Honest Pricing — What a managed 3CX phone system actually costs

The cost stack, line by line.

Numbers below are for a 35-user office on PRO-tier 3CX with 8 simultaneous SIP channels — the most common UK SME configuration. We compare what a typical incumbent UK 3CX MSP charges, what the underlying components actually cost at trade and list prices, and what going direct to the suppliers would cost.

Cost line	Typical incumbent MSP From a real signed UK Titanium-partner order form, Feb 2026.	Port Phones Source-grounded cost stack we operate from.	DIY direct from suppliers If you bought every component yourself.
3CX licence + hosting 25 users runs cleanly on PRO at 8 SC, not the 24 SC most incumbents quote.	Typical incumbent£150 / moSold as “Enterprise Licence + Cloud Hosting”. Actually PRO 24 SC list at £910/yr + own-infra hosting. SC count is roughly 3× what 25 users need.	Port Phones~£100 / mo costPRO at 8 SC list (£330/yr) + 3CX hosted at 8–16 SC (£245–395/yr) or own infra. We quote retail at audit; this is the cost stack we operate from.	DIY direct£48 / moPRO licence 8 SC £330/yr + 3CX hosted £245/yr = £575/yr direct from 3cx.com. Buyable today, self-service. Most SMEs don't realise this.
SIP trunks 8 channels covers ~35 inbound concurrent calls in a working office.	Typical incumbent£68 / mo8 channels × £8.50 each from a Gamma reseller. Gamma Gold partner wholesale rate is typically £2.50–3.50/channel, so the markup is ~65%.	Port Phones~£28 / mo costGamma channel partner pricing at our scale. We mark up modestly and itemise on the quote rather than bury it in a bundle.	DIY direct£32 / mo8 channels at typical Gamma retail (£4/channel). Sippy, Vonage Business, and others land in a similar band.
Per-user support charge “Premium support”, “co-located backup”, etc.	Typical incumbent£35 / mo35 users × £1/user. Small enough not to negotiate; scales linearly with seats; near-pure margin.	Port Phones£0Support and monitoring are part of the service, not a per-seat surcharge. You buy a managed service; the support is the service.	DIY directYour timeWhen something breaks at 4pm on Friday, you fix it or pay an hourly engineer.
Handsets 30 × Yealink T46U + 5 × T57W is a typical 35-user mix.	Typical incumbent£3,845 one-off30 × T46U @ £103 + 5 × T57W @ £150. Yealink trade prices are £85–90 (T46U) and ~£125 (T57W). Markup ~15%.	Port PhonesTrade-plusWe charge trade-plus-fixed-fee rather than retail markup. The exact number is on your audit quote; it will be lower than the incumbent figure by ~10–15%.	DIY direct£3,200 one-offYealink-authorised distributor at trade. You handle the buying, the delivery, and the provisioning.
Setup, configuration, on-site install First system stand-up + handset placement + line testing.	Typical incumbent£550 one-offA day of engineering for a 35-user site, plus the back-office config. Roughly £100–150 below market rate at the bottom; well above at the top.	Port PhonesQuoted at auditSized to your actual office, not a fixed SKU. If we can do it in half a day, you pay for half a day.	DIY directYour weekend~30–40 hours for a first-time 3CX administrator. Skill ramp is real; we've done it dozens of times.
Number porting from BT For PSTN switch-off migrations.	Typical incumbent£175 one-offPaperwork + carrier coordination + scheduled cut-over. The work is real but the price is generous.	Port PhonesIncludedNumber porting is part of the migration we sell, not a surcharge. The carrier paperwork costs the same whether we bundle it or itemise.	DIY directFree + your hoursGamma or your chosen SIP carrier handles the port form. You manage the calendar, the testing, and the rollback plan if it slips.

Cost line

Typical incumbent MSP From a real signed UK Titanium-partner order form, Feb 2026.

Port Phones Source-grounded cost stack we operate from.

DIY direct from suppliers If you bought every component yourself.

3CX licence + hosting 25 users runs cleanly on PRO at 8 SC, not the 24 SC most incumbents quote.

Typical incumbent£150 / moSold as “Enterprise Licence + Cloud Hosting”. Actually PRO 24 SC list at £910/yr + own-infra hosting. SC count is roughly 3× what 25 users need.

Port Phones~£100 / mo costPRO at 8 SC list (£330/yr) + 3CX hosted at 8–16 SC (£245–395/yr) or own infra. We quote retail at audit; this is the cost stack we operate from.

DIY direct£48 / moPRO licence 8 SC £330/yr + 3CX hosted £245/yr = £575/yr direct from 3cx.com. Buyable today, self-service. Most SMEs don't realise this.

SIP trunks 8 channels covers ~35 inbound concurrent calls in a working office.

Typical incumbent£68 / mo8 channels × £8.50 each from a Gamma reseller. Gamma Gold partner wholesale rate is typically £2.50–3.50/channel, so the markup is ~65%.

Port Phones~£28 / mo costGamma channel partner pricing at our scale. We mark up modestly and itemise on the quote rather than bury it in a bundle.

DIY direct£32 / mo8 channels at typical Gamma retail (£4/channel). Sippy, Vonage Business, and others land in a similar band.

Per-user support charge “Premium support”, “co-located backup”, etc.

Typical incumbent£35 / mo35 users × £1/user. Small enough not to negotiate; scales linearly with seats; near-pure margin.

Port Phones£0Support and monitoring are part of the service, not a per-seat surcharge. You buy a managed service; the support is the service.

DIY directYour timeWhen something breaks at 4pm on Friday, you fix it or pay an hourly engineer.

Handsets 30 × Yealink T46U + 5 × T57W is a typical 35-user mix.

Typical incumbent£3,845 one-off30 × T46U @ £103 + 5 × T57W @ £150. Yealink trade prices are £85–90 (T46U) and ~£125 (T57W). Markup ~15%.

Port PhonesTrade-plusWe charge trade-plus-fixed-fee rather than retail markup. The exact number is on your audit quote; it will be lower than the incumbent figure by ~10–15%.

DIY direct£3,200 one-offYealink-authorised distributor at trade. You handle the buying, the delivery, and the provisioning.

Setup, configuration, on-site install First system stand-up + handset placement + line testing.

Typical incumbent£550 one-offA day of engineering for a 35-user site, plus the back-office config. Roughly £100–150 below market rate at the bottom; well above at the top.

Port PhonesQuoted at auditSized to your actual office, not a fixed SKU. If we can do it in half a day, you pay for half a day.

DIY directYour weekend~30–40 hours for a first-time 3CX administrator. Skill ramp is real; we've done it dozens of times.

Number porting from BT For PSTN switch-off migrations.

Typical incumbent£175 one-offPaperwork + carrier coordination + scheduled cut-over. The work is real but the price is generous.

Port PhonesIncludedNumber porting is part of the migration we sell, not a surcharge. The carrier paperwork costs the same whether we bundle it or itemise.

DIY directFree + your hoursGamma or your chosen SIP carrier handles the port form. You manage the calendar, the testing, and the rollback plan if it slips.

Why the gap between “DIY direct” and “managed” exists.

The cost stack above leaves about £100–150 per month of gross margin in the managed-service envelope. That margin exists for real reasons, not because the market is irrational:

Partner time is worth more than the saving. A 35-person professional services firm whose principals bill £150–300/hour cannot economically spend 40–80 hours setting up a PBX. Outsourcing the setup pays for itself in week one.
Operational risk dwarfs the saving. If phones break during a peak period (tax season, lambing, exchange days), the firm bleeds revenue and client trust. The managed service is bought as insurance.
Pricing opacity is the moat. Most SME owners don't know 3CX is fundamentally free at small scale, that SIP can be bought direct from Gamma, that handsets sell at trade. They cannot DIY what they don't know is DIY-able. Managed providers benefit from this opacity. We don't; we're publishing the math on a page you're reading.
Procurement preference for bundling. One vendor, one bill, one outcome. The cognitive load of assembling licence + hosting + SIP + handsets + install + porting + support is itself a deterrent, independent of cost.
Compliance and audit cover. AML record-keeping, GDPR on recordings, business-continuity expectations from clients. “We run our own phones from a cupboard” reads poorly in due diligence; “our managed provider is a 3CX Titanium Partner” reads well.

Read at length: Why the managed 3CX market exists — ten structural reasons UK SMEs don't go direct.

How we sit inside that envelope.

Port Phones charges per-user-per-month, not per-SC. We pick the actual SC count your concurrency needs, not a default SKU. SIP is itemised on the quote, not bundled into a “Cloud Hosting” line. Support is the service, not a £1/user/month surcharge bolted on top.

The £180–220/month band in the totals above is our typical envelope for a 35-user / 8-channel office. Yours will land where your office's actual concurrency, handset mix, and SIP volume put you. We tell you the number at the end of the free audit, on a written quote, with the cost stack broken out the same way the table above does.

Why we don't publish a fixed per-user rate.

Two reasons. First, an honest quote depends on inputs we don't yet have (concurrency, recording requirements, hand-off to MS Teams, multi-site coordination). Second, locking ourselves to a public floor before we've audited enough real prospects to know our true delivery cost is how solo founders underprice themselves into a hole. We'll publish a floor once the data justifies one. Until then, the audit is free and the quote is concrete.

Get your own line-by-line quote.

15-minute audit, no commitment. You get a written quote with the same line-item decomposition as the table above — specifically priced for your office.

What you get from the audit

The current cost of your existing phone setup, what changes if you migrate to managed 3CX, the line-item decomposition, the migration timeline, and a fixed-price quote. No jargon, no pressure.

Prefer to call or email?

+44 7909 338388
sales@portphones.co.uk
31-33 Commercial Road, Poole, Dorset BH14 0HU