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Astound Hosted Voice vs Qrystal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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
3rd
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
10th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

BF
IT Director at a university with 201-500 employees
Admin features make it easy to customize and change, while Voicemail Transcription is fast and accurate
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. We could do that before, but the features that we have with RCN seem more extensive than the previous company that we worked with. The Voicemail Transcription is more accurate than what we had with our previous company. Also, and I'm not sure if this is because it's a fiber line, we seem to get the responses and the transcription almost instantaneously, faster than what we had prior. We can do lots of things: We can do call groups, we can do work with our extensions, we can set up our account codes, we can take a look at call logs. There are a multiplicity of miscellaneous settings that are allowed for each user and for the Admin. There's a simplicity to it. It seems they use KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. It works for everybody because, when I'm not here responding to it, my technicians are; sometimes my network guy is; sometimes our students are interacting with it. It creates a very easy flow for working through the product and the interface. The automatic upgrades are the best thing that ever happened, because we don't see them, we don't feel them, we just know that they happened, after the fact. What they've done, at least for us, is that we haven't had or felt a crash whatsoever, nor have we felt the disruption as a result of the updates. That tells me that work goes into them to get them done right, and that they really test the code and test the information in updates so that they work properly.
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

"One feature we leverage is that the phones can be programmed with a softbot, where you program it to dial a number. We have Vonage for international calling to reduce costs on international service. I program the Vonage number into that bot on the phone. Users call it, enter a PIN, and they can call anywhere in the world for lower costs."
"We haven't had to face any disaster recovery... [But as] a smaller company, it's nice to be able to pay for somebody else to take care of that."
"As soon as we switched over to the RCN VoIP phone system, the clarity and quality of our calls improved and there has been no downtime."
"This solution is easy... Right now we have a 48-port switch, and at any point, if I want, I can throw in a larger switch, or add an additional switch, and I don't have to call anybody to install it. I can do it myself."
"We like the administrative features RCN has available, as it is important that we can balance call loads through programming options and have full control of our messaging, schedules, and other settings."
"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."
"Support is fantastic; I love that it's US-based and within local markets, and I really appreciate calling and speaking to someone I can understand and getting my problem solved."
"If I were to rate the overall solution a ten, it would probably be an understatement."
"The product and team have helped us maintain best-in-class telephony service for our users."
"Qrystal stood out during our assessment for voice quality monitoring and proved its value in the first month after deployment."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"It should be easier to set up new phone additions to the network."
"Wireless needs improvement. We have a manufacturing facility and the majority of the managers walk around with 2.4 gigahertz cordless phones and they have to walk, sometimes, throughout three different buildings."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We felt that pricing was fair because we chose RCN over quotes from several companies. It was reasonable..."
"The pricing is very fair. They have very good pricing."
"We're okay with the pricing and licensing... It's based on the number of extensions."
"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."
"It's very affordable. We're very happy with the pricing."
"Pricing is great. If you're not careful enough, you might just order too many. For the service, the price is right. When you design it, if you mess up and you realize you really need then more lines, the price is negligible."
"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..."
"RCN, as part of the deal, leased us phones at a reasonable price and each line was extremely reasonable as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
No data available
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citi Open Tournament
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Find out what your peers are saying about Astound Hosted Voice vs. Qrystal and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.