September 9, 2020

What is a Hosted PBX System? Is it Better than 3CX?

What is a hosted PBX system? Is it better than 3CX? Check out the pros and cons of this technology. Is it right for you?

Many internet providers for businesses offer a hosted PBX Phone System Platform. PBX can be an appropriate solution for some companies. With So many phone system options being released it’s a tough choice to decide what is right for your business. PBX is just one option. Skycomp Solutions has put out a video series and another article going over which phone system you should choose. This article will go over the pros and cons of specifically a PBX system.

Should You go a hosted PBX Road? and not invest into a phone system at the office?

Hosted PBX has some advantages and they have some disadvantages. From a technical perspective and supports perspective. Troubleshooting with a hosted PBX system can be difficult. Since you have a phone at your office and its connecting directly to the internet and the PBX provider on the other side. That hosted PBX is in the cloud and it is also giving your phone lines signal. It's very hard when you have call quality issues how to troubleshoot. Having to engage the hosted PBX Provider as well as you're on site it provider that you use. Now your internet provider and the Hosted PBX provider must talk to each other to solve the quality issues. There have been many cases where the hosted PBX provider points the finger at the IT provider then the IT provider points the finger hosted PBX provider. Unfortunately, you can be stuck in the middle between two vendors and that's not a great situation to be in. If you have great services teams and great customer service. This issue might not even be a problem for you. 

Some of the advantages of a hosted PBX is that you’re paying per month per phone line. In most cases that per extension is going to be anywhere from $15.00 to $30.00 per month depending on the provider. Having five employees so your $15 a month becomes multiplied by five making your monthly payment $70 for that service. That can also include the phone lines and all your staff can be on the phone at the same time. All five people can be taking calls. This makes it quite easy and it doesn't matter if that phone is at your office building. Especially during the pandemic it helps for your team to be able to physically take that phone home and plug it into their personal at home modem. If the connection at home is good enough that extension will work fine. Nobody must worry about the firewall rules you don't have to worry about the simultaneous calling or anything like that. These options can be a big advantage with setting up a PBX system. Especially with todays majority of people working from home. You can have the comfort and flexibility of your office phone system right in your living room.

To help you make a choice. Think about the number of phone lines you have and the number extensions you have. For example, if you mainly use your cell phones you don’t really need this kind of phone system. But, if you have 15 or 20 staff if you're looking at a hosted PBX, you're going to pay $15.00 a month, times 20 staff. Whereas if you put in your own phone system.  You do have a larger upfront capital investment. But now you can have 20 extensions at your office but only pay for 5 phone lines. This is of course if you plan on not having all your staff on one line at once. If needed it is easy to add or reduce the amount of phone lines you buy. With Bell Canada you can buy more lines or subtract lines depending on what you need. But as you grow the total cost of ownership is going to become a lot more expensive than having your own phone system. If you decide you want a voice over IP phone system pretty much everybody's office has a strong and stable internet connection. With the right it provider they can set up the firewall rules for security so that you can have remote extensions.

In todays world of working from home you can absolutely do a phone system you host in your office they can have extensions from home they can have voicemail to email and all those extra features but you don't have that huge monthly fee for a hosted PBX. We might seem biased against PBX services. Skycomp believes that PBX is great for certain situations. But not for every office. We encourage you to go and watch our series on Which Phone system is right for me. Before jumping on the next new office phone trend, we encourage you to look at all our content. Make sure to watch a few videos on how you operate the phone system and see if it might be right for you. 

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