17 years helping New Zealand businesses
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About RingEX
A seamless solution to unleash the power of cloud business communications.
Ring Central is very robust and the cost reflects that for the most part.
The sales dept made 3 appointments and no showed all 3 times. My inside support person is a a grouchy B---OTCH who wants to argue with me and tells me I am the only one every that has been unhappy.
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Alternatives Considered:
Very Cost Effecient Way to Provide Seamless Phone Service for Local and Remote Employees
Comments: I have had a positive experience with RingCentral. We use it for all remote employees and our local conference rooms. Once the IT team had the process down for adding groups and numbers everything has run smoothly.
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:
Affordable and Intuitive Option for Small Business
Comments: We were looking for an affordable, integrated platform that can be used for both internal collaboration and as an external calling solution. Our staff is grateful to no longer give out their cell numbers for calls, but to be able to get calls forwarded through the app. Overall, RingCentral MVP was easy to implement and we're satisfied.
Pros:
RingCentral is convenient and easy to use, especially where we need it most- that is, making calls and sending texts to our clients and external partners from our app or desktop. Even for staff members who don't have extensions, it's easy to forward Voice Messages via email, since they come in as an attachment. Our team was moving from a dial-only system and had reservations about transitioning to a feature-rich cloud based phone line- but everything is easy to use and straightforward, from integrations to scheduling to sharing files. We weren't expecting that we'd use the reporting feature, but that also comes in handy as we can collect data on who is making calls and sending texts at what durations and who is successful in connecting, all which supports time management for our caseworkers.
Cons:
Periodically, customer support will have you waiting for a long time. When there's a technical glitch, this can be an issue. However, it's only happened an handful of times, and we're overall satisfied.
Calls Drop Constantly
Comments: Having a system that allows you to take calls from any device makes privacy a lot easier--no need to give out your personal number for business purposes. Also, if people can have calls forwarded it's not necessarily required to give everyone a company-provided smartphone, a huge cost savings as well.
Pros:
The RingCentral system allows you to seamlessly use your same phone number on your physical desk phone, laptop, and has an app for your smartphone. As someone who takes a lot of calls in conference rooms for privacy, it's nice to have the calls available on my smartphone versus having to transfer the call to a conference room phone. I also appreciate that the contact list is built into the system so I don't have to search for employees' extensions and whatnot. During times when we work remotely it helps that I don't have to set up call forwarding or anything like that, it's like I never left the office really. The software we have also enables easier international calling from your phone, we are a global company so this is used frequently. The app is easy to use which is nice.
Cons:
The biggest issue that we run into is that calls drop a lot in the middle of the call. For example, when I would call colleagues in NY and Dublin, halfway through the call, regardless of where I was located, the call would drop and the app wouldn't reconnect to the data or wifi on my phone, so I'd have to completely reboot my smartphone to get back into the app. It wouldn't be a big deal if it happened every once in a while but I have run into this 5-7 times per week which puts a big strain on my workload.
Alternatives Considered:
Call, text, fax and conference from anywhere
Comments: The overall experience with RingCentral is very positive. The sales and implementation cycle was smooth. Users got used to RingCentral very quickly and were excited for a different system of communication. The future needs of our company will be met with RingCentral. Using RingCentral now, we are able to reduce number of contracts, home grown systems, other vendors' system and unsupported systems in favor of cloud-based telephony. I am, and my company is, pleased with 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:
RingCentral way better by far!
Comments: They are by far 100 times better then Nextiva!
Pros:
Everything, very friendly software. I love the software.
Cons:
A couple of times my text did not go out. But was fixed after I reported the issue.
Review of Ringcentral
Comments: Ringcentral replaces our previous phone system in its entirety, allowing us to utilize soft phones and providing a means for video and text communications. Although we later transitioned to different services for chat and video, initially it was a welcome addition when we were just needing the phone/fax. Overall ring central is a high quality soft phone.
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.
Alternatives Considered:
Decent Centralized Communications Service
Comments: It was alright. There were a few bugs with notifications not appearing across platform, but otherwise calls were clear and didn't drop.
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.
Ring Central is a solid small business phone service
Comments: Overall we really liked Ring Central. The only reason we switched away was because a friend started their own VOIP phone service and we got to support them and use it for cheap. I really like Ring Central and have recommended it to several friends over the years.
Pros:
We used Ring Central for about a year and it was always pretty good. I really liked the mobile app because it allowed us to work remotely and not have to pay for phone service at our employees homes.
Cons:
The phone service only ever had a problem when the internet went down on our office or in my neighborhood. Ring Central was great, the internet was not reliable enough.
RingCentral Great For Business
Comments: RingCentral has been a great stride forward compared to our previous VoIP solution which was buggy and had issues. It's simple, easy to use and just works.
Pros:
Having used a competitor software previously I find that using RingCentral is quick, easy and bug free. It's relatively simple to load on your PC or mobile and does the exact job it is designed to do well.
Cons:
Contact management could be improved on RingCentral, but overall, there really isn't much to complain about.
Best phone service we have used
Comments: I have been very happy with the service, I love the app version so if I have to step out of the office I can still take calls.
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.
Alternatives Considered:
They saved us from an ancient ShoreTel system, and helped us embrace remote work
Comments: RingCentral has been in business voip for a long time now. They are huge, well defined, and are consistent across the entire experience of sales, design, implementation and training. When you onboard, you feel like you are gaining access to a huge resource that has been doing this long enough to have their game down. You pay more for that kind of experience, and it was worth it to us.
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.
Ring Central is better than the trendy apps for business calls!
Comments: With Ring Central, we're able to record calls for training, make seamless transfers to other team members, block spam callers, and our team is able to have access to one shared company line as well as private extensions. It's a business-saver when we all work remotely!
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.
Alternatives Considered:
Excellent tool
Comments: Excellent, it is efficient, easy to use, and reliable.
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:
Incredible Phone Management
Comments: We have had an excellent experience using RingCentral MVP. It has been essential for our communication within our team and with our clients. I would recommend to any company looking to have great video and telephone communications.
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.
Perfect for our Vacation Rental Company
Comments: We've had an overall amazing experience thus far. We are now closer to our customers than ever before. We are able to automate text message notifications to our guests and staff.
Pros:
We switched to Ring Central a couple of months ago as we were looking for a better Phone system that will integrate seamlessly with our new Vacation Rental Software. We decided to give RingCentral Office a trial and it's been amazing thus far. We were able to integrate the software with our new Vacation Rental Software which made communication with guests far more easier and automated. One major thing that makes RingCentral office stand out is its ease of integration with other Softwares. They also have amazing customer service willing to help and guide every step of the way.
Cons:
We've had a great experience thus far that I can't think of too many cons at the moment. Some may find their initial setup daunting. However, it's to be expected considering the many features the software offers, and they more than balance it up with amazing customer service willing to guide you every step of the way.
Ring Central (the future phone)
Comments: Benefits from Ring Central for me are the recorded lines. I deal with a lot of chargebacks and unhappy customers at times. To deal with them I need to have facts of what they are telling me and none other than a recorded line will get me those facts of the conversations had earlier with other employees, to determine the outcome of the issue presented to me.
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.
Good for inner-office messaging but not for task management
Comments: I pretty much already said everything in my previous comments. This was already being used when I started working for this company so I don't know how it's measured up to people's initial expectations. But it is useful for messaging coworkers and discussing projects and other work-related topics. We use RingCentral meetings a lot. Not only does the entire office use it for our daily morning meetings, but it's also used a lot by individual teams to discuss their projects. This is another feature that has been especially useful during COVID. We used to use it some when we were all working in the office, but it's been a great tool for communicating with coworkers now that we are all home and can't easily walk down the hall to someone's office. From what I understand, this software is owned by Zoom so it has a lot of similar features to that meetings platform. So people that are familiar with Zoom would probably have an easy time figuring out how to use RingCentral meetings. I really dislike the desk phones though - which we received as part of our RingCentral package. They are way too complicated to use so I almost always used my personal cell phone to make work-related calls. I actually find the RingCentral Phone app a lot more intuitive and easier to use than the desk phones.
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.
Alternatives Considered:
MSP Use Case for RingCentral
Comments: Overall, our experience both using and reselling RingCentral has been very positive. Our staff and clients use these products daily and while we do need to work through occasional issues, these are more often training based than product issue based.
Pros:
We both use and resell RingCentral. Our self-use is for our IT Service Desk support number and this works wonderfully. It provides us the flexibility to be out in the field and still receive calls from our clients. The medical practices that we've migrated to a RingCentral phone solution find great value in the additional features beyond just a plain old desk phone. These include faxing, SMS messaging, video conferencing, call analytics, etc..
Cons:
There are times where it can be difficult to work with the RingCentral sales team and support teams. That said, if you are patient and persistent with them you can almost always reach your end goal.
RingCentral Response
last year
Jon, the Review Team appreciates your valuable feedback. Thank you for taking the time to articulate your positive experience with our product. If you would like to continue the conversation, do not hesitate to email us at [email protected]!
Ring Central for Medium Businesses
Comments: We use RingCentral daily as our main phone system and we have a customer call center that uses the phone system very heavily. In general we have not had any major downtime with RingCentral but we do have the strange glitches that cause some users headaches trying to get the softphone to work correctly for them. The phone system works most of the time but because we use Plantronics headsets there can be some tricky configuration that users have difficulties with from time to time.
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.
VoIP Void of Value
Comments: Honestly, the entirety of the RingCengral suite is really just more hassle and frustration than it's worth.
Pros:
The biggest pro for this software is that VoIP really eliminates any kind of worry about the power going out, or being tied to a desk in order to do your work/take your calls. The other nice thing is that this suite of products via the VoIP service provides you with a phone number to utilize for work purposes (yes, even texting!) - which means no giving out your personal phone number for candidates and clients to utilize!
Cons:
This software has literally 3 separate apps you have to use on a computer in order to call, send messages to people from outside your organization, and to send messages to your team internally. Plus, a fourth for video conference meetings. It's arguably one of the most convoluted systems I've ever personally come across. The system also frequently times out on its service (even though they recommend testing your internet/router bandwith for the VoIP, and mine is great) and other features. Often messages will go out, but not in, or vice versa. Sometimes the software will completely seize up and quit, or will get stuck. I've had it ring for 5 minutes straight with no one calling me, forcing me to restart my entire computer.
PBX in the Cloud - Big Look for Small Firms
Comments: Our customers continually remark that our presence and appearance is that of a much larger company - they are amazed that a small company can have such features as the automated attendant, directory listing, audio conferencing, faxing, etc that we have. The system is ideal for companies with employees on the road. Everything is accessible from a smart phone, soft phone or physical device. We have had no software bugs/issues since subscribing a year ago. We took advantage of the annual billing option both because we are committed to the product and to obtain the discount.
Pros:
The subscriptions are very easy to manage - adding or deleting subscriptions is all done easily online. The setup is quite straight forward but there are a number of advanced options for which users should look at the help files (which are quite helpful). Voice mail, and fax options for each users, as well as opening hours, also easy to set up. What is nice is the ability to have calls routed to devices in parallel or sequence. The call-flip feature to transfer a call from one device to another, without stopping the call, works well. Our firm uses call groups to route calls for specific topics to specific agents. The ability to ring one or multiple agents simultaneously (first to pick up takes the call) is really useful.
Cons:
The audio conference and the video conferencing are separate applications. It would be ideal if the audio conferencing users could use a web browser to connect the same as the video conference app. I can see the pros and cons of two applications but it can be a bit confusing to subscribers and their customers.
RingCentral Phone System
Pros:
- Good call quality. Since it's VoIP, I was worried about call quality and dropped calls - but we've had RingCentral almost 2 years and I've never had an issue. It's all dependent on your internet connection, so if your internet is not great, then RingCentral probably isn't the best option for you. - Once you get the hang of it, it's easy to manage accounts and set up new users. - Great if you don't have a receptionist, or if most of your employees work remotely. You can have physical phones, as well as and app so that employees can use their cell phones. - Much cheaper than most standard phone carriers. - Fax option is great, you don't have to have a real fax machine - just a scanner.
Cons:
- Implementation wasn't hard, but their administrative account is not the most user friendly. There are a ton of settings options, and if you don't use the phone system exactly how RingCentral assumes you will, it can take a while to configure your way and get around certain defaults. - Customer service is about what you'd expect - only a call center with agents that are hard to understand. Luckily we only needed customer service during implementation, we haven't had any issues since. - Employees will need to be trained, you can't just hand them the phone and account and tell them to run with it. One older employee had an extremely hard time with faxing - couldn't get over the fact that there wasn't a real fax machine.
Alternatives Considered:
RingCentral is perfect for our business!
Comments: Overall RingCentral is fast, reliable, and offers tons of great features. I would recommend to anyone.
Pros:
RingCentral offers tons of options including various call handling capabilities, text, fax, video chat and mobile/desktop app. The call handling and mobile app have been the best features for us. We can call from our mobile with our work phone number and not have to give our our personal cell numbers. After hours, if a client has an emergency, the call handling directs the call to our apps.
Cons:
We don't have many complaints about the software/service. Cost would probably be one of our only complaints. It does get very expensive once you start adding lines. I guess you get what you pay for though.
Almost Perfect VOIP Service
Comments: Moving to hosted VOIP from a POTS service was the best thing we ever did. I now have complete control over our voice communications and our users have more features and functionality available to them than they know what to with. Everyone loves it.
Pros:
RingCentral has everything: centralized control, SMS, great Polycom phones, mobile app, fax as a service, voicemail and fax to email, Outlook and Office 365 integration, and the list goes on. The best part? It all works well. You can literally customize any part of the service. And unlike some providers, you don't pay extra for the auto attendant, which can be as simple or as complex as you care to make it. Their support will walk you through it all, helping you to achieve the perfect setup. You can have the service do secondary rings to your cell, the mobile app, the Windows app, whatever. I honestly cannot think of a single feature or function I've wanted that wasn't already available.
Cons:
The reason RingCentral is only "almost perfect" is the annoying account reps, who call frequently. One time I had one call every user on our account within the space of a couple of days! This was done under the guise of ensuring everyone was happy with the service, but all that did was create a scenario where everyone complained--for the first and only time, mind you--about RingCentral. Fortunately, it had nothing to do with the actual service.
Advanced Telephone System for the Contemporary Era
Comments: I must say, RingCentral has been absolutely amazing for me! It's been my go-to communication system for the past 2 years, and it has truly been instrumental in helping me reach my recruitment goals. The versatility of RingCentral is unmatched — I can effortlessly send bulk texts, schedule meetings, and make calls all in one place. Plus, what really sets it apart is its ability to verify if the numbers I'm texting are accurate. Using RingCentral is a breeze, whether I'm accessing it through the web or the application. And let me tell you, the search feature is leagues ahead of other platforms. One of the greatest perks is that you can use a single number to make calls worldwide, or even obtain a new number to expand your business across different countries like the USA, UK, and more, all from comfort.
Pros:
Unrestricted complimentary calls within the United States and Canada, Text transcription of voicemail messages, Global telephone communication, as well as Conferencing facilities.
Cons:
Restrictions in terms of character count for written communication via short message service (SMS).