New phone system
Posted by ipconfig-91@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 53 comments
We are starting to look into a replacement VoIP phone system for our three offices. We are currently running Verizon Webex Calling in two offices and Voyant in the third, and all in all, it has been ok, once you get used to how Webex Calling is set up, but Verizon Business has been a complete shitshow since taking over XO Communications.
Our local MSP will probably be pushing RingCentral, but after the recent post about leaving RC, I'm not sure I'd want to deal with that. If we did do RC, our MSP would handle the migration and deal with them, but it still worries me. Other possibilities are Teams Calling or Zoom Calling, but I wanted to see what others are using and having positive experiences with.
We currently have three offices across two different systems (Webex Calling and Voyant) and would like to consolidate to one system where all calls come into our headquarters to be handled. We would like three or four-digit dialing between offices and the ability to use physical phones or soft phones. I'm sure Verizon Business will want their Polycom phones returned, so we'll probably need to purchase new phones for those who want a physical phone at their desk. All in all, we have a very basic setup, and the most I have to do is assign coverage to the admins who cover the receptionist when they are out of the office.
So with all that being said, what is everyone using that they are happy with?
Key-Brilliant9376@reddit
Stay on WebEx. Use another provider for this instead of Verizon. I would suggest CSpire. We are happy with them.
https://www.cspire.com/
ISeeDeadPackets@reddit
Just ditch the Verizon component and move to webex calling directly. You can pick up new 9000 series Cisco IP phones for under $200 that work right out of the box, just toss in the mac or an invite code. Teams is OK but webex is a much more mature platform IMO.
zack822@reddit
Teams phone here. Only given to those who actually need it. Sales and c suite. Keep it in one location makes management and user issues easier to deal with.
elfen_no_limit@reddit
I think a lot of people end up moving away from giant carrier-managed setups and toward smth more flexible/manageable. Teams Calling is decent if your org already lives in Microsoft 365 all day, but a lot of admins still find dedicated voice platforms easier to manage operationally. Zoom Phone gets positive feedback lately too for simplicity.
I’d also seriously look at SIP-trunk + PBX style setups if you have decent in-house/admin support or a good MSP. You can consider providers like Telnyx cuz they give you more carrier flexibility/control instead of feeling trapped inside one giant ecosystem forever. Esp after dealing with Verizon/XO chaos, a lot of sysadmins seem happier separating “carrier layer” from “phone system layer” so migrations stop becoming all-or-nothing nightmares.
Royal_Bird_6328@reddit
Teams phone is good - physical handsets should really be justified at this day and age and on a case by case basis
Beefcrustycurtains@reddit
You guys use office 365 and teams? Teams phones work okay and it's nice for heavy teams users because it puts it all in one spot. You might even be able to convince them to ditch physical phones for just the regular mics you use for teams meetings.
Windows95GOAT@reddit
We use that and personally i think it's ass. The quality is just not there imo.
But sadly this was implemented before my time.
ipconfig-91@reddit (OP)
We are Business Standard, around 100 users. Would love to go to Business Premium for extra security features but also double the price and Teams Calling still not included.
Beefcrustycurtains@reddit
Trust me business premium is a hell of a deal. You can role out Intune and windows defender stuff to make your infrastructure modern. Any hosted phone solution you are going to spend around 10-15 per user. Teams Phones are on the higher end, around 15 dollars for teams phone + calling plan zone 1 license, but having everything in one spot is really nice for users.
The_NorthernLight@reddit
You can easily run physical phones on teams btw. Just need to be teams certified.
Beefcrustycurtains@reddit
Yea the more hardware you can ditch the better though. I know some people will want their physical phones though.
ipconfig-91@reddit (OP)
This exactly, although it’s mainly the older users that want a physical phone. Not to bash the older users, because I’m one of them too, but I could do without a physical phone.
The_NorthernLight@reddit
Absolutely!
BoggyBoyFL@reddit
We just moved to DialPad, we have been very happy with it. Very flexible. Support has been great. I would recommend that you at least take a look at it.
vermyx@reddit
By far a lie. They have had at least three outages where the RFO was lacking in details (I had to press them for details which basically was we updated our infrastructure with a new version, it got overloaded, sorry). Their support takes forever to get anywhere (two weeks to declare their software not giving audio notifications for texting if the app had focus "working as designed"). Their system was decent 3 years ago but not now. Also they force the "this is being recorded" recording to play both on the agent and client side simultaneously which causes some people to think that they went to voicemail because of how it sounds. Also pricing wise they are on the higher end at this point and offer less stability. We are dumping them when we are done because of all the issues we have had over the last three years.
BoggyBoyFL@reddit
We purchased through T-Mobile and they have a dedicated support group. I have both a person on the T-MOBILE side and a rep on the DialPad side. We have only had one outage since we have been with them and that was when Google Cloud was down. I guess just like everything, people have different experiences with things.
vermyx@reddit
That incident wasn't google cloud being down. The deployed an update that their application pattern triggered QoS on Google's side. The RFO however did not state this. I have asked for more technical detailing on each of their outages because they have given bs spin on the regular RFO's and not enough technical details. You probably also do not have contact centers.
Evening_Link4360@reddit
Teams Phone or Ring Central. Both suck in their own ways.
zerolagaux@reddit
Actually surprised that no one has mentioned 3CX with Yealink phones yet. It would do exactly what you're describing as this is how we currently use it. I don't like the CEO of the company and some of their reputation stuff but I've never talked to them in the 10 years I've been running it. It's so stable that we've never had a major outage with it nor needed to contact a VAR or support. We use Flowroute as our SIP provider. The fact that it's super cheap is just a bonus.
apxmmit@reddit
I get it. But you said exactly why they aren’t brought up much. We dumped them awhile back.
zerolagaux@reddit
I can understand that response. I've used it over a decade without a single time contacting them or having issues I can't resolve on my own and during that time, I've spent mere pennies compares to most setups so for me, it's a win. But don't disagree with you.
Slasher1738@reddit
Freepbx
flsingleguy@reddit
I have Cisco Webex Calling in a setup where Cisco is also the PBX vendor as well thus the manage the circuit that is in their cloud. You only need a solid Internet connection to use it. There are no PRI or SIP trunks like the old days. I have been using it for four years and it’s been great. I can fairly easily do things that you used to need a Cisco UCS engineer to do like hunt groups, auto attendants, etc. Over the years they have refined the interface to match Cisco Meraki. So, if you use both products on your network, it just seems more intuitive to use both platforms.
AfterCockroach7804@reddit
Intermedia is pretty good.
whatdoido8383@reddit
Teams phone works good if you'll be using soft clients on the computers.
The org I work at rolled it out to mobile workers (think like dock workers roaming a huge warehouse) and that has been a huge shit show. Would not recommend that, constant issues.
BuildAfterHours@reddit
8x8. I’ve been using 100’s of Poly VVX on their platform for over a decade with zero issues.
VivienM7@reddit
Zoom Phone here, with a few Polycom phones running as ZPA. I like Zoom Phone, our users... may not fully share my enthusiasm. It's very easy to manage, the audio quality is, well, VoIP, huge step backwards from ol' fashioned TDM PRI.
My view is this: post-pandemic, people are shopping for collaboration platforms first and bolting on phone functionality afterwards. All the phone-first, collaboration-second products running Broadsomething sold by some "cloud PBX" provider who was just two dudes with a rack in a random colo... haven't been calling for the past 5 years.
Who is your collaboration platform? We were/are a heavy Zoom shop so Zoom Phone made a lot of sense; if you're a Teams shop then go with Teams phone.
someguy7710@reddit
Zoom phone has worked pretty well for us.
VivienM7@reddit
Yup, and the price is... unbeatable... if you've already got a ton of users licensed for Zoom. Adding phone is like $50/year/person...
ipconfig-91@reddit (OP)
Unfortunately, we do not. Only about 10 general use seats…
VivienM7@reddit
Do you have more seats of another collaboration product?
cohortq@reddit
Also a Zoom Phone client for over 4 years. No big complaints.
Normal_Choice9322@reddit
Keep in mind every one of these providers has people who hate them. Don't let a single reddit post change your mind.
We used a broker to help with the selection process which was a great experience
ipconfig-91@reddit (OP)
That’s probably the way I’m leaning, to be honest.
Gh0st0117@reddit
Unless you absolutely need a contact center solution, stick with Teams. Takes the hassle out of everything as you won’t have to spend countless hours allow listing ports and domains, and then testing.
Ok_Ad_857@reddit
Just migrated from RingCentral to Teams phone. We’re using the company Teams+ for dial tone and SMS. Their onboarding has been great and has been easy to work with. If you’re a 365 shop, it’s worth a look.
ADynes@reddit
It's so weird seeing these posts and being a company that 3 years ago replaced out horribly aging digital phone system with a VoIP physical phone system with on site server and physical T1 lines (well....sip to T1 handoff).
It was expensive but call quality is perfect every day and our only cost is the sip lines.
patssle@reddit
I'm still running hardwired phones to a PBX. It's VoIP capable but nobody works from home so I have it disabled for security. 100% internally reliable over the past 15 years. Almost zero downtime externally. Was on copper T2 lines until AT&t shut it down a couple years ago. Now over fiber.
Practical_Shower3905@reddit
Find a VoIP MSP using 3CX or freePBX based system. (not a regular MSP, but a MSP that just manage VoIP).
Stay away from Ringcentral, cisco (webex), or any solution re-sold by big telecom companies.
The problem isn't the system, it's the company managing it.
Ogglar@reddit
Want a bit more hand in approach go with voip.ms is BYOD and it supports most pbx, softphones and IP phones as well as teams via a plugin, opening an account is a bit of a pain in the ass but since it’s Preciado it can serve as a POC to test different systems, twilio and ring central are comparable but have no prepaid options
XL426@reddit
All my telephony is on 3CX which works well - it'd work well for you for your scenario
Bob_Spud@reddit
Something to check for in the requirement of your selection.
Our team used to administer the infrastructure for the VOIP system, we discovered the system suffered from virtual machine snapshot stun that would kill the the service. It took some time fond out why it was dying each night, backup snapshots killed it. A case of not RTFM, it was in there.
The_NorthernLight@reddit
We went pure digital, Teams phone. However we are a weird company that doesn’t do much business on phones, so we were able to move 90% of the company to the teams pay-as-you go phone plan. Our bill went from $2500/month on ringcentral to an avg of $350/month. Even had we done the full plan per user we were only looking at $750/month. With the savings we bought every user a legitech Zone Vibe 125’s.
Educational_Boot315@reddit
Are all your users E5?
The_NorthernLight@reddit
Technically E7 now… but yes. But we had the phones even on 365 business. Added about $18/user if I remember correctly.
TheBros35@reddit
RingCentral has been OK for us. We don’t use Teams, so we didn’t really have a collaboration platform, so that piece of it fit in nicely for us.
We have workers who moved to new stations most every day, and their hostdesking solution for that is pretty good. They recently added pairing between the app and the phone and that has alleviated a lot of complaints (now they can hit answer on the screen and then pick up the phone).
The price is expensive, and their contact center platform is hinky as hell (but it has slowly gotten less hinkier over the years).
The biggest gotcha with us was having to establish SIP trunks between our old phone provider and them. That still causes weird headaches every few months. And faxing over a SIP trunk is weirdly a problem without a good solution.
Educational_Boot315@reddit
How many users? How many minutes used?
If you want physical phones, teams is out of the picture already. And honestly I prefer zoom regardless (both cheaper, easier to setup, and better experience for the end user). Ring Central is decent, but expensive. Nextiva is cheaper, but support sucks ass (The new AI agent is horrible). Goto pretty much the middle between the two.
If you want to do some manual uplift and have low usage, can go with a sip provider and something like yeastar (as long as a Chinese company isn’t a stopper).
The_NorthernLight@reddit
Physical phones work perfectly with Teams (just needs to be a teams certified voip phone).
Educational_Boot315@reddit
A list of around 25 phones that you either have to license separately or have a user sign in using devicelogin.
Compared to every other system out there that accepts pretty much any sip device that can be auto provisioned or at least configured in the devices web interface. Don’t punish yourself.
GloveLove21@reddit
Just moved my company to Dialpad. Product works and is intuitive.
drummerboy-98012@reddit
Another recommendation for Zoom Voice. Goes nicely with Zoom Meetings (or Workplace now?) and Zoom Rooms. 🤓
TalkingToes@reddit
We use 8x8 with desk phones and both iOS and android apps too. Works easily. Voicemail, fax send/receive, SMS, etc
frosty3140@reddit
Our org sold our office about 4 years ago and everything got moved into a datacenter and M365. We ditched physical handsets and added the Teams calling stuff (2 x 100-number ranges) and it had been working fine. About 2 months ago the provided we were using notified End Of Life for their solution. We engaged a third-party to assist and we moved everything to Microsoft Operator Connect. Changeover was painless, about a 2-min outage IIRC. So we continue with Teams only, no handsets, works fine,