RingEX Reviews

Pros

RingCentral was very easy to setup for our local office as well as remote employees. We mainly went with RingCentral for this functionality. I could order and ship a phone to a remote employee or set up a phone number for remote employee without them needing a phone and all they would have to do is plug in the phone or log in to RingCentral to get going. Call routing and everything else was seamless to the remote employees.

Cons

There is a bit of a learning curve in configuring the different groups. The customer success team is there to help you get started over the phone and generally available to help whenever needed. It was a bit of a pain to get started, but this was in 2015. It was quite a few emails back and forth with an account rep to get the right plan and block of numbers.

Alternatives Considered

Vonage Business Communications

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

Pricing and features made us choose RingCentral.

Pros

RingCentral is a unified communication system. All types of communications stay in a single software. It's great to give a business partner your office number that they could call, text or fax. Video conferencing is easy. RingCentral can be used from a web browser, desktop application, tablet app or a phone app. The unification of all these communication in one spot makes it easy for business partners and customers to work with us.

Cons

RingCentral's video conferencing software and company chat system has opportunities for improvement. Video conference quality is not at par with Zoom. Company chat system is great but not as smooth and elegant as Slack. Those are two areas for improvement.

Alternatives Considered

8x8 Work, Zoom Workplace and MiVoice Business Solution

Reasons for Choosing RingEX

As customer's habit changed with communication, our Cisco phones were one way of communicating. We had fax systems that were separate. We had 3 internal chatting systems. We had a texting system that was alright. And yet, data from all these systems had to be brought into our insurance systems or in a different common place. All of this effort wasn't improving our ability to deliver to our customers. Making the switch allows us to spend less time with various software and more time serving customers who we deeply care about.

Switched From

Cisco Unified Communications Manager

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

RingCentral's sales team did a remarkable job of keeping the conversation simple. As we asked questions, RingCentral showed us more features. They caught our attention by showing us what mattered most. They also had a clean, easy proof of concept that showed minimum barrier for entry, full feature-set and more. Their sales team used their own products to provide us support during proof of concept. While priced higher than others, RingCentral sure were able to show us the value and their fitness for a company like ours. When RingCentral showed unified communication, it sure was all unified. Competitors had a core product and different technologies appeared to have been bolted on to it. Competition was good as well. A clean, unified product, proof of concept and a smooth sales cycle led us to finalize RingCentral.

Pros

Initially, it looked good, and it had all the features we wanted. Signed up for it, and once we started doing testing we realized it was not a good fit for us.

Cons

Where do I start? First off, while this may affect Canadian users, whenever we received an incoming call, the CNAM lookup would only show the name of the city the call was originating from. Not the name or the number. After hours of talking to tech support, the only workaround was to turn the CNAM lookup off so we could at least see the number. Getting this half-fast workaround to work was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. Talking to people a world away and getting them to understand what the issue I was experiencing, including screenshots and videos, felt like talking to a wall. They could not understand why I had an issue with only seeing the name of the city on call display. The tech support kept referring to system limitations whenever they could not solve something. The salesperson has mislead us and told us we could manage multiple lines from one interface. That is not the case. You have to log into each line separately. As a small team, we wanted to have everyone have access to certain lines and be able to jump in on a conversation. That could not be accomplished. This platform was clearly not a good fit for us, but we signed a contract, and made the best of it.

Alternatives Considered

8x8 Work

Switched From

Grasshopper

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

It seemed to have more features for the price.

Pros

Ringcentral gave us a lot of options with a low barrier to entry. We came from an environment with no soft phone capability so the transition was very noticeable. The peer-to-peer communication and peer-to-client communication are both very simple and the call quality is always crystal clear.

Cons

The initial IVR setup for our company was a very drawn out process. We had to hire an external party to create our entire workflow since the built in functionality did not suit our needs. Additionally, we were in the market for a custom API hook that new calls would invoke and the process to get this built in took an extremely long time (6+ months) to add.

Pros

Their customer service is alright, and they are versatile platform for calling services. Their calling features are alright, but they are on the pricy side compared to other services. You are able to take calls on both desktop and on a cell phone, so it mitigates the need for a business cell plan and transfers all call services online. Porting over customer contacts was pretty easy with the RingCentral customer representative.

Cons

As a company, we used RingCenteral for a year before switching to a new call service specifically because, while their phone services are pretty decent, their SMS features are subpar at best, and we wanted a more unified service with less cost.

Alternatives Considered

Grasshopper

Reasons for Choosing RingEX

We actually switched from RingCentral to Grasshopper due to the cost of RingCentral, and the issues I mentioned above.

Switched From

Telegram and Grasshopper

Pros

I love the features, and the excellent design. The platform is very easy to use.

Cons

The support is little to none when something goes wrong. Salespeople give you much attention but account managers pay you no attention once signed up...

Alternatives Considered

Nextiva

Reasons for Choosing RingEX

Nextiva could not get my number from Ring Central

Switched From

Nextiva

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

Went back to the provider I had before, where the number was being held hostage!

Pros

It was easy to install, and it is easy to use.

Cons

The customer service department is improving but it still takes a long time to resolve issues. There is a lot of waiting on hold for unimportant tasks.

Pros

The ease of use and ability for our sales team to be able to answer calls that are meant for our team during business hours, and have a simple and organized location for all after-hours calls.

Cons

No specific cons at this time. Before, the app did not include HUD features which made it more difficult, but this has been addressed.

Pros

I like how streamlined the service is. The app works perfectly, we have used other services and we had trouble with the app and we have never had a problem using the desktop or app versions.

Cons

I feel that changing voicemail is a little complicated but once you get the hang of it, it is easier. There are many different options which are great because you have a regular voicemail and after hours.

Pros

It has tons of features that are great for texting, faxing, and team meetings.

Cons

The price and contract when adding new lines.

Alternatives Considered

8x8 Contact Center

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

All the features that are included and the apps they have.

Pros

The platform feels modern and robust. I like that end users can install the client without us having to deploy msi's. The sound quality alone on calls was night in day from our onprem system with SIP trunks. We were worried about quality, but it's been a non issue. It's nice having a platform that is constantly improving over time, without us having to shell out more money to prod the vendor to offer more. If you have solid internet connections into your business, you'll be fine.

Cons

The offering was a little on the pricier side compared to competitors. Worth it in my opinion though.

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect, Vonage Contact Center and Vonage Business Communications

Reasons for Choosing RingEX

Running an on prem pbx just doesn't make sense anymore when you have fast internet access. We decided our time was more valuable in other areas of the business.

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

Ring felt the most mature and well developed out of the other offerings. We were willing to pay more for a better overall product and support experience. The platform does feel like unified communication, and is flexible enough with API access that we'll be able to change how we use it over time. The other offerings often felt bolted together from acquisitions to get into the space. Ring felt a little more robust and fleshed out compared to the others.

Pros

The call recording has been huge for training our team members. The ability to transfer a call to someone with the Ask First is a feature not many apps allow, AND the fact that if my team member can't answer, I can then transfer the call back to myself for taking a message is something we haven't found in any other phone app. In other apps, if I did an Ask First transfer then the person was just lost entirely which was not good for business.

Cons

The one thing that has been less favorable is that your native phone app can/will ring over top of the Ring Central app. So it's possible to be on a Ring Central call and then have your native app ring in a call on top and you can't hear the Ring Central call. I also wish that if one of my other team members answers a call on our shared line, it wouldn't show as a missed call for me. But these are little things compared to all the benefits of the RC app.

Pros

We used the optional onboarding PM for our deployment to free up time with our IT Department and it was well worth the investment. This allowed us for a seamless go-live deployment!

Cons

While the admin user interface is nice looking, it can be a little daunting at first because configurations can be done many ways. Further to this, it is not possible to test a 'what-if' after you are done programming (for example what-if a call comes in on X and they do Y where does the call get routed) leaving you to deploy into production and potentially cause downtime or issues.

Alternatives Considered

8x8 Work, Microsoft Teams and Zoom Phone

Reasons for Choosing RingEX

The lack of features, customization and minimal support, compounded the issues we already had with the system's requirements.

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

We found that while the price was a little higher than most of these products, the support and feature set that came with RingCentral really fit our company.

Pros

It is a completely efficient tool; it can be easily used with either a small or large team. It has all kinds of tools useful to keep efficient call tracking, performance log, and analytics.

Cons

I do not consider I have something I do not like from this software at the moment.

Alternatives Considered

CloudTalk

Reasons for Choosing RingEX

The previous tool did not include half of the features found in RingCentral

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

The reviews, pricing, support during the purchase, and general information

Pros

We utilize the ability to manage all our users phones and licensing form the admin portal. Uses connections are very reliable and the VoIP options help us be more mobile. The administration is easy to learn and setup. Users are able to quickly pick up how to use phones.

Cons

If we had to pick a con for this it would be that it really makes you use their phones if you want a physical phone at desks. It would be nice to use other brands.

Alternatives Considered

Zoom Phone

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

We choose RingCentral MVP over Zoom phone due to them having more features and better pricing.

Pros

It works sometimes. 90% of the calls make it to me and I'm able to pick them up and speak to the person on the other end. Sometimes they hear me clearly other times they are not able to understand me.

Cons

A phone system that is buggy, drops on customers and is not built for any serious company with real customers.

Beware of Dodgy Contract: This is a company that has an auto-renew yearly contract with month to month payments and when service and support go out the windows and the phone system doesn't work, you are still locked into a contract.

Overpriced for what you get.

Alternatives Considered

GoTo Connect

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

It had the features we needed. Features that don't work are hardly features.

Pros

My favorite pro on Ring Central are all the lines are recorded and there is easy access to pull up those calls. You simply log into your account on ringcentral.com and all calls can be searched by day, time or phone number. You can save the recordings to your computer and send them where applicable. Another pro is the phone has bluetooth capability. I have hooked up my head set to Ring Centrals phone lines several times. You also can easily transfer calls, add a conference call (3-way calling) and put the phone on DND (Do Not Disturb) if busy. My current Ring Central phone has 4 incoming lines available to ring, although I usually only need 2 lines. My first and last name is also on my phone. You can also set up for your phone to have different ring tones for different people and keep a phone book available on the phone for easy access of calling the people you call the most.

Cons

I have found two cons for Ring Central: Since the phone runs off of internet, if the wifi signal goes down, so does the phone. Unfortunately you will need to wait until the wifi connects again for the phone line to become active again. I do believe there is way to hard wire the phone line as well where it is not connected to wifi. The second would be the recorded calls only go back as far as 3 months. Sometimes in business we need to go back a little further than 3 months.

Pros

I like that you can set up different groups/teams to discuss things with people that are relevant to the conversation. For example, each company department can have their own team or one can be set up for a specific project and you can choose to only add the people involved with that project. You can also have private chats with with one or more people, then turn that chat into a team of you determine that world be beneficial.

I also like that you can tag people, decreasing the chance that they'll overlook the message, know it's something important they need to view/respond to, and will see the message more quickly (if they have tagged-notifications turned on in their account settings).

It's also nice that it's likes to the office phone system. It allows you to take phone calls made to your office phone on your cell phone if you have the RingCentral phone app (RC Phone) installed. This has been especially useful during COVID. We've been working from home for almost a full year and most people didn't take their desk phones home with them. It's great to be able to receive work calls even though we haven't been in the office.

It also integrates with meetings. Each person has their own, unique meeting URL to use if they are scheduling meetings on the calendar. But you can also start a meeting directly within a team and everyone on the team will get notified that they are being called into a meeting.

Cons

My company was trying to use this for the reasons I described above, but also as a task-management tool. Although there are some task-management features built into the software, it's definitely not what I would recommend for that purpose.

Because the main purpose of this is for messaging colleagues, the layout is not great for keeping your tasks organized and helping you stay on top of all the various projects you have going on at once. When tasks are assigned to people, they quickly get lost among all the messages that are posted after the assigned-task notification. When we were using this as our only task-management tool, people would often forget about tasks, miss the deadlines, etc.

Pros

Great product works like a charm, I use this product daily along with almost all of my customers. The overall easy use of this product makes it 5 stars. I have a few clients who have the most basic computer skills that mastered and love this product.

Cons

I wish there were a few more features available when it comes to voicemail such as sharing a saved voicemail with another user outside of ones company.

Pros

RingCentral Softphone app is similar to a cell phone which makes it easy for people to relate to the functions of the softphone app. We use Glip, the messaging system that is part of the RingCentral phone app every day and we particularly like the gif feature that allows you to search for gifs and post them to chat. I also like that you can have the RingCentral phone app on both your desktop or laptop computer and your cell phone and you can transfer calls between the two devices pretty easily. The contacts tab on the softphone app is also a great feature that allows us to search for anyone in the company's number easily and quickly and is a great improvement over our last voip system.

Cons

There are a lot of strange glitches with RingCentral that happen, like when a user cannot make or receive phone calls and the only way to fix the issue is to reboot the user's computer (only seen on Windows 7 computers).We have also had strange issue where a user is not logged into a queue and is set to busy or do not disturb as their status and they get missed calls even though their phone never rang. The support and web results for any issue you search for are not helpful and definitely seem to be filtered to make it seem that there are no issues with the RingCentral softphone app. I also do not like how the phone app will take over my keyboard when I get a call and stop me from completing whatever I was typing when the call came in.

Pros

Very powerful solution that can be fully managed through their online interface. I like the support of all of the Polycom phones, support for presence, call queue setups, schedules, etc. It's a very comprehensive system that does a LOT.

Cons

Two issues we have.....

1) We used to use phone.com and we found we had better control of the call flow using their system. We've run into some call flow planning issues due to limitations of Ring Central.

2) WOW their customer support is bad bad bad! At least I just had a terrible experience. We hired a new employee and I needed to setup his phone. We had an existing line setup that we weren't using. I just needed to update the line to use his new phone. It wouldn't let me add his phone to the existing line and wanted me to make a new line. I did that and then I had two lines on the extension. I tried to delete one of the extensions and it said I cannot. I call support and the lady on the phone said she "Ok I can fix this for you but don't ever let this happen again". She was dead serious. I got upset at her about that comment. Long story short, she kept me on hold for 35 minutes then said she couldn't do it and they would call me when it's done. I called back in the next day, talked to someone else and within 10 minutes everything was fixed. What the hell!

Pros

Reliable-- over three years of use the web based system did not have any notable downtime. Ease of use-- easy to implement our telephone map on the Ringcentral system.

Cons

Customer service. Our company had three separate Ringcentral accounts. Sadly, after several years of using Ringcentral they changed their "pricing strategy" which doubled, and then tripled our monthly service charge-- although we did not change our business or the way we used the software.

Alternatives Considered

Grasshopper

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

Pricing

Pros

Multi-user support with simultaneous phone ringing
Text message friendly that updates on all screens/phones
Fax integration so you can receive faxes digitally on the go

Cons

Horrible ignorant customer service who screws up your entire account
Inconsistent reliability of the mobile app and service
Cannot have 2 external phone numbers ringing the same phones on 1 account login

Pros

I actually have been fairly skeptical of the software since I've been using the IP phone for a year and a half. I was never too proud of it and what it could do. However, once I have switched to using the app on my phone and a bluetooth, I really couldn't be any happier. I have full powers and the ability to even transfer to personal cell phones. I am happy now.

Cons

When we were all using IP phones we had different phones and that made some things not behave well at all. Other than that, the app has things in a little different places than the regular Ring Central phone app, but I like it better.

Pros

The online portal is fantastic. It allows you to divert your calls very easily to a phone or even take them on your computer rather than your desk phone

Cons

We do get several dropouts on desk phones a day Which sometimes makes it frustrating