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Astound Hosted Voice vs Qrystal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Astound Hosted Voice
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qrystal
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
4th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

MF
IT Manager at Piramal Critical Care, Inc.
Voicemail to email is convenient and in our region the multiple hubs provide redundancy
One area for improvement is the Web Portal. It's not a full-view screen, it's more like a minimized screen. You don't get the full view of your desktop. It's more like a five-inch by five-inch view. I think they said the software was designed that way. I don't know if there's going to be a newer version coming out later. With Google Chrome or if you open Excel you have the full view of your screen. You can see everything. With their portal, you have the web browser in the background in full view screen, but the actual portal itself is minimized, not a full screen That's the only issue that I asked them about it. Other than that, I think their calling features, settings, the voice to email, they're all okay.
reviewer2757579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Project Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real-time insight into voice quality issues has improved customer experience
I use Qrystal for real-time IMS troubleshooting and statistics for VoLTE/VoNR The partner is very sensitive to customer satisfaction and keeps seeking ways to identify any service degradation as quickly as possible. With Qrystal, we can spot any issue with customer voice quality down to its root…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"A lot of users use the voice to email, that's a nice feature to have. Voicemail will come to me as a .wav file and, if I have a phone, I can just click on the .wav file and listen to it. Or I can play it on my computer. Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, you'll be able to play it."
"I really like the portal. It makes listening to your messages so much easier as well as changing your voice mail."
"We have absolutely seen less packet loss and higher reliability with this solution... The uptime is excellent. We haven't had any issues. We haven't had any downtime."
"The Hunt Group, is the most valuable feature... You can choose round-robin, you can choose priority-for-agents, you can choose the order of agents. There are all kinds of different mechanisms for the next operator to take a call."
"This is what's cool about the RCN setup. RCN allows you to go to any web browser, at any time, and configure the phones... Our disaster recovery is: We log in to an RCN website... and we put in a new phone number for the incoming number. If you dial our number, it will actually go to that other number."
"We've had 100 percent uptime so far. We haven't been down once, not even for a brief second, not even for a reboot. Nothing."
"The most valuable feature is the admin platform that we work with. It allows us a very centralized approach for doing things and it allows us to manage and control everything right from the very top."
"The sidecars on the main phones that we use, the ones that receive the calls, are really important. They help us to distribute calls to people, from reception. That's an important starting point for us."
"Qrystal stood out during our assessment for voice quality monitoring and proved its value in the first month after deployment."
"Qrystal stood out during our assessment for voice quality monitoring and proved its value in the first month after deployment."
"The product and team have helped us maintain best-in-class telephony service for our users."
 

Cons

"The analytic part of it, the control panel, those are their biggest areas where they have to improve. There are competitors out there where, when you open the control panel, they have tons of analytics, the ability to add lines, to see which people are on the phone.... RCN has a great product, but they could make it outstanding with the right analytics and control panel."
"The way that you listen to your voicemail messages through the receiver so that you can't fast forward or rewind - I don't like that at all."
"If they had better ongoing-training options, for example, if they put something out on YouTube where you could just go and look for individual things that you need by looking at a video, that would be very helpful."
"Wireless needs improvement... We're still looking for the quintessential IP phone, the one phone that will actually be SIP-enabled and use the WiFi and be able to carry through three [different] buildings."
"I use the voicemail transcription feature but I'm not sure about the security of the voicemail system, as you can only use numbers for a password, and your direct-dial number is your username. That's kind of vulnerable to brute-force attacks. The passwords are limited to six digits, so I'd be a little concerned about security on that end..."
"It should be easier to set up new phone additions to the network."
"One area for improvement is the Web Portal. It's not a full-view screen, it's more like a minimized screen. You don't get the full view of your desktop. It's more like a five-inch by five-inch view. I think they said the software was designed that way. I don't know if there's going to be a newer version coming out later."
"In our old system, you just dialed the extension directly, With this system, you have to put a "one" in front of it to trigger it. A lot of clients didn't know that and they'd keep trying to dial the old extension number and would get nowhere... It's been a little confusing."
"It might be helpful to have video tutorials embedded into the product that give you 15-30 second details about certain analytics, etc."
"Qrystal could be improved by including Diameter KPIs."
"Qrystal could be improved by including Diameter KPIs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's very affordable. We're very happy with the pricing."
"For us, the monthly price was 38 percent lower. We were paying somewhere between $5,600 and $5,800 every month for voice and data. We got it down to about $4,000 with tax."
"We felt that pricing was fair because we chose RCN over quotes from several companies. It was reasonable..."
"We're okay with the pricing and licensing... It's based on the number of extensions."
"The solution is saving our company money, based on the initial, up-front cost that would normally be required. The monthly ongoing cost is comparable to prior solutions."
"The pricing is very fair. They have very good pricing."
"The pricing is fairly fair... We had a really good rep and she did a great job of working out a contract and a pricing solution that was acceptable..."
"We looked at about five or six other companies but when RCN came in, they beat everybody hands-down, on both the features and on the dollars side. It prompted our people to say they hadn't seen numbers so low for the services you get."
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Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Qrystal?
It might be helpful to have video tutorials embedded into the product that give you 15-30 second details about certain analytics, etc. Future version ideas? Would be nice to have a mobile app.
What is your primary use case for Qrystal?
I use the product for monitoring telephony services.
 

Comparisons

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Astound Hosted Voice vs. Qrystal and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.