License Question

[stang9550]

Just curious on the perpetual license, are you required to buy a maintenance license in addition? Basically the free license is all I really need, except I need to have 4 incoming calls (which I assume I need more than 1 trunk). Its a small office with 2 people. Thanks!

 

[pact]

You are not -required- to purchase Maintenance on the Perpetual Licence after 12 months, however Webmeeting Services, FQDN and Support Agreements will all stop if the licence does not have valid Maintenance.

3CX have essentially pushed everybody to stay current (which is fair enough, they offer a lot of additional services for the maintenance cost).

The other issue, as history has now dictated, is that 3CX will stop supporting older versions (ie you won't be able to re-install the product and activate it, the 3CX Softphone will stop working on your older version of 3CX etc) so you won't be able to continue to use your old version and won't have a valid licence to upgrade to the latest.

So it is technically possible to purchase a Perpetual Licence, use only physical phones, never re-install it and use your own FQDN and it will continue to work.

But in saying that, the Annual Cost for Maintenance for a 4 Channel Standard Perpetual is so small I can't see why you could budget for it.

 

[cobaltit]

Also you shouldn't need more than 1 trunk. You can have multiple calls over 1 trunk be it a pure SIP trunk or a multi-port ATA which would be considered 1 trunk.

 

[accentlogic]

There are some SIP Trunk providers that use one trunk for incoming calls and another for outgoing calls, so if you are limited to one be sure the provider you choose handles it that way.

 

[stang9550]

Can anyone suggest a trunk provider that will allow more then 1 incoming call per trunk. I really need the ability to have 4 incoming calls. As I has mentioned in my earlier post, the feature set that is included in the free license is more than sufficient. However the few trunk providers I called told me that they only allow 1 call per trunk. Currently I am using the google voice connection from Simonics which allows me 2 incoming calls, but we've maxed that out before. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[complex1]

@stang9550,

I allow 4 calls or more per trunk.

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

You can choose a supported provider from our supported providers list to make sure compatibility and out of the box provisioning.
https://www.3cx.com/partners/sip-trunks/

Also if you upgrade your PBX to the V15.5 sp3 which was released yesterday you will find that the 1 trunk restriction has been lifted.

 

[stang9550]

I noticed that 3CX has recently changed the Free license on v15.5 SP3 however I am a little confused on whats changed with the new license. I installed the SP3 update from the web console and I noticed that the license info hasn't changed and I'm not sure if there's something I am missing, any help would be greatly appreciated. I am running the PBX in Hyper-V Server 2016 could the static MAC settings as described here be whats causing this issue..... https://www.3cx.com/docs/installing-microsoft-hyper-v/

Here's what the license looks like after the SP3 update...doesn't seem like anything is reflected in the console??

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

If you were already running a standard licence then there is no change to your licence. The change is that all free licences are now converted to standard licences with 16SC for a year.
You can read more details and follow the discussion here
https://www.3cx.com/community/threa...etter-free-licence-with-v15-5-update-3.54161/

 

[stang9550]

@YiannisH_3CX

If the license is automatically converted during the SP3 update, then why doesn't the UI reflect the changes of Simultaneous Calls, Unlimited SIP Trunks, etc? I believe that is where the confusion is and also could that change not be reflected in the UI because of the Dynamic MAC address settings in Hyper-V ? I would like to add an additional trunk but I'd like to see the UI display the availability to do so. Thanks!

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

From your attached screenshot i can see that the change in licence is reflected in the UI as you are running a standard licence. You only have 4 sim calls probably because your maintenance was expired and if that was the case then the licence is reverted to 4 sim calls but it is still standard.
Have you tried adding a second trunk and the system did not allow you?

 

[stang9550]

@YiannisH_3CX

Thanks for the quick reply, the installation and license that I originally had applied for is less then a year old, so I'm not sure how its possible for the maintenance to have expired. Also with the update to SP3 shouldn't the license have changed to reflect the 16 sim calls or do I have that confused? Not I haven't tried adding a new trunk because I want to validate that I can add the additional trunk before getting locked into a contract for a trunk that I can't use.

What happens to the system once the free license expires? Is the PBX still usable and all I have to do is reconfigure the FQDN to a dynamic dns host name? Sorry I know that might be slight off topic, trying to learn as much as I can about this. Thanks!!!!!

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

If your maintenance was valid at the time of the licence change then the licence should have been converted to standard 16 sim calls. If the licence maintenance was not valid then the licence would be converted to standard 4 sim calls.

You can create a second dummy trunk and click OK to see if the system will actually let you add a second trunk. You do not have to actually have credentials for a second trunk to validate that the system has lifted the one trunk restriction. There are also providers with free accounts that will allow you to create a trunk for free.
Furthermore there are no longer PBX edition keys so the 1 trunk limitation no longer exists.

"Old" Free License (8SC PBX Edition)
Once you activated your License Key, you automatically got maintenance for 1 year. After the year, it would remain an 8SC, BUT due to maintenance having expired you would lose your 3CX FQDN and 3CX SMTP service would stop. At that point you would have to pay for maintenance.

"New" Free License (16SC Standard)
Once you activated your License Key, you automatically get maintenance for 1 year. After the year, the key will be changed to a 4SC, but will remain Standard and your maintenance will be extended, so you won't lose your FQDN and SMTP capabilities.

 

[stang9550]

@YiannisH_3CX

I was able to add a 2nd test SIP trunk, however as mentioned prior this installation and license are less then 1yr old, so that leads me to what I had mentioned before, how come the license info in the Web UI is not reflecting the current license status properly and how do I fix it. Below is a screen shot of the current license info from the Web UI ....any help with resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[YiannisH_3CX]

As i can see from the provided screenshot you have a perpetual standard licence key. If this is the case then you never had a PBX edition key and no changes were applied to the key. The changes were only applied to PBX editions keys that were turned to 16 SC annual licences.
If your key was a PBX edition key then please send me you licence key in a private message so i can further investigate.