GotVMail Overview

Wednesday, 18 June 2008 20:08

Put together by two college students become businessmen, ostensibly because when they were getting ready to go into a different entrepreneurship they found there wasn't any phone service company that could give them what they need, GotVMail is a go-to team. They know what they're selling, who they're selling it to, and why people want it. Here are a few reasons you might want or not want GotVMail as your hosted PBX solution:

The Good
The Bad
The Odd

Inexpensive. The costs for GotVMail are reliably low across the board.

Crisp and clean. The website is functional and elegant, which reflects well on what their user interface will most likely feel like. They have a professionally helpful manner both on graphics and when called for assistance.

No ACD queues. I also said this about Ringcentral, which you might recall if you're reading these in order. GotVMail is worse. They claim they provide a queuing service, but it really just functions as a basic hunt group with the associated long wait periods and uneven call load balancing. Also, with one extension, the maximum queue size is limited to six at most. Even the hunt group requires you contact customer service to set it up. Since this is a regular desire from hosted PBX services, GotVMail stands out as the worst queue providers of those listed here.

Downtime. While only four hours each and only four days a year, and only during the dead of night, GotVMail has more downtime than most hosted PBX services, as most are designed to provide constant service. I've also heard of complaints about the reliability of their service, but that could just be a result of customers not knowing about the scheduled maintenance.

Extension Numbering. We are still trying to find this out but we think that all extensions for individuals must start with the digit 7. We think this is limiting the scope of their service.

Setup fee and no trial period. While I listed this as a minor problem for one of their competitors, with GotVMail there's also a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you cancel within the first 30 days, you get back every dollar you spent. Of course, you have to dig through their website to find this information, and the setup fee is still $25 that is not coming back if you keep the service.

Overall:

While GotVMail seems to stand out largely as a result of their marketing efforts and low costs rather than a greater number of higher quality features, they don't appear to have any major weaknesses aside from those two already mentioned. If you can handle those problems, then they're a decent choice for hosted PBX.