Item: 8x8 Work
Rating: 6
Author: Andy Taylor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use 8x8 X Series across the entire organization. We primarily use their VoIP telephone service. We previously used their fax service, but no longer do (we use RingCentral for fax services). They also have conferencing solutions, which we very rarely use. The VoIP service allows our attorneys to work remotely, whether that's from home, on the road, or at the courthouse.

Pros and Cons

The call quality of 8x8 is very good (nearly as good as an old-school phone system).
There is very little downtime (I actually can't remember the last outage).
The ability to mask your cell phone's number on caller ID (for outbound calls) is very helpful.

The iPhone app is powerful, but clunky.
The technical support (which was absolutely amazing when we first signed up with 8x8) is terrible now. The same goes for their customer service (that is, if there is a problem that tech support can't fix or doesn't handle well, and then you call customer service to complain, they'll just pat you on the head and tell you to go on your way).
The web interface is difficult to use, both from a user standpoint and an administrator standpoint.

Return on Investment

Has helped us become more efficient by allowing us to work while on the road.
Has helped us save money as compared to using a landline PBX system.
Has helped us with the flexibility to easily move and change extensions.

Alternatives Considered

RingCentral

We previously used RingCentral for our cloud-based VOIP system. The problem with RingCentral was that the call quality was not very good (there was a little bit of a lag time) and they had quite a bit of downtime. (This was several years ago, so this might have all changed by now.) I also appreciated that--at that time--all of 8x8's tech support was very good, while RingCentral's was not. Now, however, 8x8's tech support is on about the same level as RingCentral's was.

Support Rating

8x8's tech support is just really not that good. Besides the language barrier (which is worse on some calls than on others), the tech support representatives don't really seem to care about the problem. Once, 8x8 released our main telephone number into the pool, meaning we came to work one day and no one could call our number, and anyone could've grabbed our number for their own business. I was on the phone with tech support, and they honestly acted like they didn't really care about the problem (which, thankfully, was finally resolved after a bunch of missed calls).

Key Insights

Do you think 8x8 Work delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with 8x8 Work's feature set?

Yes

Did 8x8 Work live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of 8x8 Work go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy 8x8 Work again?

Other Software Used

Smokeball, SignNow, Adobe Acrobat DC

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for our situation. We must have good call quality, and we either don't really need or have other vendors for all the other bells and whistles (conferencing, faxing, etc.). Also, I am tech-savvy, so, fortunately, I don't need to call their tech support often. If any of this doesn't apply to you, then 8x8 is probably not the best solution.

8x8 was great. Now, not so much.

Overall Satisfaction with 8x8 X Series (Formerly Virtual Office)