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Summary: 3CX is an open-platform business phone system offering on-premise or cloud-based PBX voice calling, video conferencing, text messaging, live website chat, and analytics. The most unique thing about 3CX is its incredibly flexible pricing structure. 3CX offers one forever free plan with Bring Your Own SIP Trunking, a small business plan for 20 users, and two self-hosted or cloud-hosted plans billed according to the number of required concurrent calls. Although customer support and third-party integrations are limited, 3CX provides advanced voice calling features including IVR with custom call flows, customer callbacks, skills-based routing, and call queues. While 3CX isn’t a good fit for businesses without an in-house IT team or call centers needing extensive AI-powered automation, it’s the perfect solution for first-time UCaaS buyers looking for flexible, customizable, and scalable business communications.

 

3CX Pricing and Plans

3CX offers one free plan (though users must bring their own SIP trunks) and three paid plans from $195/year per system and up. 3CX has an incredibly unique pricing structure that charges users according to the maximum number of simultaneous calls instead of traditional per-user pricing. 3CX phone system costs vary depending on whether end users choose a self-hosted (on-premises) or cloud-hosted solution.

3cx phone system pricing

Below, we’ve outlined available 3CX pricing and plans, all of which offer a 60-day free trial.

 

3CX Free Plan: Free for up to 10 Users

Best For: The 3CX Free plan is best for small businesses with under 10 employees ready to migrate existing virtual phone lines (SIP trunks) to 3CX to access more advanced voice calling and unified communications features for free. Ideal for remote, hybrid, and in-house teams.

  • Voice Calling Features: Windows/macOS desktop app, iOS/Android mobile app, integration with 3 existing desk phones and headsets, holiday and business hour routing, 1 ring group, phone directory, call parking, and call logging
  • Video Conferencing Features: Browser-based video conferencing for up to 25 participants, unlimited meeting length, 3CX Talk/Meet website link for one-click voice and video calls, screen and PDF sharing, whiteboard, in-meeting chat and polls, remote assistance, and YouTube integration for livestreaming
  • Messaging Features: Live website chat for 1 website, WhatsApp integration, basic chat reports

 

3CX Small Business: $195/year for 20 Users

Best For: The 3CX Small Business plan is best for smaller teams with existing SIP trunks needing advanced call management features like IVR and call queueing alongside business text messaging and real-time call reporting. Because the Small Business plan integrates with an unlimited number of desk phones, it’s also ideal for in-house or hybrid teams that want to continue to use existing hardware.

The 3CX Small Business plan includes all Free plan features plus:

  • Voice Calling Features: Multi-level IVR, auto attendant, multiple ring groups, call queues, call recording, customer callback, call barge, call monitor, call whisper, drag-and-drop call transfer, call reporting, real-time call center activity wallboards, SLA alerts, Session Border Control for offsite phones, unlimited desk phone integrations, and busy lamp field
  • Messaging Features: SMS and MMS text messaging, Live chat website for up to 20 sites, Facebook Messenger integration
  • Customer Support: 3CX-provided support tickets for $75, included support from 3CX channel partners and resellers

 

3CX Professional: Unlimited Users, Pricing Varies

Best For: The 3CX Professional Plan is best for medium-sized businesses looking for a hosted or on-premise phone system with scalable pricing, CRM integrations, and an intuitive call flow design tool to manage high inbound call volumes and improve customer self-service. While the Professional plan also includes customizable outbound dialers, the complex configuration process means users should have an in-house IT team or opt for the 3CX hosted option.

Pricing Structure: The Professional plan is the first pricing tier that lets users choose their desired number of concurrent calls and whether they want a self-hosted or 3CX-hosted phone system. Pricing for self-hosted Professional plans starts at $195/year for 10 users and a maximum of 4 concurrent calls. Self-hosted Professional plan pricing tops out at $34,995/year for unlimited users and a maximum of 1,024 concurrent calls. Hosted Professional plan pricing starts at $495/year for 10 users and a maximum of 4 concurrent calls. Hosted Professional plan pricing tops out at $1,995/year for unlimited users and a maximum of 256 concurrent calls.

The 3CX Professional plan includes all Small Business plan features plus:

  • Voice Calling Features: Self-managed call flow designer and outbound dialer, hot desking,  Voicemail transcription, intercom/paging, fax server integration, self-managed Hotel PBX, scheduled restore, remote office bridges
  • Video Conferencing Features: Up to 100 meeting participants
  • Third-Party Integrations: Microsoft 365, Zoho, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Pipedrive, Bitrix24, ConnectWise, Jetpack CRM, vtiger, Kommo, mongoDB, SQL databases

 

3CX Enterprise: Unlimited Users, Pricing Varies

Best For: The 3CX Enterprise Plan is best for large call centers prioritizing flexible pricing and hosting options, a higher video meeting participant capacity, greater control over call recordings, and skills-based routing for increased first call resolution rates and improved CSAT scores. It’s also the only 3CX plan with a Microsoft Teams integration.

Pricing Structure: Like the Professional plan, 3CX Enterprise plan pricing varies according to the number of concurrent calls and whether end users opt for a self-hosted or cloud-based solution. Pricing for self-hosted Enterprise plans starts at $245/year for 10 users and 4 simultaneous calls and tops out at $43,745/year for unlimited users and a maximum of 1024 concurrent calls. Pricing for hosted Enterprise plans starts at $495/year for 10 users and 4 concurrent calls and tops out at $14,995/year for unlimited users and a maximum of 256 concurrent calls.

The 3CX Enterprise plan includes all Professional plan features plus:

  • Voice Calling Features: Skills-based routing, pause-resume call recording, inbuilt failover, custom IP phone logo, standby license
  • Video Conferencing Features: Up to 250 video meeting participants
  • Third-Party Integrations: Microsoft Teams

 

3CX Phone System Top Features

3CX offers an impressive array of features across all plans, including voice and video calling, business SMS, website chat, team collaboration tools, and analytics. Below, we provide a quick overview of 3CX’s best features, which include call routing, ring groups, real-time reports, call flow design, and more.

 

Call Switchboard

All paid 3CX plans include the call switchboard feature, which is an end-user dashboard for streamlined, one-click call management.

3cx switchboard

The switchboard displays real-time agent status, enables drag-and-drop call transfers (warm/blind), and lets users upgrade voice calls to an audio conference or video call. Within the switchboard, users can also send chat or text messages, record calls, leave voicemails, park calls, and place callers on hold.

Different switchboard views are available for agents, receptionists, admins, and managers.  Only managers have access to call monitoring, call barge, and call whisper capabilities, as well as live call queue monitoring via 3CX wallboards.

 

Basic Voice Calling Features

3cx business hour routing

3CX offers numerous voice calling and call management features, including:

  • Interactive Voice Response (IVR): All paid 3CX plans include auto attendants and multi-level IVR. Admins can upload pre-recorded call menus to direct inbound calls without involving a live agent. Each IVR menu can have up to 10 sub-menus that route callers to the best available call queue , extension, agent, or ring group.
  • Call Routing and Business Hour Rules: Paid 3CX plans include custom business hour routing rules that follow preset call paths during business hours, but forward calls to external numbers or voicemail boxes after office hours. The Small Business plan includes simultaneous call blasting and numerous call routing strategies, including round robin, list-based, random, most idle, fewest answered calls, and lowest talk time routing. Custom routing strategies are also available. Skills-based routing is limited to the Professional and Enterprise plans.
  • Ring Groups and Call Queues: Admins can create ring groups of multiple agents with similar skill sets, schedules, or other criteria. Calls can be routed to these ring groups instead of individual agents, increasing the likelihood of an answer. Callers are sent to wait in customizable call queues if no agents are available. Enterprise users can access advanced call queue features like built-in post-call wrap-up time, call queue maximums, call queue email notifications, and priority queues.
  • Call Flow Designer: Enterprise and Professional 3CX plans include the self-managed call flow designer for more advanced IVR and call distribution. Users can also collect customer payments via phone, customize outbound dialing rules, access power dialing, specifically the amount of time between outbound calls, and create customer surveys.
  • Voicemail: All 3CX plans include voicemail messaging with a custom greeting, voicemail-to-email, real-time voicemail push notifications, and one-click callbacks. Voicemail transcription is available only to Professional and Enterprise users.
  • Call Recording: All 3CX paid plans include manual (on-demand) call recording, with pause-resume recording restricted to Enterprise plan holders. Searchable local and cloud recording storage is included. Recording transcription is only available via a paid OpenAI integration, which users must configure themselves.
  • Customer Callback: Instead of requiring customers to wait on hold, admins can enable customer callbacks to let customers schedule a time to receive a callback from an available agent.

 

Business Messaging

3CX provides excellent business messaging features, enabling internal and external communication via live website chat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, and instant team chat messaging.

3cx website chat

All messaging interactions, regardless of channel, are streamlined into a single inbox to avoid communication silos, with icons to identify the current messaging channel.

Agents can chat with website visitors to make product recommendations, provide customer support, and increase conversions. Admins can design chat queues to connect customers to the best available agent and create automatic message response templates with custom triggers. Team members can transfer live chats, share files and images with customers, mark chats as resolved, view chat interaction history, and create contacts from chat messages.

While agents can access individual and group team chat messaging and file sharing, 3CX lacks advanced team chat features like message threading, replies, and user mentions.

 

Video Conferencing

All 3CX plans include unlimited HD video conferencing for desktop and mobile devices alongside in-meeting collaboration tools. The Free and Small Business plans limit meeting participants to 25, the Professional plan allows for 100 participants, and the Enterprise plan has a 250-participant cap.

3cx video calling

3CX video conferencing is browser-based, doesn’t store personal data, and doesn’t require users to download an app or create an account to join a video call. Meetings can be scheduled or on-demand, and hosts can share meeting links via a link, chat, email, WhatsApp, or QR code. Video conferences can be livestreamed to YouTube or screencast to Chromecast-enabled devices. Meeting lengths are unlimited, with up to 16 simultaneous screens and 50 simultaneous audio-only screens.

Personalized 3CX meeting links can be added to a business website, email signature, or social media account to enable instant video meetings with customers and other external users. Users can run audio and video tests before a meeting, blur their backgrounds, set meeting layouts, enable echo cancellation, and adjust participant video and audio controls.

In-meeting collaboration features include:

  • Team chat with Q&A
  • Screen sharing and remote control
  • File and PDF sharing and annotations
  • Virtual hand-raising, and polls
  • Whiteboards with drawing tools and templates

 

Reporting and Analytics

All 3CX plans come with basic call logs and chat reports, but more advanced historical and live analytics are restricted to paid plans.

3CX lets managers review chat queue volumes, chat abandonment rate, chat channel popularity (website chat, SMS, Facebook, WhatsApp), and the number of chats individual agents handled over a custom date range. Users can integrate Google Analytics for more advanced chat and website interaction monitoring.

3cx wallboards

Live call center monitoring is available via the 3CX wallboard, shown in the above image. Users can review real-time call queue statistics, average wait and talk times, call abandonment rates, agent statuses, daily call volume, and the number of customer callbacks in a single pane of glass.

Scheduled or on-demand historical analytics let admins track over 20 call center metrics using 27 reporting templates. Historical KPIs include average call duration, call quality, average response time, average handle time, CSAT scores, and more.

 

Third-Party Integrations

All 3CX plans integrate with YouTube and WhatsApp, while the Small Business plan adds integration with Facebook Messenger. While only Enterprise users can access the Microsoft Teams integration, the Professional plan integrates with:

  • CRM Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, Jetpack CRM, Kommo, Nutshell, Bitrix24, 1CRM, and vtiger
  • Helpdesk Integrations: Freshdesk, Zendesk, Freshworks
  • Additional Integrations: Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics, ConnectWise, SQL Database

 

3CX Pros and Cons

3CX has scalable pricing tiers and flexible hosting options that offer serious cost savings and ensure small businesses avoid paying for unnecessary features and user seats. Although Free plan users are required to bring their own SIP trunks and are limited to 10 extensions, video conferencing, team messaging, live website chat, and basic calling features are all included at no cost.

That said, advanced call management features are limited to Pro and Enterprise plans–and require an experienced or in-house IT team to successfully configure. While 3CX customer support and third-party integrations need improvement, it’s an affordable, customizable, and surprisingly robust all-in-one business communication solution ideal for remote, in-house, and hybrid teams.

 

3CX Pros

  • Hardware Compatibility: All 3CX plans, even the Free version, integrate with at least 3 desk phones and headsets, making 3CX an ideal solution for in-house businesses or teams that want to continue using existing hardware. 3CX is compatible with a variety of desk phone models from Yealink, Avaya, Cisco, Poly, Fanvil, and more.
  • Bring Your Own SIP Trunk: While in-house call centers benefit from 3CX’s extensive hardware compatibility, remote and hybrid teams can also enjoy the provider’s BYO SIP Trunk policy.  3CX preferred SIP trunk providers like CallCentric and Voxtelesys don’t require manual configuration. Additional supported SIP Trunk providers, which may require some manual setup, include Amazon Chime, CenturyLink, FlowRoute, and more.
  • Feature-Rich Free Plan: 3CX is one of the only business phone system providers to offer a forever free plan. Free plan users can access unified communications that many competitor platforms restrict to more expensive paid plans, including video conferencing, call park, ring groups, live website chat, and WhatsApp integration.

 

3CX Cons

  • Customer Support: 3CX’s biggest con by far is its approach to customer support. Free plan users are limited to the sparse online knowledge base only, and all paid users–even Enterprise plan holders–must pay $75 per support interaction to get direct assistance from 3CX. Teams needing extensive installation and ongoing support should either purchase 3CX from a partner provider, or choose an alternative business phone system.
  • Limited Third-Party Integrations: While all 3CX plans include YouTube integration for meeting livestreaming, other integrations are restricted to the top-tier Pro and Enterprise plans.  Available integrations are limited compared to competitors, and the platform’s basic features may mean constant app switching and potential data slos.
  • Complicated Setup Process: Many of 3CX’s advanced features, including the call flow designer and hotel PBX, are entirely self-managed and come with a lengthy setup process. Because customer support resources are limited, 3CX users should also expect a longer onboarding time. While this may not be an issue for businesses interested in 3CX’s self-hosted solutions, those without an in-house IT team may want to opt for a competitor platform.

 

Who Should Use 3CX? 

  • Customizable Business Communications: Because 3CX is an open platform, users can customize their phone systems to meet their specific needs, adding uniqiue capabilities and industry-specific integrations. Since 3CX provides both hosted and on-premises solutions, it’s an incredibly flexible platform. It integrates with existing hardware and SIP trunks, improves communication between remote team members, and scales alongside your business. Given that many advanced features, including the call flow design tool, are self-managed, 3CX is best for businesses that have an in-house IT team or admins with developer experience.
  • Scalability: 3CX provides some of the most flexible pricing options in the VoIP and UCaaS space, offering cost savings ideal for new or small businesses seeking a phone system that can grow alongside them. Businesses can increase concurrent call maximums over time, switch from a self-hosted to a cloud-based platform, and scale up their existing plans to access more advanced features.
  • First-Time Unified Communications: Since 3CX offers a forever free plan for up to 10 users, it’s an ideal platform for teams that have never used a unified communications solution before and need to learn which features to look for in a paid platform. Since 3CX also has a 60-day free trial, first-time UC users can even test out more advanced capabilities without having to make a significant investment or getting locked into lengthy contracts.

 

Popular 3CX Alternatives

3CX’s limited integrations, complicated setup process, and lack of customer support may mean it’s not the best fit for your business.

Popular alternatives to 3CX include unified communications solutions like Zoom Phone, GoTo Connect, RingCentral RingEX, and Nextiva. All of these competitor platforms include scalable plans with voice and video calling, team collaboration tools, business text messaging, and extensive customer support.

 

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