Honest 3CX feedback

[Paid_Peanuts]

We are considering replacing an old Cisco VoIP solution due to ongoing costs.

We have narrowed down the choices, one of which is 3CX.

 

For those of you running a 3CX system would you be willing to share your honest feedback?

Do you experience any issues? Do you have any handset lockups that require reboots or anything similar? In your experience, do any particular brand of handsets work better than any other?

 

What advice would you pass on to someone installing 3CX for the first time?

 

Having had a bullet proof Cisco solution we are mindful of putting in something we have no experience in. But the ongoing costs of maintaining the Cisco solution and potential upgrade costs are very high, too high to justify staying with it. We inherited the solution from the BSF days.

I am also aware we could load the SIP firmware onto the Cisco handsets we have to potentially make them work with a 3CX system, saving us some handset cost.

[localzuk]

I've had a couple of glitches with it in the past, when an update has gone awry. However, removing and reinstalling from backup resolves it in less than 5 mins.

 

Its easy to manage and relatively cheap to license.

 

We use Yealink phones. Good build quality so far, though we do have the occasional glitch where the handset will randomly not put any audio through the speaker in the handset. Only a factory reset remedies it. Probably happens on 1 phone out of 100 every 3 months.

 

We also get some oddities regarding transferred calls - but this seems to be due to the person calling in and what system they're using. When their call is transferred internally their phone system drops the call entirely (not our side). Though it is quite rare.

[markwilfan]

Not used it in anger yet but came top of our tender process. I've been through configuring it and have to say it's so simple but feature rich. Did it without rtfm . Be careful to read the wizard info though as there are a few gotchas for example you can't change the length of extensions once installed. Also if you have any small sites you look after you can use a rpi3 as a session border controller to extend the system to remote sites. Benefit of this is the local calls stay local rather than going external then local again. Easy to understand licencing too which was a important to us for tco

[huckerd]

I am currently in the same Cisco call Manager situation but currently researching freePBX and bolting iSymphony to it for our solution.

 

We are looking to purchase the hardware via Sangoma reseller to delivery the solution.

 

Anyone's input to 3CX or FreePBX would be appreciated.

[mdrabble]

Used 3CX since August and was a self install project using Gamma SIP Trunks.

 

53 Extension in total - mixture of Fanvil X3 and X4 phones. and 3 Yealink W60B (Cordless phones)

 

Main Reception uses a Yealink T48S with Exp40 sidecar.

 

No issues from installing and general day to day usage. (First time I;ve logged into the system for about 3 months just to check how many extension we had in total.

 

My only annoyance is that I created custom templates based of their original ones - to add school logo to phone background and to customize the phone buttons and 3CX flag anything custom as possible issues.

 

Other slight annoyance - when on night service - no visible indication on the main reception phone.

Edited May 13, 2019 by mdrabble
Added - Night service annoyance.

[TechMonkey]

3CX site for 3 years roughly. There are a few niggles but for the price and ease of use I can over look them. It also keeps getting better with new releases. Best thing is everything is there, no extra licenses if we want to look at things or the possibilities of improving how we do things. For example we now use queues within IT as a test for using them elsewhere, other systems we would have had to purchase a license to use this. Same for voicemails, we turn them on and off at will with no worries about wasting or needing a license. We have it almost exactly how we want it now so barely touch it, but it never seems scary when we have to go back in to deal with something. Have to say we were skeptical at first as it was so cheap, but after talking to a few schools and trying to find the catch, we just couldn't justify anything else.

 

We use Yealink phones, which are very nice. The IT Team use their PCs for phones with headsets now, which works really well.

 

We got an external company to install and configure, but I think we could have managed it ourselves. I was just a bit hesitant with it being such a major public IT project.

 

Cost savings are just crazy, even on top of the massive costs savings of going VOIP.

 

It is just one of those systems I don't have to worry about, either day to day or thinking about config changes or future expansion.

 

Moving forward we are tentatively looking at moving it to a cloud provider to give resilience and expandability beyond our site but this is not a massive concern at the moment.

 

We looked at Avaya, NEC and Shoretel as alternatives. NEC and Shoretel looked nice but just stacked up expensive in comparison and lacked features, unless we shelled out more cash. We were looking at 3CX being between a third to half cheaper than the other options. This was also after making the quote more expensive with better handsets as the Bursar felt the quote was too cheap to consider.

 

Overall it is one of the things I am most happy with having done.

Edited May 13, 2019 by TechMonkey

[mavhc]

Using FreePBX with Gamma, and Grandstream and Cisco phones. Only annoying part is configuring the phones themselves really.

 

Installed the SIP firmware on the Cisco phones, have to use ChanSip with only 8 char passwords for those, not really sure it's worth it to save £40/phone over 10 years, only £4/year really.

 

Grandstream seem to have an 8 char limit on first and 2nd names, so some extensions have a space in the middle when I try to fake a 16 char name.

[TTG_Alice]

I want to vouch out for 3CX and Yealink phones. It's really popular with of our Edu customers.

 

Our 3CX education customers include: Leicester College / Selby College / Dearne Valley College / Oxford College / Reading College / Rugby School / Charlotte House Prep / Derwent Lower School / Hertsmere Jewish primary School / Kingshott School / Maple Tree School / Meanwood CofE Primary School / Thomas Whitehead CoE lower School / Stoke Damerel Community College / Cockburn School /Leicester College / Selby College / Dearne Valley College / Oxford College / Reading College / Rugby School / Charlotte House Prep / Derwent Lower School / Hertsmere Jewish primary School / Kingshott School / Maple Tree School / Meanwood CofE Primary School / Thomas Whitehead CoE lower School / Stoke Damerel Community College / Cockburn School /

 

If you are interested in a fully managed 3CX provider, send me a PM

[DrBeaker]

Knew one guy previously who was all for it, but he loved his open source stuff, regardless of whether it actually fixed the issue or not. Sometimes open-source/free isn't the best solution.

 

Myself I've heard mixed things. I've heard of 3CX being right with some customers for some reasons.

[TechMonkey]

Knew one guy previously who was all for it, but he loved his open source stuff, regardless of whether it actually fixed the issue or not. Sometimes open-source/free isn't the best solution.

 

Myself I've heard mixed things. I've heard of 3CX being right with some customers for some reasons.

 

3CX isn't open source, as far as I am aware.

 

Can you expand on the issues you have dealt with? I'd be interested incase I run into them in the future

[localzuk]

Knew one guy previously who was all for it, but he loved his open source stuff, regardless of whether it actually fixed the issue or not. Sometimes open-source/free isn't the best solution.

 

3CX isn'f FreePBX - it isn't open source, its a commercial product. I think you may be mixing the products up.

Myself I've heard mixed things. I've heard of 3CX being right with some customers for some reasons.

Please can you expand on this?

[Paid_Peanuts]

For those of you with 3CX which version did you licence? Standard / Pro / Enterprise.

 

The sweet spot seems to be Pro.

 

Currently pricing up the 3CX solution including Yealink phones - these seem to be the most popular phone on this platform and the one the majority of suppliers are recommending.

 

Also would a days install cover all we need to know to get to grips with it? It would seem most organisations are wanting to quote several days "professional services" to install - which seems overkill and expensive!

[Chris_Cook]

It probably depends how well documented your current system is.

 

I think we had a day offsite programming and a day onsite, which was probably about right. I did a lot of work before this making sure we knew how many phones, where they where and what sort of phone we were putting in.

 

The system is pretty easy to use and update. Especially for adding phones. The main issues will be things like IVRs and setting up any buttons on the handsets.

 

Its possible to do most of this in house, but there is a fair amount of leg work entering mac addresses and names. It depends on how much of this you want to do. Our provider had a handy spreadsheet we filled in and they process that in some way.

 

You may also want to spread it over a couple of days so that you can get the basic system up and running, then switch over your phone lines - which may well need to be booked in advance.

 

You might be better off getting a couple of the yealink phones and the free licence. You can play around with it and see what you think.

Edited May 21, 2019 by Chris_Cook

[mavhc]

Bar code scanner for the mac addresses

[Paid_Peanuts]

Bar code scanner for the mac addresses

 

Always use a barcode scanner - saves any mistypes. Certainly helps with the deployment of things like this.

[Paid_Peanuts]

It probably depends how well documented your current system is.

Good, we know what we have and where it is, the IP, MAC address, port and switch it is connected to.

 

 

Its possible to do most of this in house, but there is a fair amount of leg work entering mac addresses and names. It depends on how much of this you want to do. Our provider had a handy spreadsheet we filled in and they process that in some way.

I have set aside 5 days to do this work over the summer break which should be more than enough. I dont mind physically putting the phones out - that way i know they have the right length cable and they boot up and work etc.

 

 

 

You might be better off getting a couple of the yealink phones and the free licence. You can play around with it and see what you think.

Currently have the 3CX system spun up as a VM and have 3 cheap and cheerful Fanvil phones connected to it. We have it setup on some test SIP trunks from a perspective supplier and the 3CX Android and IOS app configured. So far I am impressed with the setup and ease of use.

[Macinator]

We are currently on Shoretel but needing to do massive upgrades - most equipment end of life and going from 56 phones to 325, so I am weighing option of upgrading or going FreePBX or 3CX. With my time left in this position I don't want to saddle my team with something that requires lots of scripting and linux skills, 3CX looks more user friendly.

 

My question - we are a K-8 district in the US with E911 requirements to get down to zones - preferable get to actual room locations. We will have plenty of DIDs but reading the 3CX boards it is unclear how good the 3CX integration is with E911. Is it there or available via third party?

 

Second question - we also need to integrate the phone system into the traditional school intercom. They want a panic button/code assignable to the phones to signal a building lockdown. They do not want a seperate panic button. They also want to be able to use the phones to call the intercoms at the building lever and district level.

 

Can anyone tell me if those features are available. From what I have read it seams 3CX target audience has not been the unique situations schools find ourselves in.

 

Thanks,

 

Scott

[mavhc]

Intercom is just a phone that auto answers. A panic button could just be a BLF shortcut key that dials the panic extension, might have to paint it red and put one of those nuclear button lids on it though.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1 says that landline numbers are just based on the phone number. In freepbx you have a Emergency Caller ID override, so you can say normally you're calling from 123456789 from every phone, but if you dial 911, it says it's coming from a specific number assigned to that physical location.

[Macinator]

Thank you for the reply - any idea if the BLF can require a code - we do not want the kids hitting it. Especially making it the big red button - it just draws their attention.

 

Regarding e911 answer - what you mention with FreePBX is what we need - but I am not following if 3CX is capable of this?

 

Thanks,

 

Scott

[mavhc]

In FreePBX you can have pins (passwords) on outgoing routes, might be a bit tricky to make an internal call use that, guess you could have a fake outgoing number as it's a speed dial/BLF key.

 

Or there's the custom contexts module, that seems to have pins for failover destinations.

[Macinator]

Awesome - thank you so much for your answers.

 

Scott