3CX vs. Helpshift

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

If you need a good way for players to send in support tickets that propagates in real-time, Helpshift would be a service I'd recommend.

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

• Their customer support is very responsive. If they have any problems, they fix them quickly.
• They are constantly trying to improve and expand their offering, which is beneficial to our growing company.
• It is very user-friendly and easy to manage. The analytics are pretty good as well.

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

• While I am not an engineer; it is known that Helpshift can be a bit of a pain to get it implemented into our applications.
• There are some issues with the badge when it comes to the notifications of messages that let the user know they have a reply from customer service.
• The website dashboard that is used to respond to customers has trouble sometimes and is very slow.

Incentivized

Helpshift is really easy to use and set up. We enjoy the automation to automatically route certain issues to different smart folders. There's just a lot of flexibility in the functionality to make things work for our team in the best way. I didn't give it a 10/10 just because we need SMS/Apple Business Chat and Helpshift doesn't yet offer that. They also don't currently support social media channels but they are working on releasing that soon.

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 few times we've had to contact them, they were courteous and gave us the information we needed swiftly.

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

Zendesk is used for customer communication via email and Helpshift is used for chat, they are for the same purpose but with different response times.

• 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

• The ability to properly organize and delegate work to customer service representatives has been a very positive ROI after using Helpshift.
• The customer service reps are much happier with this system over the previous system of a general company email address and other CS software tools.

Incentivized