why there is no home edition

[tritron]

It nice that 3cx is providing free version, I wonder why there is no cheap version for home users supporting faxing and voice mail, unlimited calls and etc. There are number of home servers and 3cx is very easy to install and seems as great product for home user also. I use 3cx at my home and it is great but I wish that there was version that cost $100 and had most of futures of business edition. You will not need digital assistant and some other things but most of features are needed.

 

[igor.snezhko]

You can use it at home with DEMO key. It allows two simultaneous calls and all features of 3CX Commercial Edition.

 

[tritron]

Well does demo expires it seems to count number of calls and states that counts them against license. Well two calls may not be enought.

 

[carolinainnovative]

3cx is a commercial product. They already give away quite a bit in their free edition - and you can use something like faxback's free fax plugin to get faxes. Two simul calls is sufficient for most home users - and seriously - how many home users - other than geeks like us - would actually USE a home version? You're basically asking them to give MORE away for near free?

What is to stop a business from buying said home edition? Like you said, if it just had the digital assistant disabled, perhaps they don't need the digital assistant? Now all of a sudden, they have lost a sale of a REAL license because the business was cheap.

Basically - I see lack of demand and diluting their potential revenues as really good reasons for them NOT to do this.

 

[tritron]

How many people are using home servers ? Microsoft created os to support home server and people runing home servers and using ms server software are potential market for 3cx. There are number of people that would find it usefull that are no geeks.
Extension could be setup at parents/grandparents homes, you can run sip on cell phones saving money on calls.

 

[mfm]

Hi.

Altough this is a topic that is up for discussion, there is a free verision for those who want the basic, or to try it. 3CX is a commercial entity and the currently is no focus on creating home user products for the few users who are out there, if you really need to 3CX phone system at home, and need more then 2 calls ( 1 call is allready too much for me) then it starts leaning on how may people that are willing to install 3CX also need more then 2 calls. I bet the answer would you possible you and 1 other person, so put simply it is probably not feasible and also could be a potential risk to people with small companys who just need 3 or 4 calls and want to profit form the so called home edition.

Should we start attacking microsoft for not providing enough in there home edition packages. As I said this is a very debatable topic, but 3CX has nothing in the pipeline or plans to do such an edition ( a 4 simultanious licence is a small business edition, and many users with small companies buy it)

 

[igor.snezhko]

3CX at home may be interesting as platform for Home Automation. There are some development of SIP enabled Home Automation Units, such as Grandstream network cams and so on... http://www.enseirb.fr/cosynux/HomeSIP/

 

[mfm]

As I said previously even for such implemenentation free edition will be more then enough.

 

[KerryG]

Given the limitations of the free edition, I do NOT think it is sufficient for anything more than a testing platform. I run 3CX in my house and I need features like Message Waiting Indicator. However, asking for a Home version with the same features for around $100 is not realistic. You can pay more than that for a really nice answering machine with lots of cool features, so a complete PBX system is simply not going to be in the same ballpark.

 

[StefanW]

Kerry,
MWI i even dont miss, i have an iphone and a 3G contract. in the moment someone called me i like to get it as a message and i can lissen to it on the fly and desite to ring back or wait until i am home. MWI is a bit like fax, isnt it, a old part of telefonie and cant be killed. well V9 and Exchange 2010 can do MWI now as well. so i even dont have to lissen to the wav any more my iphone shows me. i can use the speach to text engin from ms an read the message. that is the future i guess, at least for me beeing geek... :lol: (and when i del the message on my iphone the MWI i turing off at my phone at home as well and save me some $ on my electro bill..)