8x8 Work vs. MiCloud Connect

8x8 Work is an ideal communication platform for intra-organization communication; it is very easy to find any employee at my firm and quickly ascertain their availability. I don't like for outside clients to know my direct line, so I would like to be able to mask my number in outgoing texts/display our general reception number so that those clients are not confused on how best to call in to me.

Incentivized

If your company has relied only on an on-premises system in the past, Mitel is a fantastic alternative. Mitel provides an excellent hosted option for businesses looking for scalability as they expand as well as ease of deployment for use by branch offices and remote employees. However, I would recommend caution if the company plans to utilize Mitel as its only communications platform because its conferencing solutions are not ready for prime time.

Incentivized

• Direct calls to the extensions.
• Callers were able to either talk to our individual staff members or leave a message.
• We loved having a record of every single call that came in for CRM purposes.
• We loved being able to collect our messages from the console.

Incentivized

• The system up-time has been 100% over 3 years.
• With separate systems and two locations we used to have to fake the system into 4 digit dialing by forwarding all remote extensions to DIDs. Now with Shortel extended to the remote location we have true 4 digit dialing.
• The Shortel desktop application makes managing calls and call routing a breeze for even our most novice users.

Incentivized

• The auto attendant has built in text-to-speech, but this same engine should be put to use for individual and ring group voicemail messages.
• Call forwarding in the mobile app should be relocated for easier access. Instead it's buried somewhere under the generic "account settings"
• The default user template disables voicemail text transcription. Why???
• One fax number should be accessible by app for more than 1 user. Responsibility for faxes is usually distributed among a few people in a typical small office setting.
• Ability to receive and send SMS messages from a shared "main company number" would be awesome. Ability to assign this to certain users would rock!

Incentivized

• The Shoretel Mobility app for iPhone does not work very well and is not very intuitive in my experience.
• We have had many intermittent instances of employees reporting that call quality is bad, sounds like the caller is garbled and underwater.
• I deployed Shoretel Sky to eleven branches in four states over a 6 month period and experiences were not very consistent. Had issues with not enough power bricks being sent with the phones, some phones not having the the face sticker showing messages, directories, etc., user guides (quick start guides) not getting shipped with the phones at some branches, and phones being programmed incorrectly. This made it very difficult to plan my trips to train employees and install these at the various locations.

Everyone at the company now have the experiance needed to make phone calls, meetings, video conferencing. It's easy to use is unmatched in the industry. It's been a solid product throughout. The phone tree was easy to setup with the implementation team and they guided us throughout the process

Incentivized

Although the price is higher than some of the other Hosted systems out there, the value is definitely worth a renewal. Everything is relative: there are some companies out there who need phones, but don't necessarily care how they work, the functionality/features available/durability etc., they just care that they have phones that make and receive calls. There are other companies that are completely reliant on phones and certain functionality that is provided by the system. There are even some companies who are straight up dependent on the phone system and are losing tons of money anytime they are down, ShoreTel is the perfect fit for theSMB client who sees value in a solid,robust, reliable and high functioning phone system

Incentivized

I'm not using it to its full capacity like a Zoom or teams Workspace. I use the service for phone calls, hate application on my cellphone and the voicemail apparatus. This we like because it gives us the feel of a large firm when we aren't.

Incentivized

I have not used a wide array of communication software, but this far ShoreTel/MiCloud has been the simplest and easiest to get into. My work employs several temps at certain points throughout the year, and they use this piece of software frequently, and new hires seem to have little to no issue using this software. Additionally, this is our primary telephone communication infrastructure, and I have yet to encounter any issues when signed in and regularly using it handling external calls to our department.

Incentivized

In the time I have used 8x8 Virtual Office, the core system has been up and running almost flawlessly though we do have a slight performance degradation from time to time as is expected of cloud software. The one recurring issue for us is that the fax connection is not always functional for outbound messages. We usually have to retry three or four times to get the fax to connect reliably to the destination machine. Once connected, it's smooth sailing.

Incentivized

The system has gone down on us MULTIPLE times. We asked them to move us to a different cluster. Shoretel declined. Basically we had problems or outages every month of the year from June 2012 to date. Our old phone system was just that: OLD, no bells or whistles. But it was up every day and I never had to think about it much until it was time for an upgrade. That's how I want Shoretel to be. I want it so reliable that I never have to think about it.

No problems with performance, Pages load as they should. I can't answer on the reports side as only a handful of our Admins ( call center ) currently use that side of the software. It does intergrate very well with Office for meetings and conferences. Sometimes there is a slight lag or static when users are talking, but we found this to be a cause of a users computer had not restarted in a while, Once the user restarts thier computer the problem is resolved, So this is not an issue with 8x8

Incentivized

Even though the system uses a lower bandwidth connection we have experienced a higher call quality than our previous system which required a T1 line and back up broadband connection.

We are a USA based organization. Support was refreshingly quick (callback via phone or email, online live agents). Agents are knowledgeable, thorough in their explanations, and extremely patient when dealing with end-users at various levels of the ICT knowledge spectrum.

Incentivized

ShoreTel Sky's support is amazing. The only reason why I didn't give it a 10 is that we still need to contact them for stuff that we should be able to do, for ourselves, within the management portal. I know their portal is being worked on, so hopefully they will get the "little things" included for self-management.

The person giving the training was very engaged, He also listened and answered all the questions. He created a video for our company while he was training in case we needed to reference it again in the future. The questions he could not answer were answered within 24 hours via an email to the IT support staff here so we could share the answers with the rest of the group

Incentivized

I attended the first ShoreTel installer class in Austin,TX. It was a week of intensive study with a live lab and having hands on experience made the class worthwhile. I have taken all of the sales courses and remaining technical courses either online or self study to keep costs down. I send my techs to the first installer course in Austin as I feel it gives them a solid foundation and most of teh other courses they have taken have been online.

Incentivized

Good and Simple Training Module, also Certification is available.

Incentivized

The training identified some things M5 (ShoreTel's cloud division) could provide, however it was only using it every day and asking the Shoretel support several questions that I got the hang of it. The training was able to highlight functions but I did not learn how to use the phone from the training.

We had a third party implement and set up the system the way we wanted it - after that I do all changes or additions. The vendor was very knowledgeable and had it up and running in less than an hour.

Incentivized

I feel that the current features that ShoreTel provides are pretty solid, but in future I would love to see it expand into more features to assist inter team communication if possible. Considering that there was not a single issue with ShoreTel in my whole work period of 6months I think it is safe to say that the implementation is pretty standardized.

Incentivized

8x8 Work offers all we need in an easy-to-use format. Zoom seemed to have too many features that are not required and can be overwhelming to Users who are not the most Tech-Savvy. The price point of 8x8 is great, too. Get everything we need at a low cost.

Incentivized

Costs are lower with Mitel's offering than was the case with SureTel's offering. Switching from SureTel to MiTel was simple and painless. A software update was pushed by IT, and users migrated with relative ease. The vast majority of users did not need any involvement from IT during and after the switch over

Incentivized

8x8 100% suits Business needs to connect with from anywhere and everywhere. The Softphone features is very light and very easy to use also very reliable with Zero Downtime. Can also be set personal Voicemail over softphone at anytime and logs everything is very easy to find.

Incentivized

Shoretel has been very scalable for our organization. We first installed Shoretel in 2003 to standardize three sites on one phone system. As our needs have changed, our Shoretel system has adapted with our growing needs and added locations. Initially, we were using analog phones and have been rolling out VoIP as our budgeting has allowed.

Incentivized

• Moving to 8x8 Work helped us consolidate our soft phone and IVR needs with our contact center platform and save thousands in the first year alone.
• All of the 8x8 Work products I've worked with have great integration options from CRMs like Zoho/Salesforce to Google and Microsoft Office.

Incentivized

• We've definitely seen a business impact on our company in a positive manner. We've been able to provide the best possible service that suits our needs, while not being gouged by ISP's or Telco providers.
• We can better serve our customer service reps and tech support people by managing our own system, creating our own ring groups and control use.