RingCentral and Vonage

scottalanmiller

Need:

multi country support (currently Australia & NZ) needs numbers for both country
This should be easy with just about anyone.

Cloud based. Don't want an internal PBX as to not reply on a single site.
No issues there with either.

1000+ handsets / extensions overall. Initial rollout will be a subset.
Other than being priced out of the realm of reason, the number isn't a problem. RC is a "consumer" model based system and is best suited for ten and under users, it will scale up, but their design makes their value only really exist in the very small arena. We recommend them to our customers who are too small to get into business class PBXs. They are our go to for five and fewer phones.

Single solution for voice & contact / call centre (smaller component)
What kind of CC features are you looking for? This can mean most anything.

SSO with MS Azure / AD
What's the goal here?

24/7 support
Define support. Both have good support (in my experience), but limited. They don't support end to end so unless you need support only within what they handle, you might need a second support vendor to fill in the gaps.

someone who has been around for more than 2 seconds and who will (likely) be around in a couple of years
Both are quite old. RC since 1999, Vonage I used at least 19 years ago, they might be much older, I'm not sure.

Sofphone / smart phone apps
Everyone has this, always, because even desk phones are actually softphones internally.

usual remote provisioning (has very large fleet of Yealinks)
Yealink is well supported generally, they are the leader these days (by volume.)

usual IVR / queues etc
This is a "base feature", even consumer systems have this today. Putting it on a feature list is like mentioning that you need a phone to ring. Don't bother listing it.

WAN IP based security (ideally)
Not sure if either offer this, never had a customer using these products ask for it. I expect that they do, most systems do.

API to tie into internal things / analytics ?
As these are consumer / tiny business focused systems, never seen this done as customers that use them are way too small to look for stats.

being able to break down charges per department / site etc
Chances are, you'd do this in your own reports.

mix match plans / concurrent calls to be cost effective
**No service that deals in concurrent calls will ever be cost effective. All reasonably priced services, and anything business class, is by the minute. The "per line / concurrent" approach is for places that aren't aware of VoIP or that are just so small that they can't afford to get anything else (the one and two line sized shops.)

fax support (yes!)
Last I knew, both did this very well. But there are lots of ways to skin that cat.)

self management for basic things (add ext, change routing, IVR, queues, enable disable accounts etc)
Do you really want that? Or do you only want it because you assume that their support can't be good enough and you'll have to take it on to work around their problems? Not that anyone doesn't offer this, just in theory, why would you need to have it if you have a good vendor that handles it for you and you know knows what they are doing?

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

Anything else we might want.

Biggest thing that I see customers wanting and not getting from most vendors is end to end support. Our customers on RC for example have three key complaints:

Cost. They can easily be double the cost.
Lack of complete support. They have a rock solid PBX, but 99% of audio issues are with your phones, ISP or network and they don't provide any support for those items. The issues you face are never RC's issues, so their support is actually unnecessary. So when people have issues, there's actually no one to call.
Having to learn how to manage the system themselves because RC doesn't manage it for you. For simple things, like a quick recording of a message, this can be trivial. But for reprogramming an IVR, it can get pretty complex. I've seen customers spend more money paying an MSP to handle the gaps in RC's support than it would have cost to completely replace RC entirely!

360col

Thanks for the reply Scott.

I know some of the things I listed are standard features. However just want to be complete just in case either don't have (not the 1st time I have seen such things happened!).

For context I currently manage a some what "managed cloud PBX" (aka FreePBX) for one of our sub business which is near ~1000 handsets. We are merging with our sister business which has different set of requirements and more fancy features.

I currently do most things day to day admin of the the FreePBX setup (minus keeping the serer running). This allows us to quickly respond to our "customers" needs (rapid extension changes, update routing etc at short notice).

I did not know and take RingCentral as being consumer/SMB target and level. Hence asking here.

@scottalanmiller said in RingCentral and Vonage:

being able to break down charges per department / site etc
Chances are, you'd do this in your own reports.

Currently doing this and its not fun or accurate.

@scottalanmiller said in RingCentral and Vonage:

24/7 support
Define support. Both have good support (in my experience), but limited. They don't support end to end so unless you need support only within what they handle, you might need a second support vendor to fill in the gaps.

As in if their system (or things under their control) shit themselves we can talk to someone on their end and not have to wait for days... to get things fixed up in a reasonable amount of time.

@scottalanmiller said in RingCentral and Vonage:

self management for basic things (add ext, change routing, IVR, queues, enable disable accounts etc)
Do you really want that? Or do you only want it because you assume that their support can't be good enough and you'll have to take it on to work around their problems? Not that anyone doesn't offer this, just in theory, why would you need to have it if you have a good vendor that handles it for you and you know knows what they are doing?

As I mentioned. Its more of we can handle things ourselves and in a timely manner without needing to lodge a ticket and wait each time. We have very rapid changes due to business requirement. Lodging a tick to quickly activate a call forward or change the routing is not going to work too well.

@scottalanmiller said in RingCentral and Vonage:

Having to learn how to manage the system themselves because RC doesn't manage it for you. For simple things, like a quick recording of a message, this can be trivial. But for reprogramming an IVR, it can get pretty complex. I've seen customers spend more money paying an MSP to handle the gaps in RC's support than it would have cost to completely replace RC entirely!

We have internal resources that are more than capable of doing these things ourselves and changes as business needed it.

Who else would you recommend we look into at our level?

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

seems expensive (25 cents per minutes calls to mobile (unless on most expensive plan)! come on, any random provider charges 12 cents here..)

Just checked our standard and it's $0.08 max and $.025 on some calls. That's not a deal, just full price.

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

I did not know and take RingCentral as being consumer/SMB target and level. Hence asking here.

They advertise otherwise, but they, like many cable providers, offer line by line products rather than a corporate system. You can use it as a corporate system, but under the hood it's this mess of one to one lines that they have to finagle into something that appears like a PBX.

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

As I mentioned. Its more of we can handle things ourselves and in a timely manner without needing to lodge a ticket and wait each time. We have very rapid changes due to business requirement. Lodging a tick to quickly activate a call forward or change the routing is not going to work too well.

Sounds like you are used to bad vendors and just assuming that they won't do a good job. A good vendor will be no different than internal IT can be. Of course, having both gives you two teams to see who is faster at any given moment.

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

Who else would you recommend we look into at our level?

Well the worst I've ever dealt with is Weave. Avoid them like the plague. RC is rock solid, just expensive as hell and not very business-focused. SpectrumVOIP seems like a joke, small town and no support but high prices.

Since we do business phones ourselves, we tend to see vendors with problems (like they can't make phone calls actually work), vendors that are expensive (like RC), or vendors that don't provide a business experience. Basically customers moving to business phones for a reason.

So we never really see the competitors that are good. Bundy Associates is the only competitor we ever recommend because we like their business model.

Dashrender

@scottalanmiller said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

Who else would you recommend we look into at our level?

Well the worst I've ever dealt with is Weave. Avoid them like the plague. RC is rock solid, just expensive as hell and not very business-focused. SpectrumVOIP seems like a joke, small town and no support but high prices.

Since we do business phones ourselves, we tend to see vendors with problems (like they can't make phone calls actually work), vendors that are expensive (like RC), or vendors that don't provide a business experience. Basically customers moving to business phones for a reason.

So we never really see the competitors that are good. Bundy Associates is the only competitor we ever recommend because we like their business model.

Don't forget Scott's own company - NTG, they also sell this service, if you didn't pick that up from his comments.

Dashrender

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

For context I currently manage a some what "managed cloud PBX" (aka FreePBX) for one of our sub business which is near ~1000 handsets. We are merging with our sister business which has different set of requirements and more fancy features.

Other than the SSO integration with Azure AD/AD, what else is keeping FreePBX at bay?

travisdh1

@Dashrender said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

For context I currently manage a some what "managed cloud PBX" (aka FreePBX) for one of our sub business which is near ~1000 handsets. We are merging with our sister business which has different set of requirements and more fancy features.

Other than the SSO integration with Azure AD/AD, what else is keeping FreePBX at bay?

@360col Are you going to be using only softphones? Because if anyone has a desk phone, I can't even imagine trying to enter a good domain password using a handset.

scottalanmiller

@travisdh1 said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@Dashrender said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

For context I currently manage a some what "managed cloud PBX" (aka FreePBX) for one of our sub business which is near ~1000 handsets. We are merging with our sister business which has different set of requirements and more fancy features.

Other than the SSO integration with Azure AD/AD, what else is keeping FreePBX at bay?

@360col Are you going to be using only softphones? Because if anyone has a desk phone, I can't even imagine trying to enter a good domain password using a handset.

Yealink, it's buried in his description.

JaredBusch

@scottalanmiller said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

seems expensive (25 cents per minutes calls to mobile (unless on most expensive plan)! come on, any random provider charges 12 cents here..)

Just checked our standard and it's $0.08 max and $.025 on some calls. That's not a deal, just full price.

You comparing pricing for the appropriate countries? He specifically asked for Australia and New Zealand.

scottalanmiller

@JaredBusch said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@scottalanmiller said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

seems expensive (25 cents per minutes calls to mobile (unless on most expensive plan)! come on, any random provider charges 12 cents here..)

Just checked our standard and it's $0.08 max and $.025 on some calls. That's not a deal, just full price.

You comparing pricing for the appropriate countries? He specifically asked for Australia and New Zealand.

Yes, that was Australia. Didn't look up NZ. US would be far lower. The highest price I saw in Australia was actually lower than that, I rounded up because it was so close.

scottalanmiller

NZ is almost universally $.0425

Dashrender

@travisdh1 said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@Dashrender said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

For context I currently manage a some what "managed cloud PBX" (aka FreePBX) for one of our sub business which is near ~1000 handsets. We are merging with our sister business which has different set of requirements and more fancy features.

Other than the SSO integration with Azure AD/AD, what else is keeping FreePBX at bay?

@360col Are you going to be using only softphones? Because if anyone has a desk phone, I can't even imagine trying to enter a good domain password using a handset.

why? You can use the web interface.

scottalanmiller

@Dashrender said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@travisdh1 said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@Dashrender said in RingCentral and Vonage:

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

For context I currently manage a some what "managed cloud PBX" (aka FreePBX) for one of our sub business which is near ~1000 handsets. We are merging with our sister business which has different set of requirements and more fancy features.

Other than the SSO integration with Azure AD/AD, what else is keeping FreePBX at bay?

@360col Are you going to be using only softphones? Because if anyone has a desk phone, I can't even imagine trying to enter a good domain password using a handset.

why? You can use the web interface.

Or via the End Point Manager.

360col

Thanks for all the replies.

The FreePBX instant are provided & "managed" by a telco we use and we are potentially moving away from them so that won't stay. We do not currently have access to End Point Manager due to its being a managed FreePBX platform.

Also looking at the next level that involve muti-country and all that "UC" stuff (to some degree, more like using a VOIP App).

I'm just arming myself with as much info as I can as I won't be the one making the call on this. Other non technical factors has also come into play so looks like we are going to trial RingCentral.

We are Australian based so Scott's company won't fit into the equation. I also now found out that another of our little subsidiary have been using RingCentral so that gave them some bonus points just because.

I'll report back here if we do go with RingCentral and how things goes.

BTW: It turns out that we don't actually need SSO for any technical reasons at present and it was just thrown in there just because we are on the train to auth everything with Azure AD.

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

Also looking at the next level that involve muti-country and all that "UC" stuff (to some degree, more like using a VOIP App).

UC is a scam, like UTMs. Sounds fancy, but really has no business purpose. Avoid UC. Don't avoid UC platforms, every phone platform is called UC now. But don't use any UC features, it's just stupid. Phones are phones, trying to make them into everything else is going to be a terrible experience for the business and cost a lot of money while making things that have long ago been solved into problems again.

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

We are Australian based so Scott's company won't fit into the equation.

Why? We service Australia just the same as RingCentral. Neither of us are located there, both service there without a problem.

How did we get ruled out, but not RingCentral?

scottalanmiller

@360col said in RingCentral and Vonage:

BTW: It turns out that we don't actually need SSO for any technical reasons at present and it was just thrown in there just because we are on the train to auth everything with Azure AD.

Azure AD and AD are unrelated. You listed AD, lots and lots of things talk to AD that can't talk to Azure AD, and a few the reverse.