Cyprus based company 3CX offers an IP PBX phone system.
$1.08
per user/per month
RingEX
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
RingEx is a cloud-based VoIP solution available via computer mobile application. It features video and audio conferencing, desktop phone rentals, collaboration tools, and integrations with other business applications. Plans are available on a monthly, per user subscription basis.
$19.99
per month
Pricing
3CX
RingEX
Editions & Modules
Pro
$1.08
per user/per month
Enterprise
$1.31
per user/per month
Standard
Free
Essentials (up to 20 users)
$19.99
per user/per month
Standard
$27.99
per user/per month
Premium
$34.99
per user/per month
Ultimate
$49.99
per user/per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
3CX
RingEX
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
Price 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.
In my experience, RingEX is much less complicated to install and configure than products like mitel and 3CX. I think RingEX is much more reliable than 8x8 with a much higher quality in calls.
There were other providers that I looked at as well, but I don’t recall their names. One obstacle I kept running into was finding a provider that allowed us to use our existing Yealink desk phones. The phones were not cheap or attractive, and having a hardware phone works well …
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.
A basic phone system with all of the "extras" makes a small business look much more significant. Their growth into AI features is fantastic and can be used to reduce the effort of call management dramatically. While pretty much like all of them, voicemail is easy to work with. You'd probably need an administrator to manage personnel changes in a larger environment.
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.
Customer support is rudimentary. They should improve tier 1 customer support's ability to understand our needs rather than asking customers to reinstall the app
Revolving door of account managers, which causes loss of continuity in discussing opportunities
Analytics is not complete. Details about faxing and web meetings is missing.
We are grandfathered into our unlimited toll-free minutes plan. We are very unlikely to switch because of that. It has been the major factor saving us a lot of money compared to switching to other solutions. I don't know any other company that still offers these unlimited plans.
They were working on updating a few of the modules while we were going live, so this made usability difficult to train on once they did go live with those changes. Now that the changes are in place, we have really enjoyed the usability of the platform
We recently had nearly an entire day of downtime where the RIngCentral network was experiencing issues with incoming and outgoing calls. In the past year there have been more service related issues than ever before, which makes me wonder if RingCentral network is not robust enough to handle all the users
Occasional bandwith issues. In addition to this, I have one individual whose calls are blocked. We were not able to determine whether this was a RingEX or a carrier issue.
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.
Call-in support is fantastic. I have never called in and had it taken more than 30 minutes to resolve our issue. Email support is terrible. You will likely go 24+ hours until you hear back and the response is likely a canned one. I personally prefer the email or chat support option, but find myself calling instead because the email support experience is so poor.
If someone has an existing system I tell them to keep that running initially and keep RingEX separate initially until the system is configured and tested to one's satisfaction. After testing and configuration is completed, then roll over the main phone numbers to the new RingEX system. I've seen one person who immediately flipped over to RingEX without properly configuring/testing the software and had many issues with missed customer calls until I helped him sort out his configuration.
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
There is a more reliable connection and communication. The dashboard is easier to use, and the reports that can be generated are more in tune with our business needs. It is easy to review calls and pull them, which was much harder with Vonage.
We have 75 users and 85 phones on the system and have yet to have any noticeable outages. The system just works all of the time without issues. Our old VOIP system on Voyant would go out all the time for multiple hours. RingEX is much more stable and reliable.
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.
