Fonality

Honestly, if you're a company with a good, reliable standard PBX system and you're thinking of making the move to VoIP primarily to save money? I'd recommend you think long and hard before switching. As an I.T. professional with 20+ years of experience, I've heard so much hype and pressure applied to move everyone to VoIP. "It's the future!", they all say, and they tout the flexibility and features, plus the claimed cost savings.

Well, you get what you pay for with this stuff. Our company runs both Fonality and a regular PBX using a dedicated T1 circuit in tandem right now. Fonality certainly winds up costing less, and that's ultimately why we'll likely end up 100% moved over to it, within the next year or two.

Unfortunately, we have far more issues with calls not completing correctly and calls dropping than we ever have on the regular PBX system. I'd say at least twice a day, in our small office, someone complains they dialed an extension and heard only strange noises or clicks on their end of the line (even if it rang on the other end). Fonality generally likes to write this off as "bandwidth issues" when questioned about it, yet we're on a 50mbit cable modem connection that consistently checks out as giving us at least what we pay for in upload/download speeds.

Fonality's HUD software is another regular source of frustration. Because it really makes such things as multi-party conferencing easier, as well as giving a visual phone directory that lets you view at a glance if someone is actually in a call, people tend to rely on it as though their phone wasn't usable without it. Unfortunately, it's far from being as reliable as the phone itself. For example, the Mac OS X version has a number of issues running properly right now if you're on the latest version of Java 7. And I've regularly had problems with users of the Windows version where the software just quits launching. You click on it and it acts like it's going to run for maybe 2-3 seconds and closes down. A full uninstall and reinstall doesn't fix it. (Not even sure what causes this, although I'm starting to guess it may be related to people with multiple monitor setups with portable computers. If they have the HUD running on a 2nd. or 3rd. display and then sleep or shut down the laptop and take it someplace -- using it where the extra displays aren't attached, it may get the HUD software confused?)

And as others have noted, tech. support is spotty at best. We've occasionally had problems where settings we made to our configuration were lost or reverted to older ones after the Fonality server required a reboot to fix an outage or other issues. We eventually found out Fonality synchronizes those settings with other servers in multiple geographic regions and sometimes, that synchronization seems to fail on their end (often not even getting noticed for weeks at a time, until someone calls in with an issue of lost settings like we've had). I've put in tickets that didn't even get a reply for 24 hours or more, followed by a brief and unacceptable answer. The only good resolution came about with phone calls to high up heads of divisions within Fonality, who'd wind up apologizing to us and getting things fixed very quickly (until the next issue).

All in all, I like a lot of the functionality Fonality tries to offer and the pricing is good. But I can't really recommend them to companies who rely a lot on their telephones and use a lot of the advanced features (conference bridges especially). It will result in a lot of frustration, especially with salespeople trying to do business by phone all day long.

we have had their service for over a yr, its very unreliable, drops calls, call clarity is horrible. their servers go down at least once/twice a month sometimes for several hours during which your entire phone service is down.

Fonality are basically a marketing business that sell you on a dream of hassle free service and great features, they then take your money, ship you a box of stuff and its good luck from there.

We are an IT company so were happy that we had the resources on staff to self manage the server and configuration going forward, the challenge we have is that the server (they sold us) crashes, software hangs and when you call support, all they say is "try a reboot"

Now that might work if we did not pride ourselves on our customer support times, but taking the server down every few hours for 5 minutes at a time is clearly impossible to do.

One amusing anecdote is that while I am holding right now and have been for the last 27 minutes I finally got through to their office to be told that they can't transfer me to support as they are having trouble with their phone system...unbelieveable.

Last week, we ordered additional phones, they charged my company credit card and never delivered them because "we can't configure them as your server is down"

Please save yourself from misery and do what I will now do and go for a real company as Fonality are a disgrace.

I orignially purchase the premise based system in 2007.  I am a bit of a techy so for me it was easy to get the system up and running in a relative short period of time.  I absouletly loved the system.  However, in 2012 I noticed that I could no longer update the firmware of my system.  I talked to tech support and they recommened that I switch to a hosted system.  That was my entry into hell. 

In the beginning we really liked Fonality, but same as with the reviews below, we are experiencing daily issues with service now. It is completely unrelaiable. The last few tickets we opened they requested that we restart our network...that is just not asuitable answer. We are dumping them for ring centra as soon as I can get the budget approved. Stay away from these guys. The second they get your money, they don't care about you.

DO NOT RECOMMEND!

We signed up with Fonality about 4-5 months ago.  I have had issues to deal with everyday!  We were promised by Ricoh (the company that installed everything for us and were supposedly "experts") that the remote phones would work.  We were told that we would be able to unplug a phone and take it whereever we wanted and it would work as if they were "right here in our main office".  Having remote phone capability is the main reason we decided to go with VOIP and Fonality.  The remote phones never worked.  Then, Ricoh told us that we need to purchase a SonicWall to fix the remote phone issue.  We spent $1600 on this SonicWall, and our remote phones are still not working.  We recently had people move from one office into another (all within the same building) - now, their phones and HUD are not working.  There is a new issue everyday.  Literally.  Another extension was working, now isn't for no reason.  I'm actually on the hold with Fonality right now (for 41 minutes so far), while they attempt to correct the issue.

I will say that most...well...some of the reps are helpful.  It typically takes at least 1-5 hours out of my day to get all of these issues corrected, but I don't always hang up angry.  Sometimes they actually help.

Bottom line:  I would stay away from Ricoh (the supposed experts) and Fonality.  Both are way too pricey for the less than mediocre service and product that you receive! 

I signed my business up for Fonality about six months ago, and the problems are still ongoing.

First it was the softphones. We set up our system with the router and dedicated VOIP bandwidth that Fonality recommended, got blazing fast internet, used their phones and had their techs walk us through installing the HUD. Still, for the first couple months we had problems with the phones taking 2-10min to dial out and the HUD consistently crashing, which was painful since we're trying to launch a call center. When we contacted their tech support it took us at least a dozen phone calls to get absolutely nowhere, but we kept pressing until we got someone on the line who claimed to be the head of the tech dept. After explaining our issues and going over the details of our system, he told us he'd get back to us, "...after I google it." So here we are, three months into starting our business and unable to hire anybody b/c our phones don't work.

Tech support never got back to us, we fixed the problem ourselves (turns out we're better at Googling things than an IT professional).

To compensate for the problems, Fonality agreed to let us slide on the monthly payments for the months that the service didn't work. Sounds good, right? Sure did. Then, several months later, without making prior contact aside from a "miscommunication" that told us our balance was covered, we get an email informing us that our latest charge didn't go through. We called in to fix the problem and were informed that we were being retro-actively charged for past months - months that we were told we were getting comped. Unfortunately we never received a written detail of what we were getting (or any other helpful correspondence), so they took us for all they could get. The only thing they did right was offer to cancel our contract, which does me no good b/c my business relies 100% on our phones. Needless to say I'm looking for another provider.

Cliff notes: Poor tech support, ripped us off hundreds of dollars without notice and chalked it up to a "miscommunication", were unwilling to bite the bullet on their numerous mistakes, even though they acknowledged them.

Awful support. Does not have a approved firewall list . My company is going through HIPAA compliance and these clowns keep telling me which routers are approved. Amazing in this day and age you basically tell a client just keep buying firewalls, install them, when it messes up the phones, send it back and try again. REALLY?!?! 

I have been in the communications / technology industry for 15 years and have an extensive background in telecommunications.  I had a customer (school district) who’s 3Com NBX had been hit by lightning and had to be replaced.  This was in the fall of 2010.  At that time, I was an Avaya dealer, but was looking for a different solution for my customers.  I first heard of Fonality thru my Dell rep (I am also a Dell reseller/partner).  I needed a solution quick since this customer was without a phone system.  I called up Fonality and spoke with a sales rep who quoted me a system.  The customer had their own analog trunks so we only needed the system and not any voice services.  The total system cost plus 58 Polycom IP phones was around $30,000.00.  I was NOT told up front that in order to configure your system, you must connect to Fonality’s Cloud and cannot connect directly to the local PBX server to config, nor was I told up front about the extremely expensive annual support.  And if you do not pay for the annual support, you’re screwed if you have a problem.  I was under the impression we could pay per hour if we ever needed support after the 1^st year of included support, but I was wrong.  After the initial install, which was super slow due to the extremely slow response of Fonality’s Control Panel, we had several instances of not being able to make or receive calls.  Again, this system was connected to the customer’s own local analog trunks and not hosted SIP trunks.  So the problem each time was with the server’s corrupted config files.  And, each time, calling Fonality’s Tech Support was a joke.  It would take a 30-45 minute hold each time or I would have to leave my name & number and wait for a call back.  Finally, after about 3-4 months from the date of the install, the system seemed to stabilize.  Then, when it came time for the annual support to renew, they automatically charged $ 3,100.00 to the same credit card that was used to purchase the system without any warning or email notification.  Once that was reversed, they contacted me and basically told me that if I didn’t pay for the annual support, I would be sorry.  Well, finally today (1/20/2012), I was sorry.  The system would not make or receive calls and when I logged into the control panel, I got an error that said “your system cannot start due to an error in the Zapata.config or zaptel.config”.  And even though we bought & paid for the system, Fonality does NOT give you access to correct these kinds of issues yourself.  These can only be corrected thru their tech support which we could not talk to unless we paid the $ 3,800.00 annual support (an additional $750 for a 1 time activation fee since we let the support lapse).  To make an even longer story short, we paid them the $ 3,800.00, and then called their tech support which had it fixed in 2 minutes.

I don’t like the fact that Fonality forces you to pay for annual support even though we paid $ 30,000.00 for a phone system.  I don’t like their slow web control panel and I don’t like their tech support.  The customer (school district) is having me yank out the system this summer and replace it with an NEC.

I have had several incidences where the support personal is unworkable. Currently they have come to the solution that the version of there software we have is not compatible with the stuff we are doing, such as the call routing. So it causes "wierd" problems, this means that the pbx has to go on a regular restart cycle every 15 days or so. This is stupid in my eyes, if we have a maintenance contract and your software is clearly broken fix it, if that means updating it well then that is what it means. Sorry you did not write good software to begin with. No official support for paging also means that if you have a problem good luck. There is serveral sip based providers out there right now that are doing sip based phone systems that are much better. Personally we are going the cudatell route.

The other big problem that I am haveing is new phones, we are in the process of expanding and when paying $250 per phone for one of the "base" model phones that is a little hard to sawollow already, that is ok, but the problem continues, we have gotten the last 2 orders of phones and they were not provisioned correctly, this means we have to go through this provisioning process ourselfs. We paid on top of the $250 a $45 per phone configuration fee, what was that for if you do not do anything?

Stick with a product that that manufacture actually will update as well as support, and a product that you can do auto phone provisioning and not have to order the phone from one manufacturer. The only other concderation is that the controll panel that is used is hosted by fonality it self. This is not a problem right now, but could be. What would happen if they went out of business or something, you have no way to manager your phone system. I do not know if with all the problems this company has I would trust them that much. I have already witnessed a few incedences where the controll panel is unaviable because some servers are down. Well I need to change things on my pbx, I guess it does not matter though cause I do not get to make the changes without the control panel which I can't get to because the servers are down. It seams like a bad idea to me for any company to rely on a different company this much. Other providers do not require this.

Just make sure you do your homework and you are really ok with the problems before going this route.