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Every small business needs a phone system. And the great thing is that nowadays you don’t nee to spend a small fortune to get your own PBX. This is because of the rise of VOIP and related products that have brought choice to the masses; therefore driving cost down. I spent some time looking at Asterix some time back, but today came across a press release of a new product called: 3CX Small Business Phone System

Here’s the press release:

3CX Small Business Phone System provides Economical Enterprise Telephony on Windows

3CX today released version 3.1 of its Small Business Phone System. 3CX Phone System is a Windows-based IP PBX that completely replaces a proprietary PABX. Its based on the open SIP standard and interoperates with a wide range of popular SIP phones, VOIP Gateways and SIP-based providers. Although it includes enterprise telephony features such as Call Queuing, Voice Mail and Auto attendant, its targeted at the SMB market – 3CX Phone System is easy to install, manage and its low cost.

“The release of 3CX Phone System is set to accelerate the massive change occurring in the Telephony market space. With 3CX Phone System, advanced features such as Call Queuing can now be obtained for a fraction of the price of traditional Enterprise PBXs. What’s more, advanced features such as integration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 unified messaging are not even available on today’s proprietary PBXs,” said Nick Galea, 3CX CEO.
Key features of 3CX Small Business Phone System:
* Complete phone system – provides call switching, routing & queuing
* Eliminates phone wiring & patching of extensions to a particular network point
* Makes teleworking easy because employees can answer extension from home
* Purchase cost dramatically lower than a traditional hardware PBX
* Scalable – Unlimited extensions and phone lines. No proprietary expansion modules needed!
* Web-based configuration & status indication – Easy phone system management!
* Unified messaging – Receive voice mail via e-mail
* Auto attendant (e.g. 1 for sales, 2 for support etc.)
* Reduces long distance and inter office call costs using VOIP providers.
* Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging integration
* Call Queues
* Certified for Windows 2003

Four available editions: Small Business, Pro, Enterprise and Free
3CX Phone System for Windows is available in 4 editions: The Small Business Edition supports up to 25 extensions, the Pro edition supports an unlimited number of extensions. The Enterprise edition includes advanced features such as Exchange 2007 integration and Call Queuing. Pricing is competitive: Small Business costs $350, the Pro runs at $895 and Enterprise costs $1250.
3CX Phone System Free edition

A free edition, supporting an unlimited number of extensions, is also available. The main difference with Pro and Small Business is that it’s not possible to buy a support package for the free edition, nor does it include the advanced features of 3CX Call Assistant. Not withstanding, the Free Edition does more than most commercial PBXs do; including an auto attendant, voice mail and even user-to-user support via the 3CX moderated product forums at http://www.3cx.com/forums/. The free edition can be downloaded from http://www.3cx.com/ip-pbx/index.html.

About 3CX
3CX is a privately held company with a management team backed by years of experience in developing and selling network infrastructure software. It maintains a global presence with offices in 6 countries and localized information available in German (www.3cx.de), Spanish (www.3cx.es), French (www.3cx.fr), Portuguese (www.3cx.com.br), Japanese (www.3cx.jp), Traditional Chinese (www.3cx.hk), Simplified Chinese (www.3cx.cn), Vietnamese (www.3cx.vn) and Korean (www.3cx.co.kr).

Here’s a schematic showing how it works:

There’s a free version that can be downloaded (with no support attached), but it’s all you really need to get started. I might actually download it and see how far I get. We’ve always wanted a small PBX at home, and this product seems to be just the thing.

Do you use a VOIP PBX? How do you find it? What product set do you use?