3CX vs. Olark

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
3CX
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Cyprus based company 3CX offers an IP PBX phone system.
$1.08
per user/per month
Olark
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Olark is a website live chat tool for engaging website visitors while they browse. It can be used to to track leads, drive sales, provide support.
$15
per month
Pricing
3CXOlark
Editions & Modules
Pro
$1.08
per user/per month
Enterprise
$1.31
per user/per month
Standard
Free
Self Service
$19.00
Per Agent Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
3CXOlark
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrice displayed is based on 25 users. 3CX pricing is based on the number of simultaneous calls your business requires or in other words, how many calls your system needs to support at once. Unlike other PBX vendors there is no per extension cost.
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
3CXOlark
Small Businesses
Sangoma Asterisk
Sangoma Asterisk
Score 8.3 out of 10
Gist
Gist
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Sangoma Asterisk
Sangoma Asterisk
Score 8.3 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Sangoma Asterisk
Sangoma Asterisk
Score 8.3 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
3CXOlark
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(14 ratings)
9.0
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
5.4
(2 ratings)
9.8
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
3CXOlark
Likelihood to Recommend
3CX
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.
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Olark
Olark chat is easy to set up and use. You can have more than one user logged in to monitor the chat on different computers. This makes a fast response time more likely. Although you have to be sure to keep your volume up on the computer so you hear the sound letting you know there's a chat waiting. I like that you can see the customers path through the website and you can put clickable links while you are in a chat to guide the customer to a product or a help page. Plus you can see if they actually went there. This makes it easier to upsell
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Pros
3CX
  • 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.
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Olark
  • Olark is user friendly for both sides of the CHAT conversation. If you are initiating the chat, or the one receiving the chat, it is extremely easy to follow and use. There are many different levels of computer use comprehension and Olark is for every level.
  • Olark has reporting features to allow you to check the quality of your employees chat abilities as well as their productivity. It provides feedback for the employee themselves to also see how they are doing and take any suggestions the customer may leave for them regarding their chat experience.
  • Olark is very affordable and offers you the option, at a low cost, to look bigger and more professional that you even are. We were a smaller company and has the chat option with Olark and now have grown tremendously and STILL have the Olark chat option. Olark allowed us to grow and provide professionalism to our customers .
  • The Olark program allows you to set up quick responses to keep your customer from waiting, and to allow your employees to not have to retype the same response over and over. It is a great program that the employees really enjoy as well. It reminds you if you forgot to log out when you left your desk and provides your customer a quick note giving them the option to send the chat as an email inquiry instead, so you don't miss a thing.
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Cons
3CX
  • 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.
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Olark
  • Not really an area of improvement for Olark specifically, but I will offer that it is incredibly important to keep in mind your company's "shopping hours" or peak traffic times (there is a Reports feature on the software that allows you to analyze peak traffic times).
  • Transcript history can be a little tricky - if you're searching for a specific past conversation, sometimes you may get multiple search results and have to sift through them until you find exactly what you're looking for.
  • I'd also offer that you will occasionally come across folks that are on your site to cyberbully or say nonsensical things. While there isn't an absolute fullproof way to deal with this, Olark does offer a nice "block" feature to disregard any unwanted conversations.
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Likelihood to Renew
3CX
No answers on this topic
Olark
To be honest, renewal decisions are not currently within my power. Hypothetically speaking, I'm very comfortable with the platform, have used it daily for nearly a year, and would see no reason to switch to anything else. The small criticisms I had are not significant enough to deter me from using Olark. It's a user friendly, effective tool for our department.
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Support Rating
3CX
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.
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Olark
Our organization does not have any complaints about Olark's Support. Anytime we reached out to them for assistance, we received a prompt, helpful reply! As mentioned previously, we used Olark fairly basically so we didn't have too much need to work with their support team other than a few general questions here and there. They were always pleasant to work with.
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Alternatives Considered
3CX
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
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Olark
Olark has an easier implementation process and has better functionality such as the ability to send commands through the platform to either create a ticket in your CRM or push an opportunity to salesforce; you're even able to 'push' the end user to a web page. Implementing their SDK is a snap as well.
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Return on Investment
3CX
  • 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.
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Olark
  • Olark allows my customer support team to respond to inquiries much faster than before.
  • We have seen an uptick in sales as we are able to address more questions from website visitors.
  • We have changed the design of our website based on chat feedback and questions obtained through Olark.
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ScreenShots

3CX Screenshots

Screenshot of Video ConferencingScreenshot of Advanced Contact Center ReportingScreenshot of Management DashboardScreenshot of Live ChatScreenshot of 3CX AppScreenshot of See the Status of Your Colleagues