he wasn't able to get my system setup.
- On another occasion, my sales rep (Dan Halloran) indicated via e-mail that he was start the porting process for me. 7 days later, I reached out to inquire about the process, and it hadn't been initiated.
- As a third example, the rep that was finally able to get my system going (Syed Rizvi) was supposed to follow up with me on a Friday, and I never heard from him. After reaching out to him nearly 5 days later, he apologized and indicated he had been very busy.
- Mobile App. Overall, the Mobile App (I'm using the one on Android) is great. It has it's own dialer so that I can call my clients so they see my work number instead of cell phone. But, I can't access the contacts on my phone from the app. I have to lookup a number, memorize the number and then type it into the dialer. Very minor, but would be great to see this added.
Fonality? Why or Why not.
- Call routing with Fonality is very powerful. I spec'd out several cloud based systems that didn't have robust call routing (several "ring" hierarchies to choose from) before landing on Fonality.
- Fonality isn't stingy with their SIP credentials like most other cloud based companies.
- Fonality's QOS is fantastic.
- Fonality has a very knowledgable support staff. They will often fix problems without the customer's required involvement.
- User Interface for the CP. Needs improved speed at the least.
- Another VoIP company I've communicated with has what they call "courtesy lines..." I'm actually not completely sure how that works, but the salesman said they are very inexpensive because the only features they have are outbound calling, inbound call menu calling (eg: no direct call) and internal extension. So no voicemail or other features you'd expect. This is nice for a company with a LOT of employees who aren't really using their phones for much more than internal communication via the extensions.
- If they have solid internet... I recommend it.
- If they need the same number of phones as lines... I recommend it.
Fonality for a growing company
- Ease of use.
- Flexibility of device usage.
- Quick response to support questions.
- Service issues are not always resolved on the first call.
- Outages although brief occurred at least monthly.
Reliable affordable PBX service - support is hit or miss.
- Easy web management interface.
- Easy to update through web interface.
- Easy to customize.
- Good reporting.
- Quality of support is inconsistent. Sometimes they are extremely helpful, sometimes they will tell you something can't be done and you just have to talk to a different support rep.
- Getting a responsive account manager can be difficult. I had to go through 3 or 4 to get one who supports us well.
- Sometimes you need to push them to get them to do what they say they are going to do. Get all communication in writing.
Nice Product, Terrible support and account management
- The interface is very clean and easy to use. It's generally very easy to set up new phones and make changes to them. The HUD is also very nice.
- Technical support is terrible, very rarely did I speak with someone that had very much knowledge on the system. I spent hours and hours on the phone with technicians who eventually gave up completely.
- Account management has been horrendous. We were originally assigned 200 lines, however after the buildout we were unable to get any of them to work. Turns out they accidentally assigned us lines that they didn't own and had to give us new ones. These numbers were given out to clients and posted on company websites, was incredibly embarrassing for myself and our company. The other lines they then offerred didn't meet the criteria I had given them so I asked that they look for a range that does...2 days later they came back with the EXACT same numbers. I gave up and took 100 of those numbers instead. Since then I have been handed off to another Account Manager who seems to have a hard time keeping his customers straight, seems like he is overloaded and is managing too many accounts.
- Billing, per the above note regarding account management, the best they could do was reimburse us for 1 month of service. They said they couldn't reimburse us for the thousands of dollars we spent on business cards that had to be redone. They they have been unable to get our billing set up correctly, I continue to be charged for more lines than I asked for. I was told it was "escalated" last month, only to find out the billing team hasn't touched my request yet.
Phantastic Fone system
- Transparent mobility.
- Highly customizable.
- Strong technical support from Fonality.
- Would like to see an improved desktop app for when it is preferred over the webHUD.
- Stronger built in protection from SIP attacks.
- Mobile app could be improved, even though it does function well.
Very responsive and helpful organization
- Ease of use once phone system is set up.
- Fonality's customer service is prompt and helpful.
- Billing and invoicing is easy to understand.
- As I have been a business owner for over 30 years, changing from a hardwired system to VOIP does create some getting used to.
- Training for "old school" business owners (basic VOIP system).
- Texting feature.
Fonality review of Voip and App
- Voicemails are emailed
- Voicemails can be accessed online
- Interface works but is slow
- Sometimes calls are very bad quality and clients can't hear me
- Mobile app volume is really low
Connecting with Fonality
- Customer support: Phone communications are critical for us. We continue to use Fonality because of their constant up-time. When issue arise, Fonality support is quick and knowledgeable which leads to prompt resolutions.
- Connectivity: We have employees in the US, Canada and Asia and are employees are able to communicate easily as if they are in the same building.
- Ease of use: The fonality control panel and HUD provide an easy interface to manage the account and calls.
- HUD mobile: app is buggy and needs significant improvement. Fonality should not be charging for this app in its current state. We do use the app and it is helpful for mobile employees but it could add so much more value to the Fonality solution if it worked correctly.
- Cost: Fonality is more expensive than other solutions. We had resisted change to date due to the hassle of changing all of our settings and ported numbers. It makes it more frustrating that Fonality regularly promotes discounted offers but when we inquire, we are always told that the offer is not applicable to the offering we have.
Fonality for Small Customer Support Team.
- Clear and simple way to transfer calls.
- Easy to view voicemail.
- Allow a simpler interface for those who don't need to make conference calls.
Amazing Gates uses Amazing VOIP by Fonality
- Very user friendly in answering and forwarding calls.
- We like that it's adaptable in that you can customize it somewhat to fit the needs of your company.
- It's very easy to make adds, moves and changes.
- The technical support department has been a tremendous help in times there was any problems.
- Sometimes when making changes such as users, extensions and permissions, there is a lag in time before the changes are implemented. I wish the changes could be instantaneous.
- We have had some problems accessing voicemail through the HUD.
- It can be a little costly to add users.
Fonality VOIP System
- It is a reliable telephone service.
- Excellent service (customer and technical) support.
- Call drop and it would be great to know if the drop was due to the cellular service of the person on the line or our service.
Fonality Telephone Review
- Reduce costs
- Reduce complexity
- Take your telephone home with you
- Video Conferencing
- Free softphone app and licensing
- Better support for phones with no costs for provisioning new phones
Fonality the key to business success
- Access to messages from my cell phone or any computer
- The ability to have my office phones ring from any computer I plug my Fonality phone into.
- Great customer service and follow thru
- My HUD goes down from time to time.
Real User of Fonality, Quick Honest Review
- It allows us to make phone calls anywhere in the US at a great rate.
- The Polycom handsets that are the default option are very well built.
- You can usually just plug a phone in anywhere, in an office or a home, and it just works.
- Fonality account managers are really just order takers. They have almost no ability to help when there is an issue.
- Tech support is not the greatest. There is always an excuse, no ETA, and sometimes they just don't fix a known problem for days until it is "safe to reboot the system for all customers."
- Sometimes the phones just lag. There is now reason given, a call to support offers no answers, and then the lagging stopped. This happened just yesterday.
Do your research. You get what you pay for.
- Fonality's HUD software is the highlight of the product.
- The control panel (console) is based in the cloud and is ridiculously slow. Fonality will always blame this on its customers never taking responsibility. At some periods it literally takes over a minute for the settings to refresh. We have used Fonality for over 4 years and this has never improved.
- Support is very hit and miss. You will get a very courteous and experienced tech on one call. The very next call will end up oversea's and unskilled. Generally support is horrendous.
- Fonality charges a 100.00 per phone to set them up. More often then not I have to wipe the config and redo the setup. This brings the cost per phone way above the standard. you have to purchase phones through fonality and pay setup. you can purchase from other resellers but fonality requires them to be sent to them for setup.
- fonality provides no maintenance with the support. they do not send out information regarding vulnerabilities to their system. Twice in 4 years we have been hit by vulnerabilities that could have been prevented.
- Tech Support. I was able to contact 3 different very knowledgeable support agents in the wee hours of a Sunday morning and was back up and running without missing a beat. After a service outage the CIO called me personally on a Sunday to apologize and explain what had happened and what was being done to prevent the issue from happening again.
- Pricing!
- Sales Rep: My guy is very knowledgeable and available. I first contacted him on a Saturday morning.
- Their Basic Call Queue sends callers to the same agent. I needed to disable call waiting on the instrument to correct this.
- When first setting up with them there was 2 different support teams and you couldn't get a question answered without a scheduled appointment. [I think this is no longer the case.]
- User Control Panel is unwieldy and slow. Luckily it's mostly set and forget.
We all love Fonality at the company
- Instant call log when customer calls and keeps history of what the call was for. Real time Chat within High privacy of the firm for internal document.
- Customer relationship on your finger tip with all information that you need.
- Crystal clear sound way better than ordinary hosted PBX.
- Everyone loves Fonality because of the great integration with Salesforce.
- Mobile communication or App
- CTI development
- Find me feature
One major thing I have noticed is that the CPU load on the server itself can become overloaded very easily and can occasionally cause poor quality during calls or having the phone system fail over all ( Which I then have to log in and restart the server ). My other problem with the service is that their control panel calling it slow and sluggish is an understatement. Pages take almost a minute to load even during early mornings, This makes me dread having to make any changes to this particular system.
- The ability to make tree structures for routing your calls is very intuitive. Auto-routing is a breeze and anyone can learn it fairly quickly. Also having the ability to upload your own hold music playlist is great.
- Customer service are friendly and you receive top notch service.
- User management is simply laid out and has more than enough functionality out of the box to satisfy any admin.
- Even though you are an admin and have access to the control panel, you really do not have full control of the server. So calls once and awhile to customer service will be needed.
- Admin control panel page takes forever to load. Any changes that need to be made every click takes about a minute to load.
- The Web interface for the control panel can use a but of an update.
But on the other hand, If you are in an organization that doesn't have many users, Fonality's ease of use will be a great " set it and forget it " product.
7 years with Fonalilty for a small/medium size business
- Fonality support is very quick to respond to our calls and efficient at resolving them whether its an training/education issue or technical problems with our VOIP phones or server.
- The HUD - Heads up display to see all of our calls, conferences etc and to be able to drap and drop to route calls is very useful.
- The programmable "find me, follow me" feature is very useful for getting calls to our users who are not bound to a office desk extension, easily fowarding to their cell, home #'s on a schedule.
- Programming the call menu to handle the voice prompts and routing is easy to set-up and manage
- The annual cost of support is significant. We have very few calls into support as it is seldom needed. It would be nice if we could have the option to pay on a per call basis vs annual support contract.
Fonality is our choice as a Call Center Solution.
- Managing Call Center queues
- Add/Moves/Changes of extensions.
- Use of Heads Up Display (HUDO
- Easy Call forwarding.
- setup of HUD app for phones.
- Add management of do not disturb feature per extension.
- Add central control ability to remote reboot extensions.