The economy has restarted after COVID and a new communications world has emerged that has changed the parameters of doing business. Remote working capability is a must for every business and it happens in the cloud. Small businesses need an easy to setup and manage communications platform that handles calls as well as messages. 3CX is infinitely easier than its traditional PBX counterparts, and available in the cloud as well, but recently we have seen a rise in “cloud native” platforms that challenge 3CX in their own way.
Addressing 3CX pain points
Yes 3CX has pain points: It requires IT skills to set up. Setup cost is a black box for small businesses. A dedicated hosted or on premise instance is required and then you need to configure a SIP trunk and manage it. It's not rocket science and one can do it quickly but you cannot be an IT novice. And the management console has features and functions that are not necessarily needed for smaller businesses. Lastly our sim call licensing which is great for medium to large businesses, is not easily understood to smaller businesses.
Cloud Native 3CX
To address these pain points we built a “cloud native” instance of 3CX. We will set up users, SIP trunk* and live chat at sign up. Your 3CX will be fully setup in minutes. Ongoing extension management is easy because managers or receptionists can do it from the web client without needing access to the management console. And the icing on the cake? Hosting cost and system management are eliminated.
New edition: 3CX StartUP
This new cloud native edition 3CX StartUP is available as FREE or PRO. PRO can be purchased for up to 10 or up to 20 users. StartUP FREE will be free forever and allows creation of up to 10 users. You can configure live chat, 3CX Talk links and even a Ring Group. StartUP PRO 10 edition allows you to add your own SIP trunk, DID numbers as well as a multi level IVR and a call queue. You can also connect IP Phones in this edition. StartUP PRO 20 offers the same for up to 20 users.
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No per user per month pricing!
Most online comms platforms charge a hefty per user, per month price. Some as much as $35 per month! And this is independent of whether the extension is heavily used or not. For a small business with say 10 users, it adds up to a whopping $4000+ per year! Not so with 3CX, we charge one low yearly fee of $150 or $250. All you need to add is your own SIP trunk account and pay for your calls. In total you are likely to save thousands per year on your telecoms charges. See new pricing page here to be available for purchase on final release.
So how does StartUP fit into our partner model? Seamlessly! Smaller customers are often too expensive to service on a dedicated server. StartUP will allow partners to onboard customers faster and at minimal expense. We will be auto assigning StartUP customers to partners as soon as we start commercial roll out. Furthermore, the next version of 3CX will allow resellers to install 3CX in startUP mode (which means you can install hundreds of cloud instances on a single server), making it much more cost efficient to support smaller customers.
3CX STD, PRO and ENT editions?
And what happens to the Standard, PRO and Enterprise editions? These remain in place as our “dedicated” instances, suitable for mid to larger sized businesses with more complex phone system requirements.
Try out 3CX StartUP
Existing customers and partners:
- Go to ‘Systems’ page in the Customer Portal
- Click ‘Add Systems’ button in the top right corner
- From here you will be asked to choose your 3CX edition, choose:
- Hosted > Up to 10 users
- Complete the steps to add users and talk links.
New customers
Register for a new 3CX account and follow the 4 easy steps in the setup wizard.
Then join us in the forum and let us know what you think!
Notes
*1 - The SIP trunk setup feature is not available in this alpha version
