3CX vs. AliveChat

In many scenarios decision is driven by budget and compared to other solutions at the time of purchase [3CX] was simply the cheapest solution for what it has to offer. If you are looking for integrations, extensibility, and advanced functionalities, this might not be a solution for you. At the time of use (and this may have changed by now), there was a lack of APIs, CLI commands, and similar so nothing could be automated with the system. There are ways of importing data through CSV but automation would solve us so much time and support calls if we were able to connect with other systems.

Incentivized

It is well suited for communication with existing customers and prospects. It is less appropriate for people just looking to visit our website to get up to date with the latest team news or those who aren't at a computer.

Incentivized

• Simplicity: Using a single 3CX interface we can manage every phone and extension used throughout our company.
• Flexibility: There are a wide variety of options to configure each extension and phone. Changing anything after the hardware is deployed is very easy.
• Portability: Phones with 3CX can be easily moved or repurposed within an office or at remote locations, including users' homes. The mobile app allows users to use their office extension anywhere without exposing their cell number.

Incentivized

• Mobile compatibility - AliveChat has a dynamic user interface which makes its popup chat widget display and work perfectly on all devices - mobile and desktop. Thus web visitors get a complete experience no matter the device from which they use in accessing our website.
• Analytic - AliveChat provides us with a dynamic set of website analytics that helps us in analyzing our progress or decline in a timely manner. With the analytics provided by AliveChat, we are able to monitor the number of visitors on the website at a particular time, the duration of which they have been on the website, the number of times they have been on the website in time past etc.
• Feature packed - AliveChat is packed with features which makes the job of the customer care agents easier. For instance, with AliveChat it is very easy for an agent to transfer a web visitors chat to another agent that has better answers to the agent's query. We are also able to introduce short survey questions to web visitors, which they respond to before they begin chatting with a customer care rep.

Incentivized

• I would like to be able to see direct-dial numbers on the handsets. Currently that is not possible but that would be a nice feature.
• You need an SBC per location, which can be a point of failure.
• You also need a server that might get disconnected, which is another point of failure.

Incentivized

• There seems to always be required upgrades where you need to spend more money to get a better product.
• The look and feel continues to change, not necessarily for the bad.
• Price point has gone up a decent amount recently.

Incentivized

The 3CX Phone System is only a five because while they provide set-up/how-to/Q and A documents to help your district or company get started, they do not offer support for free. The documents provided, though, are good enough for you to get you up and running. We also found a good source of help through a sip trunk provider, which was a 3CX reseller provider.

Incentivized

The main differences between 8x8, Inc. and 3CX is pricing and ease of use in my opinion. The 3CX system uses annual based pricing plans based on of simultaneous calls your company needs, not the number of extensions/users and offers a free plan. 8x8, Inc. charges per extension with different plans. We currently have 19 extensions so the 3CX system makes more sense for us, however, if your company only has a few extensions you may want to throughly consider both options. In my experience, it was difficult to add new extensions and phones with 8x8 because at least at that time we had 8x8 I could not add anything on the web admin. I had to call a sales rep which took a lot more time. Also, if you didn't purchase a phone and/or headset directly from 8x8 at a usually higher price than Amazon for example then you would have to spend anywhere from 30 minutes to hours on the phone with 8x8 tech support to program the phone to work with the 8x8 system so adding a new extension could turn into a long ordeal. I can easily add new extensions on 3CX directly in the web cpanel. Granted, if you are actually adding a new phone number you would need to purchase that number from a company like ATT first before adding it to 3CX. The difference between a phone number and an extension would be a phone number allows a customer to call in directly using that number. The extension would require the customer to call the main business number then be transferred to the extension. 3CX provides a list of supported phone models on their website

Incentivized

AliveChat really serves a different purpose than other products. Very few products offer the ability to chat through our website, so it compliments our phone, text, and email options very well.

Incentivized

• 3CX has a lot to offer for a very low cost as its business model is based on simultaneous calls and not per device. It's very cost effective and very affordable.
• As the 3CX server does not require a high-performance server to run, with the Public Cloud option, it might allow even further savings.

Incentivized

• AliveChat has made it easy for us to track the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. As the real-time number of visitors on the website gives us insights into the performance of ongoing campaigns.
• AliveChat also makes it possible for us to have an idea of where our web visitors are coming from i.e. via the pre-chat survey form for instance. We are able to generate important data like how a web visitor got to know about us, their expectations when visiting our website etc.
• AliveChat makes it easy for web visitors to get a real-time response to their questions, with a delay of probably a few seconds.

Incentivized