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Ringcentral Full Review Print E-mail
Written by argatto   
Thursday, 15 January 2009 16:49

A month-long review on Ringcentral. Do they make the grade?

For most businesses, the answer of whether to choose Ringcentral is going to have to be a no. While they have been around for a while and provide a greater range of features than the common hosted PBX solution, a few of their choices have made it impossible for me to advise them as your solution. I’ll give you the quick and dirty reasons first, after which you can peruse my experiences with them if you want more information.

In short, despite competitive pricing and a wide array of quality features, Ringcentral seems to give their attention to the sale instead of the customer. Poor customer service, mediocre security protocols, regular call interruption…they spend more money than anyone else in the PBX market on advertising, but it seems like they should be trying to help their existing customers instead of seeking out new ones.

Here’s a few options for reading up on my experience and observations after a month trying to use their phone service.

Setting up with Ringcentral was almost easy – provided you can get past all the advertisements for their extra features and year-long plans. While it’s nice to know what they can do, all that information can be found elsewhere and those services can be added at any time. Of course, that kind of approach is exactly the reason I had a bad feeling about Ringcentral from the start – the kind of glitzy marketing approach they used made me worry that they were a somewhat hollow service. Having used them for a month, I’m glad to be able to report otherwise. They’re actually still a very complete service, despite the advertising approach.

They do have a few things I’d rather worked otherwise, though, so, let’s take a run through the process, starting with creating an account.

rcsetupthumb.jpg

First you pick a fancily named version of small, medium, large, or huge. That determines the number of extensions you can have, the pool of free minutes you start with, and the cost of new minutes if you go over that pool. You can also get a ‘trial’ account, which means you can tinker with their system with a maximum of sixty minutes of phone use before you start paying. Then it makes sure you understand what the basic services are, encourages you to get a year-long contract, encourages you to buy extra rollover minutes, and advertises its VoIP service.

The advertising comes back two pages later.

advertthumb.jpg

Yeah. It’s kind of like paid advertising in a free product, except you’re already buying something. Of course, should you show interest in their outbound VoIP plan, you’re then encouraged to upgrade to one of the more expensive options. They also not-so-subtly remind you of cost-saving on the yearly contracts when you put in the billing information.

Once you have all that out of the way, you move on to setting up your account. Fortunately, they have helpful video tours of the service and how to use it. This is good, because their system is a bit thick with menus – more information on this once I’ve used the system more, but the learning curve seems a touch steep.

Once you’ve selected your extensions, the type of extension, the times of the extension, the numbers, the night rules, the holiday rules, and any other special rules, you’re ready to start using your account.

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Last Updated on Thursday, 10 December 2009 20:18
 
Comments (11)
Ring Central
11 Thursday, 18 February 2010 21:12
Rod MacIver
We had a very poor experience with Ring Central—dropped calls, unauthorized charges to our credit card, efforts to transfer our toll free number from the current provider were slow and the responses to our inquiries on status inaccurate.

When we canceled the service, Ring Central advised that we either needed to fill out five forms to return the phones and get our money back, or pay an extra $200 if we wanted to keep the phones and use them. The phones were locked so that they were only usable through Ring Central. I think they were trying to punish us for not liking their poor service.
Virtual PBX Review
10 Thursday, 11 February 2010 19:33
Adam Smith
Dear All,

Nice blog and I appreciate your constant update on the telecom trends.

My name is Adam Smith and I represent PBX Plus (http://www.pbxplus.com) which is based on the award winning (Best of Show for SMB at IT Expo, LA 2009) platform – InVox (http://www.invox.com).

We would like to see you signup and review PBX Plus. I would be happy to add a FREE US or UK number with unlimited minutes to your account.

Your number would greet your callers with “Thanks for calling… Please say the name of the person or department you are trying to reach.” Caller can just say your name “…“and call will be forwarded to your mobile, landline or Skype account.

The drag and drop designer (visio-like) can be used to configure PBX in just 15 mins. Wizard configures the PBX based on the answers to each question about your business.

In fact, show attendees at IT Expo walked out “This is the best I have seen till day for telephony era!”

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks.

Adam Smith
PBX+
NO RING CENTRAL!!!
9 Monday, 18 January 2010 23:49
Jimm
STAY AWAY!!!

RingCentral uses deceptive marketing and advertising on their website!

We "were" a happy RingCentral customer but when we outgrew the service and tried to cancel our account, we were told that we had to pay an early termination fee, despite the fact that they never mention any type of commitment on their website. In fact if you visit their FAQ page, it specifically says that no commitment is required.

I have tried to work though this with customer service and got nothing much beyond an automated response to my complaints.

Cheap, yes. Support - Sucks.

And now I see that it's not just me having problems with this company. Just google for the reviews...
Move out
8 Monday, 23 November 2009 15:44
Anil
I do PBX'es full time. I like Ringcentral and have been with them for years. They are respectable brand. However, the quality and the brand has been going down over years.

After a long reseearch (I am a developer) - I listed 800PBX and GrassHopper. GrassHopper wasn't really helpful from beginning as it didn't have outbound fax which should be very easy to add if you can add T38 support. They resell Sylantro and don't have a real IP yet.

800PBX has been treating good for me although they have outsourced their support. The agents have thick accents but they answer to the question. Me being from India natively didn't present lot of issues though. The best aspects frm 800PBX is that it evolves every week. I have seen them adding speech driven extensions, call blast, phone scheudling and other advanced solutions which costs lot of $$ outside PBX. I think they are getting it right and maybe worth a shot. I have one of my main numbers with them for last 2 yrs and I haven't noticed a downtime till date.
Ringcentral no more
7 Tuesday, 03 November 2009 03:59
RogerBlain
I too was with ringcentral and can say that I am very happy I made the switch to FonAngle. They not only took the time to explain everything they made sure I was setup properly from the beginning. I have been with them for a couple of months now, the quality has been great and I have not had any issues. I would definitely recommend them if you are looking for a hosted PBX solution.
Busy
6 Wednesday, 19 August 2009 22:51
Richard
I used them as well and switched to reachme.com because I could no longer loose business. After more than a year, current provider’s customer service is always excellent and answers every question promptly. Switching was easy, about a week. I no longer have a busy signal...
Ring Central Fax
5 Wednesday, 12 August 2009 17:46
Tom
STAY AWAY!!!!!!

I just recently subscribed to their RingCentral FAX300. After not receiving several faxes (some of them confidential) that I was expecting, I got a call from the person receiving my faxes indocating that my faxes have been going to their number. I am astounded as to how such a big sanfu can occur. I promptly discontinued my services and have put a dispute on my credit card for their charges.

BE CAREFUL!!!!!!
Avoid Ring Central
4 Monday, 10 August 2009 19:40
argatto

Ring Central is a great idea. In theory it works well. In reality, it has major glitches, such as all of a sudden people can't hear me but I can hear them. Or, the forwarded number does not get the message that the call is answered and keeps ringing. The customer service agents try to help but waste a huge amount of time because at least 50% of the time, they have no clue what is going on. Unfortunately, I don't think any of these services have their acts completely together. Businesses can't afford to have phone problems.
Ringcentral Call Queue Does not work
3 Tuesday, 14 July 2009 14:18
Ringcental User
They promised me someone from Tier 2 tech support will call me back. But i did not hear back from them for almost 4 weeks. and the problem is persistant and no follow up and support is horrible.
RingOut Service
2 Wednesday, 22 April 2009 16:33
Chad
Great review. I've had RingCentral for almost a year. I've had to contact their customer service group twice and agree that they have absolutely horrible service. The first time they contacted me 4 weeks after my request and said that they lost all customer inquiries. After responding with my question, it took them nearly 3 weeks to get back. That really is unacceptable.

Problem is that I do like the service and the hassle factor of moving numbers has prevented me from looking elsewhere.

The one feature that I use quite a bit on my iphone and desk phone is the ringout feature. This allows me to call a number and have it connect to my cell phone so that it uses my ring central number instead of my cell number (good if you don't want customers/clients getting your personal cell phone). My single biggest complaint is that there is a delay in them connecting the two calls. I often get people hanging up because they answered the call and did not hear anyone on the phone. I've raised an issue with them a few times and they say they are working on it but I haven't seen any fix.
RingCentral is a total disaster
1 Friday, 20 March 2009 17:51
John
Sure the products may work but the business end is a horrific nightmare like you cannot imagine. Customer service is the worst I have ever seen and without exaggeration. Mistakes will happen and it will forever to correct them if you can correct them at all. Look around and you'll see numerous complaints by other customers and now former customers. They grew too fast and now you'll end up spending numerous hours on the phone best spent if you had just spent more money on getting a hard wired solution or answering attendant box in your own office. Don't kid yourself that you're saving money in the long run.

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