3CX has offered a 4 SC FREE subscription for many years, with great success. This offer has helped hundreds of thousands of small companies around the world grow their business without having to pay for a communications system. With this blog post we aim to assure these customers that their free subscriptions will continue to work. Therefore here is our guarantee:

All Free subscriptions, registered in the customer’s name and email address, issued before 1st January, 2023 will remain FREE - at least until 31st December, 2024.

New Rules to Keep Your 4 SC FREE

Unfortunately, there has been some abuse of the 3CX FREE subscription. For this reason there are some caveats to our offer which are explained below.

Some companies charge other businesses for our 3CX FREE edition. We need to ensure that this person understands that the subscription is indeed free! This is why it's now a requirement that free subscriptions must be registered in the name and email of the end-user that is using the software.

Running your own dedicated instance requires you to keep your 3CX Phone System up to date, in order to remain safe and secure. Therefore, we need to be able to email all 3CX customers to notify them of new updates as they occur.

Here are the rules:

  1. One 4 SC FREE subscription per customer account.
  2. Each 4 SC FREE must be registered with a unique email.
  3. The 4 SC FREE and the Customer Account must have the same email address.

Accounts with more than 1 key must transfer ownership of the excess keys, before 30th June, 2023, to other users - who do not already have a free key - using a unique email. We will monitor for fake emails or burner emails. Emails such as [email protected] will be easily picked up by us. So save yourself the time and put a real customer email there.

Failure to take action will result in the deactivation of your 4 SC FREE on 30th June. If you amend the registration details, your free subscription will be extended initially to 31st December, 2023. At the end of November 2023 it will be further extended into 2024. See further instructions later in the blog.

StartUP FREE is the New Free Offer, as of 1st January, 2023

We believe our new StartUP offer is the better option for small businesses, in all markets with reliable internet and where StartUP is available. It's hosted by 3CX, monitored 24/7 against hacking attacks and we take care of the updates - customers don’t need to do anything!. You don't need to leave a PC switched on to run the PBX. Plus, StartUP is easily and effectively supported by us. A team can easily work remotely using our apps without further configuration, and it includes SMS, Video and more!

For developing markets that can not yet use hosted we are working on a new free edition offer to be announced in the coming months.

How Do I Know If I Need to Take Action?

You need to check your subscription expiration date and registration email before 30th June, 2023.

In future updates a banner will appear in the Web Clients of all affected FREE subscriptions. For now, please take action as per the steps below:

3CX Management Console License Settings

  1. Login to the Management Console. Click on the “License” section listed at the top of the information box, to the right. Alternatively go to Settings > License.
  2. The License Settings page will open.
  3. Under Registration Details, check if the information is correct; meaning that the email is owned by your company.

If the registered email belongs to your company, and the expiration date is 31st December, 2023, then no further action is needed. At the end of the year, your 3CX FREE will be extended until 31st December 2024.

If, however, the registered email isn't yours, then the ownership of the subscription needs to be transferred to your company: Take action, and continue as per below:

  1. Make sure you have a 3CX customer account. If you do not, create one here.
  2. Contact the existing registered email owner. Ask them to login to their 3CX Customer Portal at customer.3cx.com and to locate the subscription under their account.
  3. Now they’ll have to click on the subscription details, and click “Transfer”.
  4. They should transfer ownership of the subscription to the email address of your new 3CX customer account.
  5. They should then click Transfer.

Your 3CX subscription is now assigned correctly, and will be visible in your own 3CX account. It’ll no longer be visible in the previous registered owner’s account.

3CX Portal - Systems

3CX Portal - Subscription Settings

3CX Portal - Transfer Ownership Verification

What If the Current Owner Refuses to Transfer Your subscription?

If your subscription is registered to an email you don’t have access to and this person will not transfer your subscription, then contact 3CX CSR, we are here to help!

To request assistance follow the process below:

  1. Create a 3CX Customer Portal account here, if you do not already have one.
  2. Contact 3CX Customer Service and provide us with the following information:
    • The subscription’s License key in question.
    • The email that is used to login to your 3CX Customer Portal account, to which your subscription will be transferred to.
    • Your Company name, and website, so we can match the FQDN to this information.
  3. We will either transfer the subscription or contact you, for further clarifications.

Partners With Free Subscriptions

Partners can have more free subscriptions (created before 2023) within reason. These subscriptions still need to be registered in the customer’s name. Partners will be notified of these limitations, which can also be found per partner level below.

Partner
Level
No. of FREE
Subscriptions
Bronze 5
Silver 25
Gold 50
Platinum 75
Titanium 100