Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Amazon Chime is well suited for online video and audio meetings, IMs, and conducting training sessions using a whiteboard. It can be integrated well with Google Calendar and Microsoft outlook. With Amazon Chime mobile app you can attend meetings on the go as well. Meetings can be locked so that only legitimate participants can join the meeting. Amazon Chime is less suited in case you want meeting transcripts as well for your meetings. Given that Amazon Chime is not used by a larger audience so your client or customer may face some difficulties in join the meeting or accessing some of the features of the Chime.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Chat tools, video calls, on spot meeting invite[s] easy to create and use. Ability to record any meeting and automatically downloads the meeting recording after ending the meeting. UI is clean and easy to navigate around Amazon Chime. Ability to invite outside guests easily using Amazon Chime without any issues. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review More simplified dial-in numbers. The PIN for our conference line is long and easy to mistype. You do not have to download the Chime app in order to join a conference, but if you want to do anything beyond join (schedule a conference, participate in a group chat, control participants), you have to have the app downloaded and installed. The app that you have to download in order to launch a conference is a memory hog, and slows down a computer's boot up time. The add-in for Microsoft Outlook is particularly clunky. It helps you add scheduled conference calls/video conferences to your Outlook calendar, but it can cause Outlook to crash, and creates a really slow open time for Outlook. If you can avoid downloading the Outlook Add-In, I would. No built-in screen sharing capabilities. Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review They were very supportive in answering all of our questions when we had problems. Their in-person calls but their support site also had a full set of information that can answer a good portion of your questions before you have to pick up the phone. But when you, you will get good service.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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
Read full review Better than
Skype for Business in terms of loading the application onto your device.
Skype had crashing issues always and those are comparatively low when using Amazon Chime. Amazon chime is fast and easy to work with while collaborating and setting up meetings. The audio and video quality are better than
Skype for Business .
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review The positive ROI is Amazon Chime helps make our sales reps more professional in their calls leading to an increase in closed/won deals. Amazon Chime has increased overall morale across our sales team because it has greatly improved our call processes when compared to other tools we've used in the past. Read full review ScreenShots