NetFortris (discontinued) vs. RingEX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
NetFortris (discontinued)
Score 6.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NetFortris, and the former Fonality, provided business phone systems using Polycom and Yealink IP phones. In 2022 the company was acquired by Sangoma. NetFortris and Fonality UCaaS and other services are no longer available.N/A
RingEX
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
RingEx is a cloud-based VoIP solution available via computer mobile application. It features video and audio conferencing, desktop phone rentals, collaboration tools, and integrations with other business applications. Plans are available on a monthly, per user subscription basis.
$19.99
per user/per month
Pricing
NetFortris (discontinued)RingEX
Editions & Modules
Hybrid Premise Purchase
Varies
Varies
Essentials (up to 20 users)
$19.99
per user/per month
Standard
$27.99
per user/per month
Premium
$34.99
per user/per month
Ultimate
$49.99
per user/per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NetFortris (discontinued)RingEX
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing above is per/month paid annually. Pricing increases when paid monthly. Essentials - $29.99/month (paid monthly) Standard - $37.99/month (paid monthly) Premium - $44.99/month (paid monthly) Ultimate - $59.99/month (paid monthly)
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
NetFortris (discontinued)RingEX
Considered Both Products
NetFortris (discontinued)
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
As stated, I inherited the Fonality on-premise server(s) I support. The organization's principals have requested staying with this system due to its low cost of ownership. Comparing to other on-premise systems, such as a generic Asterisk system, it offers some support …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
I'm a hardware guy, always had panasonic and siemens PBXs. You can't compare them to Fonality. It is so complex to program them and with less functionalities, it is a waste of money and time in my humble opinion. I've also installed my own Asterix servers and used to admin …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Fonality had the features and functions we were looking for in a competitively priced bundle. We weren't looking for phone hardware and wanted a simple to use the soft phone function, and we appreciate the collaboration and call monitoring tools that were included in the …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
For the services we required, Core Dial was the easy choice. They offered all of the solutions we required in a single place, at a very cost-effective price. Overall, we are satisfied with our choice.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
I've only used fonality. I used to work with it at a previous job before I became a business owner.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
At the time, we were interested in a site-based solution and Fonality's hosted service was not available yet. Fonality was much more cost-effective than the other solutions we reviewed, while still providing the features we were interested in.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
We felt Fonality's Cloud PBX and HUD were difference makers.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
If you can [get] over the initial install, Fonality is right up there with the best, with some improvements it can be even better than ones I have had used in the past.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Cost savings was the initial and primary driver, although I have found that the quality of the equipment provided with initial service was superior. The functionality and ability to customize have been better compared to my experience with Vonage. The HUD portal is not …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Fonality was very comparable to Comcast as far as product offering and service, but much more affordable. Avaya was a different system altogether but was much more expensive.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Intermedia was our old system set up by my predecessor. This system was crashing often during our high season which is what pushed us to look into a new phone system. For Intermedia, call quality was poor and the phone system was set up just like your old grandma's phone …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Fonality is competitive, still room for improvement and overall quality
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Cloud PBX migrates the worries of catastrophic events (floods, power outages, building fire, etc) away from the business to a secondary platform with greater tools to combat service uptime (backup generators, for example). It also means that potential upgrades to the platform …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
I have not used any other VoIP system that I have been paying for. I hope that Fonality proves itself enough to where I will not have to switch. So far, for the price and the functionality, this is my recommendation for small businesses. I might recommend going with a more high …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
We selected Fonality for ease of use and the HUD portal. One of the partners in the business has used Fonality in the past and had great confidence in it's success for this new endeavor. It has proven to be successful thus far and I hope to be able to update this review in a …
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Feature wise they matched up well. I don't know from a quality standpoint as we only evaluated 8x8 but never used their service.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Not sure how to rank it with other products but we selected it due to features and cost effectiveness.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
Fonality was chosen by someone other than me.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
I weighed the features offered along with the cost and felt, at that time, that Fonality would be the best choice.
Chose NetFortris (discontinued)
I think we've pretty well covered all the reasons I prefer Fonality over Verizon VCE in the other sections, and what Fonality does better. I will add that what led me to Fonality was a lot of searching out top-rated VoIP companies, and running down what features they offered at …
RingEX
Chose RingEX
We switched from GoTo's platform with pieces of Teams. At that time, the complexity and difficulty of integrating all of the features and connecting them to get a simple platform that was stable and easy to train weren't available elsewhere.
Chose RingEX
RingEX provides better service and features at a competitive price. There really is no comparison between the two solutions. Spectrum Business gives us reliable land line phone service with multiple lines and reliable business internet. Adding new lines is a physical experience …
Chose RingEX
RingEX overall is significantly better than Kixie. It's more reliable, has better features, and is significantly easier to use. Higher cost, but at the end of the day, telephony is one of the most important aspects of my business, and not one where cutting costs is the top …
Chose RingEX
Ooma is terrific and has a very reasonable price point, but doesn't scale the way we needed. MiCloud was a terribly complicated and unreliable service when we used it. RingEX has offered the functionality that we need for our entire staff and has been reliable.
Chose RingEX
RingEX sales team was the most responsive team. Zoom was not as mature and did not have a fax solution like RingEX had. 8x8 sales process was a disaster and their finance team began billing us during the sales process as if we were a customer. We could tell 8x8 didn't focus on …
Chose RingEX
Before landing on RingEX, I took recommendations from other business partners as well as searched reviews online in order to understand the pros and cons of other options. I preferred the cost point of other options, but committed to RingEX because the functionality and package …
Chose RingEX
They are cheaper. I prefer a dialpad over Ring any day.
Chose RingEX
There is a more reliable connection and communication. The dashboard is easier to use, and the reports that can be generated are more in tune with our business needs. It is easy to review calls and pull them, which was much harder with Vonage.
Chose RingEX
Better. The Kixie system is cheaper, but it is such a pain to use and interact with. often have audio issues, tech issues, etc. RingEX is far superior, although the price is certainly higher. I needed something reliable, so RingEX was the move.
Chose RingEX
We didn’t have nearly enough options or automated voice options with Google. RingEX focuses solely on communication and excelled at it, such a robust software.
Chose RingEX
Nextiva's service did not always work. Calls sometimes did not come through or go out. Their customer service team was not quick at solving issues. The app was glitchy and did not always allow you to login. I have never had an issue like this with RingEX.
Chose RingEX
Prior we had been using business lines at my firm, so this is my first experience with a web-based phone app.
Chose RingEX
This was a solution that we could not only use in house as our primary VOIP service, but we could also support and resell to our member offices. The cost savings and deals that RingEX will work out to win new business has been a major win for both ourselves and our customers.
Chose RingEX
We received quotations for 9 solutions (including RingCentral) but overall, whilst not the cheapest solution, RingCentral came out on top for value for money, without compromising on features & accessability/ease of use.

Other than NFON, we also looked at other solutions, …
Chose RingEX
RingEX is more expensive, but the increased reliability was worth it for us. We also liked the support experience better on RingEX.
Chose RingEX
I haven't used Vonage in a while, but we never had issues with it and we've had several issues with RingEX. This could be based on how the franchisor has chosen to implement the product.
Chose RingEX
RingEX beat Fuze in every single department: cost, function, reliability, features. It is more stable than Microsoft Teams although not as widely adopted only because it's not Microsoft. 8x8 while a decent platform, just was not as "mature" in its application as RingEX. We …
Chose RingEX
The reporting part and the easy implementation, as well as the support provided convinced us to make the transition and improve the services provided. A very important part is the data where we must support our decisions, without easy to download or create reports, it was all a …
Chose RingEX
We ultimately chose to go with RingEX because of their unified interface. At the time that we purchased their service, there wasn't another software that did exactly what RingEX does.
Chose RingEX
During the tender process, we met with several other vendors. During this phase, we realized that RingEX was the only vendor we were investigating, and it was its own telecom provider – instead of offering phone software running on someone else’s network. So, we figured, ‘Why …
Chose RingEX
RingEX provided a more cost effective and complete solution than the competitors we evaluated. Reliability and call quality was of paramount concern for us. RingEX provided a higher level of reliability than many of the competitors we evaluated.
Features
NetFortris (discontinued)RingEX
Cloud PBX
Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Product A and Product B
NetFortris (discontinued)
7.8
Ratings
2% below category average
RingEX
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Hosted PBX7.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)6.00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
User templates6.80 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Call reports9.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Directory of employee names10.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Call Management
Comparison of Call Management features of Product A and Product B
NetFortris (discontinued)
7.4
Ratings
13% below category average
RingEX
8.8
Ratings
5% above category average
Answering rules7.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Call recording7.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Call park6.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Call screening8.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Message alerts9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
VoIP system collaboration
Comparison of VoIP system collaboration features of Product A and Product B
NetFortris (discontinued)
7.5
Ratings
7% below category average
RingEX
8.9
Ratings
11% above category average
Video conferencing7.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Audio conferencing8.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Video screen sharing00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Instant messaging00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Mobile apps
Comparison of Mobile apps features of Product A and Product B
NetFortris (discontinued)
9.0
Ratings
12% above category average
RingEX
9.2
Ratings
15% above category average
Mobile app for iOS9.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Mobile app for Android9.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Best Alternatives
NetFortris (discontinued)RingEX
Small Businesses
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NetFortris (discontinued)RingEX
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
5.3
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.8
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.7
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
4.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
NetFortris (discontinued)RingEX
Likelihood to Recommend
Following up with leads and prospects with its Click to Dial feature makes Fonality an effective tool to a sales organization. Misdials and wrong numbers are virtually eradicated by this feature. In addition to saving a few seconds for every call, you add time to your day and are able to conduct more business throughout the year. The Polycom phones are a little basic and finding missed calls is a little difficult. Also, the HUD is a little confusing. Depending on how you dial or how the call comes into the office, the call log may only show your extension instead of the external number being contacted.
Read full review
When setting up a new user with a phone. I can call in their support line. They followed me through every step of setting up the new phone. Our office has very specific settings, and our support staff will walk you through the completion. Even do test calls, making sure the user is properly set up for voicemails, faxes, or any type of notifications.
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Pros
  • Customer service is outstanding! They were quick to solve any issue we had.
  • During set up the Fonality staff member did not close out our set up ticket until we were completely satisfied and ready to use the system on our own.
  • We needed a cordless system to use in our small office and it works great!
  • I love being able to keep the Fonality line at my desk and then pass it off to an attorney when my work day ends. It has just been a perfect set up.
Read full review
  • Chat and Messaging - Conversations are easy to search, topics can be pinned or bookmarked, and groups are easy to create and administer.
  • Phone - The core functionality works very well allowing voice, txt/sms, and faxing for all users. Administration is generally fairly easy as well.
  • Mobile Client - the mobile app offers all of the same functionality as the desktop or web client.
  • Video - Video calls make it easy to share screens with other users and includes a lot of tools for planning.
Read full review
Cons
  • Bugginess - Some things just really need some tweaking. I had to get very creative with my call routing and hold music, because the in-queue announcements don't work right at all. For example, even set to 'play once' it would loop the 'you are the first caller' announcement over and over, and cause call drops. Or my caller-name ID, which shows the registered user's name on each line on outgoing calls, even though it's not set to such anywhere in the CP settings.
  • Support - I'll give them 50/50 on this. My experience with Verizon VCE was everyone playing hot potato with issues and saying it was the responsibility of another department, meaning several phone calls and lots of hold time. Fonality doesn't have that issue, I've never really been passed around or blown off. However, some of the 'offshore' CS reps are... wow. I spent about half a dozen emails back and forth with two of them, trying to figure out why queues I deleted from the CP randomly and consistently reappeared in the HUD. Most of those emails were spent trying to explain that no, my issue was NOT that I wanted to create those queues again in the CP.
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  • Customer support is rudimentary. They should improve tier 1 customer support's ability to understand our needs rather than asking customers to reinstall the app
  • Revolving door of account managers, which causes loss of continuity in discussing opportunities
  • Analytics is not complete. Details about faxing and web meetings is missing.
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Likelihood to Renew
We've already made a deep investment in the system hardware. We wouldn't be interested in another system at this point! And by the look of my colleagues faces when they see the HUD, I don't think we'd want to switch to a system that would limit us or take away any of these features! We may look at putting the server in the cloud, should internet outages prove to be such a common issue that it is preventing our other locations from functioning smoothly
Read full review
We switched to RingEX for ease of administration, flexibility of integration (fax, web meetings, chat client, mobile app) and competitive price. Although the system has had a few quirks as it's been relying on our network much more heavily and integrating with our next-gen firewall, I can't speak highly enough of what RingEX has done for our business. I love it and can't wait to renew for a longer period of time at an even more competitive rate.
Read full review
Usability
When the system works it is wonderful. But I feel the sluggish UI and web interface really kill most of what is good about this product. Other than that the system works like a charm and is very easy to learn the administrative portion of the platform.
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Once you get used to the features of the system, it is extremely easy to find what you need. Everything is all on one place which makes the usability phenomenal. It is very user-friendly, and everything you need is mainly on the RC app. There is a separate window for your Max Agent, and everything is spelled out so you rarely have a question where something is.
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Reliability and Availability
Fonality has been available to us 99% of the time. There have rarely been any lengthy outages. If any issues do occur, their support staff is available around the clock to help. This is important, since communication is a big part in our company and availability of the phone system is important in maintaining this reliability
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It is quite reliable, we have the support of being able to identify failures and escalate it, also monitor the failures that are posted on the web about the status of the failures and evolutions. Its easy start-up and access allow us to have better performance and productivity, which in the long run turns into benefits.
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Performance
Fonality's performance is excellent. The phones work flawlessly and the calls are clear. It is a well put-together system that does not need daily support. It is not complex from a user standpoint, as most of our staff are quick to learn how to use the phones. More systems should strive to work as well as Fonality's
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Occasional bandwith issues. In addition to this, I have one individual whose calls are blocked. We were not able to determine whether this was a RingEX or a carrier issue.
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Support Rating
Because of their customer support and their attention for details in our problems that we face during our initial stage. We simply love fonality just for the way we are treated when we reach them with our fonality issues - they take it seriously and resolve it as early as possible and the most important part is we dont need to keep on insisting them to do so.
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I have called RingEX a few times for assistance in setting up call handling or implementing changes in our call handling structure. The wait time to speak with an agent is usually minimal and the ones I have spoken to are excellent at walking me thru what changes I am trying to make as well as ensuring I understand what is being done so I can handle it myself next time if the need arises.
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In-Person Training
Training was provided by the in-house IT administrator. Fonality was able to provide support to the admin, who then assisted the users. It went smoothly and all the details and functions of the system were made available to the office staff. Any questions were answered promptly and if any issues did arise, Fonality was available to answer them
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I really didn't know all the capabilities
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Online Training
Training was excellent, but most of what they had was webinars and not real world situation for our company's need. It would be better to have them remote in my local computer and test my system using inbound / outbound calls. This would have made it easier to learn and more relevant
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Everything from the installation to the implementation has been great with Fonality, there is a lot of freedom to how the system will operate but the freedom comes at a cost of more technical experience to make sure it is configured correctly. The staff is very helpful can will make sure that the system is setup correctly and work perfectly.
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If someone has an existing system I tell them to keep that running initially and keep RingEX separate initially until the system is configured and tested to one's satisfaction. After testing and configuration is completed, then roll over the main phone numbers to the new RingEX system. I've seen one person who immediately flipped over to RingEX without properly configuring/testing the software and had many issues with missed customer calls until I helped him sort out his configuration.
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Alternatives Considered
I'm a hardware guy, always had panasonic and siemens PBXs. You can't compare them to Fonality. It is so complex to program them and with less functionalities, it is a waste of money and time in my humble opinion. I've also installed my own Asterix servers and used to admin Avaya Enterprise level PBXs and I have a special part in my heart for them but when we started to search for a solution for our new building, Fonality rose among the other services like Vonage. Fonality is the perfect solution for any business that uses Telefone as a marketing and sales platform.
Read full review
We switched from GoTo's platform with pieces of Teams. At that time, the complexity and difficulty of integrating all of the features and connecting them to get a simple platform that was stable and easy to train weren't available elsewhere.
Read full review
Scalability
It is easy to scale this system, as long as you have the proper technical staff available to support it. Adding users and phones is straightforward. The main work involves having the physical network in place and configuring the networking equipment. Overall, it is not that difficult as long as all of this is in place.
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We have 75 users and 85 phones on the system and have yet to have any noticeable outages. The system just works all of the time without issues. Our old VOIP system on Voyant would go out all the time for multiple hours. RingEX is much more stable and reliable.
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Return on Investment
  • Fonality - VOIP features have allowed our staff to be more effective in communicating with their constituents both within and outside the organization
  • Fonality resolved a bunch of call restriction issues with student calling capabilities we were having with our previous phone service
  • Fonality has enabled us to use much cheaper carrier services.
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  • Cost savings over traditional phone system with land lines
  • Increased productivity due to allowing my team to work from anywhere
  • Conference calling features replaced a separate service
  • Video meeting features replaced a separate service
  • Call handling is easier
  • SMS Campaigns are a great tool
Read full review
ScreenShots

NetFortris (discontinued) Screenshots

Screenshot of Fonality's Heads Up Display (HUD) Web dashboard is home base for connecting with colleagues and customers.Screenshot of Chatting is easy in HUD as they are easily launched by hovering over a fellow user's avatar. Chats are also available within Groups and Conferences.Screenshot of Managers with Fonality's Advance Call Center license can Barge, Monitor, or Whisper with one click. Useful for training, customer insights, and quality assurance. Real-time call queue information is shown in the Dock area to the right.Screenshot of Every Fonality system comes with voicemail boxes for all users, but with optional Voicemail Transcription you'll never have to listen to a voicemail again. Transcribed voicemails are delivered in HUD and via email.