InformaCast Pros and Cons

Mass Notifications

Multimodal Communication

Location Based Alerts

Mobile Accessibility

Ease of Use Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Resource Intensity

Limited Customization Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Multiple ways to get notifications... text, voice call, push, Windows alert, iOS alert, IP speakers. Very thorough setup options. Easy to install and get going. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The menu structure could be improved. The setup could use better documentation/checklist. Integration with speakers is not perfect (works, but can be improved). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is very helpful when I cam at my desk, or at home to know what is happening at my site location for my company. I also like that as an admin, I can alert others to a possible emergency. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't like when we do drills. Our security team sends an Informacast notification and my phone rigns, I get a text and an alert on my desktop while working....it's all great if there is an actual emergency, but when it's just a drill, it's a little annoying :/ Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The end-user interface is nice and simple which is what we really needed for our users. Since we use the product for emergency notifications, we need it to be simple to use without too much knowledge. This is for sure what Informacast excels at because we can set everything up and make it simple for the end user to just fill out a couple fields or check a few boxes and get the proper notifications out to the proper groups. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The setup for InformaCast is a bit complicated and I can see why self-deployed folks may have trouble getting utilization of the product. We thankfully had a VAR install and deploy for us and their knowledge in getting everything setup was excellent in handling what we would not have been able to. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When we changed phone systems to Cisco's platform, we lost the ability to know what extension dialed 911. With InformaCast Fusion we are now able to follow in real-time a 911 call. This was the first use case we had for InformaCast. Now we are tying Fusion into our fire alarm and door security systems. We have also integrated Fusion into our overhead paging allow us to have paging in areas our old analog system did not cover. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The lack of ability to copy and paste repetitive tasks. An example was needing to create many message templates with small variations. Would be nice to copy and paste a finished template and make the minor changes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Easy to set up granular security to limit who can send to different distribution lists. Support is very quick to respond and knowledgeable about the product. The interface is easy enough to navigate and send broadcasts, even for people who are not overly technical. Easy to manage distribution lists, with several options for uploading data (both manually and automatically) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Online documentation has not caught up with all the product features and a few times I needed to get in touch with support for clarification of different settings, especially around the security settings. Also, it would be nice if the primary ID of the distribution list members were not email as it adds an extra data-gathering requirement that people aren't always willing to give. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that it is easy to use and navigate. I do not work on InformaCast that often, but when I do I find that it is super simple to get in and accomplish what I needed to without spending time familiarizing myself with the application again. I can get in, do what I need to do, then get out and on with the list of other tasks on my plate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is nothing I dislike about InformaCast Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

How easy it is to manage. It's super fast to setup in vmware, very easy to backup the configuration, easy and intuitive to restore from backup (yes, I actually had to do that once before I setup a failover server) and easy to understand most of the modules. It's also got an easy to configure failover / hot spare option. This is a Linux image that you load from and OVA and once you setup a few things you can be off and running. It can do all kinds of messaging and integrates with CUCM systems, as well as others (although I've only had experience with CUCM integration). It can do your PA announcements, timed bells, tornado warnings, text messages, and all kinds of automated messaging and announcement functions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The GUI is a little klunky but not all that different from other similar Linux servers and once you are accustomed to the organization of the modules, it's very simple, if not very intuitive at first. I also don't really like how every module is licensed separately, although that's sort of a mixed blessing. It's nice that you don't have to pay for features that you never plan to use, but some of the setup instructions don't make it clear that you have not purchased licensing until you are done configuring a given feature and go to try it ... and get an error message that you have to purchase a separate license for that feature. That doesn't happen for all the modules - the majority of them state right on the module overview page that a separate license is required - but it did happen to me for one of them and byt the time I realized that I lacked a license, I had wasted 2-3 hours setting it up. Aside from that I really love this product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It sends alerts, that's very helpful and useful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I used to not like the webpage appearance so much, but since we upgraded to latest version, that's not a problem with me anymore. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The functionality and broad connectivity options Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Other than the issue with recording 911 calls, I have no dislikes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.