Glip
Glip's trajectory took an interesting turn when RingCentral acquired it in 2015. Before then it came only in a freemium model, with a core set of features that improved when you subscribed to one of the paid plans. This is still the case, and RingCentral has no plans to change it. It's the way you buy Glip without subscribing to anything else RingCentral offers. The other way you can get Glip is to subscribe to RingCentral Office, the provider's UCaaS service. In this case you get Glip Pro accounts for free, along with single sign-on access to RingCentral Office and Glip.
In the past year or so RingCentral has made some tweaks to Glip's various plans. Guest access, for example, is now part of the free plan instead of the first paid one. There's about a half dozen new app integrations, including New Relic and both business and consumer versions of Microsoft OneDrive. And signing up for Glip gets you a free trial of the RingCentral UCaaS service with 500 minutes free, if that's something you want.
Glip's real-time communications capability remains much as before. Users can place VoIP calls between Glip clients, with video chat powered by Zoom. Finally, the Glip interface is available only in English, with localization on the roadmap.
The most notable change, however, is in Glip’s real-time communications capabilities. Previously, real-time voice came in the form of VoIP calling between Glip users, with video chat powered by Zoom. Both of these remain, but Glip now has a native dialer as well, allowing it to be a full-fledged endpoint off of RingCentral’s UCaaS service. This lets users make and receive PSTN calls, as well as access various PBX features like call hold, call transfer, voice mail, and audio conferencing. Available via both desktop and mobile clients, the new voice functionality includes the ability to seamlessly transfer a call in progress between desk phone and mobile device. Additionally, the Glip interface is available only in English, with localization on the roadmap.
At more of a corporate level, Glip’s real-time comms enhancements go beyond a team collaboration app becoming a client to RingCentral’s UCaaS service. The company wants to present itself as a provider of “collaborative communications” services. As such Glip is undergoing something of a transformation within the RingCentral portfolio. Until now Glip has been more or less an add-on app that’s tacked onto RingCentral’s flagship hosted telephony service. Going forward it’s intended to be the primary interface RingCentral customers will use to access off voice, video, messaging, and other services.
