3CX

Pros

Significant amount of customisation available and still easy for someone unfamiliar with VoIP products to use. Call quality is very good as with report generation

Cons

Some tasks such as changing extension numbers can be quite complex though this may be across all VoIP products.

Pros

I love all the features of 3CX. I love how easy you can set it up, you can find the calls logs and recordings, plus it has a very comprehensive dashboard. Also, when we reach out to them to increase our accounts SC (concurrent calls), they are very responsive as they have a local partner from where I'm from and it was solved immediately.

Cons

The only thing I don't like about 3CX is the provisioning of the softphone as in our setup, people come and go, and we need to provision whenever there's a new employee who'll use it. I think it's better if 3CX can have the login/logout functionality on the desktop app instead of provisioning every time. But it is really negligible and not a deal breaker at all.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing 3CX

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to 3CX

Pros

The 3CX installer on both Linux and Windows is incredibly easy to use and users can go from nothing to a fully-featured phone system in less than 20 minutes. Once installed, the user interface is very clean and straightforward.

The 3CX Softphone that can be installed on Windows and mac computers pairs effortlessly with 3CX provisioning files.

Cons

3CX offers very little customization outside of the user interface, and commonly phone system managers will be simply unable to perform more-complex call routing. As an example, dynamic outbound routes are simply not possible outside of the overly-simple Outbound Routes tab, and you are limited to only prefix, length of destination, and from extension.

Compared to FreePBX and FusionPBX, the ability to customize 3CX is almost non-existent.

3CX Support will 100% of the time deflect any technical issues to the carrier, and after numerous ticket responses later, they will finally admit to being able to help.

SIP SRV records are completely broken and not compliant with the SIP RFC. It's hilarious how catastrophic this lack of functionality is.

Faxing is completely broken. It will be a complete nightmare if you attempt to run T.38 faxing over a 3CX phone system.

Pros

full featured phone system with no extra costs. possibility to have cloud deployed, private cloud or even on-premise!

Cons

some features are still in beta but they are already active and communication when issues rice is closely followed by support to have them asap out of beta.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing 3CX

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to 3CX

Pros

3CX is straightforward. It seems to have all the necessary features for a small business. Still, as a business owner who cannot work on the admin side, I can only comment on the usability and stability.

Compared to other softphone apps, I've never had significant issues. I use 3CX as a softphone on an iPhone, through a Yealink desk phone, via Chrome plugin, and on an iPad. Surprisingly, the limitations I see are not due to the daily functions.

There are some features I would like, but there is nothing about this app that hinders my company's ability to operate without delay. We have users in China, Thailand, the Philippines, Jamacia, Venezuela, and the US. All locations work well, and the apps work even with limited internet access.

There are times when the connection is not great, but this is usually due to the internet and not the apps.

Cons

There is no way for my ringer on my softphone or desk phone to be customized to ring differently when someone calls my extension vs. ring group. I wish there were connectivity with Zapier so that I could push contacts from other services into our address book.

It would be nice if the SMS chat feature worked more similarly to a shared inbox, where everyone could see it. You can only transfer the chat to another extension, which makes SMS hard to use as a group.

Overall, the cons are not about the ability to use 3CX but the features I wish it had that could provide a better overall experience.