Yealink SIP phones
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Discussion

bitchstewie

Original Poster:

68,171 posts

240 months

Thursday 25th June 2020
quotequote all
Does anyone have any experience of Yealink phones in a SME environment please?

We're looking at phone systems and there is still a need for physical handsets.

I'm amazed how cheap these seem to be.

ArsE82

21,377 posts

217 months

Thursday 25th June 2020
quotequote all
bhstewie said:
Does anyone have any experience of Yealink phones in a SME environment please?

We're looking at phone systems and there is still a need for physical handsets.

I'm amazed how cheap these seem to be.
Which devices? We used T42G's for a customer (deployed around 100) and they were fine for years running with NFON.

We had some T46G's in-house which were also fine. Nice bit of kit for the price point.

Nowadays we have 50 staff. 49 are on soft-phones!

bitchstewie

Original Poster:

68,171 posts

240 months

Thursday 25th June 2020
quotequote all
ArsE82 said:
Which devices? We used T42G's for a customer (deployed around 100) and they were fine for years running with NFON.

We had some T46G's in-house which were also fine. Nice bit of kit for the price point.

Nowadays we have 50 staff. 49 are on soft-phones!
Not entirely sure but the low end T5x and T4x was mentioned.

We're just starting to look at SIP phone systems and as you say with the right system I'd hope most people would want a softphone.

But we'll still need some physical phones.

phil4

1,651 posts

268 months

Thursday 25th June 2020
quotequote all
We use them, T46s and T48s.

I'll be honest though, most of the working/magic seems to be controlled by an external firm, we get a website where we can control calls, forwarding, answerphone etc. etc. and are then billed by a reseller monthly for the users/calls.

I've got a T48s sitting on my desk next to me. When the lockdown occurred, I unplugged it from work, and plugged it back in at home and it works without me doing a thing.

ooo000ooo

2,647 posts

224 months

Thursday 25th June 2020
quotequote all
phil4 said:
We use them, T46s and T48s.

I'll be honest though, most of the working/magic seems to be controlled by an external firm, we get a website where we can control calls, forwarding, answerphone etc. etc. and are then billed by a reseller monthly for the users/calls.

I've got a T48s sitting on my desk next to me. When the lockdown occurred, I unplugged it from work, and plugged it back in at home and it works without me doing a thing.
We use T41,46, 48, w52, W60 and CP920.
Polycom seem to require a bit less manual intervention on the same platform but are a bit more of a pain if they need a bit of tinkering.
What you are connecting them to i.e. Lan, Wan and platform is probably more important as to how well they work.

buggalugs

9,292 posts

267 months

Thursday 25th June 2020
quotequote all
Yes they're everywhere around here, I had a customer go with BT for a cloud VOIP setup a few weeks ago and they supplied Yealink.

bitchstewie

Original Poster:

68,171 posts

240 months

Friday 26th June 2020
quotequote all
Thanks all some good stuff here.

A supplier has mentioned 3CX which I've heard of but haven't used.

seveb

308 posts

103 months

Friday 26th June 2020
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You've probably heard of https://www.voipon.co.uk/

Yealink are actually pretty durable and reliable, feel solid and work really well. We have people taking them home (T23/T27) , throwing them in the boot of the car, the dog sits on them, they carry on working, really impressive and cheap enough to keep a couple in stock anyway.

3CX is a great PBX you can manage yourself, easy enough to install on Win/Linux.

bitchstewie

Original Poster:

68,171 posts

240 months

Friday 26th June 2020
quotequote all
seveb said:
You've probably heard of https://www.voipon.co.uk/

Yealink are actually pretty durable and reliable, feel solid and work really well. We have people taking them home (T23/T27) , throwing them in the boot of the car, the dog sits on them, they carry on working, really impressive and cheap enough to keep a couple in stock anyway.

3CX is a great PBX you can manage yourself, easy enough to install on Win/Linux.
Thanks if we do it we'd go hosted for an easy life.

Anything to be wary of with 3CX? Looks like it does a lot and it's cheap which is usually a red flag with telephony compared to the big names smile

PistonBroker

2,725 posts

256 months

Friday 26th June 2020
quotequote all
There's only me and Mrs PB in our business, so we're not exactly testing the limits, but we have a Yealink handset each in our office. I can't remember which model as, other than collecting the odd bit of post, I've not been there since mid-March!

The app I use to pick up/make calls remotely is 3CX.

I'm sure someone on here can explain how it all works, but that's what I pay these guys to do! https://www.qssit.co.uk/

All works fine for us. The app was proving a bit flaky at the start of lockdown so I had Paul just permanently divert to my mobile instead. It's updated since, has a nicer look to it now, and I suspect probably wouldn't be so flaky now. I'm using it on an XR.

I think we must have had them a couple of years now. Prior to that we had Siemens cordless handsets but wanted the added functionality these ones gave us.


seveb

308 posts

103 months

Wednesday 1st July 2020
quotequote all
bhstewie said:
Thanks if we do it we'd go hosted for an easy life.

Anything to be wary of with 3CX? Looks like it does a lot and it's cheap which is usually a red flag with telephony compared to the big names smile
No, it's a really mature product, well designed and the core functionality has existed for years. You'll need a certificate to install to manage it - all management is web based, plus a fixed public IP if you host it. Then get some wholesale SIP trunks and off you go. You can even write applications using a drag and drop GUI type interface which links to databases etc but you don't need to as everything is accessible via a web interface, very easy to manage.

I'm going to move ours from Windows to Linux but even on Win Server 2016 it's been absolutely rock solid, very reliable.

bitchstewie

Original Poster:

68,171 posts

240 months

Wednesday 1st July 2020
quotequote all
seveb said:
No, it's a really mature product, well designed and the core functionality has existed for years. You'll need a certificate to install to manage it - all management is web based, plus a fixed public IP if you host it. Then get some wholesale SIP trunks and off you go. You can even write applications using a drag and drop GUI type interface which links to databases etc but you don't need to as everything is accessible via a web interface, very easy to manage.

I'm going to move ours from Windows to Linux but even on Win Server 2016 it's been absolutely rock solid, very reliable.
Useful thanks smile

I guess what I'm trying to understand is what 3CX can't do that might mean we're back to looking at the big enterprise names.

I did look at Teams because we use Office 365 but the telephony is stupidly expensive when you have a few hundred users.

Kaelic

2,720 posts

231 months

Wednesday 1st July 2020
quotequote all
If you have any questions or want a demo unit let me know, I am in IT but our company own Yealink UK so if you want to have a play let me know am happy to get one of the product guys yo talk to you.

arcturus

1,498 posts

293 months

Wednesday 1st July 2020
quotequote all
We use a mix of T42S and T46S. Not had a problem with any in the 2 years we have had them. All connected to 3CX. In all 180+ extensions across 7 sites plus home users. Works brilliantly. We also use the 3CX Windows softphone, the 3CX browser based phone (supported in Chrome and Firefox) and Android/Apple apps. Something to suit everyone. Our 3CX is hosted, we don't run it ourselves but we can access the Admin console which allows for a lot of tinkering.

alfaben

166 posts

185 months

Thursday 2nd July 2020
quotequote all
Previous company I worked at had a 3CX VM hosted in OVH with enhanced SLA and it worked an absolute treat for the UK offices and those abroad.

They were using T23G handsets.

Setting up the Yealink handsets to point towards 3CX was very easy through the Yealink web GUI and once done you could let it be. I think it could also be automated with DHCP options but I never looked into that. Just bear in mind you may need a minimum firmware on the handset to be supported by 3CX.

https://www.3cx.com/sip-phones/firmware-update-yea...

https://www.3cx.com/sip-phones/yealink-t20p-t22p-t...

Once the phones are talking to 3CX however you can push any further software updates straight down to the handsets no problem!

Certainly given how cheap the handsets are you could buy a handful and then get a trial of 3CX before diving in!

Watch out if buying through ebay as I found some handsets delivered still configured talking back to other cloud platforms so be prepared to factory reset if you end up in that situation.



Edited by alfaben on Thursday 2nd July 10:45

bitchstewie

Original Poster:

68,171 posts

240 months

Thursday 2nd July 2020
quotequote all
Thanks so far.

I'm looking into 3CX more.

This may be a dumb question but....

Let's assume our preference was a softphone/mobile app but we still need the odd phone on a desk.

How easy is it to sign into a phone or is the idea just leave it signed in as "meeting room 2 telephone"?

With generic phones like Yealink is there a "gap" between the phone and 3XC i.e. do you have a bunch of buttons/options on the phone that just do nothing?

I'm not clear how much config systems like 3CX push down to the phone if that makes sense.

What is 3CX bad at?

buggalugs

9,292 posts

267 months

Thursday 2nd July 2020
quotequote all
If you like soft phones then voice licenses for Teams are worth a look.

bitchstewie

Original Poster:

68,171 posts

240 months

Thursday 2nd July 2020
quotequote all
buggalugs said:
If you like soft phones then voice licenses for Teams are worth a look.
I did look but like many other phone systems they seem to be priced per user per month and when you have lots of people who don't make a lot of phone calls (hardly any) but need the ability to do so it gets expensive.