A solid VoIP product with a good set of features and competitive pricing, Dialpad is a great example of the melding of web and VoIP technologies. Excellent call portability and the ability to integrate tightly with other office apps make this a platform to consider.
Cloud-based, business-grade voice over IP (VoIP) services add a whole new dimension to the idea of call portability, meaning the ability to conduct the same voice conversation across multiple devices. This growing trend gives rise to platforms such as Dialpad, which was called Switch.co until March of 2016 (and begins at $15 per user per month) . Dialpad can be used entirely via the web or across a variety of softphone and hardware telephony devices. It offers a feature set that’s comparable to any of the other business-grade telephony providers we’ve reviewed. You can move calls from one device to another and choose how you want to answer and place calls by default. Only a slightly lean customer support policy and some feature lags in call monitoring keep it behind Editors’ Choice winner Fonality Hosted PBX.
Tight integration with the rest of your communication platforms such as Google G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 bring an even higher level of interaction to your daily tasks. Once properly configured (which company reps claim they’ll be doing for you) , Dialpad can send voicemails to your email inbox where you can listen without having to do anything beyond clicking on a link. Integration with services such as LinkedIn and Salesforce makes your sales team even more productive.
Dialpad offers a free 30-day trial of their product with a simple sign-up on their website. If you just want to give it a try, you can sign up online and immediately get started. The trick here is to specify a company size of less than five and your trial will be automatically approved. For more than five employees, a representative will contact you to walk you through the setup process and answer any questions you might have. The normal customer proof-of-concept (POC) experience includes interaction with a Dialpad engineer and a network assessment test to identify potential showstopper issues. Based on our testing of this and other business VoIP providers, we’d highly recommend suffering through the network assessment. Tracking network issues is no one’s idea of a party, but voice traffic is sensitive to network issues that other software won’t even notice. Finding and being prepared for such issues during testing is far better than discovering them on rollout day, and having Dialpad engineers walking you through this process will make it much easier than it might otherwise be.
My test environment utilizes a desktop, laptop, and smartphone. The desktop machine is a one-year-old Dell XPS desktop running Windows 10 Anniversary Edition with an Intel Core i7 processor, 32 GB of memory, and a 250GB SSD system disk. The internet connection is provided by Charter Cable and typically delivers download speeds in excess of 60 Mbps plus upload speeds of over 5.5 Mbps. The laptop is a Lenovo Yoga that also has an Intel Core i7 processor and 16 GB of memory running the same Windows 10 Anniversary Edition. An LG G3 Android smartphone is my primary mobile phone and served as the test device for this review.
You’ll find mobile applications for Android and iOS in the appropriate app stores for each platform. I quickly found and downloaded the Android app by for Dialpad in the Google Play store. Once the app installs, you must log in to your account to get started. Businesses can transfer an existing phone number, request a toll-free number, or even get a vanity number. I did struggle a bit at first with some of the default settings for caller ID and dialing preferences, which means non-IT users will likely have even more problems. But, once I figured out what it was I wanted, I was then able to change those settings to match my desired experience.
Dialpad provides a lengthy list of features that, for the most part, match those of the other VoIP products in this roundup. Incoming calls ring on all of your registered devices simultaneously. It’s also possible to transfer calls to a different device should you need to transition between your desk and a mobile phone. Presence management is a feature that indicates when a Dialpad user is available by using a green dot beside the contact listing to indicate availability, with other dot colors representing busy or offline. That’s not something all the other providers offer, notably the smaller players such as Citrix Grasshopper. One thing we would have liked to have seen more of was a deeper feature set around call monitoring. Dialpad offers call recording, which would let you play back a customer service or sales call after the fact but that’s it at the moment. Other players include the ability to either record or listen in on calls without either the company’s agent or the customer being aware. That can be invaluable for training and customer service quality monitoring.
Voicemails show up in the Dialpad app in your inbox with text transcription and an audio widget to play the recorded message. Voicemails are also sent to your email inbox with the same transcription and a link to play the recording. I found the text transcription to be not quite as accurate as Google voice’s but usable. Dialpad states in the email «Voicemail transcripts are an experiment. They might not be perfect yet.»
The video calling feature works from desktop or laptop and allows either participant to share their screen. I found the experience similar to Microsoft Skype or Google Hangouts with good fidelity when using the laptop. I did notice some minor lag in the video updating when displaying a high contrast screen but it wasn’t too distracting. Overall, the video experience was favorable though not always 100 percent when using Wi-Fi.
Collaboration is another area in which Dialpad doesn’t address directly, but instead relies on third-party providers. Some leading players, such as Fonality and even 8×8 Virtual Office Pro, offer web-based conferencing clients that allow for document sharing and collaboration in addition to hosting meetings with multiple participants. You can do this with Dialpad, but you’ll need to integrate with a web conferencing client for now, or use Dialpad’s separate UberConference platform, which is decent and allows you to share your screen, although it doesn’t offer the ability to jointly edit documents and apparently only works on Google Chrome. It’s not a bad service but be sure it meets your needs before settling on it. Dialpad offers plenty of feature tours and trial experiences to make this easy.
Dialpad’s web portal uses a clean and easy-to-navigate interface that’s similar to many consumer-grade websites today. Management functions are grouped together under headings including Office, Departments, Call Queues, Analytics, and Billing. The Your Settings heading includes personal information such as phone numbers, caller ID settings, voicemail greeting, device preferences, and Executive Admin, which a set of features reserved for those employees charged with administering the Dialpad system in your business. The Your Devices section lists all devices connected to your Dialpad account and lets you choose which ones to ring. You can also add a forwarding number or desk phone. Dialpad uses the concept of an executive assistant to designate someone to receive any incoming calls for that person.
I had no problems creating call routing rules from the Main Line settings menu.
