RingEX

Pros

RingCentral MVP combines all of the fundamental requirements for effective communication into a single program that runs on your own computer. Within a single interface, I am able to monitor and respond to incoming phone calls, text messages, faxes, and instantaneous messages from other users.

Cons

The first transition from using a traditional desk phone to a desktop app is one of the drawbacks of RingCentral MVP. No matter where you take your laptop, you can now take your calls with you. Although getting acclimated to it takes a little bit of time, the experience has been positive in general.

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

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

Pros

The ability to create call trees for different departments of our organization has been a game changer in our response time for leads.

Cons

Some of the connectivity can be an issue between phone vs desktop application.

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

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to RingEX

Pros

The digital aspect of the office phones. With the phone being connected to the computer, it is very reliable. The digital fax is also very convenient when having to send large faxes.

Cons

It is inconvenient not having a local area code number.