Fonality raises $12M for small business phone systems

September 3, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Fonality, a company that provides Internet phone systems to small- and medium-sized businesses, has raised $12 million in a fourth round of funding.

Dan Rosenthal, the vice president of finance, says Fonality’s goal is to create an open source software application that provides everything that a small business might need in a call center. Services include instant messaging, land-line calling, mobile calling, voicemail, customer relationship management (CRM) and more.

While there are other Internet telephone companies out there, Rosenthal says Fonality stands out for price and ease-of-use — for a few thousand dollars (the standard version of its product PBXtra costs less than $1,000), Fonality can provide the same functionality that one of the bigger tech companies might charge $100,000 for, thus putting this kind of software within the financial means of a small business.

The Los Angeles-based company says it has 5,000 customers worldwide. It also sells its product through a partnership with Dell. Rosenthal predicts that Fonality’s low prices should make it an increasingly attractive option if the economic slowdown continues.

The funding was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with participation from existing investor Intel Capital. Fonality raised $7 million last year.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • FilipL
    weadsa
  • FilipL
    Interesting. i've seen another really innovative service. It's called GoHello and it's basically an allmobile phone system for business. No more hardware, maintenance and heavy fees. I even think you can try it for free here:



    www.gohello.com/12b3
  • Carlos Montoya
    Our office phone communication got to a point where our customers were leaving us. I realized that I had to fix this problem and after careful research and word mouth Fonality took the prize. From the very beginning, I could see that it was the right choice because of the enthusiasm the employees had about their product. Fonality has its customers cover every step of the way, from its Fonality Knowledge Base, which covers every mishap that could occur but never did, to its support team that is available around the clock. They weren’t kidding when they said that the PBX system came ready to go right out of the box because once I got it connected to our network it worked, and I just added the HUD team program to our PBX, which I m very excited about, it’s a great way to keep our employees in touch. I couldn’t believe that I had it running just moments after I placed my order with our salesman. My boss couldn’t believe the functionality that the program offered, because in a world with constantly changing technology, you want your business supported by a company that strives to be the best and Fonality sure does.
  • Chris Viller
    We have been a happy Fonality customer for about 2-years & use their PBXtra Call Center edition product. We've been very pleased with all aspects of both the product & our relationship with Fonality. We had zero (literally zero) phone/telephony/PBX experience or knowledge before choosing Fonality and did a lot of research on various alternatives. From our perspective, their combination of features, user interface, ease of use, and great support makes them a winning provider for us. The system was easy to use and has proved remarkably flexible in adapting to the ever changing needs of our young business. We also use their HUD application, which we can't imagine life without! And we've integrated some of the click-to-call features into our CRM (Salesforce.com). We're not yet using the Unity Edition (which looks to have some great SF integration) because there are a few key things it won't do for us, but will continue to watch it and consider upgrading.

    We would fully recommend Fonality to anyone considering a phone system. It's flexible, easy to use, and the support is great.