Avaya vs Mitel Deep Dive: Which Wins in 2024

If you have a hybrid workforce, then you know first-hand how difficult collaboration can get. In my own experience – messages easily get missed or ignored, time zone differences slow the project execution, and remote workers feel left out of important conversations. 

No amount of Slack chat messages or emails can fix these issues.

Phone calls or video calls however seem to help with most of these. There is something about human connection over voice which clarifies and improves communication.

Chances are, just like me, you are looking for a business phone system that can help you streamline communication for your distributed workforce. And you’ve come across two popular solutions on the market: Avaya and Mitel. 

A great place to start, no doubt. But bear in mind that these phone systems have limitations that can slow down communication and collaboration for your distributed workforce — we’ll discuss them shortly.

My Final Verdict: 

Both Avaya and Mitel are established unified communications providers with a wide range of features and solutions. However, when compared to the alternative solutions we listed below, plus live data from G2 customer reviews, Nextiva stands out.

• Nextiva (G2 rating: 4.5/5 stars from 2,822 reviews) offers several advantages over both:
  • Avaya (G2 Rating 4.1/5 stars from 176 reviews)
  • Mitel (G2 Rating 3.8/5 stars from 228 reviews)

Here are the main Nextiva advantages over Avaya and Mitel:

• Better customer reviews per data above
• Superior customer service: Nextiva is consistently praised for its Excellent Customer Service, available 24/7 via phone, chat, and email.
• Ease of use: Nextiva’s platform is easy to set up and use, even for businesses with limited IT expertise.
• Comprehensive unified communications features: Nextiva offers a wide range of features, including VoIP calling, video conferencing, team collaboration, and customer relationship management (CRM).
• Affordable pricing: Nextiva offers competitive pricing plans that scale to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.

Overall, Nextiva is the preferred unified communications provider for most businesses. However, it’s important to note that the best unified communications provider for your business will depend on your specific needs and budget. Be sure to evaluate all of your options carefully before making a decision. That’s why we’re here to help.

Now let’s get into breakdown and analysis of the the features, bells and whistles of Avaya vs. Mitel.

Ready? Let’s roll…

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Avaya vs. Mitel at a Glance

When I started to compare Mitel vs. Avaya before singing up, I pulled together the following information to help me understand the main vitals of the the two solutions side by side:

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Avaya G2 Rating 4.1/5 Stars 

Let’s dig deeper into users’ experiences with these business phone systems. 

Avaya has an overall rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars from 176 reviews on G2.

Analyzing these 176 reviews the following facts stand out:

Business dislike Avaya because

• It’s too complicated to set up, especially if you are a new user.

Business like Avaya because of it’s

• Seamless integration with Avaya’s ecosystem apps and third-party tools

The problem Avaya solves for businesses is:

• It provides one communication solution businesses can use for voice calls, video conferencing, instant messaging, email, and collaboration tools.

Here are some G2 reviews backing up these statements above:

Main pros:

In one user’s words:

What I like best about Avaya is that it is very easy to use. I can answer calls with just one click. I can also customize it by adding buttons or numbers for auxiliary mode. I really like the fact that the audio is clear. You can use any kind of headset since it is compatible with any type. This communication tool allows us to contact our clients all over the world. 

Another user noted that Avaya made the transition from in-office to remote work smooth for his team. 

I like the simplicity of Avaya. It was so simple to use, and I was able to learn in under an hour. I never had a single issue when using this program. This came in very handy when my company shut down in-office work, and we had to move to remote working. My team was able to install it within a day’s notice, and we did not miss a beat.

Main cons:

Many users struggle with understanding Avaya’s setup and functions. Here is a review from another user: 

“It’s too complicated to set up, especially if you are a new user. You will not know how to change the toggle from LUNCH to BREAK and AUTO in,” 

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Mitel G2 Rating 3.8/5 Stars 

Mitel has an overall rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars from 228 reviews on G2.

Analyzing these 228 reviews the following facts stand out:

Business dislike Mitel because

• Mitel’s poor and unresponsive customer support.

Business like Mitel because of it’s

• Easy and simple setup
• Its traditional PBX features, unified communications function, and ease of use are what users love the most. 

The problem Mitel solves for businesses is:

• Mitel’s contact center solutions helps organizations manage customer interactions efficiently. These solutions include features such as automatic call distribution (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), and workforce optimization tools

Here are some G2 reviews backing up these statements above:

Main pros:

“I like that the Mitel Micollab allows us to do so many things. We can set up recurring or individual conference calls, we can use the chat (instant messenger) function, or we have regular VOIP phone service. The setup is simple — just plug it in! User instructions are quite easy for staff to follow when it comes to voicemail, messaging, etc., and the actual hard copy guide has step-by-step instructions you can just pass on,” explains this user. 

Main cons:

The biggest con for Mitel users is poor and unresponsive customer support. According to one user,

“It has taken over a month for them to simply help me modify our call tree and add on-hold music with a message. The on-hold music still has not been implemented.” 

We also checked out Nextiva to see how its reviews stack up against Mitel and Avaya. 

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Nextiva G2 Rating 4.5/5 Stars 

Nextiva has a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on G2.

Nextiva has an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars from 2,822 reviews on G2.

Analyzing these 2,822 reviews the following facts stand out:

Business like Nextiva because

• It provides excellent onboarding and customer support, flexible setup and usage, plus an excellent range of features. 

Business dislike Nextiva because 

• Pricing is a bit more but in most cases they were able to get a discount off the service

Here’s how one user describes their experience with Nextiva so far:

“Customer Service is great! And the setup is so easy, and they walk you through it instead of handing you a guide. Whenever you run into an issue, which so far for us is hardly ever, you can rely on technical support to fix the issue immediately. Also, our phones have never been down, which is something we experienced frequently with our last provider. We are happy with the switch!

We’ll share a bit more about Nextiva later in this article. 

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Avaya vs. Mitel TLDR

Here is the quick and dirty TLDR of Avaya vs. Mitel comparison:

Pricing and Licensing Compared

Takeaway: Mitel seems to offer more pricing flexibility for small businesses vs. Avaya.

Unified communications feature

Takeaway: Mitel has more robust unified communications tools than Avaya.

Contact center features

Takeaway: Avaya provides a more robust suite of contact center tools compared to Mitel.

Collaboration tools and features:

Takeaway: Avaya and Mitel have similar communication capabilities. But we’ll give Mitel the win here because it’s much easier to set up and use compared to Avaya.

Deployment options:

Takeaway: It’s much easier to deploy Mitel’s phone system compared to Avaya.

Integration options:

Takeaway: Overall, Mitel seems to offer more pricing flexibility for small businesses compared to Avaya.

If you’re interested to read the detailed analysis of these feature comparisons jump to the Feature Comparison section of this guide.

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Avaya’s  Key Products

Let’s take a look at some Avaya products that stand out for businesses.

1. Avaya IP Office

Avaya IP Office is an all-in-one communication and collaboration app for small and medium-sized businesses. It can be deployed on-premise and in the cloud, which makes it perfect for organizations with in-office and remote teams. 

Once deployed, you can choose one of three plans depending on your team’s needs: 

• Basic Edition: Offers voice and video conferencing features for up to 100 users 

• Essential Edition: Offers all the basic features plus IP telephony and mobility for up to 350 users 

• Preferred Edition: Offers full unified communications features, including app integrations with Skype and Microsoft Office 365 and call recording for up to 3,000 users and 150 networked sites. 

If you’re an enterprise business with more than 3,000 employees, IP Office won’t work for your communications needs. You’ll need a more advanced business collaboration solution.

Here is how the platform looks like:

2. Avaya Communication Manager

Avaya Communication Manager is a real-time voice and video communication software for enterprise businesses. 

It lets you create an integrated call network for all your analog, digital, and cloud-based business communication devices to track voice and video calls from a central place.

Once deployed, anyone with a connected device will be able to:

• Host and join advanced voice and video conferencing calls remotely.
  

• Receive and route inbound and outbound customer calls.
  

• Make and receive calls from any location and device.

Regarding capacity, Communications Manager can host up to 41,000 users on a single system. 

3. Avaya Enterprise Cloud Solution

Avaya Enterprise is a cloud communication software tool for large-scale enterprise businesses. It gives you everything you need to streamline and coordinate communication across thousands of employees and customers. 

Specifically, Avaya Enterprise Cloud lets you:

• Create a central network for all your business communication channels, including video meetings, conference calls, emails, and messages. 

• Build a high-capacity contact center with call routing, voicemail, outbound dialing, and more for in-office and remote devices.

• Deliver the same communication experience to employees and customers, no matter when and how they interact with your organization.

Here’s a video explaining the core features of Avaya’s cloud solution.

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Mitel’s Key Products

Founded in 1972, Mitel is a business phone service offering robust communication and collaboration products like:

1. Mitel MiVoice

MiVoice is Mitel’s unified communications offering. It comprises of three product packages: 

• MiVoice Business: Offers full-on messaging and call center capabilities for efficient customer communication for small, mid-market, and enterprise businesses. It supports PBX features like call routing, voicemail, and automated attendant, plus cloud-based task management. 
• MiVoice MX-One: MX-One is a fully-integrated communications system for large-scale enterprise businesses. It can host more than 500,000 users and offers advanced data protection. 
• MiVoice Office 400: Office 400 is a compact communications solution for small businesses. Its features include video conferencing, cloud syncing, and onboard voice messaging. 

MiVoice Office 400 has subscription-based pricing models, so you can easily find a plan that works for your budget.

You can deploy MiVoiCe business phone systems via the cloud, which works best for hybrid and remote teams. Alternatively, if your team works 100% onsite, you can install MiVoice IP and digital phones on-premises.

Here is what the platform looks like:

2. Mitel MiCloud Connect

MiCloud Connect is a suite of 15+ cloud apps to power your entire business and contact center communication workflow. It includes: 

• MiCloud Connect Client with day-to-day collaboration features like instant messaging and screen sharing for Mac and Windows devices. 

• Connect for Mobile Dialer to control how you make and receive calls on your phone, including Android and IOS devices. 

• Teamwork to unify all your chat workspaces so you can read and respond to messages and share files from one place.  

• Hardware systems like IP phones that you can install in your offices for on-site communication. 

And so much more. Check out the learning center for other MiCloud Connect apps and functionalities.

3. Mitel Contact Center Solutions

Mitel offers four contact center solutions that help you deliver the best experiences to your customers regardless of where or how they interact with your brand. 

• MiContact Center Business provides omnichannel customer experience management functionalities like AI-powered chatbots and customer analytics dashboards. 

These features help you deliver the same experience to customers as they go through different stages of the customer journey. 

• MiContact Center Enterprise transforms your voice-only contact center into a full-fledged customer experience platform. 

You get real-time analytics dashboards, one communication interface for all your media channels, and more to give you a 360-view of your customers’ actions.

• Mitel Workforce Optimization improves the efficiency of your customer experience team. It provides real-time voice of customer analytics to help call agents identify and resolve customer churn risks proactively. 

That’s not all. The mobile app helps you manage call agents’ capacity, check overtime availability, and assign tasks. 

• MiContact Center Outbound helps you identify and take advantage of account expansion opportunities quickly. You get real-time dashboards and historical reports that show your best customer accounts. 

Additionally, it comes with agent scripts, action prompts, and CRM screen pops to guide customer conversations and increase your chances of success.

SECTION 8

Mitel vs Avaya: Features Comparison

Now that you have a basic idea of how these software applications work, let’s see how they square up against each other.

Unified communications

Takeaway: Mitel has more robust unified communications tools then Avaya.

Mitel has a slight edge over Avaya here. Its products wrap several voice and collaboration apps into one powerful business communication platform. 

Take MiCloud Connect, for example. It has over 15 voice, video, and instant messaging software, letting you coordinate your communication workflow from one central app.  

Avaya’s products aren’t as robust as Mitel’s, although they offer core communication features like video conferencing and voice calls. For example, you need to maintain separate profiles for the web portal, phone, and voicemail, which defeats the purpose of having a centralized communication network in the first place.

Contact centers

Takeaway: Avaya provides a more robust suite of contact center tools compared to Mitel.

Avaya offers AI-powered contact centers. For example, you can route calls to Ai-agents trained to have human-like conversations with customers. On top of that, Avaya AI blocks background noise in voice calls, so you can have and record clearer conversations with customers.

Mitel, on the other hand, gives you more than call center functions. It provides data to help call agents identify and explore account expansion opportunities early, contributing to revenue growth. It also serves as a workforce management tool, allowing you to assign tasks to call center agents, view overtime availability, and approve leave requests in the app.

Both business phone services help you scale your call centers efficiently.

Collaboration tools

Takeaway: Avaya and Mitel have similar communication capabilities. But we’ll give Mitel the win here because it’s much easier to set up and use compared to Avaya.

Avaya and Mitel do an excellent job here. With Avaya Spaces, you can view your projects, messages, and tasks in one place. You can also transfer, merge, and manage calls across multiple platforms, host video meetings, and share files directly from the app. 

MiCollab, Mitel’s collaboration tool, syncs with your calendar so you can view upcoming events in the app. You can send broadcast messages to your team, manage documents, and host video conferences on your PC, Mac, and smartphone.

SECTION 9

Deployment Options Compared

Takeaway: It’s much easier to deploy Mitel’s phone system compared to Avaya.

Avaya and Mitel both offer on-premises, hybrid, and cloud deployment, meaning you can use them anywhere.

In terms of ease of deployment, Avaya has a 4.1 Gartner rating compared to Mitel’s 4.3 rating on the same user review site. Some Avaya users say its deployment instructions are unclear, and they have to repeatedly reach out to the support team to set things up and upgrade the phone system.

SECTION 9

Integration Compared

Takeaway: Overall, Mitel seems to offer more pricing flexibility for small businesses compared to Avaya.

When choosing a phone system for your business, you want something that integrates with the tools you already use to run your business. The last thing you need is to invest in a phone system and realize that you must change your entire workflow to use it.

Avaya and Mitel have native app ecosystems for their products. For example, Avaya Social Media Hub integrates with contact center solutions like Avaya Oceana. And MiCollab syncs with MiTeam. 

Mitel has 48 third-party integrations in its app store, including CRM tools like Salesforce and customer experience management platforms like Zendesk. Avaya integrates with up to 29 apps, including Cherwell and Zoho CRM. 

Honestly, these aren’t enough. But the good thing is you can always use their APIs to create custom integrations for your business needs. You’ll need some coding knowledge to pull this off, though.

SECTION 10

Pricing and Licensing Compared

Takeaway: Mitel seems to offer more pricing flexibility for small businesses vs. Avaya.

Avaya does not have off-the-shelf pricing for any of its products. So, you need to reach out to their sales teams for custom quotes based on your unified communications needs. 

Mitel has four pricing plans for its MiCloud Connect product. The cheapest package costs $20.99 per user/month, while the Elite package costs $38.49 per user/month. It also offers four subscription-based packages for MiVoice Office 400. 

Other Mitel products have custom pricing plans, so you need to contact the sales team for a quote. 

Both Mitel and Avaya offer perpetual, subscription, and cloud-based licenses. Avaya subscription comes with 20% stretch usage for free, plus discounts on trade-ins of current licenses. Mitel subscription, on the other hand, lets you customize your product offering, so you only pay for features and licenses you need. 

Overall, Mitel seems to offer more pricing flexibility for small businesses compared to Avaya. 

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Advantages of Choosing Avaya

• Flexible deployment 
• Built-in voicemail at no extra cost
• Support for multiple devices and locations 

SECTION 12

Cons of Choosing Avaya

• It is expensive, especially for smaller businesses. For example, you need to pay for an additional license to access the backup location feature. 
• Cumbersome installation and maintenance process 
• Slow customer support

SECTION 13

Advantages of Choosing Mitel 

• Robust PBX features 
• Flexible pricing and packages for small businesses
• Great user interface and experience 

SECTION 14

Disadvantages of Choosing Mitel

• Slow customer support 
• Frequent connection downtimes 
• Poor user customization features 

SECTION 15

Alternative Options to Avaya and Mitel

You’ve got to this point and still feel like, “None of these business phone services work for me.” Not to worry; we scoured the internet for the five top business communication software you can use instead of Avaya and Mitel. 

1. Nextiva 

Nextiva is a cloud-based communication provider offering VoIP phone services, UCaaS, CRM software, and live chat. It’s the best tool for collaborating with your workforce and customers efficiently. 

The latest upgrade to the NextivaONE platform empowers users to stay connected in real-time, no matter where they work. Employees can join calls and stay updated on messages without downloads. 

Key features

• Video conferencing
• Business phone service
• Team messaging
• Free business text messages
• Customer surveys

Price: Starts at $18.95 per user/month 

2. RingCentral

RingCentral, Mitel’s exclusive UCaaS partner, is a cloud-based business phone platform. Beyond voice and video conferencing, it offers collaboration solutions like team messaging and advanced PBX functionalities like call waiting and forwarding. 

Key features

• Cloud PBX
• Video conferencing
• Contact center solutions
• Integrations with popular business tools

Price: Starts at $20/user per month (billed annually)

3. Cisco Systems

Founded in 1984, Cisco Systems is an enterprise digital company that provides VoIP and unified communications tools for businesses. 

Top features

• Cisco Webex for video conferencing
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager for call control
• IP phones and endpoints 

4. 8×8

8×8 is a cloud communication provider that helps businesses of all sizes deliver stellar customer experiences. Companies use 8×8 to sync their communication channels into one streamlined platform.

Key features

• VoIP business phone service
• Team messaging
• Video meetings
• Cloud contact center.

Price: Starts at $24 per user/month 

5. Vonage

Founded in 2001, Vonage provides cloud communication solutions for businesses and consumers, focusing on VoIP services and APIs for messaging, voice, and other communication needs.

Key features

• Business cloud VoIP

• Video conferencing
• Team messaging
• API suite for developers

Price: Starts at $13.99 per month

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Avaya vs Mitel: Choosing the Best 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to choosing the best unified communications solutions. It depends on your business size, goals, and budget. 

If you’re a small team looking for core VoIP features, Mitel might be a good fit. However, for enterprise businesses looking for one tool to power their entire digital communication workflow, one of Avaya’s robust product packages might be a fit. 

You don’t have to choose either of them. There are several business phone systems that will make team communication and collaboration more efficient, including Nextiva, which works for every business. With the new NextivaONE platform, you can reduce communication costs while boosting efficiency and collaboration.