3CX vs. Highfive (discontinued)

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

The free version I would absolutely recommend, we've had some great use out of it for the past few years. Presenting, sharing screen, the conference line and some other features are all free. If we did need more analytics and more features, perhaps making it easier for the potential customer to share screen, we might re-start the search and we'd potentially rate UberConference lower, but for the free version it's been great for us.

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

• I appreciate being able to select a local phone number: it adds credibility and convenience for in-market clients/prospects.
• I like being able to customize the hold music. One of our employees wrote and produced custom hold music for Anvil, which generates discussion and engagement as an ice-breaker.
• The screen sharing is easy-to-use and is far more reliable than in the past. Prospects and clients do not have to download any app to make it work properly.

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

• Can be very laggy - I have been part of screen share conferences where the connection keeps dropping.
• Call quality is not always the best.
• Limited functionality - this cannot be your all-in-one go-to conferencing solution because there are no video call capabilities.

Incentivized

UberConference is more expensive than some of its competitors and we have not found a real advantage to using UberConference over certain less-expensive applications. UberConference charges per month per organizer and those costs add up quickly, so we will be moving forward with a more budget-friendly option in the coming months.

Incentivized

The interface is intuitive and stupidly simple, no complicated sub-menus or configuration settings. Easy to create a meeting space and then have others join with a link or dial-in PIN on the free tier. On the paid tier it's even easier with PIN-less joining and automatic reminder calls to get participants to join.

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

I haven't needed support for the most part, which is a positive for Highfive. It's intuitive and most features are straightforward to use. In the one instance that I did contact them, it took them longer then expected to respond, but they were able to answer my question once they did.

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

Uberconference is by far more reliable and has a better quality of service than the other providers in this space. I have never had a dropped call with Uberconference (unlike Skype and Hangouts). I do think they need to do more marketing because fewer people know about them than others and sometimes people decline to use the service so we have to use one of the other platforms to connect.

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

• Our teams use this every day. It makes it easy to meet with clients and share a screen and display analytics.
• Some of my clients thought that they need to register first to be able to contact me. It's bad that they are not notified in any way that it's enough just to enter its names and that's it.

Incentivized