Cisco 500 Series – Reviews and Comments From Real People Around The Web

At TeleDynamic, we get a lot of questions about different small business PBX servers and the companies that make and support them.

Many people want to know what real users and reviewers are actually saying about these products – not just the standard corporate marketing gobbledygook

To help you out, we’ve combed through the web to uncover reviews, forum comments and other (hopefully) objective content to help in your research for the best IP PBX server for SMBs.

Last time we reviewed Avaya IP office 500ShoreTel 13 and the Cisco UC320W

Today we take a look at the Cisco 500 Series

Cisco 500 Series Reviews

From RouteHub

From AVECSys

 It is much more cost effective (OK, cheaper) than the UC500 series while still including all the features you would expect in a Cisco IP telephony phone system like voicemail, hunt groups, auto attendant, etc.  This unit is perfect for the average small to medium business. Read More….

From Scan Source

The Cisco Unified Communications 520 for Small Business, a critical part of the Cisco Smart Business Communications System, is an affordable unified communications appliance that provides voice, data, voicemail… Read More…

From Cisco & Miercon

Cisco Systems engaged Miercom to examine and review the  Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business. Targeted at small offices of fifty users or less, it is  a full featured IP-based phone system designed for rapid  deployment and simplified management. Read More…

From Nova Voice & Data

Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business combines voice, data, video, security, and more into a single, easily managed solution. Get an advanced phone system that expands as your business grows and changes, without a lot of capital expense. Read More…

From A Geek’s View

So at work I’ve just begun/Finished the roleout of our new UC540 phone system by Cisco. So far VERY impressed. The installation and configuration was quite simple. By default the phone system would ring to ALL phones. But a simple configuration with the auto attendant and you can have your own digital secretary. Read More…

How Much Does the Cisco UC540 Cost?

The Cisco UC540-FXO-K9 base unit has 4 FXO and supports up to 32 Users with 8 PoE Ports. It ships with 24 phone station licenses and is upgradeable to 32 with the addition of a Cisco L-UC-PRO-8U= license. For this level of features, the UC540 runs between $1,900 and $2,500.

From the Forums

From Supportforums.cisco.com

I’m having a number of issues with my Cisco UC540 network. We have 7 phones in the office and only one of them is able to connect. The rest of them just keep restarting. The problem has been getting progressively worse over the months. Recently, the wireless stopped working as well. We’ve been losing phones one by one. I’d appreciate any help. Here’s some basic information from the web interface. Read More…

From Broadband Reports

I’m trying to determine how Cisco works but their live chat basically just told me to call their Partner support line even though I’m not a partner. I was looking for example on voipsupply.com and it shows the UC540 is $1899 (just an example) and says up to 24 users and so on. It doesn’t say anything about licencing though and that’s where I’m confused. The Cisco person pointed me to a list of features, which do show things like auto attendants, Cisco Communicator soft phone and so on, but I’m not clear if that works with all units or if you buy licences and so on like Avaya. Read More…

From Asterisk Forum

I have a problem with a Cisco 881 Router, we have 2 phones on it, they at making a SIP connection to our phone provider. but half the time they are unreachable by the phone provider, becouse they dont answer in 2000 miliseconds, any one els have had this problem? and know what to do? Read More…

From Spiceworks

Installing a cisco UC540. I want to connect the UC540 directly to the Verizon FIOS system and not use the wireless router that verizon installed. I may need to clone the MAC of the original Verison router. Can this be done on the UC540? Read More…

From Spiceworks

At a main office location we have a sonicwall tz-210 and at a remote location we have just installed a cisco uc540 acting as both the router and the telephone system. Does anyone know or have experience with attempting a VPN connection between the two so that the phones at each location can reach the others extensions? Read More…

From MicroTik

I am currently working on a UC540 with SPA501G phone’s. It is configured as a PBX style system. I am having issues transferring calls. The transfer button on the SPA501G when hit once, puts the calling party on hold. It then allows me to dial the destination extension. However at this point the system only allows a consultative transfer, where the user transferring the call to the destination can talk to each other, the original calling is still on hold at this point. If I hit the transfer button again, it does nothing. Read More…

From forums.whirlpool.net.au

Cisco – Router company that has moved into pure IP telephony. The savings had with Cisco are when you know what you are doing or have Cisco IT guys that can multitask. Generally they have been complex to setup unless you live and breathe command line. Feature wise I would say that they don’t always have the features a smaller system like the others would. Read More…

 We hope that this information was helpful. If you find additional review or forum posts that you think would add to the conversation, please put them in the Comments section! Thanks!

 

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