r/3CX

I posted here around a year ago, or maybe a little less, when I was already getting very frustrated with 3CX and seriously looking at alternatives.

https://www.reddit.com/r/3CX/comments/1m1l1zu/3cx_is_outdated_overpriced_and_hostile_were/

At this point, I have fully moved all my clients over to Yeastar, and I can honestly say I could not be happier with the decision.

This is not just about pricing, although pricing and licensing are definitely part of it. The bigger thing is day-to-day administration. Yeastar feels like it was built for real-world MSP/client deployments. 3CX increasingly felt like it was fighting me on basic things.

Here are the specific areas where Yeastar has been better for me.

Function key / BLF templates

This is one of the biggest wins.

Managing BLFs in 3CX was always one of my biggest annoyances. Every time a new employee started, or a department changed, or a receptionist/manager needed a different layout, it became this repetitive manual task.

With Yeastar, function key templates are extremely easy. You can create a template, apply it to the right extensions or users, and move on. Reception can have one layout, managers can have another, regular users can have another, departments can have their own layouts, etc.

New employee starts? Create the extension, apply the correct template, done.

https://preview.redd.it/mwvf2m3fm59h1.png?width=884&format=png&auto=webp&s=1cd5b2d9cdd835fd0131e2c7c0d18f6b2193b743

Custom phone templates are also very easy

This is another area where Yeastar is just much easier to work with.

You can take a standard phone template, make a copy, adjust what you want, and apply that custom template to the phones you want.

This is not just BLFs. You can control things like screensavers, language, backlight timeout, display settings, and other phone behavior from the template. It makes standardizing phones across clients or departments much simpler.

For me this is a big deal. I do not want to manually tweak every phone. I want templates that are repeatable.

https://preview.redd.it/67r2sibpm59h1.png?width=1449&format=png&auto=webp&s=52b524c6daed34e3f57e4d36f5e085c77c4df724

Remote phones are much easier

With 3CX, remote phones often meant dealing with SBCs, router phones, or other extra moving pieces.

With Yeastar, remote phone provisioning has been much cleaner for me. Phones provision easily and just work without needing an SBC sitting at every location.

I also do not have to upload special firmware to the phones just to make them work with Yeastar. Standard firmware, provisioning link, and off to the races.

Obviously, if you are dealing with government or very strict compliance environments, you need to be more careful for various resons. But for the professional offices I support, this has been much simpler.

Business hours and holidays make more sense

Anyone who has dealt with the newer 3CX way of handling departments, business hours, and holidays knows exactly what I mean. It became more complicated than it needed to be. And you can select days and hrs(along with a prompt)!!

https://preview.redd.it/3a2955mwm59h1.png?width=690&format=png&auto=webp&s=5aa7bb31939a3066b9abbdb33cfbccb8a759b4a8

In Yeastar, inbound routes, outbound routes, AutoCLIP routes, business hours, holidays, and emergency numbers are laid out in a way that is much easier to understand and manage.

The interface feels practical. It feels like it was designed for people who actually have to manage phone systems every day.

AutoCLIP is very useful

AutoCLIP is one of those features that sounds small until you actually use it.

Being able to route callbacks back to the original extension that placed the outbound call is very useful for law firms, title companies, dental offices, sales teams, and regular professional offices.

Group voicemail is built in

This is another small thing that makes a big practical difference.

Yeastar has group voicemail, so I do not have to create a dummy extension or some workaround just to have multiple people receive or monitor the same voicemail box.

For reception, departments, shared mailboxes, after-hours messages, or general office voicemail, it just works out of the box.

That is exactly the kind of thing I appreciate. It is not flashy, but it saves time and avoids unnecessary hacks.

https://preview.redd.it/50vahfhxp59h1.png?width=1700&format=png&auto=webp&s=611e84fca26bb95491756c21fb919e05578e4d2b

Migration from 3CX was much easier than expected

This was a major surprise for me.

Yeastar can import/restore a 3CX backup into Yeastar. In my case, I was able to upload the 3CX backup and Yeastar was able to read a lot of the existing configuration.

You still need to make some adjustments afterwards.. it is not magic. But it brought over a lot of what I needed, including phone MAC addresses and configuration details.

That made the migration process much easier than I expected. Moving clients off 3CX was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be.

Gateways have been solid

I have had no issues with gateways like the Grandstream HT802. They provision and work well.

For clients that still need analog devices, fax, adapters, etc., this has been very straightforward.

Fax is actually useful

The fax integration is another nice feature.

Inbound fax is there, of course, but outbound fax is also handled well. Cover pages, sending permissions, fax-to-email, and provider integrations are all much cleaner than I expected.

I have used Telnyx for SIP trunks, and I like Telnyx. It works well with Yeastar in my deployments.

https://preview.redd.it/4t0gm30dn59h1.png?width=1719&format=png&auto=webp&s=73a60191049c5d276138623f0cb0847018ea1e9f

Data Connectors are excellent

This is one of the most underrated Yeastar features.

I have Data Connectors running at some sites and syncing to a PostgreSQL database. From there, I can pull the data into my own cloud setup. In my case, I have used Google Cloud and Google Sheets.

I am syncing CDR, recording logs, AI summaries, AI transcriptions, call notes, and related data into Google Sheets.

https://preview.redd.it/95vnw9dfn59h1.png?width=1462&format=png&auto=webp&s=a94a168d5cdfc790fcd8c28d1ae8ef3202520150

The best part is that I am not paying for some third-party reporting service. I wrote the connector/script myself using Google Apps Script in under an hour. It just works.

Clients always want reports, call logs, summaries, searchable records, etc. Being able to push that data into your own database/spreadsheet/reporting system is very useful.

The clients are much better

The Android app, iPhone app, Windows app, Mac app, and web client are all easy to use.

Linkus has been very good for my clients. Call logs, recordings, contacts, user controls, and general usability are all straightforward.

It is one of those things where users do not need a long explanation. They can use it.

Call quality has been better in at least one problem site

I had one site on 3CX where the call quality was never quite right. Maybe it was something I did. Maybe it was a skill issue. Maybe there was something weird in the environment.

All I can say is that after moving that site to Yeastar, the call quality has been excellent.

I am not claiming Yeastar magically fixes every network issue, but in my real-world deployment, the site works much better now.

Licensing feels far less annoying

With 3CX, I constantly felt like I was dealing with artificial limits, simultaneous-call licensing issues, and constant pricing/licensing frustration(3cx 8SC 40 ext limit?? not here!).

It just feels more aligned with how clients actually use phone systems.

Deployment is simple

I am running Yeastar on AWS Lightsail for a lot of my deployments.

Once your Yeastar account is connected with AWS, the install is basically one-click. The whole thing can be up in five or ten minutes.

That matters. I do not want a PBX deployment to become a whole project before I even start configuring extensions and routes.

Roles and permissions are much better

I really like how granular Yeastar gets with roles and permissions.

You can set things up in a smart way where users, managers, receptionists, and admins each get access to what they actually need.

That is important for professional offices where you may have office managers who need some control, but should not have full PBX admin access.

Integrations are strong

Yeastar has had a lot of integrations for a while now.

Google SSO, Microsoft 365, Active Directory/LDAP, Teams, CRM integrations like Zoho, Salesforce, Odoo, HubSpot, PMS integrations, API access, database access, WebSocket audio streaming, and more.

I am not saying every integration is perfect for every use case, but the platform feels like it is moving in the right direction.

AI features and reporting are moving fast

Call recording, AI transcription, AI summaries, call notes, reporting, and Data Connector access are all useful.

The best part is that the data is accessible. I can get it out of the PBX and into my own tools.

That is much better than being locked into whatever canned report the PBX vendor gives me.

https://preview.redd.it/0xentab1o59h1.png?width=1441&format=png&auto=webp&s=4aabab2ebdfadbab818878e47bad7e0a9916bcd3

Updates and development are active

This is another major difference I have noticed.

There seems to be constant development. It feels like there are meaningful updates all the time.

I suggested a few features to Yeastar, and they actually responded seriously. One of the features was already developed...that kind of responsiveness is rare I may say w 3cx..

Support has been much better

This has been a huge difference.

With 3CX, support and partner communication often felt hostile or dismissive. With Yeastar, when I open a ticket, they actually respond. They try to help. I do not feel like I am being punished for asking a question.

That matters a lot when you are responsible for multiple client phone systems.

TLDR:

3CX is still a capable product. I am not pretending it cannot work.

But for me, it became annoying to sell, annoying to support, annoying to license, and annoying to manage.

Yeastar has been easier to deploy, easier to administer, easier to support, and much better aligned with how I actually manage phone systems for clients.

No PBX is perfect, but after moving all my clients over, I have no regrets.

I am very happy I finally made the move.

I'm not sure whether this is a 3CX issue, a Yealink issue, or some wonderful combination of the two, but I'd really appreciate a bit of consistency.

I recently deployed three brand-new, out-of-the-box Yealink T46S phones.

After about five minutes, only two of them appeared in the 3CX PnP list. No problem — I assigned both to their respective extensions.

One provisioned and registered perfectly.

The second one? Not a chance.

I could reach it over the network, so I rebooted it. No change. I removed it from PnP, deleted the phone from 3CX, manually updated the firmware, rebooted again, re-added it, and somehow it suddenly decided to provision correctly.

Meanwhile, the third phone finally made an appearance in the PnP list. Naturally, it refused to provision as well.

I repeated the exact same process that fixed the second phone. Still nothing. In the end, I had to log into the phone's web interface and manually enter the provisioning URL before it would finally register.

Now for the best part.

Today, there are still two devices showing in the PnP list despite already being assigned and working perfectly. The third device, the one that caused the most trouble, isn't listed at all.

All three phones are operational. Two appear in PnP when they arguably shouldn't. One doesn't appear when perhaps it should.

At this point I'm less interested in fixing the issue and more interested in understanding what sequence of events inside 3CX and Yealink firmware led to this particular outcome.

Has anyone else seen similar behaviour with T46S phones, or is this just one of those provisioning mysteries we're all expected to accept and move on from?

IVR goal: if inbound caller doe nothing, auto-forward to extension XY

I moved all my clients from 3CX to Yeastar - here are the specific things I think Yeastar does better

Possible to pass incoming caller number to after hours agent?

6s delay building an AI receptionist with 3CX Call Flow Designer (CFD) + n8n (VoiceInput latency)

Minirant - inconsistent behaviour

Can’t change ringtone or volume