free license (self managed or on premise) no longer available?

[ATS_Tao]

a few of 3CX install we manage are on free standard license. I don't see any free license available apart from the hosted startup? is free license no longer available for self managed and on premise 3CX installs?

 

[N_G]

@hitmusic Why dont you use StartUP Free? Its perfect for your type of install. Its completely free including the hosting. Now if you can insist on self hosting and paying your hoster whatever it is per month then you can pay for the license as well.

Despite this, no one has said that existing free keys will not be extended. They have to be registered in the customer name (unless you are partner then we are more flexible on this), yes, but they will be extended end of June.

What we will not allow is some affiliates who had 20 free keys not in the customer name. These have to be separated out to each customer. Also if you are hosting in Amazon or Azure i think you can pay for the license as well but its not something we are going to challenge for a while.

The new free offer is StartUP.

 

[weday0]

So I remain somewhat confused as I sit here with an expiration date of 03/02/23 for my self-hosted install of: 3CX Standard 4 SC

When I go to renew it jumps into the $150 annual cost, which I use this for my personal home setup as a Network Engineer with no landline so sadly a self-hosted PBX was the better and probably "more fun" route to take. Through Flowroute $30 has lasted me several months based on call volume and so forth. Therefore $150 isn't an option so at the point now of determing if I need to go ahead and spin up an Asterisk/FreePBX instance or if I will be able to continue to use the great 3CX product which honestly I have been really impressed with thus far.

So will these install licenses be extended even if I strictly only have 1 instance to my name/account?
Or do I lose Self-Hosted no matter what in 7 days when this expires?

3CX Version: 18.0
Type: Annual
Edition: Standard
Simultaneous Calls: 4
Subscription expires in: 7 days
Hosting expires in: Expired

 

[Jim.Lloyd]

3CX has a great product, and I have gotten hooked on the free version for my home/business. Having recently become less cash fluffy, the 3CX announcement did catch me negatively, until I thought about it. $12.08333(US) per month for a year actually sounds pretty darn good for this level of PBX, even if I am using it for home. In today's dollars, that is about $0.40 per day.

In 2020, I had aspirations of selling a 3CX solution to local business that fell apart by 2021 for reasons we all should know by now. Some personal events happened that led me to retire early and abandon this venture. But...
. Broad Voice was the first to offer a SIP to my residence, and required it be on a 3-year contract. So, I am 2 years into that contract, as of this coming June 2023. So, I am now the proud owner of a Broad Voice contract into June 2024 at $50/mo. It will not work with Start-Up, so I need to decide whether to offer up the $145(US) or spend my time trying to get FreePBX, Asterisk, Free Switch, or something else working for basically a year. I am retired and am changing priorities. Why should I spend my time doing that? I learned 3CX because I believed in the product enough to want to market it.

The free 3CX has afforded me many advantages for over 4 years. I think it is time for me to own up and pay up. I encourage everyone disappointed that 3CX is ending its free on-premises offering reconsider, as I have. 3CX has employees and infrastructure to pay for. $145 is a small fee to pay for my 4 years of use. That is the way I see it. I am now on a budget, so I am glad it isn't any more!

This June 2023, I will upgrade to Pro for the year, just long enough to to get off of the Broad Voice contract. I might play with Start-Up, but honestly am using 3 ring groups and auto attendants. Still, it would be great to continue without internal hardware.

Side Note: The 3CX inbound rules and call groups has worked much better for me than No-Mo-RoBo ever did! I have everything set in v18 Standard, and that $0.40 per day is well worth not having to redo that work in any other platform.

Did I thank 3CX for this opportunity to use their product for all these years for $0.00? Thank you, 3CX!

:: Edited the Typos

 

[AWS2P]

IMO, I never understood why as a commercial company, 3CX has decided to let a free version of its PBX for so long time , I think it was a bad calculation , as now everyone being bottled with FREE doesn't even understand why they have to pay for pbx use.

YES, 3CX is a commercial PBX and worth it to be paid for its use

 

[hitmusic]

@hitmusic Why dont you use StartUP Free? Its perfect for your type of install. Its completely free including the hosting. Now if you can insist on self hosting and paying your hoster whatever it is per month then you can pay for the license as well.

Despite this, no one has said that existing free keys will not be extended. They have to be registered in the customer name (unless you are partner then we are more flexible on this), yes, but they will be extended end of June.

What we will not allow is some affiliates who had 20 free keys not in the customer name. These have to be separated out to each customer. Also if you are hosting in Amazon or Azure i think you can pay for the license as well but its not something we are going to challenge for a while.

The new free offer is StartUP.

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your prompt response.

I'm not sure why you would think we would self-host and then pay someone else for hosting it? We actually have self-installed and self-host it on our own server PC on our own premises, there is no 3rd party involved.

The only thing we pay for is a deal we get for a community organisation for the SIP line it is connected to which is cheaper than the £150 per year rental your asking for.

We will not be able to use StartUP because you cannot choose your own SIP and we alread have one.

Hope this clarifies.

Thanks,

 

[N_G]

@hitmusic - OK on premise understood. I thought you were hosting on say Amazon which will cost between $10-20 per month. Well yes, StartUP you have to choose one of the providers available but of course its easy to port your number to the ones available.... Any case, in all honesty situations like yours, where you are running 3CX independently, you will be able to do so for a long time at no charge. Especially with the number of calls you have.

@Jim.Lloyd Thank you for your nice words, its much appreciated! I want to assure you that the free version will not go away end of June. No need to buy any upgrades just yet if you are happy with the current feature set.

@weday0 Yes for your use case it does not make sense to pay a license, i understand. I dont know why your license is not extended until 30/6 - I will check and revert. This should only be for new licenses from 2023.

 

[N_G]

OK Just to confirm, we will extend all free license keys issued before 2023 with same feature set and sim calls until 31/12/23 free of charge in the next few months. Only requirement is that the license is properly registered in customers name. We will extend them for at least another year until 31/12/2024 and announce our exact plans before 30/06/23.

You can screenshot this post if you like. We will make an official announcement soon.

 

[Faizan]

Hello, I installed 3cx on-premise a single time with static IP assigned and activated the license successfully. Then due to some reasons, i deleted the account and uninstalled the 3cx server and now trying to re-install the 3cx instance by generating a new license but getting error on activation using same static IP. Kindly guide me is this due to same static IP i am using or due to some other issue? and also help need to confirm whether multiple instances can use single public IP at a time? Attached Error for your reference:

EDITED BY A MODERATOR: The screenshot has been removed for security reasons as it exposed system credentials.

Regards

 

[affinity1]

OK Just to confirm, we will extend all free license keys issued before 2023 with same feature set and sim calls until 31/12/23 free of charge in the next few months. Only requirement is that the license is properly registered in customers name. We will extend them for at least another year until 31/12/2024 and announce our exact plans before 30/06/23.

You can screenshot this post if you like. We will make an official announcement soon.

Hi Nick,

Thats a great update. As a long term 3CX partner we have invested a lot of time in the product and skilling up. Where we sell a 3CX solution to an Affinity customer on our own hosting platform WE are the customer to 3CX. This is the case for Std, Pro and Ent products. How will the extension work for partners in this scenario?

Thanks
Colin

 

[N_G]

Hi Colin - Thanks for the loyalty to 3CX. Talking about free keys (as this is main subject of thread) - All free keys have to be in the customer name and you can only have a limited/reasonable amount of free keys per partner account. Exact number is to be discussed but it should be in proportion to total license sales.

 

[lnxW]

Hi there,
I'm also managing a free self-hosted 3CX instance for a small non-profit organization (Educational institute).
We are using this system for over a year now, and have been really happy with it.
For us, the free offer was an important factor, because we simply don't have the financial resources to pay for the conventional solutions out there. We've been running this on a Raspberry Pi and are currently migrating to a cheap x64 computer.

As some others also stated, we can't switch to the "StartUp" offer because of our landline and provider situation.
I can understand the change of the license model from an economic standpoint, and if we would make money with this organization, I would be the last one complaining about the price for a PRO license.

Anyway, I'm very thankful to hear that you plan to extend it until the end of this year for now. So we have time to re-evaluate our solution.
However, currently, in the subscription panel, the expiration date is still set to 3/11/23, and I'm afraid that in 15 days our institute won't have phone service anymore.

What do we have to do, to expand or renew the Free-License for now ?
Our organization name and address is already setup.
We can also provide you with a document certifying us as a non-profit organization if this would help.

Kind regards,
Linus

 

[SnakeRiverWebDevelopment]

@lnxW As stated above by @Nick Galea 3CX is extending for at least 1 year, Hope this helps you out

 

[lnxW]

@SnakeRiverWebDevelopment Yes, but it still gives me the warning.
So nothing will happen upon expiration date for now? Or do I have to renew or register something ?
I just want to make sure that everything will still work then

 

[SnakeRiverWebDevelopment]

I am sure it will auto renew, you shouldn't have to do anything.

 

[N_G]

You dont have to do anything for now - We will make a blog post in the coming days explaining our policies and what needs to be done if anything at all

 

[N_G]

@Linus - we will be extending your key, no worries at all. Unfortunately the date is confusing, because we have 3CX Trials and 3CX Free keys internally for some reason although its the same thing. We are going to fix all this in the coming days and extend keys....

 

[mattm121]

Thank you for your feedback and nice words. Yes, the 4 SC is nice for learning but also became a support overhead. Nonetheless we will take your feedback onboard.

I do believe that the StartUP edition is very useful for learning too - you can configure IP phones, SIP trunks, Whatsapp etc everything except the actual OS... And the hosting is included for free. Its much easier and cheaper to manage for smaller installs compared to a full installation.

Just to be clear are "Router Phones" and/or SBCs supported on Startup Free? I recently signed up for Startup Free (so I can test and explain the features to customers) and 60 days of Startup Pro is provided so I am waiting another 57 days for my Startup Pro to convert to Startup Free so I can test the features. TBO we have no intention of encouraging customers to use Startup Free and intend to encourage PRO and Enterprise with or without hosting like we always have. I understand hobbyists concerns but the businesses that have gotten a free ride over the years is just what it is...A free ride. We'll be here to help customers as needed with transitions. I do hope Partners will have opportunity to run multiple copies for testing/demo. Sometimes two isn't enough.

 

[N_G]

@matt121 yes IP phones are included in StartUP free and partners can spin up as many instances of StartUP Free for customers as they want!

 

[SteveITS]

IP phones are included in StartUP free

Hi Nick, https://www.3cx.com/ordering/pricing/ has "Plug & Play Phone Provisioning" and "Inbuilt SBC to Deploy Offsite Phones" unchecked for Free.

 

[N_G]

@SteveITS Good point, we will fix that