Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) vs. FreeConference.com

The Cisco Unified Communications Manager platform would be most suited for the below scenarios. 1. An organization with very restricted policies and compliance where can't move to cloud-based solutions for data security. They can install the CUCM on-premises. 2. An organization that is still on a legacy phone system could adopt CUCM to save costs and have better services.

It's great for virtually meeting with people in other cities/countries. It's terrific how they provide so many international numbers for people to use!

Incentivized

• Customizability - The program allows for a lot of specific features and ways to use the program.
• Traditional - The system is a very traditional phone system, with everything you would expect and need from an enterprise phone system.
• Expandable - The system allows from a small amount of users to a large amount, with no upper limit.

Incentivized

• Freemium model
• Easy to access website
• Helpful scheduling

Incentivized

• CUCM is overly complex and requires a very capable engineer to maintain it. Similarly, implementing anything new requires a great deal of specialized knowledge of CUCM.
• CUCM is difficult to troubleshoot because of it's complexity.
• CUCM is expensive licensing and they nickel and dime you with a plethora of tiny little license charges for every little feature. They have the most convoluted licensing models, ever, for their CU products in general.

Incentivized

• Early on (many years ago), I occasionally had some trouble getting everyone onto the same call. But that's only happened a couple of times many moons ago.

Incentivized

We have been using this product for 20+ years and will continue too. This is a great product and new features are always coming out.

Incentivized

Although it's very easy to use, once you understand the concepts of IP telephony, as I said before, I think Cisco could have improved the management interface of the platform, adding modern technologies and the design language of the other platforms like DNA Center, etc. This interface hasn't had a substantial improvement for about 10 years

Incentivized

CUCM is supported by most third-party vendors for related products, so it makes finding solutions to specific needs easy. Also Cisco TAC is very knowledgeable, and we have never run into a problem they have not been able to resolve. Usually they are resolved without the need to escalate tickers either.

Incentivized

This was the first phone system we implemented that could span multiple locations. We were very satisfied once fully implemented

Incentivized

The Cisco Call Manager application has been around for much longer than many of the competitors. As such, they have had plenty of time to resolve bugs and increase the feature set that comes natively with this solution. One of the biggest factors for us was the professional services/support that comes along with using any Cisco product.

Incentivized

Call quality is very similar to the above products. However, most of our community partners and collaborators are not aware of FreeConference and are thus less able to utilize it without prompting and sometimes assistance from us.

Incentivized

• Return on Investment as one shot investment was made then only licensing contract renewing is needed.
• Virtualized environment and centralized administration tools.
• Money saving as a result on using features like TEHO.
• Business continuity assured on environments with SRST and Multi site Deployment with Distributed Call Processing.

Incentivized

• There is ABSOLUTELY no negative ROI because its free and you can't substitute a cost for time because it took no time lol. Great service all the way around.
• I am currently waiting for the contract to expire for our current payed provider so that we might permanently (company wide) switch to freeconferences.com.

Incentivized