Understand how our latest product developments in Update 7 benefit StartUP users.
Beyond the technical jargon, here’s what Update 7 Alpha means for StartUP users. In a nutshell, we bring you 3 new features previously unavailable in the StartUP edition, offering you low cost, reliable solutions to run your business efficiently. Let's take a look.
1. Configure DECT Phones - and Why They Matter to Small Businesses
You probably know what a DECT phone is without even realizing it! You know those cordless, landline phones that you can wander around with. A mobile that’s not a mobile? Yes! These are DECT phones. StartUP users can now configure these and by doing so bring to their business - whether small or large - a wide range of benefits.
Let’s imagine you’re running a restaurant, for example, with indoor and outdoor seating. DECT phones - designed for voice communication - provide excellent voice quality for busy staff. A priority when transmitting information internally and efficiently across a busy restaurant over brunch! Running on a separate frequency range independent of WiFi, they’re not subject to interference or drops in connection, making them a very reliable communication tool. Even better still, DECT phones give you a very long range between 50 and 300 meters allowing your staff to communicate with each other over a long distance.
Perhaps your restaurant is a small, cozy one - or maybe it’s bigger and over multiple floors. Either way DECT phones work. If your staff are few and the area is not too big, then one base station and a couple of low cost handsets are all you need. As your business grows, and you have multiple staff working simultaneously, it’s possible to scale up and use several handsets at the same time and at several base stations. DECT phones are hard wearing and long lasting and almost impossible to break. But even if yours does, no data is lost and it’s easily and cheaply replaced. They’re energy-efficient - a must in today’s world, and with all internal calls free, it’s communication at zero running cost.
And from a business point of view, no constant interruptions for staff with the latest notification from their personal world of who did what and when and with whom…
What’s stopping you! Configure your base station behind your SBC router phone and then assign your handsets to users from the users tab.
To summarize:
- DECT more reliable than WiFi for voice
- No need for staff to use personal phones
- Cheap, long lasting, easily replaced hardware
- Long battery life
- Scale up according to business needs
2. More SIP Trunk Providers to choose from
In this StartUP update we have added many more SIP Trunk Providers for you to choose from. Some of the top new ones include Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and CallCentric.
What is a SIP Trunk used for? You’ll recall, to make and receive phone calls and / or to communicate digitally over an internet connection you need a phone line. A SIP Trunk is your virtual phone line.
3CX supports leading SIP Trunk Providers across the globe. Whilst we never want to lock our users into one provider over another, we do want to guide you towards partners that we’ve done the research on. Doing the research means the 3CX team has checked that all templates from listed trunk providers are updated - and tested with every release - to ensure there are no issues for our users. We call these partners preferred or supported SIP Trunk service providers.
What does this mean for you in practical terms? SIP Trunk / VoIP Providers are a convenient way to connect your 3CX StartUP to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). These SIP Trunks have been tested with 3CX. Preconfigured templates are included to make configuration quick and easy.
3. Easier / Quicker to Provision an IP Phone
What this means! You no longer have to enter the extension number and a lengthy PIN. Plus you can import a list of IP Phones by MAC address to ease configuration!
StartUP PRO or StartUP Free You Choose!
At the moment all users are on StartUP PRO for FREE. In the coming weeks, however, we’ll launch StartUP Free - for up to 10 users, and StartUP PRO - for up to 20 users.
Whichever edition you choose, you’re getting a phone system combining traditional and modern communication tools at virtually no cost, for up to 10 users, hosted in the cloud, with your choice of SIP trunk provider. Additional features include a Ring Group, an Auto Attendant, 3CX Talk / Meet Links, Mobile & Desktop Apps, Video Conferencing for up to 25 participants, Team Messaging, Live Chat, and WhatsApp Integration.
For up to 20 users, you’ll keep everything from StartUP Free plus Multi-level IVR, Call Queues, Busy Lamp Field (BLF), Voicemail-to-text, Holiday & Business Hours Routing, Call & Chat Reporting, Listen in, Whisper, Barge in… and… all at low, annual cost. Our pricing page provides full details of both StartUP editions.
Sign up to download and test 3CX StartUP for yourself!
Phone System 
