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.
$10
per month
Webex Calling
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Webex Calling is Cisco’s flagship cloud calling solution with over 12 million users worldwide. It delivers an enterprise-grade calling experience that enables customers to replace PBX hardware with a cloud calling solution. Webex Calling's connectivity and collaboration experience includes calling, meetings, messaging, contact center, and integrated devices.
The price was a huge standout since we have a large number of users and because of this it was important for us. Aside from cost the reliability was also of utmost importance due to the urgent nature of some of the calls. These were the two main reasons we chose this platform.
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
Webex Calling is a cloud based enterprise grade calling solution backed by Cisco's strong collaboration expertise. This makes Webex Calling a robust solution as compared to other players in the market. It offers vide variety of calling related features to make the user experience rich and satisfactory. Enterprises which requires strong collaboration for its people working in office or remotely from home will benefit a lot from this cloud calling solution.
Depending on what the persona is, as I said, if you are in a big campus where everyone is out and about within the facility, it suits that high-end architectural infrastructure base or working from home where you're just logging in via the internet and bang, you've got access to the same tools.
Some of the features that on-prem had that have not yet been implemented in the Cisco WebEx product, like when you're in contact center, there is no bidirectional communication yet. So if you put a call on hold on a physical phone or on your soft phone, it doesn't talk back to the contact center portion. So the bidirectional communication would be useful and we're still getting used to the differences in how reporting is done and call detail reports. The on-prem has been around for so long that you're just used to going in there and just running CDR reports and that with Cisco WebEx a little bit, it's a learning curve that you have to get used to and that you have to have the report generated and wait for it to become available. And sometimes it can take longer because put in the queue and it runs when it has a chance.
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
The service can be intermittent and the call forwarding feature will not always work perfectly. There will be periods of time where the calling feature will not work at all and people on the other end can hear me but I am unable to hear them. It also requires a fairly strong signal which can be an issue if you work somewhere remote or a building without much service.
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.
It is a very easy product to deploy and configure and to really take advantage of. It does not matter if you are using it in an office or your home, or for a security office or a collaboration meeting room - you have the right endpoint available for each case and the configuration parameters to improve the functionality you need.
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.
I have been working for a long time with Cisco as a provider and also Cisco TAC and Cisco Support Engineers. The support starts right beforehand in the documentation of the product you are interested in. From the start you have a good, complete, and detailed and easy to read datasheet and there's always someone available to answer any questions.
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
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.
It's far far secure when compared to the other two rest everything is almost similar. In free version Google Meet has unlimited meeting length. For me Webex Calling is all about security. The interface is also very good and professional, directory part is well functional so all of these features make Webex Calling a good choice.
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.
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.
Webex Calling allowed us to continue working in a remote world
While workshops are best in person, Webex Calling allowed us to continue offering that critical service and also included break out room functionality for small group activities, when needed.
The recording feature allows everyone to hyper focus on the discussion - if anything was missed in notes, it was always saved in the recording when we had one. Perfect for interviews and workshops.
