fitgap

3CX

Features
Ease of use
Ease of management
Quality of support
Affordability
Market presence
Take the quiz to check if 3CX and its alternatives fit your requirements.
Pricing from
$175 per year
Free Trial
Free version
User corporate size
Small
Medium
Large
User industry
  1. Real estate and property management
  2. Agriculture, fishing, and forestry
  3. Construction

What is 3CX

3CX is a unified communications platform that provides IP PBX, VoIP calling, video meetings, messaging, and live chat in a single system. It is used by small to mid-sized organizations and IT/service providers that want to deploy a phone system on-premises or in the cloud and manage extensions, call routing, and basic contact center functions. The product supports SIP trunks and standard VoIP endpoints, and it offers web and mobile apps for end users. Deployment options and PBX-style administration are central characteristics compared with more contact-center-first platforms.

pros

Flexible deployment options

3CX supports on-premises, private cloud, and hosted deployments, which can fit organizations with data residency or infrastructure preferences. It can be deployed on common virtualization and cloud environments and managed centrally through an admin console. This flexibility is useful for IT teams and service providers that standardize on a PBX model rather than a fully managed, vendor-hosted UC service.

Broad UC feature coverage

The platform combines telephony, voicemail, conferencing, messaging, and web chat in one product. This reduces the need to integrate separate tools for calling and basic collaboration for many SMB use cases. It also provides desktop, web, and mobile clients so end users can place and receive calls across devices.

SIP and endpoint interoperability

3CX is designed to work with SIP trunks and a wide range of IP phones and gateways. This can help organizations reuse existing telephony hardware and choose carriers based on cost or regional availability. It also supports common PBX capabilities such as IVR, ring groups, queues, and call routing rules that many businesses require.

cons

Contact center depth is limited

While 3CX includes queues, basic reporting, and routing features, it is not a full-featured enterprise contact center suite. Advanced capabilities such as sophisticated workforce management, deep quality management, and complex omnichannel orchestration typically require additional products or integrations. Organizations with large-scale, multi-site contact centers may find the native feature set insufficient.

Administration can be PBX-centric

Configuration and troubleshooting often require telephony knowledge (SIP, trunks, codecs, firewall/NAT behavior) that some teams do not have in-house. Compared with fully managed UCaaS offerings, more responsibility sits with the customer or partner for deployment design, updates, and operational reliability. This can increase implementation effort, especially in complex network environments.

Video/webcasting not primary focus

3CX includes video meetings, but it is not primarily a dedicated webcasting or large-scale event streaming platform. Features commonly needed for webinars and broadcasts (advanced production controls, attendee analytics, and large event tooling) may be limited relative to specialized video platforms. Organizations running frequent external webinars may need a separate webcasting solution.

Plan & Pricing

Plan Price (per year unless noted) Key features & notes
3CX FREE (SMB Free) $0 — free (up to 10 users) Shared/hosted SMB instance; includes live chat, web/video calling, mobile/web apps; free forever for SMB Free as documented.
3CX SMB (Small Business) $175 / year (up to 10 users); $275 / year (up to 20 users) Small-business paid SKU (single annual per-system fee). Bring-your-own SIP trunk; low-cost option vs per-user SaaS.
3CX Basic Edition Annual per-system pricing by Simultaneous Calls (SC). Example: 8 SC = $320/year; 16 SC = $640/year; 24 SC = $825/year (blog published Dec 18, 2025). "No-frills" edition for telephony, fair‑use limits on max extensions per SC. (Detailed SC→price table published in 3CX blog.)
3CX PRO Edition Annual per-system pricing by Simultaneous Calls (SC). Example reference prices published in 3CX blog (EUR): 8 SC ≈ €350; 16 SC ≈ €750; 24 SC ≈ €1,095; 32 SC ≈ €1,395 (prices shown exclude VAT and are subject to FX). PRO adds queues, call recording, reporting, CRM/Office365 integrations, contact‑center features vs SMB/Basic. Pricing is per‑system (not per‑user).
3CX ENT / ENT (Enterprise/AI) Annual per-system pricing by SC. Example reference prices published in 3CX blog (EUR): 8 SC → (higher tier), 16 SC → (higher); see blog table for full SC range (up to 1024 SC). Enterprise/AI edition includes advanced features (more conferencing participants, AI features, failover, advanced controls). Pricing varies by SC — contact sales for large/complex deployments.
3CX Enterprise Plus (ENT+) — Cloud Transcription add-on/edition Example ENT+ bundled prices (US$) for transcription-enabled bundles: 24 SC — $1,895/year (includes 90,000 transcription minutes); 32 SC — $2,295/year (includes 120,000 minutes). ENT+ is a transcription‑focused bundle (cloud transcription minutes bundled). ENT+ pricing is edition-specific and published separately.

Notes: 3CX uses a flat annual per-system licensing model based on Simultaneous Calls (SC) rather than per-user per-month pricing; exact prices depend on edition (Basic / PRO / ENT / ENT+) and selected SC size. Prices on the vendor site exclude Tax/VAT and are subject to FX/region differences.

Seller details

3CX Ltd.
Nicosia, Cyprus
2005
Private
https://www.3cx.com/
https://x.com/3cx
https://www.linkedin.com/company/3cx/

Tools by 3CX Ltd.

3CX Power Dialer
3CX

Best 3CX alternatives

Genesys Cloud CX
Kaltura Video Cloud
RingEX
See all alternatives

Popular categories

All categories