Need a new Phone system

[Sonic007]

Hi everyone,

 

Our current contract is all over the place and costing us silly money.

 

We currently have Yealink handsets that I'd like to keep as they do the job and we own them. We have approx 20 internal extensions and two physical numbers, one for our Infant School, one for our Junior School.....both these numbers currently go to the same menu system and callers can choose a school and leave pupil absence information, or talk to the office.

 

At the moment if we want to make any changes we have to call them up and they have to change the names on a phone extension or do any changes we need.

I'd like to just be able to login, make a change, and then that is it, it gets pushed to the handset.

 

I've heard good things about a hosted 3CX system.

What would you all recommend and what company to go with?

 

 

Thankyou.

[steveg]

We've just finished having a 3cx system installed with Yealink handsets, very happy with it. Chose to go on-site VM although cloud is an option too, we just wanted a way of communicating internally if the internet is down.

 

We used a company called Clarion, although I think I would happily do the install myself if it came to it again. They have been pretty good and no major issues with them, it's just pretty straight forward and quick to learn.

[synaesthesia]

3CX I think is a no-brainer. Had double success with the company Tri-Lan, both hosted and for on-site. Excellent support & reliability, all with Yealink handsets.

[Tys]

Ditto with 3CX, will do exactly what you need - we just moved over (Easter) at trust level and costs were a tiny fraction of what we were paying previously. Yealink handsets too.

 

Happy to jump on a call and talk/show you how we have ours setup if you like, just let me know, can also refer to a couple of suppliers (our current one and one I have used in the past) but really you can't go far wrong.

[willtech]

3CX is a great solution. @VeryPC. was great in getting pricing and licences for us to do it.

[Olliedawg]

Another +1 for 3CX. Paired with Yealink handsets, over the past 3 years zero issues really. Easy enough to manage through the web console.

Over easter I moved our 3CX from a standalone aging PC running on bare windows 10, to a VM on one of our ESXi hosts. Very easy to do.

 

Our 3CX licence costs us about £270 P/A

 

Call costs average about £190 per month (Gamma)

[mrbios]

If you're comfortable with linux, FreePBX is a solid product. Been running it as our phone system with yealink handsets since 2016.

 

We pay per call, unlimited concurrency (no free minutes + limited to X amount of calls) average monthly cost for calls is £65pm, which is the only cost to us for the system.

Edited June 17, 2024 by mrbios

[Tys]

Another +1 for 3CX. Paired with Yealink handsets, over the past 3 years zero issues really. Easy enough to manage through the web console.

Over easter I moved our 3CX from a standalone aging PC running on bare windows 10, to a VM on one of our ESXi hosts. Very easy to do.

 

Our 3CX licence costs us about £270 P/A

 

Call costs average about £190 per month (Gamma)

 

Do you have a high number of concurrent calls? Those call costs are more than our annual cost (which covers our whole system, inc 3CX and trunks/calls), we pay based on concurrent calls for the trunk much like the 3CX license with all UK landline/mobile included so maybe something to explore?

[Olliedawg]

Do you have a high number of concurrent calls? Those call costs are more than our annual cost (which covers our whole system, inc 3CX and trunks/calls), we pay based on concurrent calls for the trunk much like the 3CX license with all UK landline/mobile included so maybe something to explore?

 

We have the single trunk & up to 8 concurrent calls. Are you with Gamma also?

[Sonic007]

Thanks everyone. It sounds like 3CX is the way to go!

 

Now to decide if we go hosted or run a VM with it on. I've no experience with 3CX so wonder if the Hosted route wuld be better.

 

I said 20 handsets originally. We have 26.

For our 26 handsets we would want to make sure each of these can dial out.

Edited June 17, 2024 by Sonic007

[synaesthesia]

Just double check on that requirement. It's *extremely* unlikely they will all need to dial out at once. We can get by with 4 concurrent calls, with 60 handsets on site. We have 8, but haven't gone above 4. And of course that does not include internal calls, only external.

[Sonic007]

Just double check on that requirement. It's *extremely* unlikely they will all need to dial out at once. We can get by with 4 concurrent calls, with 60 handsets on site. We have 8, but haven't gone above 4. And of course that does not include internal calls, only external.

 

 

I trhink you are right. I will double check this.

I've already noticed we are paying for a line for a Fax that we no longer use and have found a number that I have no idea what goes back to so investigating that too.

[HarryMonkey]

Have you got a lift? It could be the alarm/emergency/panic/get me out of here line.

[johnlevis]

Good to see us recommended for 3CX, thanks @willtech

 

If you'd like to chat about options @Sonic007, details are below

 

John

[Net_Man]

Can I please ask the 3CX users a question. Is 3CX system capable of using SIP trunk lines.

 

We are currently using a Unify system with Voiceflex SIP lines whereby we get free landline and mobile calls and just pay for non-geo numbers. The the Unify annual maintenance on the other hand is about £800 and there is also a one off VOIP handset license fee of about £200

[robk]

3cx def works with SIP. We have all schools in our trust connected back to one 3cx server hosted in AWS. We just port the nos onto a set of Gamma Trunk lines as we move schools over. I think for 3 secondary schools and 5 Primaries we have 32 sim calls licenced.

[Netwacky87]

We've just finished having a 3cx system installed with Yealink handsets, very happy with it. Chose to go on-site VM although cloud is an option too, we just wanted a way of communicating internally if the internet is down.

 

We used a company called Clarion, although I think I would happily do the install myself if it came to it again. They have been pretty good and no major issues with them, it's just pretty straight forward and quick to learn.

 

We have just signed with Clarion too for a 3cx system. They seem very switched on and all looks very straight forward!

[dobsonl]

3CX is certify the way forward I think for most schools, its really easy to manage.

 

We have ours running in Azure and covers now 12 schools ranging from a few extensions in 1 upto nearly 100 in the largest all on 1 system, all of ours has been setup in house without the use of a telephone provider per say.

 

SIP lines are comming in from Gamma with more free minutes than I care to work out.

 

Never had any issues with it and the team can easily manage any changes required on it, including menu changes.

 

Happy to jump on a call.

[Edu-IT]

3CX is certify the way forward I think for most schools, its really easy to manage.

 

We have ours running in Azure and covers now 12 schools ranging from a few extensions in 1 upto nearly 100 in the largest all on 1 system, all of ours has been setup in house without the use of a telephone provider per say.

 

SIP lines are comming in from Gamma with more free minutes than I care to work out.

 

Never had any issues with it and the team can easily manage any changes required on it, including menu changes.

 

Happy to jump on a call.

What are your Azure running costs?

[PrimaryNetMan]

Another vote for 3CX. Have moved 3 Primaries over (soon to be 4) to fully hosted and managed instances. Handsets are Fanvil and just a RasPi SBC to worry about onsite.

[snagrat]

3CX is certify the way forward I think for most schools, its really easy to manage.

 

We have ours running in Azure and covers now 12 schools ranging from a few extensions in 1 upto nearly 100 in the largest all on 1 system, all of ours has been setup in house without the use of a telephone provider per say.

 

SIP lines are comming in from Gamma with more free minutes than I care to work out.

 

Never had any issues with it and the team can easily manage any changes required on it, including menu changes.

 

Happy to jump on a call.

 

Identical here but we actually use Yeastar rather than 3CX.

 

300 extensions, Gamma trunks. Just works

[bknaggs]

Can I please ask the 3CX users a question. Is 3CX system capable of using SIP trunk lines.

 

We are currently using a Unify system with Voiceflex SIP lines whereby we get free landline and mobile calls and just pay for non-geo numbers. The the Unify annual maintenance on the other hand is about £800 and there is also a one off VOIP handset license fee of about £200

 

We run 3CX with Voiceflex SIP lines.

[CrootUK]

What are your Azure running costs?

 

Keen to also know an answer to this Q, looking to move our 7 onprem 3cx appliances to a single cloud one soon.

[Sonic007]

Don't know how this compares to everyones bills and if 3CX will get them lower....

 

We pay the following:

 

£210 per year maintenance charge

£217 per month line rental /call charges / hosted rental

[dobsonl]

@CrootUK @Edu-IT

 

Our VM is a B2s which I think is about £60, its slightly hard to tell as we have a collection of VMs in azure that are all billed together.

 

SIP trunks from Gamma are £123.75 per month for 25 channels

 

- - - Updated - - -

@CrootUK @Edu-IT

 

Our VM is a B2s which I think is about £60, its slightly hard to tell as we have a collection of VMs in azure that are all billed together.

 

SIP trunks from Gamma are £123.75 per month for 25 channels