Fuze vs. Vonage Business Communications

Fuze has way more capability than we need for our small office so it might be best suited for large installations, call centers, and complex environments. Our office is small and our needs [are] minimal, so when we need support we are challenged to understand the support person due to our lack of technical sophistication. We sometimes feel like we should switch to a solution more geared for consumers or SOHO. Nevertheless, Fuze provides reliable service at [a] reasonable cost that meets our needs, and because support is rarely needed we are happy with them most of the time, i.e. when support isn't needed.

Incentivized

Vonage Business Communications excels in scenarios requiring seamless remote work, such as virtual teams and remote workers. It's also ideal for businesses needing reliable disaster recovery solutions. However, it may be less appropriate for very small businesses with minimal communication needs or those with limited budgets, as the comprehensive features might be more than necessary.

• Availability to use your work number anytime anywhere. Our recruiters make themselves available as much as they can. Being able to answer calls from their worklines while not in the office and make calls from their work numbers is a big deal.
• Setting up new phones and numbers is very easy with their hub. I don't always have to go directly to their support team to setup new users. As long as I have the mac address of the phone and we have free numbers I can set a new user up in minutes.
• Their support team is great as well. If I do need to get help with an issue their support team is quick to respond and very knowledgeable about their systems. Their team is also able to fix most support cases within the same day.

Incentivized

• Eliminates physical phone consoles that can be pricey and unnecessary for staff.
• Has a companion app that allows you to use your personal cell phone to check messages or make calls.
• The desktop application is easy to use and has a number of customizable settings so that the app can be minimized but alert you of incoming calls.

Incentivized

• Desktop application stability and compatibility with certain hardware.
• Better installation - Per-user and per-computer installs sometimes compete with one another and/or upgrades fail to install.
• [The] desktop app is not best for touchscreen-enabled devices due to lack of ability to scroll through messages using a finger or stylus.

Incentivized

• Relies on internet connectivity (no separate trunk like an on-prem system).
• Phones can be on the expensive side if you purchase through the Vonage store, especially conference phones. Thankfully Vonage is so flexible and is compatible with phones purchased from other places.

Incentivized

Cost and support and the primary driving factors. The management team has been extremely responsive and assisting even with the obstacles and hurdles we experienced during implementation. We are still learning how best to manage the solution and comfort and pleasure with the solution will increase as our knowledge and skillsets improve.

Incentivized

I think it will be renewed as overall it is a midrange product that mostly does what we need it to

Incentivized

For most user, Fuze is very user friendly and easy to get use to. When it comes to the admin portal, it can be a little more challenging. There are also a lot of feature you unable to do as an admin that would normally be accessible. This cause the admin to have to rely on Fuze support, which could delay the resolution of a problem

Incentivized

I thought it had very practical and useful usability. It has a clean and simple interface with large fonts that make it easy to read. It isn't particularly difficult, although figuring out some operations may be a bit challenging. For the most part though, it isn't very difficult to use

Incentivized

We've had a few outages over the past year. More than other vendors I've used. They usually have outages fixed within an hour. The downside is they do not provide root cause of outages. If they do at takes them at least a month to get it to you

Incentivized

Since Fuze runs across multiple devices and platforms they really strived to make a lightweight interface that is optimized for phone calls, chat, and collaboration. The web client loads fast, the chat is always up-to-date, phone calls arrive on-time. The desktop client is the most feature rich and basically it just adds desktop sharing functionality as well as VoIP for calling, and the mobile client doesn't consume a lot of battery, and it stays running to get phone calls, chats, and can do meetings over Wifi, Cellular Data, or Cellular voice.

Incentivized

Our experience with Fuze support has been overall very positive. Their technicians seem to be well trained and able to handle a variety of requests and issues without unnecessary delays or extensive troubleshooting. Fuze allows enough customer access to avoid the need to call support for every little issue but is ready to assist when issues are beyond our capabilities to resolve.

Incentivized

Sometimes there is a disconnect between support and customer success. We had an issue where the support team was automatically assigning numbers to our extensions without informing us. This was something that was not communicated to our account manager. I would just recommend to pay attention to your account when changes are made.

Incentivized

At many of our sites with more than 50 users, Fuze sent someone onsite to train. This worked surprisingly well, as the trainer allowed the users to set the pace and answered TONS of questions. Fuze has a very streamlined training process, their staff is very professional, very knowledgeable and very engaging.

Incentivized

Fuze has vast amounts of training videos and guides on how to use its products and services. There are literally endless-hours of training and I often point end-users to a particular video which addresses the specific needs of the user, for example: how to check voicemail. Or, how to share your desktop, etc.

Incentivized

Personally, I didn't have any trouble getting started with Fuze. It was installed on my computer on my first day and I was good to go! Little to no hiccups. I was not with the company when they first adapted Fuze so I can not speak to the implementation as a whole.

Incentivized

We have had several vendors try to get our phone business, and I have always given my opinion to management why we need to stay with Fuze. Customer service is wonderful and the support staff puts up with me and they are very helpful. We use another company to do our dialing campaigns. Not sure why, but I think the reason was Fuze didn't offer that service. Fuze from the beginning appealed to our business due to the fact that it seemed so easy to use and manage.

Incentivized

I haven't used anything else too closely related but Skype for Business has a lot of the same issues. Vonage's abilities and pros way outweigh the cons. I don't think I have heard of more viable software to fit our needs in the market right now. It has become essential to my workflow.

Incentivized

Fuze does have scalability limits but most of that is how many end-points they can put on a virtual PBX, or VCX as they call them, I THINK its limit is somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000, but we've not had issues with that because we have put users into various VCXs some by location, some by department or function. Either way, we have 7,000 currently deployed, and are going to end up with over 15,000 when we are done, Fuze is VERY scalable.

Incentivized

• We receive constant negative feedback from mangers about the system not functioning correctly. (This is mainly due to lack of support from Fuze)
• This has had a positive impact in that the system is cheaper and we are missing less calls due to the functionality of the system.

Incentivized

• Cut down phone hardware expense since the soft phone is free and easier to use.
• Text is becoming a more important and effective way to reach clients. Some will not answer a call or accept voicemail but respond quickly to text messages.
• Allows me to work from anywhere with smart phone app saving hours at work.