NetFortris (discontinued) vs. Zoom Phone

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
Zoom Phone
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Built on Zoom's platform, Zoom's cloud phone consolidates business communication and collaboration into a single system. Available in 40+ countries, with expandable coverage through a bring-your-own-carrier offering, Zoom Phone supports inbound and outbound calling through the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Features: Post call summary & next steps A post-call summary from Zoom’s AI Companion keeps the focus on the conversation instead of…
$10
per month per user
Pricing
NetFortris (discontinued)Zoom Phone
Editions & Modules
Hybrid Premise Purchase
Varies
Varies
US & Canada Metered
$10
per month per user
US & Canada Unlimited
$15
per month per user
Global Select
$20
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NetFortris (discontinued)Zoom Phone
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsNo fees for emergency 911 Service No fees for compliance and administrative cost recovery Fee No 10DLC SMS fees
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
NetFortris (discontinued)Zoom Phone
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 …
Zoom Phone
Chose Zoom Phone
User management is easier with Zoom Workplace and for larger meetings and calls offers a larger feature set and better recording options when appropriate. Interactive chat for group meetings is easy to use and encourages participation and attentiveness. The cloud features for …
Chose Zoom Phone
we use teams for internal meetings and internal collaboration. It fits oue environment better. However the phone system from Zoom Workplace is much easier to setup and use than Zoom Workplace calling is.
Chose Zoom Phone
Zoom Workplace checks WAY more boxes than any of these, except I believe that BlueJeans had more permissions (facilitator, moderator, etc.)
Chose Zoom Phone
zoom is better for mobile working.
Chose Zoom Phone
Zoom Workplace does well with both phone communications, meeting communications, and conference room capabilities. It's chat capabilities are inferior to Microsoft Teams as Teams has a higher integration with other utilized tools.
Chose Zoom Phone
Zoom Workplace beat all competitors on price. Interface was easy to learn and use and we had already tried Zoom Workplace for meetings before adding phone services so we liked the idea of having that integrated in a single service. SMS messaging and interoffice chat became …
Chose Zoom Phone
I joined this company after they had already chosen Zoom Workplace is very functional but too confusing for the ties to our e mail addresses, document sharing, etc...I don't feel great about using it and who sees what.
Chose Zoom Phone
The main reason why we switched to Zoom Phone is because our VOIP system inexplicably went down for almost a month and no one could figure out what was wrong. Lumen was charging way more than Zoom Workplace, but could not get the system to work.
Chose Zoom Phone
I only have experience using Teams as an attendee. I believe the Zoom Workplace platform for meetings is easier to navigate.
Chose Zoom Phone
We use Teams still for most things, but for video conferencing and phones we use Zoom Workplace because it is much better and more cost effective, hardware wise.
Chose Zoom Phone
Cheaper, faster, easier for the team to adapt to and use.
Chose Zoom Phone
Nextiva Business Phone Service and Mitel MiCollab
Chose Zoom Phone
Ease of use, pricing was much better, we had Zoom conferencing already so it made using the phone solution easy as we can use the same Zoom Client. The features were more robust than anything else we had seen for a cloud based telephone system. The troubleshooting tools are …
Chose Zoom Phone
Zoom Phone was much easier to manage and use than Cisco. It also allowed us to get off premises and into the cloud. We chose Zoom to move into the future of phone systems.

Zoom Phone/contact center was much easier to setup and use than TalkDesk. It was also quite a bit less …
Chose Zoom Phone
Cloudcall had worse call quality, more dropped calls, and no texting function. All three things improved when switching to Zoom Phone.
Chose Zoom Phone
Compared to Mitel, Zoom is a next-generation phone system that is significantly easier to use than Mitel or Teams.
Chose Zoom Phone
Zoom Phone was the best value and had the richest features. Also, the implementation of Zoom Phone was much easier than the competing products.
Chose Zoom Phone
Has all the features plus Zoom Meeting integration. Pricing is very competitive. Zoom Webinar is a cut above similar products, so having them all in the same family makes it easier for our staff, most of whom are not technical.
Chose Zoom Phone
As I mentioned before, the interoperability between Zoom Phone communication channels with Chat and Meeting makes this a good user and customer experience.
Chose Zoom Phone
Zoom outpaces most of the other companies by miles. Teams is a 2nd but it's not even close. Cost of Zoom for longer meetings, more features might turn people off - but it shouldn't because of the actual features and integration (neat bar, Zoom rooms in 365, etc) - others may …
Chose Zoom Phone
Zoom Phones is simply user-friendly. You don't have to be a computer engineer to use the software. It does exactly what Zoom Phones promises. It saves money from business and personal landline. Which then in hard times is a huge benefit for me. Less bills more work time.
Features
NetFortris (discontinued)Zoom Phone
Cloud PBX
Comparison of Cloud PBX features of Product A and Product B
NetFortris (discontinued)
7.8
Ratings
2% below category average
Zoom Phone
9.5
Ratings
17% above category average
Hosted PBX7.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)6.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
User templates6.80 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Call reports9.00 Ratings9.40 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
Zoom Phone
9.2
Ratings
9% above category average
Answering rules7.00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Call recording7.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Call park6.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Call screening8.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Message alerts9.00 Ratings9.70 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
Zoom Phone
9.6
Ratings
18% above category average
Video conferencing7.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Audio conferencing8.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Video screen sharing00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Instant messaging00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Mobile apps
Comparison of Mobile apps features of Product A and Product B
NetFortris (discontinued)
9.0
Ratings
12% above category average
Zoom Phone
9.9
Ratings
22% above category average
Mobile app for iOS9.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Mobile app for Android9.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Best Alternatives
NetFortris (discontinued)Zoom Phone
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)Zoom Phone
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
6.6
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
NetFortris (discontinued)Zoom Phone
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
I think it works well for offices that have multiple locations. Being able to give each person and office their own extension makes it easier for colleagues to connect with each other, plus it's a costs savings for each of the offices
Read full review
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
  • Transcribes voicemails. Great for those verbose folks that leave long voicemails.
  • Loud and clear volume quality! Great in a busy office with lots of people talking.
  • Easy to keep track of who has called me. Has Caller ID which is helpful.
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.
Read full review
  • We needed to link each of our team members' personal emails to the Zoom account so we have to filter VM notifications out of our personal accounts.
  • It'd be nice if you could set business hours through the webpage to include a lunch break so that you don't have to manually go in to edit.
Read full review
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
Integrated into our network. System wide access. Staff are comfortable with the product
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.
Read full review
Zoom Phone has a very sleek design which makes it very easy to operate and use both in the setting up of and interacting in a meeting space. That being said, certain features can seem a bit crowded while trying to screen share or display video which somewhat defeats the purpose of the application as compared to a standard conference call.
Read full review
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
Read full review
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Support have been great during the time for implementing Zoom Phones to our team of 50 people. There were times where they kept supporting us through links but more and more we had actual people getting back to us via emails so we are very happy overall. The product is so great, too.
Read full review
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
Read full review
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
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.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
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
Price point was about the same but Zoom included more features for the price. Also the ISO mobile app was better. We were also about to drop Calendly and save some money using the native Zoom app.
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.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
  • Zoom Workplace has had a positive effect on out business by combining meetings and phones in one place.
  • The collaboration has been better with our staff being hybrid.
  • The Zoom Workplace platform has been more that I expected to pay, but the customer service is outstanding.
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.

Zoom Phone Screenshots

Screenshot of the Zoom AI for business phone communications, available at no additional costScreenshot of Zoom's integrated workflowsScreenshot of the Call Handling Panel