RingCentral Professional Review

RingCentral Professional Review

Product
RingCentral Professional
Type
Usage Based Professional Plan
Reviewed by

on April 22, 2013
Rating
Price
$8.29 - $31.29/month
Summary

RingCentral Professional Is Best For:

Mobile Professionals looking for a cloud based phone system that will allow them to route and receive calls regardless of where they may be.

Pros

  • No charge to transfer local & 800 numbers
  • Unlimited minutes on Pro-Unlimited ProBusiness Plans
  • “Ring out feature” & “Call from Web” features
  • Unlimited extensions on ProPlus and ProUnlimited Professional Plans
  • Save up to 35% on RingCentral Professional w/Exclusive Pricing
  • Mobile Apps – Android, iPhone, Blackberry

Cons

  • 4.99/mo to add dial by name on RingCentral Pro plan
  • $2.99/mo to add additional virtual extensions on RingCentral Pro plan


 

RingCentral was founded in 1999 in San Mateo, CA. Their RingCentral Professional product is ideal for mobile professionals, geographically diverse teams, or basically anyone who is frequently out of the office but needs to be reached. RingCentral Professional gives you a set number of minutes per month, and is your traditional usage based billing structure – however with RingCentral you have unlimited minute plans as well.

Pricing: US RingCentral Professional Plans:
Pro: $8.29/mo paid annually ($9.89/monthly )
ProPlus: $16.29/mo paid annually ($19.99/monthly)
ProBusiness: $23.29/mo paid annually ($29.99/monthly)
ProUnlimited: $31.29/mo pre-paid annually ($39.99/monthly)
* exclusive plans and pricing are not available by going directly to RingCentral.com

Canada RingCentral Professional Plans:
Pro: $9.99/mo* ($19.99/monthly)
ProPlus: $19.99/mo* ($29.99/monthly)
ProPower: $24.99/mo* ($39.99/monthly)
*if pre-paid annually

Setup/Installation Fee: No
Disconnect/Cancellation Fee: No
Free Trial: Yes – 30 Day RingCentral Professional Free Trial
Customer Service: 24/7 good – improving(provided by out-sourced company)
Included Minutes: Pro: 300/month
ProPlus: 1,000/month
ProBusiness: Unlimited local & long distance/1,000 toll-free /month
ProUnlimited: Unlimited local & long distance/unlimited toll-free
Overage Minutes: Pro: 4.9¢
ProPlus: 4.4¢
ProBusiness: 4.2¢
ProUnlimited: No charge
Incoming Lines: 1 per plan
:Extensions: Pro: 10
ProPlus: Unlimited
ProBusiness: Unlimited
ProUnlimited: Unlimited
Local & 800 Transfer Fee: Free
Vanity 800 Number Fee: $30 – one time fee
True 800 Number Fee: Free


 

Unlimited Minutes & Extensions on RingCentral Professional

RingCentral’s Professional ProUnlimited offers a fully functional, feature rich small office system that includes unlimited local and long distance and 1,000 toll free minutes/month. Add to this that you get unlimited extensions on both the ProPlus and ProUnlimited plans and you have some powerful plans at the Professional level.

Feature Rich

RingCentral offers an extensive and comprehensive list of features.

No Charge to Transfer 800 or Local Numbers:

RingCentral doesn’t charge a fee to transfer your existing 800 or local number, while other vendors charge a one time fee per phone number to transfer.

Integrated Real-Time Call Controller

This feature allows you to turn your PC into a call command center. You can easily answer or screen incoming calls, send them to voice mail, transfer to another extension, disconnect or even monitor voice messages as they are being left and pick up only the ones you want to talk to. You can even prompt the caller to speak their name and it will be played via your PC speakers.

Click to Call/Ring Me Web buttons

RingCentral and Phone.com are the only two vendors that offer this functionality. You can add a button to your website to easily allow your visitors to call you directly from their PC.

Microsoft Office & Outlook Integration

RingCentral integrates with Microsoft Outlook, so you can place calls directly from Outlook with RingOut click-to-call dialing, receive faxes in your Outlook inbox and easily send faxes to Outlook Contacts. You can also fax directly from Microsoft Office® applications such as Microsoft Word®, Excel® and PowerPoint®.

Mobile App for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry

With the release of their mobile app for the Android market, RingCentral now has apps for both the iPhone and Android mobile phones. You can truly take your business mobile now, with these apps allowing you to:

  • Stay connected on-the-go with faxing, voicemail, and call management.
  • Faxing – Receive and forward your faxes from anywhere.
  • Visual Voicemail – See a complete record of all your calls and faxes.
  • Call Logs – See a complete record of all your calls and faxes.
  • Get only the calls you want, and block the ones you don’t want.
  • Make calls with RingOut, while keeping your personal phone number private.
  • Access any of your business contacts and company extensions easily.


 

Dial by Name Directory Charge on their Professional Plans

This is probably really picky, and most likely a little used feature for true professionals with fewer than 6 extensions anyway, however we’d like to see them drop the $4.99/mo charge and follow their competitors lead on this one.

200 message limit

Currently RingCentral has a 200 voice and fax message storage limit, per extension. Again, this probably won’t be an issue for most people using the system, but something to be aware of.

$2.99 Fee to Add Extensions to RingCentral Pro Plan

RingCentral offers unlimited extensions on its RingCentral Pro Plus and Pro Unlimited plans as well as all of its RingCentral Office plans. RingCentral’s lowest priced Professional plan (Pro) comes with only 10 extensions and will still cost you $2.99/mo to add virtual extensions. Their Pro Unlimited plan comes with unlimited local and long distance minutes, and 1000 toll-free minutes.

Customer Support

RingCentral has taken many hits on their customer support capabilities. In Q4 of 2008 RingCentral outsourced their Customer support, and they will be the first to admit that the transition wasn’t exactly smooth – actually it was quite bumpy! Not only did they train in a totally new support staff, but also implemented many new support processes at the same time. Admittedly, not necessarily the best strategy. They struggled over the next year to get their customer service back to levels that their customers expected from them. Now with both a RingCentral Facebook page, normal RingCentral Twitter page, and dedicated Ringcentral Twitter Support page as well, customers not only have the typical support methods, but also have multiple means to voice support needs & concerns, and have their voices heard – clearly, loudly, and publicly.


 

 

Some Final Thoughts:

RingCentral Professional plans are packed with features you’ve come to expect from RingCentral, like call management, voicemail & greetings, internet fax, a fully functional cloud-based pbx, web phone features, and mobile apps. If you are looking for a stable, market leading partner that offers a very wide range of desirable features at good price points, then RingCentral is a great option.

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Total Rating: 3 / 5 based on 99  reviews

Reviews (99)
Verified ReviewerVerified ReviewerVerified Reviewer
A Verified Reviewer is a user who has connected a social network with our site, providing an added level of transparency and trust.

4

I have posted a not so good comment a while ago, which is not listed under comments for some reason. I had a hard time getting anybody to respond to the chat at the RingCentral website. Was not a good start for me who just wanted to get some questions answered before signing up. However, I have to say that things turned around after that. I managed to speak to a person who answered my questions. She stopped being pushy about finding out my information once I told her that I am still at the research stage. Once I signed up the configuration was easy. Very user-friendly interface. Some things are confusing but overall very easy. I could not get a couple of things working so I called support. I did not get to India but I am not fanatic about having a US support. Most foreign countries are more friendly than the US. The person, even with his heavy spanish-like accent solved my problems, was professional and I was happy. As reluctant I was to sign up, I am happy for now. I hope it will stay this way.

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5

I've found RingCentral easy to set up and love all the ways I can customize how calls come in. Everything works as advertised. I found their customer service to be excellent. They were easy to get through to and very knowledgeable. I've tried a couple of other PBX phone services, but have finally found the right one for me. The Business SMS within their Iphone app is great!

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1

After evaluating different VOIP services for 3 months, we decided to switch to RingCentral. Everything was great until my customer support call to set up the service. The support rep (out of India) was not only late in calling me, but also was extremely inept at explaining the software. When I let her know that I was using a Mac instead of a PC, she continued using the same language. It took me 6 times of explaining I wasn't using that type of machine before she changed her script. She ignored most of my questions.
To say I'm disappointed in the customer service would be an understatement. If I had known the customer support that I would have been dealing with, I would most likely have made a different choice in my VOIP service provider.

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1

I used this service for 2 months.

Their customer service is the worst. After trying my best to be patient with them (I was really excited to use their service) I was left with the feeling that they simply do not care about their customers.

I would have to contact them several times over a period of weeks before they would provide me with support, and it was made obvious to me that they were not willing to help and that my attempts to contact them were intentionally being ignored.

If you don't mind calling their call center for support and spending 45 minutes talking to a representative the chances of having your issues resolved is better. But no email or online contact is available whatsoever.

It was a very difficult process from start to finish and I would strongly recommend choosing another service over RingCentral.

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0

Hi Pat,

I don't have anything in paper form right now, but I'd be happy to transfer the information in our detail compare grids into one excel spreadsheet if that would help.

I will do this, email it to you, and make it available for download on the site as well.

Thank you for visiting our site and for the wonderful feedback.

Best,
Lynn

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1

Ringcentral simply do not listen to its customers. Even after 3 years of begging from lots of customer, there's still no auto call recording to all call option. Stay away.

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5

Ring Central is a great VOIP software package. It is very easy to use and extremely user friendly. Their customer service associates do not treat you like you are a number and they also take their time to figure out any problems you may be having. I had an emergency and they were very attentive and genuinely were concerned with my frustrations during the emergency. I would tell other companies and friends that Ring Central is a product you want to use.

The only problem I had was that I had a few dropped calls.

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1

Only 1 star because of the value; if you need only the most basic of phone services then RingCentral is worth considering; however if you have a virtual office and are selecting a cloud-based solution because of limited resources and want to avoid getting a server and everything associated with having a server based solution AVOID RingCentral; save your money, time and reduce your frustration. 1) No start-up or installation guide. 2) No user guide. 3) Customer service, while responsive, gets on and off the call fast and frequently says "... our software is intuitive" or "...just play with it". In over 6 months we have not been able to get a caller id other than my name, and a RingCentral representative made the last request. They said the new caller id would be implemented in 7-10 days. We are still waiting. We have not successfully implemented a single change that didn't require a follow up call to Customer Support. Call forwarding is easier to implement with ATT, Cox and Comcast than RingCentral. If RingCentral worked as well as reviewed here or represented on their website I would be thrilled, but it has been one issue after another, not all issues resolved and Customer Services says call us when you have a question. I have better things to do than sit on hold and wait for someone to do or not do something that I should be able and am willing to do myself.

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2

I appreciate the opportunity to be asked to give feedback. It is nice to know companies are striving to improve. I wish my feedback were positive but it is not. I had a phone number that was forwarded to Ring Central - it worked fine for a year and then all of a sudden it stopped working. It took me over 5 phone calls, several cumulative hours on the phone and several weeks of waiting until it was actually fixed. It was a huge frustration and cost me a lot of money in business because people were not able to reach me. I did ask for compensation for the time that my phone number what not working which I was given without any hassle which was something I suppose. It could have really added insult to injury to have to pay for a service that I wasn't benefiting from, never mind that actually was hurting my business. I know that it must be tough running a business like this but I feel that if someone calls 5 times and doesn't get results, the request to speak to a manager or someone who can actually get the job done, shouldn't be a tough thing to make happen.

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5

Our company started using RingCentral last year. Our team was hesitant to utilize a VoIP based system, because of a lot of negative feedback with other VoIP based providers. Choosing RingCentral to augment our phone system was easy and has proven to be a key factor in our success. Our sales-force can now be completely decentralized without having to sacrifice customer service. The system has all the features we need now and the functionality to allow us to scale as demand rises. Customer service is friendly, helpful and most of all responsive. Thanks RingCentral!

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