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3CX Live Chat vs FreePBX comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

3CX Live Chat
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Meetings (7th), IP PBX (1st), Unified Communications (2nd), Live Chat (4th)
FreePBX
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP category, the mindshare of 3CX Live Chat is 5.3%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreePBX is 3.3%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FreePBX3.3%
3CX Live Chat5.3%
Other91.4%
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
 

Featured Reviews

Ram Maruboina - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer – Rust Systems & AI Evaluation at Turing
Real-time chat has boosted customer satisfaction and improves team efficiency and lead conversion
We could improve with better advanced chatbot customization, stronger AI-powered conversations, automatic deep CRM and third-party integration, more detailed analytics and reporting, additional customization options for chats, and improvements to mobile app performance and workflow automation. Regarding security, it is essential for customer-facing interactions. I would point out the real-time data lag, which is a significant gap, and enhancements in system reporting and live data update metrics are necessary. We also miss deep customer journey insights, along with user interface improvements, mobile widgets, and agent experience enhancements, especially with security and privacy configurations. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate 3CX Live Chat as an 8 because it has excellent control over the PBX license while enabling instant transitions from chat to voice and video calls. The reasons for losing those two points include basic analytics, widget customization options, and limited standalone chat tools compared to its competitors, which have higher market shares. With the right developers, they could excel in this area. The reason I chose the number eight is not only about analytics or customization but due to reliability bugs and agent workflow frictions, which affect the overall reporting coherence. Reliability and security glitches are significant drawbacks.
DR
Sr Voip and Call center engineer at Superdave LLC
Migration projects have cut licensing costs and now support flexible call flows and hot standby
FreePBX can be improved as they come out with a new version every year or so. Their current version is FreePBX 17. The user community and the FAQ are great; you can search for just about anything you want to do on FreePBX and they're getting new AI engines and new text to speech engines from third party vendors all the time. So it's a very rich community. Sometimes the security is a bit odd with FreePBX, but security is a bit odd overall, so I don't know if that's a valid concern. I appreciate it; it's a good environment. Sangoma is the owner of the system. If I ever get stuck on something, and it doesn't happen very often, I can call and get help from Sangoma, and sometimes they want me to pay for it. It's fine if that's what it takes, but there's great support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Easy management console access through web browsers with a good interface to Outlook and multiple CRM systems."
"The ease of deployment and web interface to manage the phone system is without parallel, the phone system can be deployed within hours, and the cost saving to the client can be up to 80% compared to other systems with the same features."
"It is a highly flexible and easy to use platform which offers many benefits to our customers."
"This unit is perfect for small-medium sized businesses looking for a solid and reliable cloud-based telephony system."
"3CX Phone System is fantastic and easy to setup."
"They can increase their productivity with the many options that 3CX gives them."
"The failover features that come on SP3 allow me to create a replica of 3CX PBX in case the 3CX fails, and the replica becomes active right away, minimizing downtime and data loss."
"We have not had any bugs or glitches, the solution is stable."
"FreePBX has made a positive impact on my organization, and we have completed many projects with it."
"I have seen a return on investment with FreePBX; for example, the musical instruments group saved over $30,000 a year by moving from Cisco to FreePBX for their licensing."
"FreePBX has positively impacted my organization, and if I were to compare it to Elastix, I find it a lot easier to manage since it does not have a lot of bugs and is very user-friendly."
"FreePBX offers the best features for a small call center for a small company with 20 or 30 agents."
"FreePBX is a solution that gives you the entire communication happening between party A and party B, where party A is your consumer and party B is your producer."
"My advice for others looking into using FreePBX is that it is reasonable and most of the features are free, so I recommend it."
"I find FreePBX cost-effective as it does bring the return on investment and measurable benefits to my clients."
"FreePBX positively impacts my organization because it would not be able to work properly without it, as a lot of server configurations are built on it and we fully rely on this system."
 

Cons

"The call logs/reporting functions need some improvement and are still very basic."
"It needs the option for the CS rep to stop recording when a credit card number is recited by the customer."
"There are a lot of quality of life things that could be improved. When adding extensions, you need to use the extension import setting, you can't just use an import function to update extensions. You have to delete and recreate the extension, which can have all kinds of unintended consequences."
"In 3CX, customization is not as easy as I would like."
"3CX Live Chat could improve by being more customizable. There should be more skinning options for the appearance of the solution when we embed it onto a website. This would allow us to make it look more like part of our solution, rather than a third-party application."
"It is not supported by Linux versions. This product is also not open source, which is not much appreciated by the guys like me, who love experimenting with the codes of any product they receive."
"Message management in 3CX Live Chat is a little tricky. You can transfer a conversation to someone else if it comes into a group, but it isn't always easy to return the conversation to the group."
"The support team can appear to be condescending."
"However, when the call volume is large, sometimes FreePBX goes on halt, and because of that reason, I give it seven out of ten."
"Security would be the main feature that I wish was better because the FreePBX box can get hacked quickly."
"One area where they can continue to focus their improvements is support for third-party phones on the endpoint manager module."
"There are some limitation issues with concurrent calls; when we have concurrent calls, sometimes the entire PBX fails."
"AI is not 100% accurate and at the end of the day, a machine cannot be blamed for a mistake it has done; it is always the user's responsibility."
"Sometimes when I receive reports that a user is not able to make a call out or they are having a call drop issue, viewing the dashboard provides no data."
"I believe FreePBX could be improved regarding the user interface. Sometimes the user interface has bugs, and when you apply configuration changes, they do not always apply properly."
"Sometimes the security is a bit odd with FreePBX, but security is a bit odd overall, so I don't know if that's a valid concern."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There aren't any additional costs. With the license I purchased, I have all features that I need. I don't have to buy an add-on or another license."
"There is no add-on costing on the standard fees."
"The price of the solution is in the middle range compared to other solutions. There are different license options available. For example, there is a professional version and an enterprise version, and with the enterprise version, you have the ability to modify the dashboards. You can purchase a license at many different time frame increments, such as monthly, yearly, or two years."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. There are a few license options and we are using an enterprise license."
"We have purchased an annual license to use 3CX Live Chat. There are different options available, you can pay monthly or yearly. I am completely satisfied with the pricing of 3CX Live Chat, it is cheaper than competitors and it is a better solution."
"The price of the solution has been reasonable. We have not had any problems or complaints with the licensing model. We have not reached a point where we need to upgrade. We have all the correct channels."
"We used a yearly license depending on the customer's requirements, and the customers did not complain about the pricing."
"Switching from POTS or PRI to SIP Trunk save the customer real costs. ROI is seen in less than a year."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for 3CX Live Chat?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for 3CX Live Chat is generally positive. The pricing structure is straightforward, and the licensing models are user-friendly, leading to a smo...
What needs improvement with 3CX Live Chat?
We could improve with better advanced chatbot customization, stronger AI-powered conversations, automatic deep CRM and third-party integration, more detailed analytics and reporting, additional cus...
What is your primary use case for 3CX Live Chat?
My main use case for 3CX Live Chat is customer support, website live chat, and lead generation. For my customer support and lead generation use, I worked with 3CX Live Chat for customer inquiries i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FreePBX?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we only need to pay for the server through DigitalOcean billing. Since it is open source, you can have the ISO and install it on your own.
What needs improvement with FreePBX?
FreePBX has some monitoring and real-time monitoring features. They also have some SIP packet capturing. There is a third-party tool called Homer that is a great tool because it can capture call tr...
What is your primary use case for FreePBX?
I have implemented FreePBX in IVR features many times because I am a hardcore developer who first prefers customization. FreePBX provides many services, but sometimes we do not need all of them, so...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

3CX PBX
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about 3CX Live Chat vs. FreePBX and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.