Allworx 6x Review

My company has been actively using an Allworx 6x since 2008, during which time we have always been using a SIP trunk for calling and have been with bandwidth.com as our primary provider.  There are so many problems we have encountered over the years with so many caveats that it won’t help to review the old information except to say we have burned too much time working with Allworx idiosyncrosies over the years.

Pros:

  1. A solid, local hardware solution with programmability to work with hard lines, SIP trunks and a great deal of programmability on the phones.
  2. The phones have programmable buttons with multiple colors such that you can see messages, other lines busy or a variety of other functions.
  3. Many improvements over the years have led to a mature architecture that does 95% of what we want to do.
  4. The handset call quality is generally good and the basic phone function allows for an efficient workflow with call staff and regular staff.

Cons:

  1. Redundancy is an afterthought and support is little help.  I want to buy a solution using a SIP trunk that can failover from one connection to another easily with a high quality, multi-wan router sitting in front of the Allworx. Due to the way the Allworx is programmed and it’s SIP packets are handled, a solid solution does not exist.  The result is unreliable phone service if you have an unreliable connection.  If this one issue were dealt with, my happiness with this system would improve greatly.
  2. The phones are outlandishly expensive for the quality you get.  Many phone models are not duplex despite marketing claims.  I spent more money adding phones for several offices this year than some entire systems cost with more phones in total.
  3. Poor documentation for various features.
  4. When we bought this system in 2008, we were using ringcentral with many issues.  As cloud services have matured, the need for a local PBX has diminished.  The benefits of a local PBX do still exist but they come at greater cost that must be weighed more carefully now.

Conclusion:

The Allworx system is generally competent and worth a solid look.  Were I starting my company today and faced with the same decision I was faced with in 2008, I believe I would choose a cloud based service.  The lack of redundancy, difficult to navigate or unhelpful support and high cost (once phones and features are included) prevent the Allworx 6x from competing with now mature cloud based phone systems.  During this same time, the cloud services have themselves matured and now offer similar or better reliability and features at a lower price point.

With traditional hard lines instead of a SIP trunk, the Allworx 6x would gain reliability but lose flexibility at which point my conclusion remains the same.

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