At TeleDynamic, we get a lot of questions about different PBX servers and the companies that make and support them. Many people want to know what real users and reviewers are actually saying about these products – not just the standard corporate marketing gobbledygook
To help you out, we’ve combed through the web to uncover reviews, forum comments and other (hopefully) objective content to help in your research for the best IP PBX server for SMBs.
Last week we reviewed Avaya IP office 500. Today we take a look at ShoreTel 13.
ShoreTel 13 Reviews
From Atomic Data
One of the big questions Atomic Data gets is, how is ShoreTel different from Cisco? Why ShoreTel when you partner with Cisco elsewhere? Our goal is to bring clients the simplest, the smartest, and the very best in IT technology that we would use ourselves, and we do. Read More…
From Dr. VOIP
If we consider a simple 100 extension solution, ShoreTel will have a $20K software license fee before you purchase any of the required VoIP hardware. Basically, you are paying $200 per user for an Extension and Voice Mailbox. After you purchase your software license, you will still need to purchase handsets, gateways and servers! Microsoft, CISCOand Avaya, though significantly more complex in their licensing strategies, start from the same basic “per seat” model.Read More…
From smbitsolutions.files.wordpress.com
IP phones: Do not support XML applications, no color touchscreen phones, no integrated video support… Text-to-speech or automatic speech capabilities: Not offered….Redundancy: A customer may be required to double its ShoreGear switch capacity for every switch an IP phone is deployed on, in order to support call processing redundancy; this can be an expensive proposition when the customer needs many IP phones Read More…
From No Jitter
This week ShoreTel announced availability of its latest release, ShoreTel 13. Several aspects of the release struck a chord with me, highlighting the growing sophistication of ShoreTel’s solutions. Read More…
From Eweek.com
ShoreTel is expanding the video conferencing and instant messaging capabilities of its unified communications platform, leveraging open standards to help businesses increase employee productivity. The companys ShoreTel 13 software release, announced July 17, takes advantage of new capabilities within ShoreTel Communicator, the platforms call manager application, to broaden the video collaboration and IM features. Read More…
From TalkingPointz
ShoreTel: ShoreTel 13 is out with several new features including feature parity between SIP and TDM trunking (seriously) and improved video with native support for H.264 AVC and certified integration with LifeSize endpoints. ShoreTel (along with Microsoft and Cisco) is now making presence/IM a free feature. ShoreTel joined the UCI Forum which is a multi-vendor consortium focused on UC interoperability. ShoreTel is the designated beneficiary of NA SMB of HP’s decision to kill 3Com again. Read More…
From Dr. VoIP
There are a number of major enhancements to ShoreTel in Version 13. Most enhancements have been related to bringing ShoreTel SIP into compliance with the standards accepted by the SIP community at large. Though there are enhancements for other features like the SA-100, this release is notable for what it does NOT announce. The marketplace is demanding enough but the issue of having your development agenda driven by an outside company must be dreadful!
In this case, Microsoft dominants many of the decisions that ShoreTel must make with respect to the priority of features and releases. So how tightly is ShoreTel bound to Microsoft? Why have they not followed the path chosen by CISCO and others to move to an “appliance” built on Linux? Read More…
How Much Does ShoreTel Cost?
Authors Note: It was quite difficult to find up-to-date pricing on ShoreTel 13. We did find some pricing info from PEPPM.org from 2010. The PDF goes into great detail on pricing at a product by product level. You can get info on servers, phones, routers and the price of the installation manuals (yes, they charge for them.) Remember, this is 2010 information but it should give you a good idea of their pricing. Download PDF Here…
From the Forums
From Spiceworks.com
“Best VOIP system I tested – including Cisco. Their system is simple to setup and maintain, and costs about 20-40% less than a comparable Cisco system. My previous employer had me test five different demo phone systems, and the Shoretel system was by far the best, and the second cheapest one.”Read More…
From Spiceworks.com
“We’ve had a ShoreTel system in for 5 weeks now and so far have had nothing but problems. It started with Database corruption on the Director server which meant an entire server rebuild. We’ve had issues with the Workgroup service dropping out which slows down all incoming calls and in some cases drops them completely… We have had it where a user hangs up a call but it remains connected, allowing the customer to hear everything until either they hang up or the user makes a new phone call. Sound quality of the handsets is disappointing (really tiny) on internal and external calls…So all in all it’s only been an OK experience for us early on, hopefully as time goes on we’ll iron out the issues but some are really starting to make me lose confidence in what promised to be a great product.” Read More…
From Spiceworks.com
Pricey…Good Hardware…Generally good software… Easy to program and pretty flexible. Customer support is poor. System upgrades require you to abandon older hardware which can unnecessary turn a free upgrade into a multi-thousand dollar venture. Planned obsolescence is just a back handed way to maximize revenue whether you are an automobile manufacturer or a phone co. (no they are not all like that). Read More…
From Tek-Tips
We are considering Avaya IP Office and Shoretel. I am concerned about the licensing system of Shoretel. Everything needs a license. The vice president wants to be a supervisor you have to get a license. Want to also include someone else as a supervisor, you have to buy another license. And there is also a license for a voice mailbox. Read More…
From Forums.Shoretel.com
1. Outlook occasionally loses integration with voicemail. New voicemails will not arrive into the Inbox. In one case I have the option to attach a seperate .wav file via email turned on. That email will come in but the playback version of the VM won’t arrive into the inbox.
2. Call Handling Mode is ignored or uses the default schedule from Director. I have all Outlook configurations set to use a 7:00AM – 7:00PM work day via a Group Policy. Some workstations are utilizing a 8:00-5:00 schedule instead.” Read More…
From Forums.Shoretel.com
I have a brand new Lenovo Windows 7 x64 with Office x64 installed. After installing ShoreTel Communicator, the outlook integration will not work. I get an error saying there is outlook isn’t installed or that it isn’t the default mail client. It is, though. I’ve gone through and re-installed communicator, fully uninstalled (removing registry keys) as well as removed the registry keys for outlook as the default client and ran a repair on the Office install.” Read More…
From WorkEnd IT Blog
Occasionally your ShoreTel system will just flat refuse to dial certain numbers on certain phone lines. In my experiencethis happens most with PRI/Voice T1′s dialing to specific area code/prefix combinations. Read More…
We hope this information helps in your research of VoIP PBX Systems for SMBs. If you find any more information that would help other readers make an informed decision, please add them to the comments below!
