Fonality: Daily Outages and Issues 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.

Fonality: Do Not Recommend 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 alwayshang 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!

Fonality: We had to fix the problem ourselves 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.

Fonality: Awful Support 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?!?!

Fonality: $3000 Annual Support Fee I have been in the communications / technology industry for 15 years and have an extensive background in telecommunications. I had a customer (school district) whos 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 Fonalitys 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, youre screwed if you have a problem. I was under the impression we could pay per hour if we ever needed support after the 1st year of included support, but I was wrong. After the initial install, which was super slow due to the extremely slow response of Fonalitys Control Panel, we had several instances of not being able to make or receive calls. Again, this system was connected to the customers own local analog trunks and not hosted SIP trunks. So the problem each time was with the servers corrupted config files. And, each time, calling Fonalitys Tech Support was a joke. It would take a 30-45 minute hold each time or I would have to leave my name andamp; 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 didnt 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 andamp; 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 dont like the fact that Fonality forces you to pay for annual support even though we paid $ 30,000.00 for a phone system. I dont like their slow web control panel and I dont like their tech support. The customer (school district) is having me yank out the system this summer and replace it with an NEC.

Fonality: Poor product, Worse Customer Support Our experience with Fonality has been horrendous. From the beginning the sound quality has been poor at best. Since day one the sound bleeps in and out and we drop countless calls per day. Patients have complained that they cannot even get through to our main lines. My front desk informs me that the phone with do a half ring and then stop. At times we have not been able to dial out from our business lines. We have been on frequent contact with customer support who refuses to even offer help because 'we are using a router that they do not support' supposedly. My IT company, who has spent several hours on the phone with Fonality customer service was sent an email saying that our router was one that Fonality supported. We call Fonality trying to get help and they refuse to help because they dont support our router. I have increased the speed of my fiber optic connection and that has not helped. I have spent over $2,000 paying for IT tech support and countless hours lost in employee time, not to mention the unknown cost to my business from lost patients not being able to get through to anyone or from dropped calls. Even with all of this evidence Fonality refuses to let us out of our contract and still refuses technical support help. Poor product, and even worse customer support.

Fonality: Won't Respond When I signed up with the agent, the program sounded great. Once she had the contract she would not longer respond to any of my emails when I had installation problems which were many. On top of that she gave me a monthly quote figure of $125.00 per month and I just got my first bill and they had $50 per month worth of taxes and fees which she conveniently forgot to mention. Dont trust what they tell you. The service also continually drops calls. Boom Dead. I am going back to the phone company. Its actually cheaper.

Fonality: I got great service I Got great service from all Reps and tech support I have dealt with. Our sale person Mike went above and beyond in customer service.

Review of Fonality: sound quality and price are decent, but... 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.

Fonality: sound quality is a huge step up for us We are a company of about 20 people based all across North America and have been fed up with our current VOiP provider so we made a change. I made sure to ask our sales rep explicitly if I could use their phone by plugging into an AirPort Express as I don't have a hardline where my desk is in my house. He told me I could. Upon installation not only could I not use my AirPort Express but their phones won't work with any Apple product (including the Time Capsul router). This would have been helpful to know up front.After running out and buying a new router with QoS I still drop calls, we have other phones that are plugged into the router they sold us that don't work, the phones we were led to purchase are a pain to setup and our sales rep now doesn't seem to be able to return calls within 24 hrs.The sound quality is a huge step up for us from our previous provider, that was a big plus. But not being able to really use the phones all the time is a huge downfall as it's kind of important.

Fonality: Reliable and Recommended From our experience, Fonality works quite well with standard T1. Call bursting and accounting is nice as well as being able to write custom reports which is huge for us. It's so nice being with a company and not having the headaches that we had with the previous one. We have recommended Fonality to several other companies in our building. Haven't heard any complaints what-so-ever.

Fonality Voip Provider Review Our company is based in Michigan and provides call center ops with the Fonality Call Center PBXtra. We roughly average 2500 calls per day that are less than 2 minutes in duration and are processed with an average of 25 CSR on staff. We selected Fonality based on the small biz model and cost. We have recently expanded to the Fonality HP Server and only integrated the required T1 lines to the system. We doubled the CPU/RAM and increased our T1 cunt and added roll over capabilities.The Fonality Support Team and Management have been available at all times. We would recommend Fonality to any business that is moving forward with expanding their operations and moving toward a fully supported VOIP solution.

Fonality: Excellent Quality, Incredible Savings My husband and I were a bit nervous before we decided to make the switch from our local telephone company to Voip. After doing so and seeing the savings that Fonality has brought to our small business, we kick ourselves for not doing this long ago! Since we switched, we have been extremely pleased with our service and the support that Fonality has given to us.We have not experienced any problems what-so-ever with sound quality and highly recommend Fonality to anyone who is considering making the switch to Voip.

Fonality: piece of cake I own a Fonality PBX and have approximately 110 phones. I have several Call Centers and many professional users in an office environment. Initial setup for the system was a piece of cake. The HUD Software works fantastic and is also customizable. My Fonality system was 50K less than one of the other companies that I was considering. If I had to do it all over again, I would choose Fonality, hands down! Any time that I have called their support line, they were knowledgeable and extremely helpful.

Fonality is the Solution for Us We were reluctant to move our sales office to voip, but we felt we had to cut costs in this economy. We signed up completed our installation questionnaire for our phone set up and got our phones a couple days later. We plugged them in and they worked. It took about two weeks to get our main phone number ported to our new phones, but the calls continued to ring into our old phones until the moment that it got switched to our new phones. It was smooth and seamless.

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Fonality: Mixed Bag Mixed bag! You get what you pay for. We've had fonality for 4 years now. Have a bonded T1 connected to it along with land lines. Before I get into details, my single comment about fonallity is you get what you pay for! Cheap is never "cheap". I know this post is old, but surprised to see how many recent comments there have been. I'm also surprised to see the webiste fonalitsucks.com taken back by fonality. :-) That's unfortunate. there's nothing wrong with free speech. The only reason I came across this post was because, after having used a fonality PBX for 4 years, we came across another frustrating situation with them. And the most amazing thing is when we escalted it to the manager (Mike C - I only mention his last initial becuase there are many Mike's there) he felt that there was nothing wrong, when in actuality there obviously was! Keep in mind when we did purchased and installed our system, the now board members were the ones answering our phone calls and resolivng our issues. In any case, I have to say I'm EXREMELY surprised and dissapointed to still see some of these internal issues there. Mike seemed more interestd in covering his own but with someone in his dept, than acknoledging there was a problem. Low and behold when he found out it was also related to the sale dept, he said he would jump on it right away and make sure to push it up the chain of command to have that corrected. In the 4 years we've used their system, it's been truly some very frustating moments and some great moments of amazement that was built into this system. We've gone through 2 servers already that crashed and in situation like that, it's obvious they're still going through growing pains. I think we had the first server that crashed due to a HD and they didn't know what to do. And of course along with their growing pains, we feel it directly. And it can be VERY frustrating working these issues out with them, while their lower level techs are running around with their heads chopped off. Of course it takes a few hours of very frustrating, yelling and hair pulling, before it gets escalted to a level of compentency that can do anything. But it is more afforadable than antyhing on the market. Again, you get what you pay for.