8x8 Work is a collaboration hub for phone, video, and messaging. It brings secure unified communication and collaboration experiences to every employee.
$24
per month
Google Voice
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Google Voice is a free IP telephony service that provides users with one phone number that can be forwarded to multiple phones or devices. It includes features such as call forwarding, voicemail translation, text messaging, and voice calls. Fees may apply for international calling.
Google Voice is hard to compare because on a cost basis it is so much lower than it's competitors. As a whole, I would say it's definitely lacking features compared to Nextiva, and a few from RingCentral but the service is reliable and it has the most commonly used core …
Well, Google Voice was a free number, there was nothing to pay for like other services. It it also something that you can set up by yourself without having to call in and speak with a representative on the phone. Just go to the Google Voice page and set up the service and …
I believe that 8x8 Work is well-suited for any organization, whether it employs 1-2 users or thousands. It is so easy to deploy and use. We are mainly a MS Teams house, and we want our Users to use this for Meetings and Chats. The fact that 8x8 has the flexibility to disable this within the client, so that it forces our users to continue working in Teams for meetings and chats, and then use the phone element in 8x8 Work, is brilliant. Our company finds it extremely easy to use, and the fact that we have different departments using it, with each department having the ability to change their outbound CLI to reflect the area of the business they are calling from, is excellent.
In the past, I would have happily recommended this for small business use cases. Due to its affordability, versatility, and low barrier to entry as well as its simplicity to use. Google Voice was integrated into the Chrome Browser, it was easily accessed from Gmail, and integrated into Gmail and could even be leveraged in such a way to when phone numbers were clicked on, Google Voice was the tool used. However over the past few years and more, in the past couple of years from 2021 to current, this tool seems to have lost favor with the Alphabet suite of tools. With the lack of integrations, it's becoming less stable, and people are just opting more for Google Meet Voice. The biggest area where this is less appropriate and where opportunity has opened for others is its lack of features, like virtual attendants, call recording, call transcription, SMS, MMS, CRM integration, and other key features even 1 or 2 person business really needs in this day and age
The auto attendant has built in text-to-speech, but this same engine should be put to use for individual and ring group voicemail messages.
Call forwarding in the mobile app should be relocated for easier access. Instead it's buried somewhere under the generic "account settings"
The default user template disables voicemail text transcription. Why???
One fax number should be accessible by app for more than 1 user. Responsibility for faxes is usually distributed among a few people in a typical small office setting.
Ability to receive and send SMS messages from a shared "main company number" would be awesome. Ability to assign this to certain users would rock!
All our employees love this product. No one has ever had an issue, whether it be the phone or fax. Great during the winter when employees have to work from home because of the snow. Never had an issue with the phone app. Highly recommend this product
It's user friendly, how to use it is self explanatory, they support all their own options while someone like Phone Booth uses a third party. I can cancel Google Voice anytime and I choose how much I spend with Google Voice
I'm not using it to its full capacity like a Zoom or teams Workspace. I use the service for phone calls, hate application on my cellphone and the voicemail apparatus. This we like because it gives us the feel of a large firm when we aren't.
I haven't had problems with dropped calls, bad reception, lost recordings - everything works the way it should. The iOS app is easy to use, and the process is easy to explain to other people. It's also the cheapest way I've found to call internationally - I've used it to interview people from London and Austraila.
As mentioned before, we have not had an outage with the phone system per say, There was an issue with the call center where we did have an outage, but it was quickly and promplty handled by 8x8 support, they got us up and going again within 24 hours. The 8x8 hard phone and softphone side of things have been rock solid, I couldn't ask for anything more seeing we are in health care and it's exactly what we were looking for. When and if there is an issue 99% of the time it's user error
None of the features that are available slow down the application. The reports (even the ones with hundreds of records) complete very quickly and the web interface as well as the mobile application never struggle to load or complete a task. The analytics will sometimes take some time to reflect the online status of users but it is to be expected due to connection speeds.
We are a USA based organization. Support was refreshingly quick (callback via phone or email, online live agents). Agents are knowledgeable, thorough in their explanations, and extremely patient when dealing with end-users at various levels of the ICT knowledge spectrum.
They do not offer support unless you have the Business account for Google Voice under G Suite. This is tough, because Google doesn't really have a customer support team for this service, so when it gets shut down for a few hours, we have no choice but to wait it out. But this doesn't happen that often, which is great.
The person giving the training was very engaged, He also listened and answered all the questions. He created a video for our company while he was training in case we needed to reference it again in the future. The questions he could not answer were answered within 24 hours via an email to the IT support staff here so we could share the answers with the rest of the group
The implementation of 8x8 X was rather smooth. We had training prior to getting the system. The IT company did a good job on the training. The whole system is wonderful. Saves me so much time with the faxing, as i can just let it go by itself and not have to make sure pages don't get skipped, as with a regular fax machine.
It is a pretty seamless program to transfer to, even for people who either have little experience with these programs or people who were stuck on Skype
I prefer 8x8 Work; it has the right number of features and modes for the communication I need. I much prefer 8x8 Work meetings to zoom meetings, as it is much, much easier to transition between devices when I am on the road. 8x8 Work is also easier to manage across multiple modes of communication.
The integrations of Google Voice with all our devices are flawless, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac. Also, the call performance is far superior on wifi as well as on mobile data. With Skype, we had several problems with personal accounts, performance issues, and in general, it felt awkward to use it.
At this time, we’re very happy with the pricing model that we have worked out and they have provided for us. Just be sure to do your homework, and use your comparisons to work out your cost with 8x8. They will be very straightforward with you on what they can adjust for you.
Google Voice should be also be use to those who have difficulty in speaking English. So the contract term will need to be a little strict as Google Voice is used in navigations as the part of GPRS navigation is personal. The private data need to be in control much more securely and safely.
The only issue was adding licences was not via a button click but through your account admin which seems bad practice in a SaaS world as the user should be able to sign up, amend and close their account with ease
PS had all the users etc. set up by our go-live date. All hard phones were activated and when we received them, all we had to do was set them up and punch in the activation code to activate them.
It help to connect with the products that we use as a part. We need to get in touch with our professional world. It is like a tool that helps us to get in touch with everything from A to Z in our professional careers. So we need to be in touch with everything as linearly as the jpb can be done.
Cost for Google Voice is stellar, starting at $10/mo per user.
While it doesn't offer a new Audio/Video conferencing solution it does integrate with GSuite so it makes use of Google Calendar and Hangouts/ Google Meet.
Gets the employee's to use their company phone numbers more as texting is easy and deployment is simple.
The cell phone app is reliable and easy to deploy.
