Item: Evolve IP Unified Communications
Rating: 1
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our entire company uses this as our phone system as well as call center. Internally, we utilize the UC-One softphone application on Windows laptops and cell phones. It doesn't really address any "problems", but certainly causes a lot. We needed a new phone system a few years back and this was what was chosen.

Pros and Cons

For UC calls, it works fine for the most part. Making and taking calls using a physical Polycom phone works fine.
It is pretty reliable as a service. We use an Edgewater device on our network to apply quality of service to the phone and prioritize that network traffic. Even the remote usage seems to work fine.

There are so many ways they need to improve. I can't list them all.
First off, their tech support is the worst I've ever seen. They generally break something on at least half the tickets we submit. New accounts always have some kind of issue and it is amazing when one works 100%. Response times were terrible too. It could take 2-8 days just to get a new account setup.
Reporting is inaccurate. Even trying to get it configured with their support team was a hassle and didn't work and wasn't even our data.
Billing had mistakes often and there could be 3 SKUs for the same item. Same item number, description has the same words in a different order.
Admin features are lacking. We can't even change the physical phone on an account. We can't create new accounts. Very limited options.
The admin portal info is inaccurate. Some accounts show no phone associated even though they have one that is working on their account.
There are times that randomly something stops working and not even the tier 1 support can fix it - a checkbox could "uncheck" itself magically and neither we nor the tier 1 tech can check the box again.
When we ask to have licenses removed, they don't remove all the licenses. Then, when we re-use that DID (which is what the account is tied to) for a new user, the license applies to them - for instance, call recording. And we didn't ask for call recording on that new user.
UC-One crashes all the time. It frustrates our users and has a few commonly seen issues.

Return on Investment

It wastes our admins time with all of the issues we have to deal with.
It wastes our employee's time with all of the issues they have to deal with while waiting for a resolution.

Alternatives Considered

Dialpad, Vonage Business Cloud, RingCentral, Genesys PureCloud, Microsoft Teams and 8x8 Virtual Office

Evolve is worse than Dialpad, Vonage, RingCentral, Genesys, MS Teams, 8x8, and any other system I've dealt with. These mentioned all have better features, work well, are simple to use and admin, and some of them cost less.

Support Rating

Support? If I could do everything myself with the time I don't have, I would do it better than their support. I don't like saying it that way, but it is the truth. We hired someone from another company that also used Evolve IP and when they found out that is what we used here, he expressed all of the same complaints and stories that we had.

Key Insights

Do you think Evolve IP Unified Communications delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Evolve IP Unified Communications's feature set?

Did Evolve IP Unified Communications live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Evolve IP Unified Communications go as expected?

Would you buy Evolve IP Unified Communications again?

Likelihood to Recommend

I would leave it at the "?" rating because what can you rate them? 1 is too high. The only way they'd be "ok" is if:
1. Your company isn't growing and your users never leave the company.
2. You don't have to call support or make edits to the admin portal.
3. Don't need reporting.
4. Only use a physical phone to make/receive calls.
5. Do not plan to use a softphone or call center system.
6. Enjoy systems or people that frustrate you.

Evolve IP is a phone system and company to avoid.

Overall Satisfaction with Evolve IP - IP Phone Systems