Cisco Unified Communications Manager

4.3
Overall rating
Reviews

4.3
Overall rating
Reviews

About Cisco Unified Communications Manager

Cisco Unified Communications Manager is a platform for integrating business communication technologies such as telephony, video conferencing, presence information, call recording, web conferencing and messaging. It enables administrators to control unified communications infrastructure supporting a large number of users making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. Cisco Unified Communications Manager allows businesses to manage their communications networks, administer user settings for a variety of collaboration tools and extend these tools to mobile devices. It also enables video capabilities for contact centers. Cisco offers an API that helps developers create new applications. Additionally, Cisco Unified Communications Manager allows end-users to manage their own settings using an application or an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu. The system is available in a number of licensing bundles. User Connect Licensing allows organizations to purchase user licenses for single applications. Unified Workspace Licensing offers bundled collaboration tools priced according to the number of users.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - Automatic call routing configuration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - End user configuration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - IP phone configuration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - Call recording settings
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - Microsoft Lync configuration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - SIP trunk configuration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - Automatic call routing configuration - thumbnail
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - End user configuration - thumbnail
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - IP phone configuration - thumbnail
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - Call recording settings - thumbnail
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - Microsoft Lync configuration - thumbnail
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Software - SIP trunk configuration - thumbnail

Cisco Unified Communications Manager pricing

Cisco Unified Communications Manager does not have a free version but does offer a free trial.

Starting Price:
Not provided by vendor
Free Version:
No
Free trial:
Yes

Alternatives to Cisco Unified Communications Manager

Cisco Secure Endpoint

4.7 (13 Reviews)
Cisco Secure Endpoint is an advanced malware protection solution that helps enterprises secure emails, web traffic and...

Microsoft Teams

4.5 (9844 Reviews)
Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based group chat solution that helps teams collaborate on documents. Its key features...

Zoom Events and Webinars

4.7 (6015 Reviews)
Zoom Webinars is great for single-session large broadcasts. The product is flexible giving you the ability to easily...

Google Classroom

4.6 (2850 Reviews)
Google Classroom is a web-based education management platform designed for academic purposes. It facilitates educational...

Avaya Cloud Office

4.2 (41 Reviews)
Avaya Cloud Office is a cloud-based communications and collaboration solution designed for small to midsize businesses. ...

Webex Suite

4.4 (7425 Reviews)
Webex brings together Calling, Meeting and Messaging modes of collaboration into a seamless, engaging, inclusive and...

3CX

4.4 (440 Reviews)
3CX is a business communication platform that helps businesses streamline calling, video, and live chat. The platform...

8x8 Work

4.0 (306 Reviews)
Experience seamless collaboration with 8x8 Work. 8x8 Work is an all-in-one collaboration hub for phone, video, and...

11Sight

4.7 (82 Reviews)
Very few organizations pay attention to optimizing the customer journey from the first engagement. Even though, your...

OnSIP

4.7 (69 Reviews)
OnSIP Hosted OnSIP Hosted VoIP by Junction Networks is a cloud-based phone solution that offers businesses across...

ULTATEL Cloud Business Phone System

4.7 (40 Reviews)
ULTATEL enables people to work together and get the information they need to do their best work, anywhere they...

WeKall

4.5 (39 Reviews)
Designed for businesses of all sizes, WeKall is a cloud-based telephony solution that helps configure call campaigns...

iotum

5 (19 Reviews)
iotum’s white-label platform gives you complete customization of the video and voice experience without building it...

Cloudya

4 (19 Reviews)
NFON provides Business Solutions for Smart Communication. Cloud-powered suite bringing Voice and video calls, customer...

Wildix

4 (5 Reviews)
Wildix is a global provider of unified communications solutions that enhance the simplicity, security and functionality...

Browse Cisco Unified Communications Manager Reviews

75 of 75 reviews
Sort by:
Amey M.
Amey M.
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 2/12/2024

Cisco UCS easy to integrate

I used it since last 8 years for multiple clients. It's user interface is very smooth and easy to use.

Pros

The easiest way to manage users from single console. It is very compatible and easy to integrate with all types of other voice softwares.

Cons

Its console is user friendly but the relations between user creation and the phone ID assignment is difficult to understand.

Oscar
Oscar
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 20/8/2021

Call Manager - Good for medium and large companies

In general I liked it.
I stayed in version 11.5 and it works very well, it still has support and I can upgrade phone firmwares without problem.
I think I will stick with this version for a bit longer before migrating to a subscription scheme with the new licensing.

Pros

The versatility of the tool is what we like the most. It supports all protocols and is easy to integrate with third parties. Policies can be created very easily and user control is simplified with the integration to LDAP.

Cons

Being able to upgrade software and IOS is no longer so simple.
The new version 12 and 14 no longer support perpetual licensing.
I think this is something that will affect small clients and will be very limited in the future.

Alternatives Considered

Avaya Cloud Office

Reasons for Switching to Cisco Unified Communications Manager

In itself it is much more versatile and allows a simpler growth. It is very easy to add new nodes with the same licenses and maintain a diversified high availability scheme across multiple remote offices. Other vendors do not offer this versatility.
Kaung Khant
  • Industry: Telecommunications
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 23/12/2024

Cisco CUCM: Balancing Power with Complexity in Enterprise Communications

For my overall experience with CUCM, it's literally positive with its robust of advanced telephony features, strong security features, reliability, stability, integration capabilities, scalability and flexibility. I also strongly appreciate its cisco support and documentation too.

Pros

I like most about CUCM are its robust of advanced telephony features including call control, voice and video conferencing, mobility and more can meet the diverse communication needs of large enterprises. And I also love its high reliability and stability ensuring minimal downtime and consistent service quality.

Cons

A little bit complexity in configuration and management than other vendors.

Cynthia
Cynthia
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
2
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
2
Customer Support
4

2
Reviewed on 29/5/2018

GUI Interface is not that intuitive. Requires a lot of patience and time to read user manuals.

Pros

I will have to admit that as long as you have a service contract with Cisco, they have excellent customer service. They've resolved many issues for us that were mission critical. But this is strictly for the CUCM itself. If you need help with specific physical phones, that requires a separate service contract and they will NOT help you.

Cons

I do not like that there is no consistent way in knowing which DID phone numbers have already been used and which ones are available. The biggest issue I have is when I think a phone number is available to assign to staff person, but often times that same number is being used as a voicemail box only for messages. Since the voicemail system is different, I have to constantly check both systems as well as a spreadsheet we have to ensure the phone number I'm assigning is actually available for use. Plus, we have several different call blocks so I never know which prefix goes with which extension. CUCM does not show the full phone number, only the last 4 digits. So unless you have running documentation knowing all the phone numbers in your call blocks, it's not very intuitive.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Food Production
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 30/4/2024

Awesome platform for communication

Wonderful IPT plaform for corporate/ business requirements that must ensure a reliable and secure communication platform. It matches the standard/ typical use cases for phone communications, and it can be scaled up to meet more complex requirements such as intelligent call routing/ multi-channel interaction (advanced contact center us cases).

The implementation of the on-prem Cisco gateway and physical phones is easy. You may also just select the cloud-based service (Cisco Webex app on your PC) in case you are not interested in increasing the 'physical footprint/ hardware'.

Pros

Very professional/ corporate-oriented portfolio.
Very nice quality (audio) and products evolution on the last years.
Great integrations with Cisco UCCX/ Finesse for contact center/ intelligent call routing and multi-channel support.
Easy to deploy.
Robust solution for business environments.

Cons

Licensing tiering is sometimes complex to comprehend.
Support contracts a bit too expensive in some ocassions.

Justin
Justin
  • Industry: Banking
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 2/11/2018

Enterprise Banking VoIP Solution

We have a very complex design of 4 clusters implementing 10 digit dialing scheme for everything nationwide. We were able to accomplish this with CUCM and it's extremely granular configuration ability.

Pros

I have been administering Unified Communications Manager for almost 10 years . The stability of CUCM is unrivaled. The uptime of our voice environment in the last 4 years has been over 99.99% with the only downtime being due to patch/security updates and maintenance. I sleep well at night knowing that our environment is stable.

Cons

The only complaints that I've had about CUCM have all been addressed in newer versions. The complexity of licensing was addressed with Enterprise License Manager. The difficulty of upgrades was addressed with Prime Collaboration Deployment. It's very difficult to find any cons with the current version of CUCM.

Javier
Javier
  • Industry: Telecommunications
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 4/10/2019

Excellent Call Control with multiple advanced telephony functions.

Cisco Unified Comminication Manager already has many years in the market and is an excellent solution for IP telephony in small, medium or large companies, since it adapts to any type of company. It also allows you to gradually add more features with other solutions that are integrated natively.

Pros

The best thing about Cisco Unified Comminication Manager is the possibility of having any type of phone registered even from third parties. It brings many features that help users to move in and out of the company. It also allows you to incorporate collaboration tools, Video Conference, Voice Mail, etc. All integrated

Cons

Some traditional functions of telephone exchanges do not have them, however it is possible to incorporate them but with the development of third parties.

Juan Carlos
Juan Carlos
  • Industry: Entertainment
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
1
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
1
Customer Support
0

3
Reviewed on 25/4/2018

Great and robust product, however is for advanced users

If you are looking for a robust and secure communication solution, it's great, I would only advise against its reporting.

Pros

It's a good product, high quality, and very robust security-wise, it has all the tools and functionalities for your communication needs, I used it personally for a Call Center and I had little to no downtime.

Cons

I really disliked its reporting system, is not user friendly also cisco does not allow you to tamper its software and it makes it really difficult to extract valuable information for analysis.

Abigail
Abigail
  • Industry: Investment Management
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 17/4/2018

Cisco's Unified Communications Manager made my workplace phone system so much easier to...

This software helped me to control and organize my phone system according to my business and even my employees.

Pros

The aspect I like the most about this software is that I can control every phone in the office. If I want only 3 people's phones to ring when a main line call comes in, I can do that. If I want to group certain phones to roll over certain calls, I can do that as well.

Cons

One con about this software is that without instruction, you would never be able to use it. Written instructions are simply too complicated and there are a lot of shortcuts, tips, and tricks you can learn by having a cisco rep come out! However..it is time consuming!

Ali
Ali
  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 17/9/2018

The most powerfull tool

I work for more than 10 years with systems associated with the UCM and I present few failures and these were never associated with the software was hardware or bad configuration, really excellent.

Pros

Its stability is impressive, practically without maintenance it is able to work a lot of time.

Cons

At present, a state of maturity has been achieved that allows it to be one of the best in the market, although it requires a little more time than other brands.

Omar
  • Industry: Plastics
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 25/7/2019

Excellent sound quality and very reliable

We needed to renew our old communication manager and decided to evaluate IP telephony, we reviewed several options and Cisco was the one we liked the most. Cisco allows us to have IP phones, analog phones, PC clients and other collaboration tools.

We migrated from another brand to Cisco and the voice quality improved a lot.

We have remote offices to which we send telephone extensions through a VPN, and it is totally imperceptible to our clients due to the high quality of the voice. It allows us to be in contact between offices with calls, video calls or through the internal messenger (Cisco Jabber) We can receive directly voice mail in our email.

Pros

This Call Manager is the best we have ever had, the voice quality is unbeatable even in remote offices connected by VPN, 100% recommended. It is a very good investment. Allows you to consolidate the telecommunications infrastructure.

With video calls it allows us to place a camera phone in a boardroom and directors make calls to this room for meetings and it's as if they were there saving us travel expenses.

This tool is very complete, we have Cisco Unity Connection (Voice Mail) and Cisco IM and Presence. It allows us to have the phones installed in a PC with a client on windows without losing quality in the calls, and even make video calls from the PC.

Cons

The cost of licenses or phones are a little high and sometimes limits you a little to take better advantage of their capabilities.

Brian
Brian
  • Industry: Construction
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
2
Customer Support
4

5
Reviewed on 8/8/2017

I have over 17 years in VoIP. Cisco Call Manager has been the best product I have ever used.

A fully enterprise level VoIP phone system that allows our company to configure to our needs.

Pros

The software is completely customizable. Cisco has made every effort to supply a fully feature rich platform that can be configured for any situation or use. Call Manager can be setup for multitenancy. Features and support for new technologies are being added on a regular basis. Cisco technical support is knowledgeable and quick to respond.

Cons

Licensing is very expensive. There are multiple licensing options that can be difficult to understand.

Marsha
  • Industry: Government Administration
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 7/3/2018

A very reliable and stable solution which we are have been using for years

I like that the solution is fully featured, we currently use this solution and have been for years and must say it is very reliable and stable. CM is fully featured and is a flexible IP telephony solution. We have it across multiple sites, with publisher and subscriber the solution provides full redundancy in the event of a disaster. The phone deployment is quick and simple, and bulk imports make large scale deployment of telephony endpoints quick and seamless. It is helpful to consult with another organization to construct a plan and design prior to implementation.

Cons

It takes some training and continuous use to fully master CM as it is not very simple at first. It is helpful to consult with another organization to construct a plan and design prior to implementation. Once you have been using CM for sometime you become more comfortable with the solution and deployment. The licensing model can become costly and upgrade can at times get complicated.

Dominic
  • Industry: Transportation/Trucking/Railroad
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 27/6/2018

Unified Communications Manager is a great product!

It is such a great product that I will definitly recommand the product.

Pros

Really stable product
Cluster mode
Rich in feature
Flexible to meet your needs
As it is popular it is easy to find support
TAC support is normally really good

Cons

Miss some feature here and there
Not much monitoring included you have to buy 3rd party tools
As it is not complete with Monitoring or even easy of use platform to create phone the Value for the money spend is OK but surely not good.

Matthew
  • Industry: Philanthropy
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
0

5
Reviewed on 29/3/2018

Very happy with Cisco

Pros

We have used a variety of Cisco products and their communication manager fit well with our organization. We make a ton of calls and this simplified the process and allowed our users to have high quality calls.

Cons

We haven't had any major issues. In fact we generally solve all IT issues internally without using customer support so I'm not even sure how they do on the support side. The issues are usually minor.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Banking
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 25/5/2019

It is practical to communicate with company employees, however there are line problems.

I use Cisco communication everyday to ask some questions about the tasks to another employee.

Pros

I like most to communicate with team members. I can solve my problems quickly over Cisco.

Cons

Sometimes, when another employee call another one, that call comes to me.

Jeff
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
2
Customer Support
2

3
Reviewed on 7/6/2017

workforce admin

Pros

Desktop softphone somewhat easy to use and admin for end users. Mirrors existing hard phone system.

Cons

Difficult to manage call flows. skill change tools limited. Easy to add skills to agents, but difficult to remove skills from groups of agents.

Evaggelia
  • Industry: Primary/Secondary Education
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
0

4
Reviewed on 20/9/2018

Cisco Unified Communications solutions has the solution for any type of communication

Pros

I like the fact that there are certified partners all over the world that are willing to help you choose the right product and to make it work effectively. There are products for every need. Every school small or big can make the proper choice to buy a tool that supports the synchonous or asynchronous comunication or both among students, parents and teachers, and share docs and presentations to collaborate as if it is face to face meeting and not only!

Cons

While comunicating and presenting may appear a delay. The presenter needs some time to make someone else presenter. Some docs need to be converted in order to appear properly to everyone.The prize is a bit high.

praveen
  • Industry: Government Administration
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 18/12/2020

Cisco unifed communication manager

Pros

IT saves a lot of time when you have large number of hosts .use host profiles and apply on the other host using cisco UCS

Cons

if there is a bug in the host profile it will be applied to all the hosts . need to be very careful when creating host profile

Eric
  • Industry: Hospital & Health Care
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
0

5
Reviewed on 5/6/2018

Cisco Communications Manager Review

Pros

This is a product that is easy to use, and very user friendly. No one on my team has ever had a complaint about it.

Cons

I can't think of anything that I've disliked this product. In my opinion, it is exactly what a mid- or high-volume Call/Contact Center needs.

Tina
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 29/1/2018

Great experience!

Pros

The UCM is feature rich and full of functionality. It's a bit of a beast so, I suggest educating yourself on the product or partnering with a company to manage it. It's been very reliable.

Cons

Big learning curve. It's beneficial to work with an engineer that's familiar with the system since there is so much to it.

Antonio
  • Industry: Education Management
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 26/3/2018

Excellent program for phone calls

Optimize the cost of phone calls

Pros

Excellent program for telephone calls includes many features with Cisco IP Phones and with good voice modulation

Cons

Although it is a very good program, it is closed some voice protocols like SIP, it is very proprietary of cisco and you need hardware of CISCO System

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 5/3/2019

Cisco CUCM Review

I am a network engineer with 6 year experiences. I used some IP pbx like avaya, alcatel and cisco.

Pros

Easy web interface, easy configuration. limitation for different user types like administrator or helpdesk personel.

Cons

There are a lot of bugs and you should fix them periodically.

Larry
  • Industry: Primary/Secondary Education
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 6-12 months
  • Review Source
Value for Money
2
Functionality
2
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
1

3
Reviewed on 15/6/2017

Cisco Unified Communications Manger is a wste

Pros

Cisco Unified Communications Manager is an okay product but is incredibly not user friendly. It's scalable, but not worth it.

Cons

The user interface is not very intuitive for many users. It is overly complex and hard to use for most users. It also require many many clicks to complete simple tasks.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Telecommunications
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 6-12 months
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
0

5
Reviewed on 28/11/2018

Unified Communications Manager Review

Excellent.

Pros

Easy Deployment (Solutions for small and large offices).

Cons

Licensing Model for ordering the solution

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
3

3
Reviewed on 28/1/2019

Communication Manager Best Choice of Tomorrows Telecom Needs

its easy to use
Its easy to Configure
Its pride using CM 10 and CM 11 for MP and Presence feature

Pros

1) Its HW Specific , it can be customized either to work on Appliance or in Virtual Environment
2)Main Advantage is that its Converged i.e. Voice and Data One One Single CISCO Network
3) Its Product Portfolio makes you to take immediate Decision either CM on Router or On Server or on VM.
4) SIP integration is Some What Tricky but stable
5)REAL Unified Communication Comes on Track When Presence , MP need to integrates and System Proves its Capability as VALUE FOR MONEY.

Cons

1) System Should prompt to next Section and Next Section if to implement Features and Programming.
2) By making this it will be More Easy to implement fast and Compete other Brands

Megan
  • Industry: Defense & Space
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
0

4
Reviewed on 20/1/2023

Solid product

Pros

For only $20 per month you get a solid web conferencing platform with easy-to-use administrative tools.

Cons

Each license is a bit expensive given that you only get the basic features with each one.

Chirag
  • Industry: Insurance
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
4

5
Reviewed on 12/2/2021

Reliable phone system

Overall, Cisco Unified Communication Manager was one of the most stable products that we didn't have to worry about at all. It powered our VoIP communication, voicemail delivery by email, allowed us to automate certain feature changes and more. It was rich in feature and features were hard to find. We stayed with default feature-set as much as possible.

Pros

Cisco's unified communication manager is rock solid once set up. You won't have to worry about this system going down. We used it on-prem. While it has a lot of capabilities, we used only fraction of it. They also have APIs you could use to communicate programmatically and change ring groups/hunt groups, round-robin and more. It takes a while to master the features.

Cons

The user interface has not been thought through very well. It looks old school. In today's day and age where the user interface design is clean, well-organized and easy to find, Cisco's Unified Communication Manager looks clunky (but it works)! There are lot of opportunities for Cisco to change its look and feel to make features easier to find.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Automotive
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
4

5
Reviewed on 22/4/2022

Cisco Unified Communication Manager (CUCM) 12.5

Pros

Multi party conference, no distortion in voice, highly reliability, safe

Cons

Good software, sometime TEC support is not up to the mark

Alternatives Considered

Avaya Cloud Office
Robert
  • Industry: Management Consulting
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
4.5
Ease of Use
3.5
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 24/11/2015

More than just VoIP - A Powerful UC and Collaboration Suite

Pros

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and its associated products (Unity Connection voicemail, Contact Center Express, etc.) provide a full suite of unified communications and collaboration capabilities. The solution can scale to from SMB to large enterprise and is highly flexible, allowing it to accommodate a wide range of business needs. The latest versions transition both voice and video communication onto a unified platform to drive the ubiquity of video adoption and impact the speed of business. Support for a wide range of endpoints, including PC, tablet, and mobile devices, allows for the adoption of collaboration tools by remote and mobile workers. The product is powerful and lends itself easily to fulfilling business goals.

Cons

One of the primary negatives about Cisco UCM would be the cost, especially at smaller scales and when competing against a legacy TDM solution. Even for businesses that are driven primarily by cost though, the additional benefits such as integrated instant messaging, point to point video, and mobile device integration may prove to be enough of a differentiator to justify the extra expense.

Organizations that are interested in managing their own solution will typically need to hire or have on staff a fairly high level engineer, though most IT people would be capable of learning how to handle at least basic moves, adds, and changes. The importance of solid solution architecture and maintenance can not be overstated enough.

Matthew
  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
4

3
Reviewed on 27/11/2018

Robust product set with strong functionality but a lot to learn

Great way to monitor and manage on-premise phone systems without paying a substantial fee to a consultant/product provider for management. Allows for a very robust amount of phone service management and integrate with several other third-party products for additional tools (have their own quirks and requirements for management and account permissions). All around great, and very matured, product for voice systems management.

Pros

- Extremely robust feature set with depth in configuration and customization.
- Diversified technology with a strong security interface.
- Configuration rich interfaces with strong delineation of permission sets and redirects.
- Administrative overhead easily reduced by account permissions sets

Cons

- So robust can feel a bit overwhelming (version specific)
- Deployment time frames can be long from purchase to full production implementation (good support though)
- More hardware specific as far as integration than some other agnostic products.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Automotive
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
3

5
Reviewed on 6/5/2022

Cisco call manage is best one and voice quality is really good

Pros

Voice quality is really impressive through the VPN connectivity.
We can also use ip-phone application on desktop/laptop and use as a soft phone.

Cons

While using soft phone, application got stuck if we switch headphones.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Education Management
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
1
Functionality
2
Ease of Use
1
Customer Support
1

1
Reviewed on 5/2/2022

Disappointed

Overall the product just did not meet our expectations. We ended up changing to another product that is far superior.

Pros

This product was backed by Cisco, so it did have a major and well respected name behind it.

Cons

At the end of the day, this was just overly complicated to operate. It was not intuitive and was behind the times.

Verified Reviewer
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
3

5
Reviewed on 4/5/2018

No Joke - Its a phone system.

Pros

Number 1 - Cisco. - Inherited this phone system about 4 years ago. Self taught how to use and configure. Have since installed 4 more systems for other customers - feature rich - must have extensive Cisco knowledge.

Cons

Must have extensive Cisco knowledge. Classes, trainings and certifications recommended. This is not an easy system to learn or implement, and there are many many variables

Mark
  • Industry: Mining & Metals
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 28/7/2019

Cisco CallManager - easy choice for a Cisco shop

Been using call manager for over 10 years - this is one of the better call systems out there - sure cloud based services are popular but for enterprise with thousands of phones this is a solid option.

Pros

CallManager is a phone system seemingly built by "network guys" - it has all the major features of a call control server and is easy to manage from a network perspective. The software is solid and runs well - programming phones is very easy as well.

Cons

Updates can be cumbersome in addition some device support can be problematic. If you stick to an all Cisco ecosystem it works well but when trying to integrate its not the best. Call reporting\details can be a bit harder to dig into without some sort of front end software.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 18/12/2017

Enterprise grade VoIP but needs dedicated staff

Pros

The thing I like most about this software is a combination of the full feature set and the high quality of support from manufacturer.

Cons

The thing I like least about this software is the complexity of configuration. Cisco is great about giving many options or nerd knobs to turn, however the UI needs a overhaul to make newer features easier to configure/find.

Verified Reviewer
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
2
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
2
Customer Support
4

5
Reviewed on 5/3/2018

We used the Unified Communications Manager for our phone system for 10 years.

Pros

The Unified Communications Manager worked well...with redundant servers we never experienced down time.

Cons

The Unified Communications Manager can be difficult to setup and manage. We found it to be too expensive to upgrade.

David
David
  • Industry: Banking
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 5/4/2019

Best phone system ever, hands down.

Pros

There's absolutely nothing you can't do with a Cisco phone system. It truly is the best.

Cons

If you aren't familiar with the layout of CUCM / unity / UCCX then the initial timeline of learning can be skewed.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
5

4
Reviewed on 28/11/2018

Great for product with a ton of features

I have been using Call Manager for about 2 years now and have no trouble navigating the system. If the use-case fits your needs and you have the resources it's a great product.

Pros

There are a ton of features with CUCM that allow for a lot of customization. I like the fact that it is a very stable system and don't have to worry about it having issues.

Cons

Because Call Manager is very feature rich, training classes are needed to better understand the product. Also, licencing cost and support are expensive which make it hard to justify for SMB and small K-12 schools.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

3
Reviewed on 12/11/2019

Network made easy

We realize that easy management of all network devices save us a lot of time

Pros

We used all types of unify access points, routers and Switches in business or private
It is a pleasure to config ad access , vlans or limited bandwidth

Cons

Unify controller should have wizards for beginners like smart home Szenario with separate iot network

Olakunle
Olakunle
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
3

4
Reviewed on 17/6/2018

Cisco UCM remains the traditional option for voice over IP

Pros

The Cisco UCM is built for purpose with hardware optimization for voip services. As with most cisco products, the architecture is resilient and applicable for high availability environments. The application is modular and rich in features. Rich CTI features also.

Cons

The licensing of the features can be complex to understand. You may not know what is required for the functions you want until you talk to an expert. Not suitable for out of the box implementation. Highly trained personnel required to deploy.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Banking
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

4
Reviewed on 29/5/2019

Cisco Unified Call Manager Review

Pros

CUCM has very strong redundancy mechanism which enable up to 9 Nodes in one cluster. You can integrate IM and Presence, Unity, Contact Center and Expressway Servers to this cluster without any problem. They work very coordinated together. The CUCM Nodes share and replicate their database continuously so that every change on any Node, replicate to the others. So you are able to manage all in one server's GUI.

Cons

It is quite expensive by means of license and support. Also the IP Telephones are also expensive in comparison to market.

Ali Osman
  • Industry: Banking
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 14/5/2019

Most powerfull IP Exchange

we have up to 400 braches and we were using exhances on all branches. if we need to make a change we used to make on all brances. now we are managing all phones and system with just a one screen which is located centralized.

Pros

CUCM is very stable and powerfull system. it provides onsite and also multiside redundancy. you can manage whole phone via one screen. backup/restore process is easy to make. management and documentations are very good and you can find anything you need on cisco.com

Cons

price is too high. making upgrade takes too much time. Administrative priviliges are limited.

Larry
  • Industry: Higher Education
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

4
Reviewed on 15/8/2017

I use Cisco UCM nearly every day. It is a robust software, but has a learning curve.

We never have to worry about down time on our phone system. We also find it easy to manage day to day changes.

Pros

You can do just about anything with a phone system that you would want to do through the software. It is low maintenance. Typically there are no problems unless you are performing an upgrade or making a major configuration change.

Cons

The cost is always a bummer. There are other solutions that are a lower cost but don't provide all of the advanced features that you get with Cisco. I also don't like how complicated some parts of the software are seems like the user interface could be much more simplified. The user interface also needs an update... perhaps it's time for it to move to HTML 5 and get rid of all of the popup windows.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Telecommunications
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 26/9/2018

Hosted Phone System

Good product with great support from one of the largest companies. Ultimately stopped using it for an all in house solution.

Pros

We like the ability to monitor different sites when we used this platform. The ability to have separate offices extension dial and setup call centers with ease was much help during our initial call center deployments.

Cons

The platform is not as simple to use as other systems but does generally cover all necessities we had for a system. We ultimately decided on an in house system to improve our system.

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Government Relations
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
0

5
Reviewed on 5/8/2018

Essential software to management a fleet of Cisco IP devices.

Pros

Updating extensions, mobility profiles, and hardware is instant, so changes can be instantly seen. Everything on Cisco IP devices can be customised through this software, using features like the device template. There is plenty of documentation on forums and the Cisco support pages on how to configure these devices as required.

Cons

The UI is a bit dated and isn't scalable to mobile devices.

shauna
  • Industry: Government Administration
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
4

5
Reviewed on 12/12/2018

Great product with many useful features

overall good product and many different applications within the client to use

Pros

maintenance and upgrades are usually not that time consuming. Easy transfer of regular phone services over to voip cisco phones for over 4000 employees. rarely experience any outage problems with the software. offers a wide variety of features to cover all or most communication needs. Bridge conference availability 2- 10 people to communi9cate at one time

Cons

Lots of issues with the systems paging feature. Always having to perform maintenance to get paging up and working again. When network is not working the phone is not working. When participate calls in or hangs up the bridge does not provide any warning or alert tone. Not a way to lock conference call to not allow additional people to join. issues with jabber client are often

Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Education Management
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
0

4
Reviewed on 6/12/2019

Fancy going to HI? Why fly when you can pilot your very own nuclear submarine...

This software is probably great for global businesses. It's been sold to far too many SMBs and it's a nightmare at everyone one I've seen that tried to implement it.

Pros

This thing's got it all. If you need to do it, you can do it with Cisco UCM. And it's ridiculously reliable.

Cons

The complexity. The interface. I wish they'd make a UCM Lite, with 90% of the flexibilty of UCM turned off or hidden or something.

Moses
  • Industry: Hospital & Health Care
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
2
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
2
Customer Support
0

3
Reviewed on 19/9/2018

Not a fan...

Pros

Very reliable and has lots of features. Well know company with good reputation.

Cons

We used this for years before moving to a cloud based phone system. The dashboard is super cumbersome and unless you are well versed in CISCO applications you will be completely lost. On top of that it is very expensive for yearly support and the such. We saved tons by moving away from this setup.

Miguel
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 17/5/2018

Cisco Unified Manager good for big deployment of VOIP

Pros

Easy to manage alot of individual phones. Able to edit a group at a time or individual phones. Easy to make changes remotely and not having to physically go to each phone

Cons

Alot of menus and options that can overwhelm users. Process to update firmware on phones is very cumbersome and time consuming. Some things needed to be done via CLI and not the web gui.

75 reviews

Related categories