3CX Phone system

[DaveA]

Hi All,

 

We are looking at replacing our old BT ISDN phone system with a new one. We are looking at 3CX a phone system and I was just wondering if anyone could give me a bit of feedback about how they find them to use and manage. And also if there are any Liverpool /northwest Schools that are running one and would not mind me and our school receptionist popping over for a chat and to have a look at your system that would be great.

 

Thanks All,

 

Dave.

[Aprice]

Hi Dave,

 

I've used 3CX a couple of times, unless you're after the mobile app then I don't think it's all that great. I think there's better alternatives out there that cost less.

 

Happy to have a chat with you about what we've put in since, just drop me a PM.

 

Thanks,

 

Alex

[SpaceInvader83]

We moved from Cisco Call Manager over to 3CX quite a number of years ago (100+ handsets), it's been brilliant, super easy to setup and administer, updates are a breeze, massive cost savings, would highly recommend. You could opt for a cloud hosted instance to make deployment even easier, plenty of resellers offer this or you can go direct via 3CX and pick up some SIP trunks, as a measure we have just over 100 handsets (Yealink), 3CX 16 SC Pro licence and 10 SIP trunks and we never top those out.

[PMFR]

We moved to 3CX here last year (25 handsets, SIP etc). Haven't looked back. Absolutely no problems at all.

[dmason2]

Have used 3cx since working at the new place, works a charm, able to add the phone extension to own phone via the app

[dobbyit]

Love 3cx, wouldnt change it. love the mobile app. I belive the 3cx v18 is now intergrated with teams but not checked this out yet. we have 16 handsets and other staff have own extension number via a webclient or mobile phone

[dobsonl]

We moved about a year ago now across the trust to 1 PBX running in Azure with a SBC on each site (the all through site has SBC in high availability) totalling 10 sites now and wouldn't look back, the staff love being able to also call each other without having to go through switchboards.

[Cat_Jam148]

Moved over to 3CX last year with around 45 handsets and I can't complain really. Went down the on-site hosting route due to costs. Was straight forward enough to set up and is easy to administer.

 

3CX offer free webinar training sessions which I found useful when it came to getting my head around everything. https://www.3cx.com/3cxacademy/videos/basic/

[MatthewL]

Run it at home on a RaspberyPi, does for what I need, use an Andrews & Arnold SIP trunk costs me nothing a month really compared to what I was paying Vonage previously.

 

Should do for what most need, just spin up a VM and away you go. Just remember that it relies on your internet connection if you want to make external calls, obviously self hosting you can still make internal calls if you internet goes down.

[TechMonkey]

Used it at my previous place for about 6 years. Cost was fantastic and did everything we needed and more, without masses amounts of training, everything was fairly straightforward. Over COVID admin staff were able to continue as if they were in the office, no one was any the wiser.

 

New place has a cloud system and I miss 3CX, this one is very interesting in the way it organises things. Would love to move to 3CX but can't justify the disruption at the moment.

[lmgtfy]

We use 3CX in a MAT running a few instances over many schools. Not had many issues. Yealink T31G handsets are great value. 3CX did used to be a lot cheaper but even at the current prices you can't easily beat it if you have a lot of extensions and don't want to go down the Freepbx route.

[CrootUK]

We have migrated our MAT schools to 3CX 2-3 years ago from various solutions/providers in house and they have all gone very smoothly and quickly.

 

Also done another MAT to 3CX again very smoothly.

 

We use the Yealink T42s mainly have around 300 of them in our Trust. T46s for receptionists and various yealink DECT phones.

 

Trade account on VoiPon is the best route for handsets we found.

 

Need any advice feel free to PM, also you can get certified for free via 3CX training platform.

Edited March 8, 2022 by CrootUK

[localzuk]

Been running 3CX here for at least 5 years. Due to workload, migrating all our schools on to it has been slow going, but we've just put the porting request in for our penultimate school, and will be installing handsets at the final school soon. So, then we'll have all our schools and nurseries using it via our WAN, hosted on our own server cluster here.

 

Its one of the few systems that Just Works tbh.

 

We settled on Yealink T41 handsets and T48 for our middle school receptionists. Plus a couple of W52 DECT phones in nurseries. Out of 160 we've installed, we've had a single one which was faulty out of the box and 2 which kitchens killed with flour/water/food goop.

[jnfarmer]

Used 3CX at my old place and as soon as I had the opportunity to replace it at my current place, I took it. We used to use Cisco and every teacher had a desk phone in the office, this was to expensive to replicate so only some admin staff got desk phones, everyone else was given a £30 USB headset, shown how to use the web client/softphone and it's been brilliant!

[hallb15]

Who are people using for their SIP trunks?

Any you'd recommend or ones to avoid?

[Davit2005]

Who are people using for their SIP trunks?

Any you'd recommend or ones to avoid?

 

Gamma are talked about a lot, no personal experience but previous places have used it and not heard anything bad.

[MatthewL]

I used Andrews & Arnold at home and had no issues so far.

[Cat_Jam148]

Who are people using for their SIP trunks?

Any you'd recommend or ones to avoid?

 

We've been with Fuse 2 for about a year now

 

Cheap trunks with call packages

 

 

Were cheaper than Spitfire and Gamma when I was looking into it

 

Can't complain.

[ozydave]

Moved to 3cx about 1 1/2 years ago. Not looked back, easy to manage. Ours is hosted in azure with onsite SBC

 

Got around 200 yealink T41's, cheap and easy to setup.

We use Gamma SIP again no problems,

Cut our overall phone system (including call costs) down by thousands.

 

Maintenance on old system was 3.5k a year [emoji45]

[CrootUK]

Who are people using for their SIP trunks?

Any you'd recommend or ones to avoid?

 

We Use Gamma a-lot, works a treat. But can be pricey for certain mobile providers not included in the package eg Virgin Media and LycaMobile.

[Wave9_Lee]

I guess the key difference from 3cx etc and a managed service, are having to manage/update/fix your hosting/server/patches, troubleshooting and call routing yourself vs having it all looked after to an SLA. So although costs might be higher, your own overhead and risk is lower. We include all changes within our charges, soft clients, Teams integration, etc. We think the pricing is pretty good, even for large deployments. One other benefit is that we can offer QoS if using our broadband, so you have an SLA on call quality. Happy to provide a quote for the system, or just SIP trunks if needed, anytime.

 

cheers

[Zoom7000]

Moved to 3cx about 1 1/2 years ago. Not looked back, easy to manage. Ours is hosted in azure with onsite SBC

 

Does 3CX need an onsite controller? I'm looking at replacing our VoIP solution and would like to go fully cloud based, however, a couple of suppliers have told me that you need an onsite controller, especially if you want internal calling between multiple sites. Is this correct?

[Chris_Cook]

Your 3cx server can be onsite or cloud hosted.

 

Depending on your internet connection and phones, you may need an SBC (session border controller) on each site.

 

This especially seems to be the case with ATA boxes and hotdesk phones.

 

Depending on the number of phones, you can host this on a raspberry pi, or on a PC/VM.

[orangedux]

We deploy 3CX to our clients and frankly it's a breeze. Clients love it and the cost savings and flexibility a brilliant.

 

One thing to be aware of, if you host on 3CX servers there are access limitations to certain config elements so you may want to self host on something like AWS if you want complete control of the system.

If you're running multi-site you can run Session border controllers on a Raspberry Pi (setup takes 5 mins).

I would avoid Polycom phones as I have encoutered provisioning issues with these which can sometimes be a pain to work through, I prefer Yealink personally.

Other than that, awesome!

Good luck

[Guest Guest]

Webmate. Hands down the best sip trunk provider I have ever used, £7.40 minus extra Dids for free UK unlimited calls. Can’t grumble about them.

 

Highly recommend them