7 of the best 3CX alternatives to consider: A breakdown

Businesses of all sizes have been using 3CX as a unified communications solution since as far back as 2005, with the service provider offering a flexible alternative to more traditional PBX.

Businesses today operate in a digital world. Ergo, they need a cloud-based VoIP solution that allows for flexibility and growth. While 3CX is one option, however, it would be short-sighted to ignore the wealth of UCaaS solutions available to organisations and individuals.

There are many phone providers out there, as well as a sea of SaaS solutions. In this guide, we explore the best alternatives to 3CX, so you can find the right virtual phone system for your company.

What is 3CX?

3CX was one of the early leaders in the business VoIP sector. Today, they offer an affordable business phone solution that can scale with a company. This service offers an easy way to connect your SIP trunks as well as use softphones.

3CX can be fully hosted in the cloud, or self-managed either via private cloud or on-premises to offer better security and redundancy. It’s not, however, a truly cloud-based VoIP phone system. Included in all packages are live chat, a WhatsApp integration, and team messaging.

iOS and Android apps mean users can make and receive calls from the smartphone of their choice, as well as connect with team members through messaging, calls, and video conferencing. There are also web-based clients and desktop apps that let you turn your laptop or PC into a softphone for business communications.

3CX is a relatively cheap option for startups, freelancers, and small businesses looking for a simple business communications platform. For example, its free hosted plan can accommodate up to 10 users. A self-managed package with up to four simultaneous calls is also available free of charge.

Why businesses might need an alternative to 3CX for your phone system

While 3CX has its advantages, it also comes with certain challenges and is lacking several important and useful features. The service is not a one-size-fits-all solution for every business. Common issues include:

Your growing team needing more advanced features

While 3CX is competitively priced, it’s also lacking when it comes to more advanced features. Call flip and call forwarding are nowhere to be found, which means users are often chained to their desk phones or must forever have a company mobile to hand.

Other features like voicemail transcription and IVR are hidden behind the higher priced-tiers offered by the vendor. Those taking a high volume of calls are also limited by the hosted option, which doesn’t have the capability to use the call flow designer.

You want a wider range of integrations with popular tools

Most businesses have a hefty tech stack at their disposal, so you want a VoIP solution that works well with the applications you use. 3CX does offer CRM integrations for Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, and several others. There are also a few vendor-supported options like Freshworks and Nutshell.

The most expensive enterprise package offers integrations for Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365, too. Otherwise, however, the integration offerings from 3CX are rather thin, and you may find that the tools you're using don't integrate with 3CX.

Many of the alternatives below have a wide range of integrations with dozens and even hundreds of apps—including more than just CRMs and helpdesk apps. Dialpad, for instance, connects with popular apps such as Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, Outreach, and more.

There's also an open API that allows businesses to develop custom integrations and ensure connectivity with their tech stacks. This helps you improve workflows through the use of automation, while eliminating redundancies.

You need a more cost-efficient cloud phone system

For small businesses, 3CX offers competitive pricing. However, as your business grows, you’ll find the costs grow with it. This is because 3CX comes with a less-transparent pricing structure than many of its competitors.

What you end up paying will depend on the licence or hosting fee plus the number of users and simultaneous calls. With an uptick in call volume, you may find yourself with an annual or monthly invoice that’s notably higher than expected.

Transparent services like Dialpad, on the other hand, offer business phone plans that start from as little as £12 per user, per month. This makes it easy to add or remove users or upgrade your plan and know exactly what you’re spending each month.

Let’s not forget the importance of customer satisfaction either. Most will find it a major drawback when they see the hefty fees involved in creating a support ticket. 3CX has been known to charge users £75 to do this.¹

Some user reviews also mention issues with poor call quality and dropped calls while talking with customers.²

The 7 best 3CX alternatives and competitors

1. Dialpad: An AI-powered, truly unified communications solution

From as unbiased a perspective as we can offer, we’ve found no other UCaaS platform that provides so many intuitive and AI-powered features. Here's a quick overview of what you get with Dialpad.

Custom caller ID

With a VoIP solution, you’ll likely have several phone numbers and devices. Dialpad lets you fully customise your caller ID whenever you make a call. Our caller ID feature lets you easily select the number you want from a dropdown box.

It’s this number that’s shown to recipients. This is especially handy for your sales team, as it lets them establish trust by dialling from a local number—all while using their IP desk phone or mobile app.

Single pane of glass

The Dialpad platform provides your business a single pane of glass (SPOG). We’re talking about having a fully unified communications solution in one window, on one display.

Whether on a desktop or mobile device, the app provides your team with everything they need for both internal and external communication.

From a single user-friendly interface, team members can place phone calls, join video meetings, use instant messaging, and more. This saves your team valuable time switching between applications and windows or tabs to use different communication channels.

Integrations

Business productivity and flexibility are often improved by native third-party integrations. You may already have a robust stack of existing technology. Even if you work in a relatively small or new business, you’ll need to add business tools to help you scale as you grow.

Either way, with Dialpad, you have access to all the most popular apps and tools. In the App Marketplace, you’ll find integrations for popular CRMs like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Zoho. In addition, you’ll discover dozens of Dialpad integrations, including:

• Microsoft 365

• Google Workspace

• Zapier

• Outreach

• Clio

• Theta Lake

With the open API, you can also build custom workflows and integrations to connect to your business systems. This gives you greater flexibility regarding what tools you use in the future.

Powerful, built-in AI

But possibly the most unique thing about Dialpad is its proprietary artificial intelligence, or Dialpad Ai, which transcribes phone calls, video meetings, and voicemail messages in real time.

We work in a busy and increasingly noisy modern world. Voice calls are essential to businesses and aren’t going anywhere. You’re not always available to take them, though, and that means you’re also not always available to listen to a voicemail.

Dialpad’s visual voicemail feature is powered by Dialpad Ai, and automatically transcribes your voicemail messages—in real time:

It can also provide transcriptions of virtual meetings and phone calls!

The benefits of visual voicemail are numerous. It:

• Saves time, as most people can read messages quicker than they can listen to them.

• Helps you stay up to date with your voicemail messages even when you're in meetings and can't get away to listen to the audio message

• Provides documentation for important details like phone numbers and more.

• Lets you easily access voicemail from PC, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.

• Provides a downloadable format of messages that can also be emailed to easily share important details with work colleagues.

The same artificial intelligence technology that drives our visual voicemail also provides real-time call transcriptions, which essentially eliminate manual post-call work like note-taking. These transcripts can be made available to lessen the workload regarding staff training and new hire onboarding, too.

Built-in analytics

Dialpad comes with built-in call analytics as well. From the main dashboard, managers and team leaders can check on metrics and KPIs like average call times, call volume patterns, and more.

Not only is this useful for tracking agent performance, it also helps with scheduling out rotas for your sales, support, and other customer-facing teams. (There are also visual heatmaps that show call volume and average speed to answer, meaning optimising your rota has never been easier!)

A fully integrated contact centre solution

If your business doesn’t already have in-house or outsourced contact centre teams, it's likely you’ll need them in the future. Many unified communications solutions have to be thrown aside as you outgrow their usefulness, but this is not the case with Dialpad.

Dialpad is one of the only VoIP services with a tailor-made, fully integrated contact centre solution. So, when it’s time to opt for a virtual or cloud contact centre, you can just adjust your pricing plan to add the features you need. The result? A much smoother process when it comes to contact centre software implementation and onboarding.

Your customer contact centre can be set up in minutes, and your customer support team will be able to use a single platform for all inbound calls as well as internal communications.

Other features:

• Custom call forwarding, which allows you to add up to five external numbers

• Advanced call routing

• Call recordings

• Custom IVR menus

• Apps for PC, iOS, Android

• Full browser-based functionality

• HD audio and video for calls and virtual meetings

• Conference calling

• Power dialler

• Unlimited local calls within the UK

• SMS, MMS, and group messaging

Dialpad has everything you need right now and it’s also ready to scale with your business in the future, making it perfect for your company. It’s not just us that think so, either. G2 and its user reviews point to Dialpad being an industry leader in no less than seven categories.

Fun fact: Dialpad also offers a 100% uptime Service Level Agreement for Enterprise customers. And speaking of pricing, the biggest benefit of Dialpad is it offers customer support at every pricing tier, with 24/5 support provided through chat and web on the least expensive plan and 24/7 coverage just one tier above that.

In fact, Computer & Network Solutions Ltd (CNS), which is a managed services provider, actually switched not only from re-selling 3CX to Dialpad, but also switched from being a 3cx customer to Dialpad. Alex Huntington, their Director, said:

“One of the reasons why we decided to become a Dialpad reseller while going through this process was that we were traditionally a 3CX reseller, which was a very large capex project with very little ongoing maintenance and support to make it an annuity-based business... Whereas with Dialpad, one of our business analysts implemented the phone system for us and he managed to get it done. He’s not an engineer and never mucked around with a phone system in his life and he got the whole thing running in about a month. So it speaks to how easy and user-friendly Dialpad is.”

Try it now!

2. RingCentral MVP

RingCentral has been a major player in the telephony world of PBX and UCaaS for a long time now. That means you can trust them as a reliable service provider. Like Dialpad, RingCentral also offers a contact centre solution to its customers.

However, this product has been outsourced and is a white label for the brand. This means it may have more hiccups fitting into some systems than others.

What makes RingCentral a good alternative to 3CX?

In addition to providing a CCaaS solution, RingCentral also packs in more communication options than 3CX. These include team messaging, group chat, file sharing, and task management. This merchant also offers 24/7 live support.

Pricing

If you want video capabilities, RingCentral MVP pricing plans start from £18.99 per user, per month. Calls are not unlimited, however. The standard plan provides 750 “inclusive” minutes per user.³

3. 8x8

Founded in 1987, 8x8 is a VoIP platform that offers a fair amount of features for its price point. Most users will find the services straightforward and easy to use for cloud communications like voice calls and video meetings.

8x8 includes omnichannel communications with the option for integrated virtual call centre capabilities. It also offers a 99.999% SLA uptime, which is as close as it gets to Dialpad’s 100% SLA uptime for enterprises.

What makes 8x8 a good alternative to 3CX?

8x8 offers more flexibility regarding multichannel communications than you get with 3CX. This includes several APIs that connect with business tools for B2B and ecommerce. For example, SMS APIs with Lazada and Traveloka allow you to implement mass text messaging as part of your marketing strategy—though it's via third-party vendors and not fully integrated.

8x8 also connects to more third-party apps for social media channels, such as WhatsApp Business and WeChat.

Pricing

A basic plan with 8x8 starts at £10 per month, per user but is limited to a five-user maximum. Medium-sized businesses (and those that want video conferencing) will need to go with the X2 plan, which starts at £25 per user per month.⁴

4. GoToConnect

You’ve likely heard of GoToMeeting as a web conferencing solution. GotToConnect, however, is a bundled package that offers a full communications suite for businesses.

It’s a fair choice for companies that want to replace their traditional PBX. As a UCaaS platform, it provides the typical call management features and messaging options like team chat and SMS/MMS.

What makes GoToConnect a good alternative to 3CX?

GoToConnect claims to have 100 plus features, so you’ll be hard-pressed to find more capability from a 3CX-type package. Its cloud phone system is also a good option for businesses with lots of remote employees, and it boasts virtual meetings that can handle up to 50 simultaneous webcams with up to 250 participants.

Pricing

GoToConnect’s pricing plans start from £10 per user, per month and include one auto attendant with recorded greetings. If your business operates from more than one site, you’ll likely need a higher-tiered plan as long-distance calling charges can quickly get out of hand.⁵

5. Bitrix24

For those who like to take the road less travelled, Bitrix24 offers some powerful features at competitive prices. The only caveat is that the platform has a steep learning curve compared to alternatives like Dialpad. Power users will get the most out of the service.

Bitrix is highly customisable, meaning it can accommodate the needs of most businesses and industries. Its biggest upsides are its collaboration, admin, and workflow features, which allow your team to communicate in a variety of ways, as well as stay in touch with project managers and monitor task assignments.

What makes Bitrix24 a good alternative to 3CX?

Britrix24 comes with more powerful capabilities than 3CX. In addition to workflow management, the service comes with a built-in CRM that can help you find and nurture leads. It also includes a basic website builder that’s useful for startups.

Pricing

Bitrix24 has a free plan for up to five users, which is handy for startups and freelancers. Otherwise, Basic plans start from £45 per user, per month and include a CRM, website builder, and cloud storage.⁶

6. Vonage

Vonage takes a different approach. Instead of offering basic packages, you’re invited to piece together a kit with the features you want and need. Of course, like dining at your favourite restaurant, choosing a la carte over a fixed menu has financial consequences.

That said, most anything you could want is available as an add-on. That includes voice class with SIP trunking, API integrations, and contact centre capabilities.

What makes Vonage a good alternative to 3CX?

With Vonage, you might be able to save money compared to a 3CX package by only paying for what you need. Another reason you may go with Vonage is if you need more advanced features like interactive broadcasts and video chat embeds.

Pricing

Voice calls and SMS texts from Vonage start at €0.0127/minute and €0.0062/message respectively. All prices are quoted in euros, so watch out for volatility in the foreign exchange rate.⁷

7. Mitel

Mitel offers businesses a diverse range of services to meet their communication needs. Companies can opt for a cloud business phone or an on-site phone solution. They also provide a range of IP desk phones, conference phones, and wireless phones for those that need equipment for their offices.

Mitel One comes with voice calls, messaging, and group chat capabilities. The app is highly focused on video meetings but otherwise limited when it comes to advanced features.

What makes Mitel a good alternative to 3CX?

Mitel One is a good solution for businesses that want to incorporate IP desk and room phones with a desktop application or have a simple app for video meetings. It does allow for WebRTC softphones but doesn’t provide any native mobile apps, so performance and functionality vary and are poorer when compared to the Dialpad mobile app.

Pricing

Business phone packages with Mitel vary according to your needs. You have to contact the company for a quote.

What's the best 3CX alternative for your business?

3CX has its pros and cons, and many businesses find it lacking in one or more areas. While there are plenty of alternatives available, we personally think Dialpad rises above the crowd—but objectively, the best way to find the best option for your business is to simply give these alternatives a try.

If you do have both external and internal communications needs, and know that you'll need something that can quickly scale with your business, then we'd highly suggest looking at alternatives to 3CX that come with a fully integrated CCaaS or hosted contact centre solution so that you can keep your tech stack (and costs) relatively streamlined.

¹3cx.com/ordering/pricing/

²g2.com/products/3cx/reviews?utf8=%E2%9C%93&filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=3&filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=2&filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=1&filters%5Bkeyphrases%5D=&order=g2_default&filters%5Bcomment_answer_values%5D=

³ringcentral.com/office/plansandpricing.html

⁴8x8.com/products/plans-and-pricing

⁵goto.com/pricing/connect

⁶bitrix24.uk/prices/

⁷vonage.co.uk/communications-apis/pricing/?icmp=megamenu|mainnav_products_gotothecommunicationsapispage_quicklinks_pricing