3CX vs. Zoom Phone

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

I think it works well for offices that have multiple locations. Being able to give each person and office their own extension makes it easier for colleagues to connect with each other, plus it's a costs savings for each of the offices

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

• Having our Phone system all in onc place. Call, Text, Voicemail. with live transcript
• Zoom Meeting AI companion - taking notes, creating action items, and summarizing the meetings then email immediately afterwards
• Scheduler - being able to send links to team members or vendors to book a time that works best for them that is linked and synced to my calendar.

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

• We needed to link each of our team members' personal emails to the Zoom account so we have to filter VM notifications out of our personal accounts.
• It'd be nice if you could set business hours through the webpage to include a lunch break so that you don't have to manually go in to edit.

Incentivized

Integrated into our network. System wide access. Staff are comfortable with the product

Incentivized

Zoom Phone has a very sleek design which makes it very easy to operate and use both in the setting up of and interacting in a meeting space. That being said, certain features can seem a bit crowded while trying to screen share or display video which somewhat defeats the purpose of the application as compared to a standard conference call.

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 had any sort of issues with Zoom as of yet to have to call Support. That right there makes me think it's a good product. Simple and easy to use. Nothing confusing or glitchy that would make me have to get in touch with them. Straightforward so I'm not trying to figure out a specific workflow.

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

The main reason why we switched to Zoom Phone is because our VOIP system inexplicably went down for almost a month and no one could figure out what was wrong. Lumen was charging way more than Zoom Workplace, but could not get the system to work.

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

• Calls actually come through, resulting in our users trusting our phone system again
• Improved internal communication
• Users can be reached anywhere, so they do not have to stay at their desk to wait for important calls
• Voicemail is processed faster because it is translated to text

Incentivized