“RingCentral offers self-service VoIP phone system”…*Yawn*
Monday, July 20th, 2009I like to stay on top of the Tech News as much as possible, especially when that news is Mobile or Telecom related. Therefore, I was excited to see the headline “RingCentral offers self-service VoIP phone system” in my FierceVoIP email newsletter. I hadn’t heard anything from RingCentral in a while, so it was about time they made some news. Upon reading the press release, I felt somewhat robbed in that this announcement was far from exciting and new. They’re offering a 4-line self-service VoIP system, with their usual set of features. That’s it? That’s their news of the day? *Yawn*
Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m failing to see how this is new or revolutionary. There are other providers out there offering very similar services. Packet8 offers a similar plan, but may lack in the business phone needs when compared to RingCentral; however, VirtualPBX offers their iVPBX plan for $49.99/month for 5 extensions, inbound fax, ACD queues, and unlimited* minutes. All that for almost half the price of RingCentral. There are, of course, a few differences between the offerings from RingCentral and VirtualPBX.
- RingCentral is offering their own VoIP service, providing the hardware phones pre-configured for your convenience. VirtualPBX offers their plan in partnership with Gizmo5. If you want a hardware phone, you’ll have to buy it and configure it yourself. However, you can use the VirtualPBX plan and Gizmo5′s softclient with little setup and configuration time.
- RingCentral offers both inbound AND outbound faxing. Ok, that’s cool! I’m still waiting on VirtualPBX to offer outbound faxing, but I hear that’s coming soon.
- VirtualPBX has true ACD queueing, whereas RingCentral makes use of the standard, less “intelligent” hunt groups. If you need to evenly and intelligently deliver calls across multiple agents, the True ACD Queue is the better choice.
Given the current economic times, I’d probably go with VirtualPBX’s plan for $49.99 and take the time to either configure the hardware myself, or just use the softclient. And with the $50/month savings, I could eventually save up and buy some cool new tech gadgets!
In the end, I’m just hoping that we have some more exciting Tech News this week. Last week was fairly slow, so I’m not sure I can handle a consecutive week!
Must. Have. Tech. News!