We have one guy who wants to dump our telephone system and go with discord for all phone calls?

Is that actually viable?

I don't know enough about discord to intelligently make any kind of decision about it.

From what I understand and from web searches, they have voice calls over discord, but both caller and called must both be discord users and calling from discord apps or from desktops connected to the discord site. Is that true?

If it is true, then it is clearly a no go.

SF2004 said:

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This is a hard no.

As much as teams, discord, skype, whatever has grown your company still needs a tried and true telephone system.

edit: you are correct, in order to call on discord you need to both be on discord.

Discord is a gaming/community app, not a business one.

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Thanks. That is pretty much what is expected.

I suppose that what I ought to do is pull out my cell phone and offer to call his discord number. That does not include installing anything on my cell phone -- I try to keep the installed apps to be pretty limited.

eric76 said:

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I suppose that what I ought to do is pull out my cell phone and offer to call his discord number. That does not include installing anything on my cell phone -- I try to keep the installed apps to be pretty limited.

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Please do and report back.

I love tech and Microsoft teams has done amazing things for our company BUT, when a customer needs to get a hold of me (or the company) they use my phone number.

Just curious, why does that one person want to switch to Discord, or switch at all? There are indeed other options, like Ooma Office (among others)

https://www.ooma.com/small-business-phone-systems/

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-business-voip-providers

eric76 said:

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We have one guy who wants to dump our telephone system and go with discord for all phone calls?

Is that actually viable?

I don't know enough about discord to intelligently make any kind of decision about it.

From what I understand and from web searches, they have voice calls over discord, but both caller and called must both be discord users and calling from discord apps or from desktops connected to the discord site. Is that true?

If it is true, then it is clearly a no go.

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How big is your company and what kind of telephone service? I could see going over to a corporate softphone scenario built into messaging with external numbers (my company uses Webex teams for messaging, internal calls, and external calls). That type of solution give you a lot of flexibility on how people use the service via hardware.

With all that said, I'm pretty sure Discord doesn't have a business based setup that has an external bridge. You would want something that is designed to have business based resiliences and could bridge to real numbers.

Caesar4 said:

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Just curious, why does that one person want to switch to Discord, or switch at all? There are indeed other options, like Ooma Office (among others)

https://www.ooma.com/small-business-phone-systems/

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-business-voip-providers

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He's very intelligent, but I think that he often sees things the way he wants to see them instead of what they actually are.

IrishAg said:

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eric76 said:

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We have one guy who wants to dump our telephone system and go with discord for all phone calls?

Is that actually viable?

I don't know enough about discord to intelligently make any kind of decision about it.

From what I understand and from web searches, they have voice calls over discord, but both caller and called must both be discord users and calling from discord apps or from desktops connected to the discord site. Is that true?

If it is true, then it is clearly a no go.

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How big is your company and what kind of telephone service? I could see going over to a corporate softphone scenario built into messaging with external numbers (my company uses Webex teams for messaging, internal calls, and external calls). That type of solution give you a lot of flexibility on how people use the service via hardware.

With all that said, I'm pretty sure Discord doesn't have a business based setup that has an external bridge. You would want something that is designed to have business based resiliences and could bridge to real numbers.

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It's a small, family business. We currently have only one employee that is not related to the rest of us.

And how often are phones used? Just internally, or do customers call in?

We are right around 50 employees and we have decided that cell phones and Teams calling is all we need. A "phone system" would be overkill.

We switched most of our VOIP lines to Jabber soft phones over a year ago. I've received one phone call in that time and it was a robo-call for some warranty service.

Proposition Joe said:

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And how often are phones used? Just internally, or do customers call in?

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Mainly customers, both local and national, calling in and us returning their calls.

Yellerjacket said:

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We are right around 50 employees and we have decided that cell phones and Teams calling is all we need. A "phone system" would be overkill.

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How easy is it to forward calls on cell phones?

You can get Zoom Phone or Ring Central at an affordable rate. You can port your phone numbers to these phone systems and they will work. They have the ability to do call trees, etc for the main phone line.

You can also look at Google Voice consumer for something free. Google voice business is paid and cheaper than Zoom Phone or Ring Central, but if you need to get the calls, I wouldn't depend upon Google voice business to give you much support.

Everything mentioned above can be used with your cell phone, computer, or even a phone that you can get that sits on your desk.

There's only 3 or 4 of you?

Zoom Phone is their phone only product at $15 per month, per extension. If you want video and many of the AI features they offer, the cost is about $22.50 per extension on an annual prepay.

RingCentral would cost you more than that. Their Core seats start at $30, though I can easily discount that. Then you have to add $5 per extension for CRF and e911.

Outside of the monthly costs you then need to either purchase or lease the physical phones if you want physical phones. Then there is installation if you want someone to set everything up for you, handle all the number porting, and provide training.

ETA: Also, never go directly to providers like RingCentral or Zoom. Always go through a local Partner if you can. Pricing is either the exact same or a little lower and you now have an added layer of escalation or support for anything.

I run incredible pbx in a vps, and sip trunks from bulk vs. Most expensive part is like $1.50 month for e911 per number. Each number cost $0.06 month but costs a quarter to set up.
Have a few dozen numbers for various things unlimited extensions and probably all in less e911 for $30 a year.
Self host and save A buck a month.

Yellerjacket said:

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We are right around 50 employees and we have decided that cell phones and Teams calling is all we need. A "phone system" would be overkill.

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We are at a couple thousand and we recently did the same.

We still have our office numbers, but if someone calls it, it goes straight to Teams.

Lathspell said:

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There's only 3 or 4 of you?

Zoom Phone is their phone only product at $15 per month, per extension. If you want video and many of the AI features they offer, the cost is about $22.50 per extension on an annual prepay.

RingCentral would cost you more than that. Their Core seats start at $30, though I can easily discount that. Then you have to add $5 per extension for CRF and e911.

Outside of the monthly costs you then need to either purchase or lease the physical phones if you want physical phones. Then there is installation if you want someone to set everything up for you, handle all the number porting, and provide training.

ETA: Also, never go directly to providers like RingCentral or Zoom. Always go through a local Partner if you can. Pricing is either the exact same or a little lower and you now have an added layer of escalation or support for anything.

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There are currently five. Sometimes there are more. It just depends.

We also need to put telephones in various other rooms such as the computer room, the conference room, the front desk, ... .

Preferably, the ability to put them in other buildings as well would likely be appreciated. For example, the shop and the gym.

Do you still have you att high bandwidth connection,? Pretty simple strategies using something like incredible pbx with reliable internet connection either self hosted or cloud that have cost in the few dollars a month for everything, all numbers, lines and no limits on extensions.
Everyone talks like $15/mo is a good deal, i think its crazy expensive. Email in my profile if want to discuss directly.
Hope thing are well in gruver these days.

My question to all companies looking at migrating to the cloud is, "Do you really need that phone?"

If you keep your cell phone on you, the leading providers have great mobile apps that allow you to fully utilize all the features of your phone system from your cell phone. That allows you to be mobile without needing a physical handset in all the places you could possibly be.

For some people, that seems too high tech. But if you can make calls on your cell phone, you can use any of the mobile apps from these providers. The user experience is pretty much the same, you just have more options while on a call like Hold, Transfer, Conference, Record, Transcribe, etc.

I haven't used a desk phone in years. I have several for demo purposes, but I work 100% off my cell phone app and PC app, depending on what's easiest for me at the moment.

ETA: Huge benefit for business is the ability to use your business number for SMS/MMS. I can't tell you how often I call a customer and receive a text back saying to call them back in 10 minutes, or tell me they are in a meeting and will call me back later. The ability to text is basically required to do business, these days. Granted, setting up texting has been made into a pain in the ass with needing to register with TCR.

Lathspell said:

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My question to all companies looking at migrating to the cloud is, "Do you really need that phone?"

If you keep your cell phone on you, the leading providers have great mobile apps that allow you to fully utilize all the features of your phone system from your cell phone. That allows you to be mobile without needing a physical handset in all the places you could possibly be.

For some people, that seems too high tech. But if you can make calls on your cell phone, you can use any of the mobile apps from these providers. The user experience is pretty much the same, you just have more options while on a call like Hold, Transfer, Conference, Record, Transcribe, etc.

I haven't used a desk phone in years. I have several for demo purposes, but I work 100% off my cell phone app and PC app, depending on what's easiest for me at the moment.

ETA: Huge benefit for business is the ability to use your business number for SMS/MMS. I can't tell you how often I call a customer and receive a text back saying to call them back in 10 minutes, or tell me they are in a meeting and will call me back later. The ability to text is basically required to do business, these days. Granted, setting up texting has been made into a pain in the ass with needing to register with TCR.

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I wouldn't mind going to cell phones.

The big question about cell phones for me is to have a call that rings multiple cell phones at once so that anyone who hears it can answer.

Also, I tend to forget to charge my cell phone and it may be down a couple of days before I realize it. I missed some messages last night because the batteries were dead. I get so many unrelated text messages to it that I had to turn off the notifications for text messages.

The worst, I think, is if you ever give out the cell phone number to doctors and hospitals. I don't consider text messages to be at all secure and that we should always be suspicious about them, especially if they are from someone not a good friend or family. I'd much rather they use e-mail so that we can at least check the headers to maybe see if they are legitimate. Too bad that they don't digitally sign and encrypt the e-mails as well. Text messages seems like the worst of all possible worlds.

For UCaaS solutions like RingCentral, the mobile app is simply your extension. It can ring whenever you want your extension to ring. That includes as a member of a ring group or call queue, or if someone calls your direct number, or if someone makes a selection through an auto-attendant.

As for texting, I don't know what to tell you. You can take issues with texting all you want, the simple fact of the matter is people are trying to text you if you are calling their cell phones. Either texting you to say they are in a meeting or will be calling you back.

We are considering switching from Nextiva to Ring Central.

5 stations, 1 main number
Local construction company
Use phones because we always have
Receive about 20 calls a day to main number, 12 of which are unsolicited junk
Would like the ability to forward calls to an outside cell phone

Thoughts and/or advice?

TIA

Sorrell Booke said:

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We are considering switching from Nextiva to Ring Central.

5 stations, 1 main number
Local construction company
Use phones because we always have
Receive about 20 calls a day to main number, 12 of which are unsolicited junk
Would like the ability to forward calls to an outside cell phone

Thoughts and/or advice?

TIA

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My first question would be why you are looking to move from Nextiva. I'm assuming either a support issue, a missing feature, or a pricing issue.

Do you currently own your desk phones or are you renting them from Nextiva? If you own them, what model are they?

What you listed there is extremely straight forward for a phone system which can be handled easily. On the RingCentral platform, you would need (5) licenses. I generally always quote the Advanced tier and try to stay away from Core because of some programming options that are not available on Core. I would rather sell someone Advanced licenses and discount them, if there's a budget issue.

With RingCentral, you get a main company phone number and main company fax number included with your account. From there, each license/extension/user also has a direct phone number assigned to them.

As for the spam calls, there's not much anyone can do about that. RingCentral does implement STIR/SHAKEN protocol to do what they can. Also, you can manually block or set specific rules for specific phone numbers, but that's about it.

As for forwarding calls to cell phone, that is extremely easy to do. Either as a setting in call routing to possibly route to an answering service, or as part of your personal call routing to route to your personal cell phone, or as just a forward always. There is no charge to forward off the system to another number. We actually have a dermatology clinic in Houston with around 16 location around Texas. We implemented a RingCentral solution for them about 4 years ago. Every person who calls in to set an appointment chooses that option in the menu. We then have the phone system forward them off the system to this company's third party scheduling contact center.

Outside of those, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Unfortunately, I'm no longer subscribing, so I don't notifications anymore. May slow down my response time. If you have an email or phone, I'm happy to reach out and talk through any questions or concerns.

It is mainly a price issue. We have been with them several years now and they are wanting to raise prices on us. We thought we would see what else is out there and we got a quote directly from Ring Central.

We own our phones. Polycom VVX201

Sorrell Booke said:

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It is mainly a price issue. We have been with them several years now and they are wanting to raise prices on us. We thought we would see what else is out there and we got a quote directly from Ring Central.

We own our phones. Polycom VVX201

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What are they quoting you? Are you doing pro serv install or self-install? Did you get any free months on your contract?

I would never sign directly with RingCentral or any provider. I would always find a good Partner to work with. It literally costs you the exact same as going Direct with RingCentral, and it aligns you with a partner who can offer support or act as an added escalation path for any potential issues.

With the RC self-install, you will schedule a couple calls with a RC person to talk you through programming your system. But it will ultimately be incumbent on you to handle your number porting, system programming, and flashing your phones over to RC.

Our company is in Houston and can provide onsite services in the greater metroplex. Even outside of the greater Houston area, we can provide a better professional services install than RingCentral, and we offer live end-user training, as part of our installation.

For a 5-phone RC installation where we go onsite, we would charge about $630. If we were doing it as a completely remote install, we would do it for $525.