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Evolve IP Unified Communications

Score8 out of 10

13 Reviews and Ratings

What is Evolve IP Unified Communications?

Evolve IP is a cloud-based business phone system that has integrations with third-party applications such as Google, Salesforce, and Zendesk. It includes features such as call forwarding, call park, voicemail, caller ID, group directory, audio conferencing, and inbound fax messaging.

Top Performing Features

  • Hosted PBX

    Hosted telephony infrastructure obviated the need for local PBX hardware

    Category average: 8

  • Mobile app for iOS

    App for iPhone and iPad

    Category average: 7.9

  • Mobile app for Android

    Android app

    Category average: 7.8

Areas for Improvement

  • Audio conferencing

    Audio conferencing credentials for all on the system.

    Category average: 8.5

  • Call recording

    Automatic recording of inbound and outbound calls

    Category average: 8.4

  • Call reports

    Historical call analysis and trending metrics

    Category average: 8.1

Evolve IP is a phone system and company to avoid.

Pros

  • For UC calls, it works fine for the most part. Making and taking calls using a physical Polycom phone works fine.
  • It is pretty reliable as a service. We use an Edgewater device on our network to apply quality of service to the phone and prioritize that network traffic. Even the remote usage seems to work fine.

Cons

  • There are so many ways they need to improve. I can't list them all.
  • First off, their tech support is the worst I've ever seen. They generally break something on at least half the tickets we submit. New accounts always have some kind of issue and it is amazing when one works 100%. Response times were terrible too. It could take 2-8 days just to get a new account setup.
  • Reporting is inaccurate. Even trying to get it configured with their support team was a hassle and didn't work and wasn't even our data.
  • Billing had mistakes often and there could be 3 SKUs for the same item. Same item number, description has the same words in a different order.
  • Admin features are lacking. We can't even change the physical phone on an account. We can't create new accounts. Very limited options.
  • The admin portal info is inaccurate. Some accounts show no phone associated even though they have one that is working on their account.
  • There are times that randomly something stops working and not even the tier 1 support can fix it - a checkbox could "uncheck" itself magically and neither we nor the tier 1 tech can check the box again.
  • When we ask to have licenses removed, they don't remove all the licenses. Then, when we re-use that DID (which is what the account is tied to) for a new user, the license applies to them - for instance, call recording. And we didn't ask for call recording on that new user.
  • UC-One crashes all the time. It frustrates our users and has a few commonly seen issues.

Return on Investment

  • It wastes our admins time with all of the issues we have to deal with.
  • It wastes our employee's time with all of the issues they have to deal with while waiting for a resolution.

Alternatives Considered

Dialpad, Vonage Business Cloud, RingCentral, Genesys PureCloud, Microsoft Teams and 8x8 Virtual Office

Look to take VOIP to the cloud then look no further

Pros

  • One pane of glass to manage multiple sites
  • Zero upfront cost of ownership
  • Flexibility in configuration

Cons

  • Better reporting system more of a GUI for creating reports
  • More device selections
  • More included features in the more expensive monthly service offering

Return on Investment

  • We have reduce operational expenses by an average of 30 percent by switching to EIP.
  • Higher level of employee engagement with customers (given phone features).
  • Only negativity would be if you have a single point of failure for internet service it proves to be a challenge.

Other Software Used

Yardi Property Management, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Cisco ASA

Reliable Hosted PBX Service with excellent support

Pros

  • EvolveIP has excellent customer service. Their support personnel are very knowledgeable and response time is excellent.
  • The quality of the service that EvolveIP provides has been a big plus for us. Uptime has been at a very high level over the years that we've been with them and we have never had any issues with call quality.
  • The Phone System product is just a part of the stable of products that EvolveIP offers and they seem to be constantly finding new ways to innovate within the communications space in terms of offerings for UC, integration with our CRM platform, etc.

Cons

  • I'd like to see them build out API functionality for reporting off of call data within the organization. They have a Call Center product that seems to include a fairly robust reporting module, but it would be nice to be able to do some more of this within the standard Phone System product as well.

Return on Investment

  • Cost and time savings over supporting and maintaining on-premise PBX equipment.
  • Increased flexibility for employees to stay connected from a variety of locations.
  • Increased productivity in our phone room by allowing the use of a soft-client that can integrate into our workflows via features such as click-to-dial.

Evolve-IP for SMB

Pros

  • Unified Communications
  • Centralized management of a distributed phone system
  • Training

Cons

  • User UI

Return on Investment

  • Increase in ROI due to decrease in downtime