We need a new phone system - Recommendations?

[Sonic007]

Hi all,

 

We currently have a contract that is up for renewal and I'm interested to see what is out there to compare?

 

We are two schools, side by side, an Infant, and Junior School and there is a site wide phone system so staff can call from infants numbers to the juniors and vice versa.

 

We need approx 25 phones.

 

Our current system uses Panasonic phones and we are keen to look at a more stable sollution as Panasonic will cease to support phones in the coming years.

 

We have two phone numbers, one for each school and then a line for the alarm.

 

Voicemail and an absence line for pupils and staff would be needed too.

 

 

Please let me know what you would recommend and anyone interested in providing a quote, please DM and I will get back to you.

 

 

Thankyou.

[Rob_D]

Teams phone system is probably worth checking out if you're using 365 for other things.

[Sonic007]

Teams phone system is probably worth checking out if you're using 365 for other things.

Not Microsoft 365 users here I'm afraid.

[willtech]

3CX @johnlevis is a good person to talk to at Very PC

 

Its quiet a good system we replaced an old system with this.

 

Lots of features.

Edited September 24, 2021 by willtech

[DrCheese]

3CX, either locally hosted or cloud hosted - Don't even entertain any company nowadays that tries to sell you a bespoke onsite PBX, they're ripping you off.

[MatthewL]

3CX would be ideal or FreePBX based, depends how little you want to do.

 

All good and well having it hosted but it's not cheap as having it in house, least you can still make internal calls if SIP lines go down.

 

It's not all about the system, don't forget the how the incoming lines come in, are they going to be SIP or you still on a physical connection, time to change, possibly?

 

If you are looking at this, do you have the network infrastructure in place to deal with VoIP phones if that is the route you are going (most sensible).

Edited September 24, 2021 by MatthewL

[Bedders]

We use 3CX (disclaimer: Not a school!).

It's great because you can use physical handsets, but there's also the option of an app on your mobile phone, and a softphone to be installed on a PC or Laptop.

[Jcx500]

Without a doubt 3CX

 

So easy to administer

[ozydave]

We have just installed 3CX. Undoubtedly a very good choice. Love it, easy to administer and soooo much cheaper than our old system.

Had a recent renewal for our old system which came in at just shy of £4k for the year. That's without calls.

 

3CX all the way

[ozydave]

We have just installed 3CX. Undoubtedly a very good choice. Love it, easy to administer and soooo much cheaper than our old system.

Had a recent renewal for our old system which came in at just shy of £4k for the year. That's without calls.

 

3CX all the way

Chat to @veypc

[Simcfc73]

I bought a freepbx box and second user grandstream phones. Very cheap.

 

Probably use 1% of Freepbx though... we only really use ring groups.

[southhamster]

Our alarm provider moved us from a dedicated BT redcare? Line to universal 4G device (hunts for the strongest signal from any available) which saved money and arguably more secure so you could bin 1 line at least.

[Jamman960]

We moved to freepbx in 2016 and it’s been great, started out replacing our existing phones but eventually changed to 1 phone per classroom - it used to cost us 300+ to add a new phone to the system and we were close to capacity but now if there’s a pc in a location adding a phone is simple and usually only costs us the price of a phone. We also went from 2 pbx’s to one to cover both of our sites

 

Moving to sip trunks was easy, be weary that openreach freeze migrations during December, this caught us out briefly. We used Gamma and get trunks for £8/mo per trunk with 1000mins free covering all local,national and mobile numbers

 

If I were doing it again I’d be looking at 3cx also but freepbx is more than capable

[Jcx500]

Without a doubt 3CX

 

So easy to administer

 

To elaborate on this ,

 

Took me less than 10 mins to have a phone configured and ready to use

 

Oh and the phone app .. it is so good , you deploy the msi out to staff machines and just send them a email from 3CX to set the app on there machine

Edited September 26, 2021 by Jcx500

[Steve21]

Out of curiosity, for those with 3cx, are you all hosting it yourselves or using cloud based?

 

While I like the idea of cloud-based for it, I dread to think the complaints if the internet is down and we have no internal lines either! (It doesn't seem the failover works cross platform last time I read)

 

Also, is anyone using specific hardware to keep old analogue lines etc alive with 3cx, or just dumping them all?

 

Steve

[ITGURU]

Unify Openscape Business S Server here running on Hyper-V. Can use physical phones and softphones with it on PC and phone.

incoming lines on SIP.

[DrCheese]

Out of curiosity, for those with 3cx, are you all hosting it yourselves or using cloud based?

 

While I like the idea of cloud-based for it, I dread to think the complaints if the internet is down and we have no internal lines either! (It doesn't seem the failover works cross platform last time I read)

 

Also, is anyone using specific hardware to keep old analogue lines etc alive with 3cx, or just dumping them all?

 

Steve

 

We host it ourselves for this reason. (Secondary)

 

The primary I support has it in the cloud with a local SBC on a Pi. Works just as well but as they pay per extension it does mean if they want to expand they have to pay more, whereas at the secondary I just add another extension for free.

[TechMonkey]

Out of curiosity, for those with 3cx, are you all hosting it yourselves or using cloud based?

 

While I like the idea of cloud-based for it, I dread to think the complaints if the internet is down and we have no internal lines either! (It doesn't seem the failover works cross platform last time I read)

 

Also, is anyone using specific hardware to keep old analogue lines etc alive with 3cx, or just dumping them all?

 

Steve

 

We host it but are looking to move to cloud. Went completely IP based, except for stand alone phone lines for things like alarms or lift phones, but they never went through the PBX. We currently have our SIP trunks setup so we can redirect them to mobiles or a hardline we left in the main office (old fax line) if the worst happens. If we move to cloud then we will direct people to have the app on their phone and use mobile data.

[gsk]

I set up 3CX and a few Yealink T46S phones out of interest. It is easy and cheap but it's one more thing that comes down to you to sort. I did a comparison of costs against having another company do the phones on a Cloud Hosted VOIP situation and found that it's worth the cost to spread the risk and hassle a bit, especially as it still offered decent savings over the existing analogue system. The trial helped in upskilling us to be able to deal with initial issues and being able to tell if we were being BS'd by a supplier. We sold the phones and did a procurement process with some 3rd parties and they invariably resell and value-add the top Cloud hosted providers like CallSwitch, Horizon and Xelion.

 

The first thing to sort is getting your alarm(s) off of redcare. Find out who's monitoring what - some schools have different intruder and fire companies. Some will buy red care and the alarm companies will piggyback and others will have the whole lot done by the alarm company. There's usually a choice between a TCP/IP link or a 4G link. There was a cost to get the change done but that saved money within the first year by getting rid of redcare.

 

Then decide whether you want to keep your existing physical lines. I think most people would suggest that you don't. Then you need to decide whether you're going to put in a dedicated broadband connection for the phones or not. The companies prefer it sometimes because it takes away any issues of filtering and firewalls, but in reality thats not a big issue. The broadband capacity used by VOIP calls is TINY (use 1 Mbps per 10 simultaneous calls as a guide).

 

The issue of losing your internal phone system if your internet connection goes down can be sorted with an SBC (Session Border Control) unit on site which will ensure that internal calls don't leave the internal network. I found that this added a layer of complexity with Softphones, apps and using them at different locations though so best to weigh up what you need, or might need in future.

[DrCheese]

Then you need to decide whether you're going to put in a dedicated broadband connection for the phones or not. The companies prefer it sometimes because it takes away any issues of filtering and firewalls, but in reality thats not a big issue. The broadband capacity used by VOIP calls is TINY (use 1 Mbps per 10 simultaneous calls as a guide).

 

Yes, so one of the companies I got to quote for the 3cx solution insisted that we pay for a "Ethernet first mile" connection if we went with them, as they insisted it was the only way to ensure decent call quality. They'd wave that condition but I'd have had to have signed loads of wavers & realistically, I couldn't be bothered with the inevitable headaches that I'd get if we had any problems, as I knew they'd always blame the circuit - So didn't go with them.

 

The reality is as long as you have a decent enough connection out to the web, you'll be fine. We have a leased 1gb line and we've had zero problems since day one. Going from PTSN voice quality to "HD" voice quality was amazing, it just sounds so much better.

 

If you don't VLAN your phones off at the moment you may want to do this simply to keep the traffic clear but that's all.

[gsk]

Does VLAN'ing offer better performance than just QoS?