Ringcentral Vs. Grasshopper Vs. Phone.com
Feb 11 2010
Posted by Ken as Productivity Tools, necessities
Lately we have been asked a lot to compare Ringcentral and Grasshopper. And to be honest, I don’t want to spend hours comparing features etc… And I have to include a third competitor (who we currently use) in the mix Phone.com so I’m just going to list some of our personal experiences with each service.
RingCentral.
We used to be huge Ringcentral fans. Even to the point of evangelism. We have recommended Ringcentral to countless businesses as a way to cut costs. Our loyalty was strong, and for good reason. In the early days Ringcental customer service were happy to help is out, they were willing to do what it took to keep longtime, loyal customers happy. Well, it appears those days are gone. There does not appear to be any loyalty in the other direction. When we needed to make changes to our services we knew we could get what we needed elsewhere with more features included and get it all cheaper! But that wasn’t enough to make us jump ship alone. All we needed was 5 more extensions. That’s all… We gave them plenty of opportunity to make a small concession to keep us. But sadly, they stood fast in there position not to work with us…. So, we jumped ship.
On to Grasshopper.
Grasshopper seems to be a great company with even greater potential. All of our dealings with their support and sales reps were fantastic. The only thing that kept us from staying with grasshopper was a lack of some features, or more specifically a limitation of the flexibility of those features. We were coming from Ringcental, with many phone numbers and extensions. The problem lied with our extension numbers. There was no way to Create extensions that matched our Ringcentral ones. That would mean new business cards as well as annoying the people that call us on our current extensions. For this reason we set out once again to find the perfect replacement for Ringcentral. If you are setting up your phone system for the first. Time go ahead and give Grasshoppeer a try… but for us…
On to phone.com
When we got to phone.com we felt like there was a party going on but we weren’t invited. How was it that we didn’t know about phone.com before… That question still haunts us. But what doesn’t haunt us is the decision to switch to phone.com. They have every feature you want and need plus more. They have amazing call routing and automated response system. You can even route calls based on their caller ID so when joe’s client calls it is routed straight to Joe. No prompts, no extension. Awesome. They have so many features we have only begin to scratch the surface. I’m looking forward to giving the conference call feature a try when I get a chance. We wanted flexibility and we got it. Wow. You can do anything you want with this system.
Phone.com gets our vote for sure. Give them a try, here is a link: Business Phone Service – Increase Productivity Reduce Cost
You are starting a business and your going to need a website. Maybe you are already running a business but you don’t have a website yet. If it’s the latter then you need to set up a site now, Go. Do it. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Seriously, Is there anyone out there that doesn’t realize that your business HAS TO BE ONLINE?
Ok, When I think about starting a company, and I’m looking for a business name I start by looking for a domain name. This is true even if it’s not an “online” business.
Step 1.
Here is a link to godaddy to get you started looking for that perfect domain name. I have all my domains at Godaddy now. They have GREAT management utilities and they are cheap!
Step 2.
Once you have a great domain, it’s time to find some hosting. This can be a confusing thing with all the options that are out there.
I reconmend using hostgator, host one site for under $5 a month, host unlimited sites for under $10 a month and they use the best web panel ‘cPanel’. Better yet they inclued ‘Fantastico’ which will help you get wordpress set up with one easy click. (I reconmend using wordpress for almost every site)
click on the Big Mean Gator before he eats the whole letter H will ya?! Get your hosting set up and install wordpress!
Step 3.
Head over to this site and find yourself a nice wordpress theme, start writing content, make some videos and get that site looking great!
I know step 3 seems a bit short, but it really is that simple. I will dive into more details on the site building and design soon…..
So you have decided to start a business.
Step one: come up with a business name.
Step two: get business cards.
Maybe that’s over simplifying things a little bit but the fact is you are going to need some business cards, and there is no reason to drive down the street to the local print shop and drop $500 on business cards.
I am not going to get into the design aspect right now, this is purely about the printing…
As a designer and entrepreneur I have had lot of business cards printed… I have used quite a few different online print shops and even the occasional local shop and for business cards there is a clear winner:
Overnight Prints. Fast turnaround, amazing prices, helpful customer service. You can get 250 double sided, glossy, full color business cards printed on an offset press (as opposed to a digital press) for under $30. That is amazing.
Overnight Prints product is so good I now use them for ALL of my own standard sized cards, brochures and greeting cards. (by the way, a custom greeting card will get noticed by the client, but that’s another topic)
Here is a coupon for 100 free business cards to get you started!
In my opinion Overnight Prints is the best,but their product sizes are limited to keep prices as low as possible. So what if you want something different… A custom sized card maybe…
Uprinting. Uprinting lets you print custom sizes at great prices. They aren’t as cheep, and they aren’t as fast but they can handle almost any size printing you need, they even have these cool Canvas Prints. 10% OFF All UPrinting Products!
I recently designed a card for my design business, I wanted to have a 2″ square card. I looked around and the prices were crazy everywhere I found except for Uprinting. I got the cards and the quality is perfect. I am very happy with my new cards. Next time I will be looking for custom die cutting… I’ll keep you all posted.
While you can design a simple card on both sites if you want to stand out you will need to have an amazing design, I promise I will dive into that subject soon.