Before Fonality created its award-winning IP-PBX phone system, SMBs had only two options: pay astronomical prices for traditional PBX systems or settle for the typical, feature-lean, key phone systems that have always made SMBs look and sound small. Fonality enables SMBs to compete on a level playing field with much larger companies by providing them with scalable enterprise-class PBX phone systems that cost 40 to 80 percent less than comparable systems.

That’s why Fonality now serves more than 3,800 businesses in 70 countries and why 60,000 users have made over 120 million phone calls using our hybrid-hosted business phone systems. From single-site businesses with basic telephony needs to national corporations with distributed call centers that need advanced presence management and communication tools, Fonality’s solutions meet the demands of any business environment.

The Story of Fonality

Fonality was founded in 2003 as a residential VoIP provider by serial entrepreneur and small and medium-sized business (SMB) expert, Chris Lyman. Within months of starting the company, Lyman and his team of four people needed a PBX phone system. After shopping around and receiving a $15,000 bid for a phone system for just five employees, Lyman went to his team and said “we’re in the wrong business.” Fonality immediately shifted gears from residential VoIP to business telephony.

Lyman’s vision for Fonality was to change the phone market by creating the world’s first truly affordable enterprise-class phone system for SMBs. Leveraging his expertise in making technology easy to use, he designed a product that was “as easy to use as Hotmail.” Now, business owners and managers can manage and administer their own phone systems and eliminate the expense of calling the “phone guy” every time they needed to make a change to their phone systems.

Fonality stormed into the SMB IP-PBX market by leveraging an investment from a small group of angel investors. In 2006, the company received its first round of venture capital, a $5 million investment led by Azure Capital, which Fonality used to expand its management team and continue product development. Fonality has demonstrated significant business success – growing at a monthly rate of ten percent on average, achieving profitability in 2006 and increasing call volumes at a rate of 400 percent per year for the past three years. As a result of these successes, in early 2007, Fonality secured $7 million in a Series C investment round led by Intel Capital, with additional participation from Azure Capital.