Why Four Quotes Are Not Comparable
Comparing phone system quotes is unusually hard, and it is not because the technology is complicated. It is because the vocabulary is shared and the meanings are not.
Four suppliers can each write "cloud PBX" on a quote and be describing four different products with four different failure modes, four different owners of the equipment, and four different answers to "can I leave?"
The actual problem with phone system procurement
Nobody is being deceptive. The word genuinely does cover all of it, and each supplier is using it for the thing they sell. But the effect on a buyer is that the one document you were given to compare with — the quote — is the document least able to tell you what you are comparing.
The good news is that the decision is commercial rather than technical. You do not need to understand call signalling. You need to know what the price counts, who is responsible when it breaks, and what you get back if you leave. Three questions, and none of them are engineering.
What the Word Actually Means
PBX stands for private branch exchange, and its job has not changed since the 1890s. It does two things.
It connects your people to each other
Extension 204 rings extension 211 without going anywhere near the public network, and without being charged. This is the "private branch" part.
It lets them share outside capacity
Twenty-two staff sharing, say, six simultaneous outside calls. Every pricing model in the market still descends from this ratio.
Everything else came later
Transfers, hold, hunt groups, voicemail, queues, recording, reporting, automated menus, AI answering. All of it sits on top of those two functions.
So when a supplier says you will not need a PBX any more, they mean you will not own a box. The function is in every quote you have, including theirs, because extensions still have to ring each other and calls still have to reach the street. The variable is location and accountability — which is exactly what the quotes are silent about.
The Five Things Called a PBX
| What it is | How to recognise it in a quote | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 1. On-premises hardware — a system in your comms room, wired to physical lines. | A hardware line item, an installation charge, and a maintenance or support contract. Possibly "line rental". | You own an asset and its risks. Parts, technicians and the line types it depends on are all getting scarcer. |
| 2. On-premises, switching over your data network — a server or appliance on site, calls carried over your existing cabling, external calls over SIP. | A server or appliance, per-extension licences, SIP channel charges, and often an annual software maintenance figure. | Lower hardware cost, same ownership. You patch it, you secure it, and fraudulent international traffic through it is generally your bill. |
| 3. A private instance, hosted — the same software, run for you in a provider's data centre. | No on-site equipment beyond handsets, but per-extension pricing and language about "your instance" or "your tenant". | Hardware becomes somebody else's problem. Configuration is still yours, and so is the internet at each of your sites. |
| 4. A shared cloud platform — one large system serving many businesses, each isolated. | Per-user pricing, self-service administration, minutes-not-days provisioning, no instance language. | Nothing to maintain, upgrades happen underneath you, adding a person takes minutes. Deep customisation is not on offer — configuration is. |
| 5. A platform that includes calling — unified communications, or a contact centre platform. | Priced per user in tiers, with messaging, meetings, queues, reporting and integrations listed alongside calling. | You are buying more than a phone system. Right if you need queues and reporting; over-specified if you need eight handsets and a receptionist. |
The one-question test
"When this is finished and installed, what equipment will be on my premises?" If the honest answer is handsets and possibly a router, you are looking at 3, 4 or 5. Anything else and you are buying an asset. It is the fastest way to sort four quotes into two piles, and it takes one email.
The Five Pricing Units
This is where most of the apparent price difference between quotes actually lives.
| Unit | The question that matters | How badly it can distort a comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Per extension | Does one person with a desk phone, a laptop app and a mobile app count as one extension or three? | Severely. This one question can double or triple a quote for exactly the same twenty-two people. |
| Per user | What counts as a user? A warehouse phone, a lobby handset, a meeting-room phone and a gate intercom are endpoints, not people. | Moderately, and it usually favours per-user pricing once you list your shared devices honestly. |
| Per concurrent call | How many simultaneous calls, based on what evidence? Sized from real data or from headcount? | Both ways. Under-size it and callers get engaged tone at 9am; over-size it and you pay for a peak you have never had. |
| Per number and per minute | Are direct numbers, 1300/1800 numbers and call charges included, capped or per minute? | Severely for anyone with a 1300 number, where inbound cost depends on where the caller is calling from. |
| Capital plus maintenance | What is the refresh cycle, and does the comparison period include a replacement? | Severely. A five-year comparison with a replacement due in year six makes owning hardware look far better than it is. |
Ask the extension question in writing
Send one sentence to every supplier: "For twenty-two people, of whom eighteen will use a desk phone and a mobile app and four will use a laptop app only, plus a warehouse phone, a lobby phone and two meeting-room phones — what is the total monthly figure?" The replies to that single question have reordered more shortlists than any feature comparison we have seen.
Normalising: A Worked Example
The twenty-two person business from the introduction. Figures are illustrative and rounded, and the point is the method rather than the numbers.
| Quote A | Quote B | Quote C | Quote D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| As quoted, monthly | $310 | $528 | $690 | $1,140 |
| Architecture | On-premises appliance | Hosted instance | Cloud platform | Cloud platform with contact centre |
| Billing unit | Licences plus SIP channels | Per extension | Per user | Per user, tiered |
| Devices counted | 22 licences | 44 extensions once mobiles are added | 22 users, shared devices free | 22 users, shared devices free |
| Hardware up front | $7,400 appliance + $4,600 handsets | $4,600 handsets | $4,600 handsets, or bring your own | Included in term |
| Install and porting | $1,900 | $900 | $0 | $0 |
| Calls | Per minute | Per minute | Included, national | Included, national |
| Annual software maintenance | $1,300 | Included | Included | Included |
| Refresh in five years | Likely appliance replacement | None | None | None |
| Normalised five-year total | ~$50,000 | ~$41,000 | ~$46,000 | ~$68,000 |
The cheapest monthly figure became the second most expensive over five years. The quote that looked mid-range became the cheapest once its per-extension counting was applied honestly — and then only because the supplier confirmed that mobile apps were not separately billed. Quote D was genuinely the most expensive and was also the only one that included queue reporting the business had said it needed, which makes it a different product rather than a worse deal.
What the exercise actually buys you
Not the cheapest option — the ability to have a real conversation. Once four quotes are on one page in one unit, the discussion moves from price to scope, which is where the useful decisions are. Every supplier should be willing to check your arithmetic against their own quote. One who will not is telling you something.
Costs That Appear After Signing
None of these are dishonest. They are simply not on a first quote unless you ask.
| Item | When it shows up | How to pre-empt it |
|---|---|---|
| Number porting fees | At cutover, per number or per range. | Ask for a total to port your exact list of numbers, including any 1300 or 1800. |
| Handset provisioning or configuration | On delivery, sometimes per device. | Ask whether handsets arrive pre-provisioned and what happens if you buy your own. |
| Additional call recording storage | Month three, when retention starts to bite. | State your retention requirement in months and get the cost of it in the quote. |
| Integration setup | When you connect your CRM or practice software. | Name the systems you want connected up front and ask what is included versus billable. |
| Per-minute charges on 1300 inbound | The first invoice. | Ask for the rates by caller origin — fixed, mobile, interstate — not a single blended figure. |
| After-hours support | The first time you need help at 7pm. | Ask what hours are included, who answers, and what an out-of-hours call costs. |
| Early termination | Only if you leave — which is when it matters most. | Get the term, the notice period and the termination formula in writing before signing. |
Our note on what actually goes wrong when businesses switch providers covers the cutover side of this in more detail.
The Responsibility Column Nobody Fills In
Features converged years ago. Responsibility did not, and it is the column missing from every comparison table a supplier will give you. Fill it in yourself.
| When this happens | Who fixes it? | Why you want it in writing |
|---|---|---|
| The platform needs a security patch | On-premises: you or your IT provider. Hosted: usually the provider, but confirm. Cloud: the provider. | An unpatched voice platform facing the internet is a standing target, and patching it is real recurring work. |
| Somebody places $9,000 of international calls through your system overnight | On-premises: very commonly your bill. Hosted and cloud: ask exactly where the line sits. | Automated toll fraud is a persistent industry. This is the single largest unbudgeted risk in owning equipment. |
| A staff member calls 000 from a laptop in a different city | You maintain the address records; the provider delivers the call. | It is a real obligation with real consequences, and mobile staff make it harder. See how 000 works from a cloud phone. |
| A fault at 2am that turns out to be in the network | An operator investigates it. A reseller raises a ticket with whoever they resell and waits with you. | Both are legitimate businesses. Only one can change anything, and you should know which you bought. |
| You want your call recordings from eighteen months ago | Depends entirely on retention settings and export capability. | Ask for the export format now. "We can look into that" at the point of need is not an answer. |
What Happens When the Internet Drops
This question gets asked in every phone system conversation and answered badly on both sides. The honest version has two halves.
The handsets at that site stop
True of every cloud or hosted system, and there is no point pretending otherwise. No connectivity, no desk phones.
Your inbound calls do not stop
The exchange is not at your site, so calls still arrive at the platform and can divert to mobiles, another site, a queue or an AI answer that takes messages — provided that path was configured in advance.
A power cut is the same, only better
Desk phones stop, mobile and laptop apps carry on entirely unaffected, and the diversion path works the same way.
So the comparison is not reliable versus unreliable. It is between an outage that takes your calls off the air and an outage that reroutes them. What matters is whether the diversion path exists and has been tested — so ask each supplier to describe it specifically, then break the connection one afternoon after cutover and confirm calls land where you expected. More on this in how phone redundancy actually works.
Whose Numbers Are They
This is the question that decides whether every other decision is reversible, and it is almost never on a quote.
Australian numbers are administered under a national framework: providers hold rights of use over ranges and allocate numbers from them to customers. Whether a number is recorded as yours determines whether you can take it with you. A business can advertise a number for nine years, pay for it every month, print it on a van, and still discover at the point of leaving that the rights of use sit with the provider rather than with them.
Two sentences to send before you sign
"Will the numbers on this service be registered with rights of use in our business name?" and "If we give notice in two years, will you port them to another provider on request?" A supplier who answers both plainly in writing has just told you something valuable. One who answers with reassurance rather than confirmation has told you something more valuable. The detail is in the 1300 number rental trap.
The Exit Question, Asked Early
Ask what you get back on the way out while you are still an attractive prospect, because the answer is materially better then than it is later.
- The numbers. All of them, ported on request, including 1300 and 1800. Confirmed in writing.
- The call recordings. In what format, over what period, and how — a download, an export, or a support request with a fee attached.
- The call history. Your own records of who called whom and when. Frequently overlooked, and frequently the thing an accountant or a lawyer asks for.
- The configuration. Not the software, but a legible record of your dial plan, queues, hours and routing, so a rebuild elsewhere is not a discovery exercise.
- The contacts and voicemail. Directories and stored messages, especially where a mailbox is a de facto record.
- The terms. Notice period, remaining term, and the termination formula in numbers rather than in principle.
None of this means you are planning to leave. It means the switching cost is a known quantity rather than a surprise, which is the only condition under which a supplier relationship stays honest.
Eight Questions
| Question | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| 1. What equipment will be on my premises when this is finished? | Sorts your quotes into "buying an asset" and "buying a service" in one email. |
| 2. Is the platform shared with other customers, or an instance for me? | Distinguishes cloud from hosted. Both fine; they behave differently on upgrades and customisation. |
| 3. Do you operate the network and the platform, or resell someone else's? | Decides who can investigate a fault rather than escalate it. Ask it plainly; a straight answer is a good sign either way. |
| 4. Exactly what does the billing unit count — including mobiles, laptops and shared phones? | The single biggest source of misleading price differences. |
| 5. What happens to inbound calls when my office internet fails? | A specific answer means somebody has configured this before. A vague one means you will be the first. |
| 6. Will the numbers be registered in our name, and will you port them out on request? | Whether the decision is reversible. |
| 7. Who patches the platform, and who pays if fraudulent international traffic goes through it? | The two responsibilities most often undefined and most expensive to get wrong. |
| 8. If we leave in two years, what exactly do we get back and in what format? | Turns switching cost from an unknown into a line item. |
Getting to a Shortlist
A compressed version of the whole process, in the order that wastes the least of your time.
- Write down what you have. Numbers, sites, staff, shared devices, and the busiest fifteen minutes of your week. One page.
- Write down the three things that must work. Not twenty features — three outcomes. "Nobody waits more than a minute at 9am", "the after-hours line reaches somebody", "calls show in our CRM".
- Send question 1 and question 4 to every supplier. Before any meetings. The replies will reorder your list.
- Normalise into one five-year total. Same unit, same inclusions, hardware refresh where relevant.
- Ask the remaining six questions of the top two. In writing.
- Ask both for a reference in your industry, and ring it. Ask that business what went wrong at cutover, because something always does, and how it was handled.
A word on the three-outcome step
It is the step that prevents over-buying. Feature lists are long because they must satisfy every buyer, and a business that shops against a feature list ends up paying for a contact centre when it needed eight handsets and a good after-hours path. Three outcomes, written before the first meeting, is the cheapest procurement discipline available.
What We Put on a Quote
Since this article is a list of things to demand, it is only fair to say what we do.
We tell you which architecture you are getting, because we operate our own network and platform rather than reselling somebody else's, and that is a checkable claim rather than a slogan. Our pricing unit is per user, and shared devices — warehouse, lobby, meeting room — are not billed as people. Numbers we allocate are registered with rights of use in your name, which is what makes them portable if you leave and presentable while you stay. Porting, provisioning and the diversion path for an internet outage are part of the setup rather than an extra, and we will write down what you get back on exit before you sign, not when you ask.
And if one of the other quotes is a better fit for what you actually need, we would rather tell you that than win a deal that unravels in month seven.
In short
Every quote contains a private branch exchange; what differs is where it runs and who is accountable. Ask what equipment stays on your premises, whether the platform is shared or yours, and whether the supplier operates it or resells it. Then fix the units: get every quote onto a five-year total including handsets, porting, install, calls and one refresh, and ask precisely what the billing unit counts for a person with three devices. Fill in the responsibility column yourself — patching, fraud liability, emergency addresses, who investigates at 2am. Confirm the numbers will be in your name and ask the exit question early. Compare on those, not on features, because the features have been the same on every quote for about five years.
Related reading: hosted versus on-premise, what a cloud phone system is, what it costs, what goes wrong when you switch, and whose number it really is.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does PBX mean on a phone system quote?
PBX stands for private branch exchange, and it describes the switching function that lets your internal extensions ring each other without touching the public network, and lets many internal phones share a smaller number of paths to the outside world. That function is present in every quote you have received, including the ones that say you will not need a PBX any more — what those quotes mean is that you will not own a box, because the exchange runs as software in a provider data centre instead. The reason the word causes confusion on a quote is that it covers at least five materially different architectures: hardware in your comms room wired to physical lines; hardware in your comms room switching over your data network; a private instance run for you in a provider data centre; a shared cloud platform serving many businesses from one system; and a broader unified communications or contact centre platform that contains calling as one component. Four suppliers can each write cloud PBX and mean four different products with different owners, different failure modes and different answers to whether you can leave. So the word itself tells you almost nothing useful, and the questions that do are about location, accountability and pricing unit.
How do I compare phone system quotes that are priced differently?
Normalise everything into a single multi-year total in one unit before you compare anything, because the apparent price difference between quotes is very often a difference in what the price counts. Five units appear in practice. Per extension, where the decisive question is whether one person with a desk phone, a laptop application and a mobile application counts as one extension or three, since that answer alone can double a quote. Per user, where the question is what counts as a user, because a warehouse phone, a lobby handset, a meeting-room phone and a gate intercom are endpoints rather than people. Per concurrent call, which is inexpensive when sized from your own busiest fifteen minutes and expensive when sized from headcount. Per number and per minute, which matters most if you have a 1300 number, where inbound cost depends on where the caller is calling from. And capital plus maintenance for on-premises equipment, where any comparison period that excludes a hardware refresh flatters owning the asset. Build a five-year total for each option including handsets, porting, installation, call charges, storage for the retention you actually need, and one replacement cycle where relevant. Then ask every supplier to check your arithmetic against their own quote; a supplier who will not is telling you something.
Is one person with a desk phone, a mobile app and a laptop app charged three times?
It depends entirely on the platform, and it is the single most important question to ask in writing before you compare any prices. On platforms billed per extension, each registered endpoint can be a separate billable item, so one person using a desk phone, a mobile application and a desktop application may be counted as three. On platforms billed per user, that person is one user and the devices come with them. The difference for a twenty-two person business is not marginal — it can be the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive quote on your desk, for exactly the same people doing exactly the same work. Ask the question with your real numbers in it rather than in the abstract: state how many people will use a desk phone plus a mobile app, how many will use a laptop app only, and list the shared devices such as a warehouse phone, a lobby handset and two meeting-room phones, then ask for the total monthly figure on that basis. The replies to that one email have reordered more shortlists than any feature comparison, and they take a supplier about five minutes to answer if they are willing to.
What happens to my phones if the internet goes down?
The handsets at that site stop working, and your inbound calls do not, provided the diversion path was configured in advance. Both halves of that sentence matter, and most conversations about it only include one. The first half is simply true of any hosted or cloud system: no connectivity at the site, no desk phones, and there is no point pretending otherwise. The second half is the part that gets left out: because the exchange is not at your premises, calls still arrive at the platform and can be diverted automatically to mobiles, to another site, to a queue, or to an AI answer that identifies the business and takes messages. A power failure behaves the same way, except that mobile and laptop applications are entirely unaffected because they are not on your network. So the honest comparison between an on-premises system and a cloud one is not reliable versus unreliable, but two different failure modes: an outage that takes your calls off the air, and an outage that reroutes them. What actually determines your experience is whether that diversion path exists and has been tested. Ask each supplier to describe it specifically, and after cutover, deliberately disconnect the service one quiet afternoon and confirm that calls land where you expected them to.
What costs usually appear after signing a phone system contract?
Seven turn up regularly, none of them dishonest, all of them absent from a first quote unless you ask. Number porting fees, charged at cutover per number or per range, which you should pre-empt by asking for a total to port your exact list including any 1300 or 1800 numbers. Handset provisioning or configuration charges, sometimes per device, so ask whether handsets arrive pre-provisioned and what changes if you supply your own. Additional call recording storage, which usually appears around month three when your retention requirement starts to bite, so state that requirement in months and get the cost quoted. Integration setup, when you connect a CRM or practice management system, so name the systems up front and ask what is included versus billable. Per-minute inbound charges on 1300 numbers, where you should ask for rates by caller origin rather than a blended figure. After-hours support, which you discover the first time you need help at seven in the evening, so ask what hours are included, who answers and what an out-of-hours call costs. And early termination, which only matters if you leave, which is exactly why the term, notice period and termination formula belong in writing before you sign rather than afterwards.
Will my phone numbers still be mine if I change providers later?
Only if the rights of use are recorded in your business name, and that is worth confirming in writing before you sign rather than discovering at the point of leaving. Australian numbers are administered under a national framework in which providers hold rights of use over ranges and allocate numbers from them to customers, and whoever is recorded as holding those rights is who can decide the number's fate. It is entirely possible for a business to advertise a number for nine years, pay for it monthly, print it on vehicles and signage, and then find that the rights sit with the provider rather than with the business. Two sentences sent before signing will settle it: will the numbers on this service be registered with rights of use in our business name, and if we give notice in two years, will you port them to another provider on request? A supplier who answers both plainly and in writing has given you something useful. One who responds with reassurance rather than confirmation has given you something more useful. This single question decides whether every other decision you make about your phone system is reversible, which is why it belongs near the top of the list rather than in the fine print.
Do I need a contact centre platform or just a phone system?
Decide it by writing down three outcomes before you look at any feature list, because feature lists are long by necessity and shopping against one is how a business ends up paying for a contact centre when it needed eight handsets and a reliable after-hours path. A plain business phone system is sufficient when calls arrive, someone answers them, and nobody is accountable for how long people wait. You need contact centre capability when callers wait in a queue and somebody in your business owns the question of how long that wait is, because at that point queueing with announcements and callback, skills-based routing, real-time visibility, and reporting on service level and abandonment stop being extras and become the actual product. The test is not size. A five-person booking line where every missed call is lost revenue may need queue reporting more than a fifty-person office where the phone is incidental. Write the three outcomes as sentences about results rather than features — nobody waits more than a minute at nine in the morning, the after-hours line always reaches a person or takes a proper message, calls appear against the customer record in our CRM — and then ask each supplier which of their tiers delivers those three and what it costs.
