Top 3 VoIP Phone Systems

There are many brands of VoIP Telephone Systems on the market. Also, there are essentially two different types of systems – Cloud, or hosted, VoIP and premise based VoIP phone systems. This article will focus on the premise based solutions. With all of the different brands it can be difficult to decide which one is the best solution for your office. Top brand names such as Cisco, Avaya, Shoretel, Mitel, and others are always on the forefront of businesses selection process. But out of all of these manufacturers which ones are considered the best? Below we have compiled the top three, not in any particular order.

1. ShoreTel

ShoreTel is widely considered top of the market place for VoIP telephone solutions. The ShoreTel unified communications system scales from a small business size of 5 telephones all the way to over 20,000 telephones – without having to replace any hardware.  ShoreTel utilizes custom appliances called ShoreGear switches for all of the mission critical pieces of the system. All call processing and tear down takes place in these ShoreGear switches.

2. Cisco

Cisco is known as the “gold standard” to most IT professionals, and their voice solution is no different. Cisco is the leading manufacturer of data and voice over IP solutions in the enterprise market. Generally speaking, Cisco requires that all switches, phones, and other data equipment on the network be Cisco branded as well. This can be good as it provides a holistic solution, but it can also limit the IT professional by keeping them locked into equipment that may cost more than other brands, such as HP switches or less expensive SIP phones.

3. Avaya

Avaya has the most installed VoIP phone systems on the market. However, most of these are hybrid systems utilizing digital telephones with the VoIP phone system, the Avaya IP Office. The Avaya solution is a good value as the main components are built into the IPOffice 500V2 appliance. A range of VoIP, SIP, and Digital telephones work with this system, making it a good value for someone upgrading their older Avaya/Lucent/ATT or Nortel phone system.