3CX Live Chat vs Astound Hosted Voice comparison

3CX and Astound are both solutions in the Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP category. 3CX is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.0, while Astound is ranked #8. 3CX holds a 2.5% mindshare in CBV, compared to Astound’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of 3CX users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Astound users who would recommend it.

3CX Live Chat

Read 55 3CX Live Chat reviews

42 Views
30 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Astound Hosted Voice

Read 10 Astound Hosted Voice reviews

141 Views
32 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

3CX Live Chat

Astound Hosted Voice

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between 3CX Live Chat and Astound Hosted Voice based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed 3CX Live Chat vs. Astound Hosted Voice Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

3CX Live Chat vs. Astound Hosted Voice

March 2025

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Helped 845,406 peers since 2012

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

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Virtual Meetings (17th), IP PBX (1st), Unified Communications (2nd), Live Chat (4th)

Astound Hosted Voice

Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP

8th

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP category, the mindshare of 3CX Live Chat is 2.5%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Astound Hosted Voice is 2.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP

Featured Reviews

Ahmed ACHOUR

General Manager at Beyond IT Services

Enhanced service desk workflow which streamlines operations and offers strong integration capabilities

The customers use 3CX for IP telephony and call center activities. Additionally, they use 3CX for service desk activities, including integration with other ITSM products to collect data from customers who need technical support on their platforms 3CX has proven to be a good solution, particularly…

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Bracey Fuenzalida

IT Director at a university with 201-500 employees

Admin features make it easy to customize and change, while Voicemail Transcription is fast and accurate

The most valuable feature is the admin platform that we work with. It allows us a very centralized approach for doing things and it allows us to manage and control everything right from the very top. We could do that before, but the features that we have with RCN seem more extensive than the previous company that we worked with. The Voicemail Transcription is more accurate than what we had with our previous company. Also, and I'm not sure if this is because it's a fiber line, we seem to get the responses and the transcription almost instantaneously, faster than what we had prior. We can do lots of things: We can do call groups, we can do work with our extensions, we can set up our account codes, we can take a look at call logs. There are a multiplicity of miscellaneous settings that are allowed for each user and for the Admin. There's a simplicity to it. It seems they use KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. It works for everybody because, when I'm not here responding to it, my technicians are; sometimes my network guy is; sometimes our students are interacting with it. It creates a very easy flow for working through the product and the interface. The automatic upgrades are the best thing that ever happened, because we don't see them, we don't feel them, we just know that they happened, after the fact. What they've done, at least for us, is that we haven't had or felt a crash whatsoever, nor have we felt the disruption as a result of the updates. That tells me that work goes into them to get them done right, and that they really test the code and test the information in updates so that they work properly.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It lets you see how many calls you made, the time you called, and how many minutes you spent on the phone."

"The solution is stable."

"It is SIP compliant to multiple SIP phone vendors, though it is not locked into a proprietary vendor."

"The integration between the video and voice is the most valuable solution."

"It’s straightforward to set up."

"3CX is useful and easy to use. I can talk to my colleagues from anywhere."

"The dashboards and interface of the solution are very good, they have covered most of the main features needed for our needs."

"The call queue and reporting systems are robust compared to what you have to pay to get the same level of functionality with a competing system."

More 3CX Live Chat pros

"The Hunt Group, is the most valuable feature... You can choose round-robin, you can choose priority-for-agents, you can choose the order of agents. There are all kinds of different mechanisms for the next operator to take a call."

"The solution’s reliability and disaster recovery are amazing. Since their uptime is way over 90 percent, it builds my confidence. Secondly, since it's cloud-based, it's not my problem if the system's down."

"We have absolutely seen less packet loss and higher reliability with this solution... The uptime is excellent. We haven't had any issues. We haven't had any downtime."

"We use call recording. It's important to us because there's information that's passed from the customer to us... It's very important that we get the right information and if there's ever a dispute, we've got that recorded phone call to know if we've done something incorrectly or if the customer misordered."

"We like the administrative features RCN has available. It is important that we can balance call loads through programming options, and have full control of our messaging, schedules, etc."

"The sidecars on the main phones that we use, the ones that receive the calls, are really important. They help us to distribute calls to people, from reception. That's an important starting point for us."

"One feature we leverage is that the phones can be programmed with a softbot, where you program it to dial a number. We have Vonage for international calling to reduce costs on international service. I program the Vonage number into that bot on the phone. Users call it, enter a PIN, and they can call anywhere in the world for lower costs."

"We haven't had to face any disaster recovery... [But as] a smaller company, it's nice to be able to pay for somebody else to take care of that."

More Astound Hosted Voice pros

Cons

"The analytics need to have a granular depth on how the customer details and the data sends information through this medium."

"The support team can appear to be condescending."

"Reporting and integration are the main challenges, which are at the mid-level or in the enterprise depending on the system that we choose."

"It needs the option for the CS rep to stop recording when a credit card number is recited by the customer."

"In 3CX, customization is not as easy as I would like. With 3CX Call Flow Designer, you can set up the flow of a call, deliver it to the department, and automate the process. I can't do many things with this."

"It could be better in terms of providing more options for call recording."

"Some customers want to integrate a CRM solution with 3CX, but it's not compatible."

"There should be an option to save some extensions."

More 3CX Live Chat cons

"It should be easier to set up new phone additions to the network."

"Wireless needs improvement... We're still looking for the quintessential IP phone, the one phone that will actually be SIP-enabled and use the WiFi and be able to carry through three [different] buildings."

"The way that you listen to your voicemail messages through the receiver so that you can't fast forward or rewind - I don't like that at all."

"One area for improvement is the Web Portal. It's not a full-view screen, it's more like a minimized screen. You don't get the full view of your desktop. It's more like a five-inch by five-inch view. I think they said the software was designed that way. I don't know if there's going to be a newer version coming out later."

"If they had better ongoing-training options, for example, if they put something out on YouTube where you could just go and look for individual things that you need by looking at a video, that would be very helpful."

"The analytic part of it, the control panel, those are their biggest areas where they have to improve. There are competitors out there where, when you open the control panel, they have tons of analytics, the ability to add lines, to see which people are on the phone.... RCN has a great product, but they could make it outstanding with the right analytics and control panel."

"I use the voicemail transcription feature on my phone and I think all staff members do. We also have voicemails that we receive from our main number and that can be really confusing. It's something that I've recently had some problems with: The way that these calls are bounced around from line to line before they land in a specific voicemail box that we have to check."

"If they could improve on their response times, making them even faster than they are right now, that would be great."

More Astound Hosted Voice cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Switching from POTS or PRI to SIP Trunk save the customer real costs. ROI is seen in less than a year."

"There is no add-on costing on the standard fees."

"3CX sells an annual subscription, but we usually split it out monthly for clients, so they don't see an annual bill for the 3CX licensing, it's just part of their monthly phone bill. As they're paying us for carrier service anyway, we just roll it all together. Your standard phone service would be an additional cost, you either need to maintain a local carrier with POTS lines or PRI or a SIP, or you have to go with a cloud-based SIP."

"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."

"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."

"We used a yearly license depending on the customer's requirements, and the customers did not complain about the pricing."

"The price of the solution is reasonable. There are a few license options and we are using an enterprise license."

"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."

More 3CX Live Chat pricing and cost advice

"We looked at about five or six other companies but when RCN came in, they beat everybody hands-down, on both the features and on the dollars side. It prompted our people to say they hadn't seen numbers so low for the services you get."

"For us, the monthly price was 38 percent lower. We were paying somewhere between $5,600 and $5,800 every month for voice and data. We got it down to about $4,000 with tax."

"The pricing is very fair. They have very good pricing."

"RCN, as part of the deal, leased us phones at a reasonable price and each line was extremely reasonable as well."

"The solution is saving our company money, based on the initial, up-front cost that would normally be required. The monthly ongoing cost is comparable to prior solutions."

"We felt that pricing was fair because we chose RCN over quotes from several companies. It was reasonable..."

"We're okay with the pricing and licensing... It's based on the number of extensions."

"It's very affordable. We're very happy with the pricing."

More Astound Hosted Voice pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Educational Organization

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about 3CX Live Chat?

The solution is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for 3CX Live Chat?

The pricing of 3CX is around six out of ten. For some customers, the first year may be free of charge, allowing them to try the solution before deciding to implement it.

See all answers

What needs improvement with 3CX Live Chat?

The reporting and dashboards of 3CX could be improved.

See all answers

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Comparisons

Yeastar S-Series VoIP PBX vs 3CX Live Chat

Compared 37% of the time

Kamailio SIP Server vs 3CX Live Chat

Compared 24% of the time

Fortinet FortiVoice vs 3CX Live Chat

Compared 22% of the time

Webex vs 3CX Live Chat

Compared 17% of the time

More 3CX Live Chat Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Live Chat

March 2025

Download 3CX Live Chat product report

Buyer's Guide

Astound Hosted Voice

March 2025

Download Astound Hosted Voice product report

Also Known As

3CX PBX

No data available

Overview

Connect with your website visitors for free with the 3CX Live Chat plugin. With more than 1,900,000 downloads, 3CX Live Chat is the most popular, effective and reliable live chat plugin for WordPress. Increase conversions and boost customer satisfaction by communicating directly with your website visitors in real-time.

Integrate with 3CX for a multichannel communications suite including voice and video (requires 3CX V16). Get 3CX for free for one year for unlimited users hosted by 3CX, in your own cloud account or on-premise on Windows or Linux.

Easy and convenient for visitors
Build rapport with potential customers via live chat
Increase sales
Reduce customer support line costs by using live chat
Learn to understand the pain points of your customers

FEATURES

Simple and clean UI for all users
Option to elevate a live chat to a call or video call
Free iOS or Android apps to respond to messages through a smartphone
Ability to transfer chats to other agents
Agent’s picture is shown in the live chatbox
Customizable chatbox. Add a company logo, change the colors of the chatbox
All chats are saved in chat history
Dedicated storage system for all offline messages
Create unlimited agents to handle live chats and calls
Customizable offline message form
Supports animations in the chatbox
Ability to choose whether you want to accept or decline a chat

3CX

Astound Hosted Voice is a fully managed cloud-based solution delivered over our wholly owned, fiber-rich network that offers advanced unified communications customized to fit your organization’s specific needs. It offers intuitive features that helps improve productivity while providing flexible, cost-effective pay-as-you-go features to fit any budget. Astound Hosted Voice is a completely scalable solution with unlimited nationwide calling, predictable monthly costs, and offers easily customized call and administration tools.

Astound

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Citi Open Tournament

Buyer's Guide

3CX Live Chat vs. Astound Hosted Voice

March 2025

Free Report: 3CX Live Chat vs. Astound Hosted Voice

Find out what your peers are saying about 3CX Live Chat vs. Astound Hosted Voice and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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