Call Soft Pro

2.0 stars

"After you buy, they seem to disappear"

September 15, 2009  |   By SRQJohnson

Version: Call Soft Pro 3.1.4

Pros

Thoughtfully designed product, which was a trendsetter several years ago when I first bought the product. Now there are others with equivalent features for the same price or less.

Cons

I reinstalled the Callsoft software recently as a new need arose for it. I still had my registration information, but the program would not accept it for some mysterious reason. Emails over a period of weeks have not been acknowledged by callsoft.

Summary

Any user installed software which is highly technical is going to require, as a minimum, a phone call or two to the factory/developers. The software I bought years ago was a bit quirky, IE the database MUST be in the executable directory, etc. There were minor performance issues, that could be lived with. At the time I was using it as a hobbyist, and liked it OK. Now I need something for my business and want more reliability.To sell something fairly complicated, AS IS should put a small company out of business in short order. So it appears if I want to use the product again I need to buy it again. For my money I will spend it with an organization which will acknowledge that I am a customer.

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2.0 stars

"Good product, if it worked... no tech support"

December 6, 2007  |   By lenbh

Version: Call Soft Pro 3.1.4

Pros

I purchased this product based on the features - not bad for the price. I really liked the idea of forwarding FAXes to an email account.

Cons

My initial tests showed that it worked for the first page (I only sent a single page FAX to prove it would work), and then purchased it. Unfortunately, after that, I found that it would time out on the second page, and throw away the fax. There are a few other quirks. I tracked down the EXACT modem recommended by Callsoft, and configured the system exactly as they suggest, with no improvement. I tried contacting Callsoft support, and after several re-sent emails and a request for a refund, I finally received a reply after several weeks, with a generic answer to my problem that was already in their online FAQ. No further reply to several emails since then. SOOOOO, if you want to use this, (1) test it thoroughly before you buy it, and (2) don't count on getting any support, nor a refund.

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4.0 stars

"May not answer individual emails, but still a lot of product for the money"

May 8, 2007  |   By greenexpert

Version: Call Soft Pro 3.1.4

Pros

I have been using this product for many, many years. I have a small landscape company and cannot afford a full time secretary.

Call Soft Pro answers the phone, receives faxes (so we don't need a second line), and has multiple configurable mailboxes. It also will notify you of messages via txt message to your cell, pager, email, etc., telling you the caller ID information, date, time, and will even forward the messages to you as a sound file if you like. Call Soft Pro can also forward a call using the three way calling feature (very neat! - we use that for "press 1 to be connected to the manager / salesperson's cell phone, etc.).

There are many, many more configurable options and features, way too many to list here. In fact, I still haven't found anything that I wanted to change, but couldn't (and I am pretty quirky with wanting to tweak things). And new features continue to be incorporated from time to time in new versions.

I don't think you can find any other software out there that provides anywhere close to this much functionality at anywhere near this price. It has a lot of the features of a complete small company phone / voicemail system for a fraction of the price. Not needing to have a second phone line for the fax will pay for the product in the first month alone! Not to mention all of the other great features. Give it a try!

Cons

As some have said, sometimes you don't get answers back to your emails. This is a new experience for me. In years past, I used to have all the emails I sent in answered within a few days, but lately I have sent a few which have not been answered at all, and it has been a few weeks now. The issues I reported were minor bug reports however, that do not affect my everyday use. Also, any problems that I have reported over the past years have been corrected in new versions. You may not get an email back addressing your specific problem, but the issues are eventually addressed, judging from what I have seen in the past.

I dunno, maybe the guy has been busy with his day job, and develops this on the side. If he took the time to do it full time and/or hire support staff, the price of the product would be that much more. So appreciate it for what it is.

In summary, I still think that there is still no other software out there that comes even close to this amount of functionality at this price. So quit whining. :)

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2.0 stars

"No visible means of support"

April 24, 2007  |   By NoBetaPls

Version: Call Soft Pro 3.1.4

Pros

Thoughtfully developed, very well documented and full of great features. In fact, we couldn't think of anything they left out. Extremely flexible with respect to configuration--options for everything. All in all, we couldn't wait to implement it for all our business telephony.

Cons

Sadly, support is non-existent (as reviews of prior versions mentioned). We couldn't get CallSoft Pro 3.1.4 to play well with other applications, so we tried many times over a two-week period to get presales support about it. All listed contacts were unresponsive. Not a good beginning for software that's expected to answer the phones for my business.

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