Fonality vs. Avaya
I have been looking at getting a new phone system lately that will support about 10 concurrent users. I literally knew nothing about VoIP systems for small companies when I started looking, but now I think I’m pretty educated on the basics, so I hope I can save someone the search or at least point you in the right direction.
First of all, from everything that I’ve seen and read, Avaya is the industry leader in small business VoIP solutions. Every single retailer claimed that they were “better than Avaya.” Rather than be impressed with the small players, I found myself wondering why everybody compared themselves to Avaya - they appeared to be the de facto standard. I was finally convinced of this when I saw a Cisco advertisement that said something to the effect of “Better than an Avaya.” Come on, Cisco, you can do better than that…
I was ready to go with the Avaya IP Office, which is a $7K - $20K option depending on all the features you want (assuming a company with 20 or so people). This is a pretty sweet product with auto attendant (”Hi, you have reached yada yada yada. Press 1 for…”), voicemail, unique extensions, remote access, forwarding, etc. But then I saw Om Malik’s blurb on fonality, a similar solution. I have seen a million companies with products like this, but the fact that Om Malik (Sr. Editor at Business 2.0) even mentioned it totally legitimized the product in my mind.
Now I’m torn - the Avaya office costs a little bit more, but it is an established brand (AT&T owned) that I know will be around forever. However, the admin interface for Fonality is so easy to use I swear my grandparents could set up the auto attendant and call forwarding.
For now I’m going to keep my eye on Fonality and wait a couple of months to make the decision.
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