Fonality, Inc. Reviews 29

AWFUL phone services and TERRIBLE customer service. Nothing but problem, after problem. Cannot wait to get away from them. I think these 5 star review are FAKE!!!

Working with Fonality is a nightmare. I'll admit, there are very few outages with the system, but trying to handle any issues with them is almost impossible.

When you call in to get assistance, the agents sound as if you just woke them up from a nap, literally yawning into the phone, slow speech, lots of "ums" and "I thinks". I feel like the agents don't understand urgency or concerns in general. Their responses to your questions makes it sound like they're guessing the entire time.

Customer service aside, their system is outdated. The HUD needs Java 6 to run... and if you have any newer version it wont download. The admin dashboard looks and runs as if it hasn't been updated since 2005. Getting any kind of real, useful reporting is a pain and requires you to do a lot of the leg work through spreadsheets.

Overall, I would not recommend this company. They may have been a legitimate contender in the early days of the internet, but they need to update their system and educate their staff so they can actually answer customer questions.

SUPER SLOW DELIVERY!!! VERY RUDE CUSTOMER SERVICE (SARAH) PERSON THAT REPLIED TO ME!!! SENDING PRODUCT BACK IF IT EVER GETS HERE!😡

Fonality Review
Up until recently the Becker Law firm (BLF) had been a loyal customer of Fonality – Netfortis. We were leasing our phones through Fonality, paying $22.00 a month per phone since 2016. Over the course of four years, we paid $5,280 for these phones. However, when something happened to the phone or the phone quality was reduced, it was BLF’s problem and Fonality would not pay to them fixed. This is one of the reasons we ultimately chose to cancel our service with this company. After cancelation of the service we are required to return the phones which was not unusual.
During the four years that these phones were in use one of the phone’s was damaged, but it was still in working condition. Fonality/Netfortis wanted us to pay $375.00 for that phone. Not only was it four years old but, also that we had paid $1,056 for that phone over the course of its lifespan. After some research, the value of the telephone was less than $100.00. I called and spoke with a manager at Fonality/Netfortis. While she was pleasant to talk too it still took her days to try to get the matter resolved. When I told them that since I was going to have to buy the telephone, I wanted it returned they charged me to ship it back after I had to pay to ship the telephones to them.
During one of my phone calls with Fonality/Netfortis they left me on hold for over an hour, which is unacceptable by any standard. After being left on hold for that amount of time they denied my request to have the phone shipped back to me at cost to them.
The primary reason I cancelled my service with Fonality/Netfortis was cost. Our firm was their customer for over four (4) years and when I compared costs, I discovered that not only had the cost of this service declined over that period, but their new customers were paying significantly less than we were. When I inquired of my account representative if they could do something to bring my firm in line with what others in the industry were charging or what they charged new customers, I was told that if I were to go out and get a quote for a comparable service and submit it to them and they agreed that it was comparable, they would match that price. If I did not want to do that work, then they would give me a minimal price reduction but lock me into a long-term contract.
I found both of these options unsatisfactory. I did the research they suggested, found a different service provider with more features than Fonality/Netfortis and at a significantly lower cost. I then switched my service to this provider and have been happy. Overall, I am not happy with my service with Fonality/Netfortis and I will not recommend them to anyone.

They have horrible customer service. They absolutely could not get us up and running. They even acknowledged they were providing horrible care to us. Yet they are coming after our Agency for liquidated damages because our Agency owner was forced to cancel the service. He lost pay with employees. Missed business opportunities because they could not do there job. Also 99% of customer service agents can't speak English. Made it very challenging to communicate

Switched from them after yet another service outage. Best part? They wanted me to pay an exorbitant amount to get away from the services they said they would provide my agency but were unable to.

Don't even start with then. Hidden fees, all their features aren't included, and the customer service is non-existent.

To whom it many concern; I had a fonality phone system for over 5 years. During that time, the phone system would fail on an average of 5 times/week. It was often blamed on the "HUD". The customer service was inadequate. We would have to manually reboot the system sometimes as many as 3 times a day.
After five years, I notified Fonality that I was switching to a new company. I notified them over 2 months in advance. They claimed that the notification occurred within 30 days of the contract renewal date. They insisted I pay another year of service. My service was switched 2 months earlier. They did not recognize the service change as notification of service termination. They repeatedly tried to bill my credit card. After several failed attempts (I had to change the number to stop them), they relented.

I would never recommend this company to anyone. Do not use fonality. The product is poor. The service is poor. The corporate behavior is terrible. One of the worse companies I have worked with.

Fonality phone systems has totally changed the way we do business in my insurance agency. Being able to tie all 12 locations together by utilizing HUD was a true game changer for us. Before we switched we had to have more staff in each office to handle the call volume. Now all 12 offices can help answer our incoming calls.

The cost savings were also incredible....we were able to cut staffing due to the usage of the IVR. The IVR redirects over 2,000 calls per month to our 24/7 service center. We also saved over $250 per month off our phone bill by switching to VOIP.

Fonality has been a fantastic partner and easy to do business with as well. I highly recommend taking a look into Fonality as you look to improve your phone technology.

I have used Fonality in my own company as well as now providing their services to my clients. Fonality has made the installation of their product, porting of my existings numbers, and training of users a smooth flowing process. Fonality's customer support has been exceptional and kept downtime to a minimum.

Fonality is the first company that I recommend when I am asked for advice on a phone system.

We didn't have a phone system before so I don't have much to compare it to. We did our research and this seemed like the fit. It works great and we haven't had any problems. The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is because their website is not very user friendly.

Update: Beware with trying to leave them because they have your soul. You have a 30-day window to cancel your contract every year with Fonality so we have to pay a ton to cancel and pay some stupid cancellation fee. Since I left the review above the market has changed. There is by far better software out there. We switched to Toky.co over a year ago and it is so much better. I would also looking into Zoom's new phone system that can link up with physical phones. Stay

I work for a multi-national cloud based software solution company, and we utilize Fonality as our primary PBX with Fonality being the Hosted Server. We recently eclipsed the 100+ users plateau with Fonality. With features like Desktop HUD (Heads Up Display), HUD Web, HUD Mobile, and their Administrative Interface, the functionality is second to None! I can literally run the phone system from the Beach, which I have had to do in the past. It's really a tragedy living in Florida! But Seriously, the Account Management Team, Support Staff, System Engineers, Marketing Team, and Corporate Sales are all Great people deal with...

I have read all the reviews about Fonality, and many other PBXtra systems in our quest to stay ahead of the technology curve, and it's clear to me that we have made the right choice.

Take the system for a test-drive, and I think you will see for yourself how incredibly versatile it is. I'm completely happy with the system, and I think you will be too.

We have rolled this cloud based service to 4 of 17 locations so far with plans on more. At times there can be challenges but the 24x7 support has been responsive and very helpful - even on weekends.

Like any other VIOP system with lot's of capabilities there is a learning curve but the staff is helpful and the knowledge base deep. Make sure you have proper bandwidth and determine a compatible router.

Overall - A+

We have an on-premise PBX and use a local SIP carrier here in Canada. The hardware has been rock solid and we have tied 9 remote offices on to 1 phone system. The admin interface is well laid out and the Auto attendant is the most powerfully versatile design I have seen or used. The only reason I did not give 5 stars, is that there is always room for improvement.

1. Customer support is terrific but sometimes you must demand to speak to a higher tier to get an issue fixed. I have been working with the system long enough that I have gone through all the tier1 support stuff before calling.

2. It would be nice if you had 1 or 2 licensing streams as apposed to having to purchase add-ons. I purchased a 5 year contract and don't have access to new features, that were not available when we signed the contract.

That being said, after working with this system for the past 3 years I would recommend it to anyone. It just works.

The portable phones for this system did not hold up

I purchased a PBX server 10 years ago and I believe they no longer sell servers, but I had to trouble shoot things myself to get the system up and running. Due to a technical glitch with their software, I had to purchase support which was like $750 to sign up and $360 annually, just so they can answer my question about the initial setup.

I will not do any business with them and I would not recommend them to others.

I no longer use their server. There are many affordable open source alternatives for PBX servers. I got a grandstream which works pretty good. I can't speak about their hosted service.

.... My 2 cents.

We had a copier company "throw in" this Fonality phone system in with our copier lease. It was supposed to be for free but as the old saying goes, NOTHING is EVER free. Soon after we signed the contract we started getting hit with the "maintenance" contract invoices. That's how this company can get away with saying it's inexpensive or "free". Fraudulent business practice if you really want to boil it down to ethics but unfortunately not illegal.
To top it off, Fonality sent some rep here to help set us up and what a joke he was! We had to call him back a few months later with another issue and again his professionalism was sorely lacking. We have since gone online and figured out what we need to survive until this awful lease is up and then we can get a system that actually fits what we need.

When we moved into a new building, our then-IT guy chose Fonality because it was a free tool and supported the functionality that we needed. However, we have since outsourced its management to a Fonality specialist at a third-party IT companhy and spent thousands of dollars on its maintenance, because our current IT person, our CTO, our SysAdmin, and our Head of Product -- all who are highly technical and understand database structures, etc. -- found the interface to update the system too confusing and frustrating to use. If we did not have sub-tenants who relied on its functionality, our company would move off of Fonality onto another provider stat.

Best voip phone system out there!!! Great service & awesome features!!!

Fonality is easy to use and provides functionality that is not available in any other system on the market.

If your system are working fine, way yo need to pay 1,200 or more dollars on a maintenance. It does not work good for remote extensions, there is a lot of Ghost calls and in some countries could not use the service because it only speak english

We probably move to another system if this fails.
We didn't do it because of the phones but this next time we will definitely do it.