Need a new Phone system

[CrootUK]

@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

 

Thats not bad, are you using SBCs at every site? what hardware did you go for?

Edited June 18, 2024 by CrootUK

[dobsonl]

We have a mixture of SBCs on the bigger sites and then the smaller ones have got router phones

[Callum99]

Another +1 here for 3CX.

 

We’ve just gone with them for two of our secondary schools with the view to roll it out to our other MAT schools.

 

One server for the entire MAT.

4 digit extension numbers.

 

Currently just the two secondary schools on so far. 130 extensions, and 10 external simultaneous calls. 32 overall simultaneous calls.

 

3CX hosted in the cloud, each site has a SBC. SBC’s are on our hypervisors at each school.

 

I’d definitely approach at MAT level and have one phone solution trust wide.

[flyinghaggis]

+1 for 3CX. Works well in a school as it's charge per simultaneous call which makes the pricing attractive.

[TechMonkey]

Just a note I learned yesterday, Clarion have a plugin that links to certain MIS (iSAMS being one) to allow number lookup. So when a call comes nominated staff will have the MIS record opened for the caller.

[SimplyJade]

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.

Have you considered Pragma? I've seen a few schools go in their direction. No complaints from what I've seen!

[Iain.Faulkner]

We've just put in a Gamma solution through Wave9 (wavetalk), with a view to integrating all our schools into it (both secondary schools will be done by September). Can't fault it, pricing was good, and the team at Wave9 have been brilliant for us.

[TheHyperTechie]

3cx here, cloud hosted via a local MSP. Yealink handsets.

 

Can be slightly annoying that I don't have access myself to make quick changes. But they never take more than an hour to reply.

[markberry]

We've just moved from an old Cisco system to full MS Teams using a 3rd party provider for the SIP trunks and Yealink devices. The costs are pennies compared to the previous system and ADSL lines. We had a 3rd party do the original install although we could have probably done it ourselves. We now manage the phones, lines, voicemail etc all through Teams management in M365.

[Eudora931]

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.

Hi Tys,

 

Have Dm'd you

[DGardiner]

just be careful if youre getting someone to run it for you, they try to apply the pay by extension format on you and when i was looking if was anywhere form £5-£10 per. and they eat the benefit of 3cx. the licence and server resources are buttons.

 

We pay our local company around 302/pm for hosting the server/licencing(32 Sim Call is more than enough for us)/trunks/server support - we havent bundled minutes onto the trunks so have calls on top, but that was our choice

 

that serves 14 Schools, at around 390 extensions total

[aac]

I installed an on-site FreePBX VM at my place, the ongoing monthly costs are as follows:

 

Trunk: free (vsip)

Call package:£49.99 (Unlimited calls to uk mobile/landline and international landline)

Block of 20 DDI numbers: £40

 

And the average out of package charges £3, unlimited channels (some SIP providers charge per channel)

[mthomas08]

We use FreePBX and works fine. The company providing it are low cost and their support has been 2nd to none. Relatively local-ish though.

 

They provide the Yealink phones and no complaints.

[speakercon]

We use FreePBX and works fine. The company providing it are low cost and their support has been 2nd to none. Relatively local-ish though.

 

They provide the Yealink phones and no complaints.

 

I'd be interested in which company you use that supports FreePBX? I only know of VOIPON in the UK.

[nicholab]

Is no one using MS Teams as an option so you have a single IM and Phone system? Edited February 10, 2025 by nicholab

[Boredguy]

Is no one using MS Teams as an option so you have a single IM and Phone system?

 

Yes, 6 out of our 7 schools have Teams as our Phone System. We're doing the 7th at Easter now we've finally got some handsets in after waiting 4 months for the box shifter to get them to us!

[TechMonkey]

Is no one using MS Teams as an option so you have a single IM and Phone system?

 

I looked at Teams through our licensing and a collective version of the licensing. The issue was the price vs flexibility. If I limited the Teams licenses to just what we have now, staff using phones and shared devices, then we could either keep the price the same or make a small saving. 3CX basically gave me a massive saving and the opportunity for anyone in the organisation to have a phone extension at no extra cost. Add on to that new hardware to get the features to make it worth the money, and professional fees charged to set it up, I just couldn't justify it, even at educational rates.

 

I've not used it yet, but Yeastar Cloud-PBX seems to be causing some waves and grabbing interest. Can't quite work out if it is just unrest from 3CX partners/suppliers or if it is actually a similar/better product. Only heard about it after we installed our new 3CX system (isn't that always the case) so haven't looked into it too hard.

[snagrat]

We use Yeastar but host our own P-Series Software edition. Basically the Cloud version.

 

Up to 400 extension now and just run it in Azure

[mthomas08]

I'd be interested in which company you use that supports FreePBX? I only know of VOIPON in the UK.

 

Sent a DM. Not sure if I can publicly state the name, I once did.. and got a slight note.