Mitel MiCloud Business
When you’re running a small to mid-sized business (SMB), every penny counts. So as you peruse phone system, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), provider options, it is crucial to consider how much you want to spend and what features your employees will need to access.
Mitel MiCloud Business may not be one of the biggest names in the space, but it is a compelling alternative to those that are. Plus, with three different plans to choose from for each employee, Mitel MiCloud Business gives companies the flexibility to decide for themselves which features are essential on an individual worker basis.
Stacked with cutting-edge collaboration tools that you can access on everything from your work computer to your smartphone, it’s easy to make a case for Mitel MiCloud Business. And it’s even easier to set it all up, assuming you have the right hardware for the job.
Pricing and key features
As we mentioned before, Mitel MiCloud Business comes in three distinct flavors, each of which has its own unique price point. The most affordable option is the MiCloud Essentials plan which, as its name suggests, entitles you to all the basic features that most employees will find to be more than enough.
With the Essentials package, you get unlimited calling minutes per month, PBX features, video and audio conferencing with up to eight people and – conveniently enough – integration with both Microsoft Outlook and Google G-Suite. And it doesn’t stop there. On top of all that, you can access all of Mitel’s own collaboration tools and the mobile app, for taking all of your work along for the ride when you’re traveling about.
Mitel MiCloud Essentials costs $23.99 (£18.47) per user per month, according to Mitel’s price estimator utility. Its other features include instant messaging, four-way desktop screen sharing, Softphone, Connect Telephony for Microsoft and an admin portal for managing all of that. For employees that need a little more than that, Mitel recommends the Premier package, which we also found was the best value.
For $30.39 (£23.40) per user per month, the Premier package goes a step further to satisfy your business needs. It has everything that’s included in the Essentials package but adds in Salesforce and CRM integrations, speech-to-text transcriptions of your voicemails and on-demand call recording. Meanwhile, video conferencing capacity goes up to 12 people at a time while audio conferencing and desktop screen sharing go up to 25 people.
At the top of the chain is the Elite package, which might appeal more to midsized businesses than small ones. Audio conferencing and screen sharing get boosted to 100-party limits, video conferencing jumps up to 24 users at a time and you can expect three major additional features as well. These are: always-on call recording, archiving and an operator. For companies that want to avoid missed calls at all costs, the $43.99 (£33.87) price tag may very well be worth it.
The best part about all of these packages is that businesses can pick and choose which employees get which plan. Unlike some of the other VoIP options out there, it’s not a one-click ‘apply all’ situation. You can purchase the Essentials plan for 50 people, the Premiere plan for 30 people and the Elite plan for just one executive if that’s what you want. You don’t have to be cornered into buying the same product for the entire staff.
Final verdict
To distinguish itself from some of the chief players in the VoIP market, Mitel MiCloud Business bears an array of features you won’t commonly find elsewhere. All three plans have mobile twinning, for example; that is, the ability to link your cell number to your work extension. You can also customize your hold music and set it up so that all of your voicemails are transcribed and subsequently emailed to you.
However, most of the features we found from competing VoIP providers such as RingCentral Office and 8x8 Virtual Office Pro are accessible with Mitel MiCloud Business too. Things like auto attendant, rerouting during off hours, call forwarding, call holding and call parking are all in place. What’s more, like Virtual Office Pro, MiCloud Business has contact center capabilities. There’s also a web client in case you don’t want to download and install the desktop or mobile apps.
Moreover, creating and managing users in MiCloud Business is relatively painless. Once you’re in the Management Portal, you can click and drag to add, modify or delete users. This is a little different from what we experienced with RingCentral (For Business) where creating a new user requires that you go through five different windows.
Though its pricing could be more aggressive, Mitel MiCloud Business proves itself as a viable contender for your next VoIP provider. Now with voicemail-to-text functionality and full CRM integration, not to mention some pretty nifty smartphone compatibility, Mitel MiCloud Business is feature-packed and easy to use. And, if its suits your business’s needs, you can buy all of your hardware straight from Mitel. It’s a one-stop shop.
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