RingCentral

Think of RingCentral as the "Salesforce" of the VoIP world. They "integrate" with almost everything (what that even means is many things...), does that mean it'll do what you want it to do? Great question! They have all the standard business VoIP features—company department lines, employee lines, SMS/MMS, IVR menus (press 1 for x department, press 2 for...). It's not a question of features—they've been around for a while.

Okay, that all sounds great! Right? But what's RingCentral like to actually use? Well, painful (I'm finding myself writing more and more about the "joy" component to using software). There's zero joy in using it. It feels like you're using archaic and unintuitive software. Why is this the case? Well, like Salesforce, since there are such gigantic enterprises on RingCentral, they are in that messy area where they really can't innovate much without upsetting their highest paying enterprise customers who ultimately just want things to "stay the same".

I've personally implemented RingCentral to a myriad of teams 6+ years ago (some of which are still using it to this day), and well, I regret it (now). At the time, we all got sold on their "native integration" marketing shpeal. Although, to be fair to past Alex—at the time RingCentral's largest competitors were not even cloud-based, so they were a huge upgrade at the time. The setup process at the time was (and still is) incredibly painful. They expect to be working with an IT department, not an agile team. So they used to be a great solution, but are really getting eaten alive by the more modern software like Dialpad, and Aircall.