Item: MiVoice Business
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I've used MiVoice Business as my last 3 companies all of which were upgraded from the Shoretel system. Moving to the Shoretel platform allowed us to get rid of a very old and expensive PBX system that was growing increasingly difficult to maintain. Shoretel was a large and expensive transition, the maintenance costs are much better. The MiVoice upgrade allowed a slightly better use experience/client. With Virtual appliances that MiVoice Business introduced, it was relatively easy to save even more with getting rid of older incoming PRI trunks and move to SIP trunks. We saved money and got better resiliancy.

Pros and Cons

Virtual appliances if you have a strong VM infrastructure
The user client is decent and has improved since earlier versions of MiVoice Business
Extremely easy to setup new extensions/users
For the most part, it's an extremely stable system with just making and receiving phone calls.

Softphone working through a VPN/Work-From-Home has always been a struggle
While I'm told an upgrade is near, the Contact Center is outdated and needs work
The upgrade process is very flakey and regularly fails on a Window server.

Return on Investment

Was able to replace our old dying PBX system
Softphone, when it's working, allows users to answer phone calls from home
Can leverage our existing VM infrastructure to use virtual appliances instead of physical appliances

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams

I've used MiVoice Business at multiple employers. Once of them was moving from a very old Avaya PBX, another was with an NEC phone system that was slightly newer. MiVoice was far more easier to setup phones, setup users, manage voicemail, ETC. While we had consultants perform any upgrades with Avaya and NEC, MiVoice we did more collaborative with our support partner but we ran into far more issues with upgrades of MiVoice.

My last 2 companies have discussed moving their phone system to Microsoft Teams and my current position they've already done that. All the issues with MiVoice relating to upgrades and issues with the Connect client are not existant with Teams.

Teams is the bar, sadly MiVoice Business - while a very good product - falls short. They just haven't yet resolved issues that have long existed and in a pre-covid world it was OK. Now that people are displaced, the office environment has changed and end users are not isolated to a desk with a physical phone. MiVoice Business needs to catch up.

Key Insights

Do you think MiVoice Business delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with MiVoice Business's feature set?

Yes

Did MiVoice Business live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of MiVoice Business go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy MiVoice Business again?

Likelihood to Recommend

As a phone system, MiVoice Business is absolutely fantastic. It's equipment and even virtual appliances are extremely stable. Simple auto attendants and making/receiving calls is where the strength is. Where is needs help is the Windows-based software. Upgrading this can be extremely difficult and it frequently fails for no reason. Services stop running and needs frequent reboots. The client has improved greatly with newer releases but can be buggy.

Sadly, the old ways of a traditional desktop phone is dying and I think MiVoice Business isn't as good as some other options that provide more. The end user client just isn't as stable as something like Microsoft Teams or Zoom Voice that can provide a more stable soft phone experience.

MiVoice Business falls short in todays Office Environment

Overall Satisfaction with MiVoice Business