Nextiva Review

• Features
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• Likes
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• Dislikes
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• Customer Reviews
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• Where to Buy

Editor’s Rating:

Avg. User Rating:

Overall

Nextiva Features/Benefits

Nextiva was founded in 2005 and is based in Scottsdale, AZ. We found it very hard to find much "bad" chatter out there about them while writing this review, and while that isn’t always an indicator about a company, it does seem like any company’s unhappy customers usually are their most vocal. While talking with Nextiva, they stated that providing top notch customer service is always one of their top priorities. You get the option of either Usage Based – Nextiva Connect or Flat Rate – Nextiva Office plans.

Although Nextiva may be lacking in the some of the more "advanced" features such as true ACD queuing, and for some reason they aren’t currently offering Vanity Numbers, they do have most of the features any small business will find necessary, and quite a few that are just plain "cool" – such as their unlimited minutes plans on Nextiva Connect.

Likes

Unlimited Minutes: With Nextiva Connect Unlimited you get all the features of a virtual pbx, AND unlimited minutes for as low as $69.95/month. Right now, RingCentral and Phone.com are the only other vendors we have reviewed that offer unlimited minutes.

Nextiva Office provides Flat Rate Plans: With Nextiva Office you can get flat monthly rate plans based on the number of users/lines you want. You get all of the features of Nextiva Connect(virtual pbx) and Nextiva vFax bundled in as well. You can purchase optional high quality business VoIP phones from Cisco or Polycom.

Customer Support: This isn’t necessarily a “like” but more of a clarification. Although their website states that they offer customer support from 6am until 6pm Scottsdale AZ, time, and some websites have “dinged” them for not offering 24/7 customer support, they do indeed offer 24/7 support. We had a discussion with the guys at Nextiva and this was one of the topics that we brought up. They stated that they in fact have a service that will answer any calls after the standard 6am to 6pm time-frame and then forward the call the the appropriate support person as necessary. Although this is less than ideal in terms of a true support-desk, they state they are committed to customer support and as their customer base grows and customer support needs change, they will definitely be changing their customer support setup. You can view this as a "like" or "dislike"… we see this as a company making the best use of their current resources, while keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s going on knowing it will have to change at some point in the near future.

Month to Month – No Contracts: You are not locked into any type of contact if you don’t want one. You can pay month to month and cancel at any time.

Dedicated Porting Department: They have a department dedicated to porting existing numbers. This makes it easier and quicker to port your existing local and toll free numbers from your existing phone service provider to Nextiva.

Dislikes

Internet Fax as Separate Service: With Nextiva if you want internet faxing, you must purchase their vFax service in order to get it. This is unfortunate because RingCentral also has a separate faxing solution, however if you purchase any of their hosted pbx solutions you do not have purchase the faxing solution separately in order to get the internet faxing ability.

Only 1 Incoming Line: Nothing new here! We have “dinged” most of the vendors on this one. Phone.com and Grasshopper are the only two that offer more than 1 incoming line on most of their plans. With most small businesses wanting both an 800 number and a local number, it would be nice to see more vendors offer at least 2 incoming lines as a default without an additional monthly charge being applied… at least at their higher end plans.

Lower Minutes on Nextiva Connect: Their minutes are little on the lower side until you get to the unlimited plan and then the price is a bit higher.

No Vanity Numbers: They currently are not offering Vanity Numbers. We find this a bit odd… and does put them a bit at a disadvantage in regards to their competitors who all offer this service. We suspect this will be something they will be offering before long.

No Support for Canada: Because of the way they support enhanced 911 or E-911 they currently do not support Canada. Phone.com also supports E-911 but does it in a way that also allows them to support Canada customers as well. So there are ways around this.

  Where to Buy

• Try Nextiva Connect Today!

• Try Nextiva Office Today!

  Summary

All in all Nextiva appears to be going through a growth period, however we’ve not seen many new features added to their Connect product in the last year. They still do not support Vanity numbers, and internet faxing is still a separate solution you must purchase. For the price we feel there may be better solutions available at this time.

Their Nextiva Office product is competitively priced and you get their vFax service bundled with it for free, but a significant drawback we see is that they limit you to absolutely no toll free minutes – all toll free minutes are billed at 2.5¢.