Important News about the 4 SC FREE Subscription

[Natassia Allery]

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 i...

Continue reading the Original Blog Post.

 

[mcsphones]

So to confirm, as long as any existing "SC 4 Free" licenses are in the customer (end user)'s name & email, all good right?

 

[sam.phillips]

Wooooooh! About time. Best move 3CX has made with licensing for a while.

 

[Natassia Allery]

So to confirm, as long as any existing "SC 4 Free" licenses are in the customer (end user)'s name & email, all good right?

There are 2 things you need to keep in mind as a partner:

1. All 4SC FREE assigned to your account need to be registered in the customer's details. Then they will be extended until Dec 2023 and thereafter until Dec 2024.

2. Also a partner, the number of 4SC FREE assigned to your account should not exceed the quota as per your partner level.

Then you are good.

- As a Gold partner you can have up to 50 4SC Free assigned to your partner account.

 

[simsyn]

We have noticed that few 3CX keys have been suddenly downgraded to 4SC Standard from 4SC PRO/ENT today.
Those keys were under 4SC ENT/PRO 1 YEAR free subscription but got downgraded before the 1 YEAR period.

Is this something related to this new 4SC Free Subscription license policy?

 

[SteveITS]

See also https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/free-enterprise-downgraded-to-standard.119628/

 

[Natassia Allery]

We have noticed that few 3CX keys have been suddenly downgraded to 4SC Standard from 4SC PRO/ENT today.
Those keys were under 4SC ENT/PRO 1 YEAR free subscription but got downgraded before the 1 YEAR period.

Is this something related to this new 4SC Free Subscription license policy?

Reach out to 3CX Customer Service Team from the email address of the registered license owner. The team will check the license key and advise you accordingly.

 

[simsyn]

Reach out to 3CX Customer Service Team from the email address of the registered license owner. The team will check the license key and advise you accordingly.

We did that already and waiting for a response.
2 customers already complained and we have activated both with commercial keys since both were critical call center operations and can't wait till Monday.

Our team is still trying to figure out how many customers we have in this license category and who is affected.

Highly appreciate it if anyone can explain why this happened even without prior notice. Because 3CX gave this 1 Year FREE PRO/ENT 4SC license without any other conditions as per our understanding.

 

[N_G]

I don't recall this offer but a customer with critical operations on a free license? Really? And they actually complained and expect resolution on Saturday? I can't say I feel sympathy for the situation.

 

[simsyn]

I don't recall this offer but a customer with critical operations on a free license? Really? And they actually complained and expect resolution on Saturday? I can't say I feel sympathy for the situation.

What's the requirement for paying for the license if the customer wants a 4SC PRO license & 3CX says 4SC PRO/ENT is Free for one Year?

Was there any warning from 3CX not to use this free license for production use? I don't think so.
If there was no such offer from 3CX, this customer would have activated a commercial 4SC PRO license from day one and that is what exactly we also preferred as the partner. We had charged only for the support services since the license is free for the first year

3CX only gave this offer but now we have to answer all of these customer questions when the license is downgraded without prior notice.

 

[Wihan]

Is self hosted instances that is not using a free license affected by this change?

 

[SnakeRiverWebDevelopment]

Is self hosted instances that is not using a free license affected by this change?

If you are not using a FREE license not to worry, only if you were using a FREE trial or a FREE license.

OMG, all this worry about FREE, What is FREE? No cost, No money. WOW I have a Free license that I don't even want, Why you ask? Because the Free license is so limited it is not worth using.

Upgrade to PRO, ENT, I have.

In my opinion you are doing your client a disservice by not giving them a full license for there PBX.

Don't be fooled by my Trainee Partner status, I was a support tech for a Platinum Partner in Tampa, FL before I moved on and have been so since V12

 

[N_G]

@simsyn You are not wrong, i just think your expectations are not in context of the situation.

We streamlined hundreds of thousands of keys to a single free edition license and are extending it at minimum to december 2024. Its true that possibly a thousand keys or so got their PRO features curtailed 1-2 months earlier on friday. (they still have standard license and in many cases for more time) This after running 3CX free of charge for at least 10 months and in many cases years.

Conversely hundreds of thousands got their keys extended. Simply wasnt easy to identify these thousand because it was a more complicated offer, so instead customer can contact us and get their PRO features extended again. If they cant wait for a few days, then they could get them immediately at a cost of $10 retail per month and you as a partner a fraction of that.

In any case we will be fixing and honoring each and every offer we made in the coming days.

 

[Glen.c]

So i also have 13 clients that we signed up last year on the free pro for a year that have been converted over the weekend to standard. They were due for renewal in June, pretty sure most would have upgraded to Pro on the renewal date as we'd advise them to do so.

Can these clients that have that offer of free Pro for a year have that reinstated until the renewal date rolls around, or do they need to upgrade as of now?

If they can have it reinstated, do I as their reseller contact our 3CX channel manager or do the customers contact 3CX directly from their email that is registered with 3CX as stated to the user in this post?

https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/free-enterprise-downgraded-to-standard.119628/

That was a really good offer by the way, that helped get us over the line on a few deals and the clients were always going to renew a year later. I didn't mind that it was stopped though as the revenue didn't go towards our reseller target total but it did help get clients over the line and once they had used Pro, they weren't going to be using standard anytime soon.

 

[Mister VoIP NL]

We have a few also, the offer was "4SC PRO license free for the first year" which is slightly different then a "FREE" license. It is a PRO license which was offered for free. Maybe our distributor made an own offer, but I see more partners with this problem so I don't think it was done without knowledge of 3CX.

 

[Glen.c]

We have a few also, the offer was "4SC PRO license free for the first year" which is slightly different then a "FREE" license. It is a PRO license which was offered for free. Maybe our distributor made an own offer, but I see more partners with this problem so I don't think it was done without knowledge of 3CX.

Yeah that was the offer.

We don't buy through a distributor, we purchase directly out of the 3CX reseller portal and it was a thing we'd do in the 3CX portal to activate that offer on a new client. It was 100% a 3CX offer that we did end up using on some new clients last year.

The process was something like this:-

1. Set the client up as a lead in the 3CX reseller portal
2. Fill in all their details and 3CX would fire them off an email and I think us an email (it's been 6-8 months since I did one of these)
3. Then you'd go to their license in our reseller portal and click on it and inside the portal it gave you an option to apply Upgrade Free to Pro for a year. I cant remember the exact wording but it would then convert the license into Pro for a year.

Pretty sure when it first launched we sort clarification on if it was calendar year or renewal date and i was told by the person here that normally talks to the channel manager that it was renewal date.

 

[Natassia Allery]

So i also have 13 clients that we signed up last year on the free pro for a year that have been converted over the weekend to standard. They were due for renewal in June, pretty sure most would have upgraded to Pro on the renewal date as we'd advise them to do so.

Can these clients that have that offer of free Pro for a year have that reinstated until the renewal date rolls around, or do they need to upgrade as of now?

If they can have it reinstated, do I as their reseller contact our 3CX channel manager or do the customers contact 3CX directly from their email that is registered with 3CX as stated to the user in this post?

https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/free-enterprise-downgraded-to-standard.119628/

That was a really good offer by the way, that helped get us over the line on a few deals and the clients were always going to renew a year later. I didn't mind that it was stopped though as the revenue didn't go towards our reseller target total but it did help get clients over the line and once they had used Pro, they weren't going to be using standard anytime soon.

We will honour the previous offers, provided that the subscriptions are registered correctly - meaning in the customer's name and email. Keep in mind the previous offer's expiration date will be reinstated.

 

[Natassia Allery]

We have a few also, the offer was "4SC PRO license free for the first year" which is slightly different then a "FREE" license. It is a PRO license which was offered for free. Maybe our distributor made an own offer, but I see more partners with this problem so I don't think it was done without knowledge of 3CX.

This was an offer made by 3CX. We will honor the 1 year free 4SC PRO offer. You can contact us at [email protected] or via our online form https://www.3cx.com/contact-form/ to regain the PRO features - provided the subscription is correctly registered. The previous expiration date will be reinstated.

 

[Glen.c]

We will honour the previous offers, provided that the subscriptions are registered correctly - meaning in the customer's name and email. Keep in mind the previous offer's expiration date will be reinstated.

My clients are setup correctly. Do I send our channel manager the keys or do I get the clients to email 3CX directly from the email address that is registered with 3CX?

 

[Natassia Allery]

My clients are setup correctly. Do I send our channel manager the keys or do I get the clients to email 3CX directly from the email address that is registered with 3CX?

In this case you can request we reinstate the features of the previous offer on behalf of your clients, or they can contact us directly. Also, keep in mind 1 free license per customer.