Item: GoTo Connect
Rating: 10
Author: Michael Wilson

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use GoToConnect (formerly Jive) for all our entire company's phone system. Although we are a smaller company, we have employees spread across the country and a VOIP service instead of a traditional landline service is incredibly valuable to us, particularly because of the central administration abilities of the Jive/GoToConnect system.

Pros and Cons

Technical Support is FANTASTIC - second to none!
Reliability is first class. In 6 years, I can only think of a couple of times when we've had any technical issues whatsoever.
Voice quality is excellent, particularly internally from extension to extension.

Conference Bridges are very basic. They provide host passcodes but little more in the way of conference line administration.
Some of the online documentation could be improved, but that is made up for by their excellent technical support.
The integration with the other "GoTo" products is confusing and clunky. When Jive was a standalone product, there was no confusion. Because there are too many GoTo products, you sometimes don't know what is being referred to if you don't know the entire GoTo product line in detail. The new owners don't do a very good job of putting their various (otherwise great) products in definable "silos", and as a result their product offerings blur together.

Return on Investment

As with most VOIP systems, once you learn the basic administration, you have no need to call in experts to configure new lines or call paths. This saved a lot of money.
GoToConnect forces a compatible version of firmware to your phones when they're being provisioned. I asked that they upgrade the version for our hardware on their end, which they gladly did. This saves us tens of thousands of dollars by alleviating the need for wiring our new building for ethernet. A simple firmware upgrade supporting wifi on our Yealink phones saved us five-figures!
Once configured, it works so well there's little need for maintenance. "It just works".

Ease of Deployment

I rated deployment an 8 instead of a 10 because I would have preferred to be able to use their online documentation to fully implement and configure our phone system. But it was a bit confusing. Had I needed to rely on this only, I may have rated this portion a 2 or a 3. However, once I contacted support, within minutes I had a friendly support agent on the other end of the phone to patiently answer my questions and explain things I did not understand. This boosted their rating considerably. Their support is unmatched.

Call Quality

The internal extension to extension calls are strikingly clear regardless of geographic location. I have no complaints about external call quality. We've had no issues with connectivity or downtime unless it was due to our local ISP having a temporary outage. The call quality is quite good. I can't really see any room for improvement in this area.

Usability

A couple of years ago, GoToConnect (which was, at the time, called "Jive") underwent a redesign of their admin interface. After becoming familiar with the changes here, the new interface was far and above much easier to use than the previous version. Administration, configuration, and implementation of changes couldn't be simpler under the new admin tools.

Products Replaced

Key Insights

Do you think GoTo Connect delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with GoTo Connect's feature set?

Yes

Did GoTo Connect live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of GoTo Connect go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy GoTo Connect again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

While I do have a system administrator IT background, I do not have experience with VOIP systems. While trying to pick through the documentation I encountered a considerable learning curve so I had to contact support to hold my hand through the process, which they did patiently, proficiently, and with cheer. They taught me a lot - enough to be able to administer our company's systems from there on out. For the novice, me experience with their support was so great, I would recommend it without hesitation.

On the downside, for those who prefer to teach themselves, their online documentation assumes that you have a basic knowledge of VOIP systems - which I did not. So, the learning curve was steep - until I contacted support. My main criticism of their system is the limitations of their conference bridges, but at least they are easily configurable.

GoToConnect is rock solid, affordable, and I highly recommend it ... No "Jive". :)

Overall Satisfaction with GoToConnect (formerly Jive)