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Last UpdatedJul 17, 2023
The Ultimate Guide to PBX Phone Systems for Your Business
Short for Private Branch Exchange, a PBX system happens to be a private telephone network employed within a business. PBX phone systems users can communicate externally by sharing numerous external lines for making external phone calls. Similarly, PBX phone systems users can communicate internally within the company via connected internal telephones, as well as connected to SIP Trunks, VoIP providers, analog, ISDN, and the PSTN. PBX systems allow users to have more ‘phones’ as compared to PSTN physical phone lines, allowing for free calls between users and also providing a host of other features such as call queues, IVRs, call recording, voicemail, and transfer calls.
PBX phone systems today are available as virtual or hosted solutions, as well as on-premise solutions which can be run on the company’s own hardware.
Advantages
Basically, there are two major advantages of using PBX phone systems:
Users need to know that newer VoIP-based PBX systems aren’t relying on physical landlines, allowing users to support an unrestricted number of simultaneous phone calls as much as their bandwidths allow
Types of PBX phone systems
Basically, there are four main kinds of PBX systems: Traditional, IP PBX, Hosted, and Virtual ones. The differences between them lie in their initial and recurring costs, and exactly how many employees they are best used for.
IP PBX systems can also accommodate businesses with remote workers and employees as well as multiple locations. Also, since call transfers and routing are handled through the internet, calls can be transferred easily to somebody in a whole other office (given that they are on the same network). In fact, someone who is working from home can receive calls the same way as in an office setup by plugging in an IP phone.
Even then, IP PBX systems are expensive because of the PBX hardware itself costs a minimum of around $1,000, apart from recurring costs of around $5-$10/set per month. That being said, it makes great sense for businesses with 50+ employees to install IP PBX systems since the monthly fees are relatively lesser than other kinds of PBX phone systems.
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