Zoom Phone tier breakdown.
- Metered — £8.07/user/mo. Includes the Zoom Phone licence but NOT calling minutes. UK landline / mobile calls billed per-minute (currently ~£0.024 to UK landlines, ~£0.10 to UK mobiles at standard Zoom Phone metered rates). Easy to overspend if usage estimates are wrong.
- Pro — £11.84/user/mo. Includes unlimited UK domestic calling. The realistic SME tier.
- Pro Plus — £18.59/user/mo. Adds the Zoom Workplace suite and AI Companion features.
The Metered tier looks cheap on the headline. In practice, a UK SME with 25 users making ~30 minutes outbound to landlines and ~10 minutes to mobiles per user per day pays an extra ~£100–150/month over the Metered headline — roughly the difference between Metered and Pro. For most firms, Pro is the right pick.
Pricing comparison at 30 users.
| Tier | Zoom Phone Pro | 3CX (Port Phones managed) |
|---|
| Per-user / mo | Zoom£11.84 | Port Phones~£8 |
| Monthly (30 users) | Zoom£355 / mo | Port Phones~£240 / mo |
| 24-month difference | ~£2,750Smaller than the RingCentral/8x8 differential — Zoom Phone is genuinely competitively priced. |
Where Zoom Phone wins.
- Zoom Meetings integration. If your firm is heavily Zoom Meetings-centric for video, having calling in the same vendor is a coherent stack. Same login, same admin console, same support.
- Cheap entry tier (Metered) for very-low-volume usage. A 5-user firm making 10 calls a week genuinely pays under £50/month on Metered. 3CX SMB FREE is also under £50/month (free, in fact) but requires DIY setup.
- Polished UX. Zoom's product design is well-regarded. Calls in the Zoom client work the same way Zoom meetings do.
- Global presence. Zoom Phone is in 47+ countries. UK-based firms with international footprint get coherent single-vendor coverage.
Where 3CX wins.
- Better PBX features at standard tier. 3CX PRO includes advanced call queues with announced wait, callback-on-busy, supervisor wallboards, IVR designer, hot desking, switchboard. Zoom Phone Pro has basic queues; the more advanced PBX features require Pro Plus or aren't available.
- UK partner relationship. Zoom Phone UK support is the global Zoom queue. 3CX through Port Phones is a direct UK MSP.
- UK SIP via Gamma at competitive rates. Zoom Phone's "unlimited UK" sounds attractive but the underlying SIP is via Zoom's own carrier relationships. Gamma SIP through 3CX is well-understood, well-integrated, and competitive at usage-based rates.
- Per-system pricing on growth. 30 users on Zoom Phone Pro costs £355/mo. 50 users costs £590. 100 users costs £1,180. Adding 10 more is always +£120/mo. 3CX scales by SC band, with much shallower growth slopes.
Who should pick which.
- Pick Zoom Phone if: you're heavily invested in Zoom Meetings, you want a polished out-of-the-box UX, you're under 20 users with simple needs, or the Zoom brand simplifies procurement.
- Pick managed 3CX if: you need PBX depth (queues, recording, IVR), you care about TCO above 30 users, or you want a UK partner relationship.
- Pick Metered (carefully) if: you have genuinely-low call volume (under 5 min/user/day average) and want the cheapest viable option. Monitor the bill monthly.
What we'll tell you at audit.
Zoom Phone is the most-credible competitor in the SaaS PBX space on raw price. The honest answer for a 20–50 user firm at typical usage levels is a ~£100–200/month preference for 3CX-managed, plus the PBX feature depth. For very-Zoom-centric firms or very-small ones, Zoom Phone may genuinely be the right call. Book a free audit and we'll model both against your real call volume.
