Nobody wakes up wanting a new phone system. The question tends to arrive with a renewal notice for the maintenance contract on a box in the comms cupboard, a box that is sometimes older than half the staff.
At that point you are really asking two things. Is a cloud PBX actually better, or just newer? And is now the right time, or should you sign up for another few years and deal with it later?
This is our attempt at an honest answer to both. We sell cloud phone systems, so we have a side, but there are real situations where keeping what you have is the better call, and we will get to those.
They do the same job
A PBX routes calls. It decides which phones ring when someone dials your main number, runs the "press 1 for accounts" menu, holds callers in a queue and passes calls between extensions.
An on-premise PBX does that from hardware in your building. A cloud PBX does it from a platform hosted in a data centre, and your phones connect to it over the internet. Staff still pick up a desk phone, or a softphone on their computer, and callers can't tell the difference.
So the real comparison is not features. Both can do menus, queues, voicemail to email and the rest. It comes down to three things: where the system lives, who looks after it, and what happens when something goes wrong.
The internet argument isn't what it used to be
The most common reason people give for sticking with an on-premise system is that it doesn't depend on the internet. That used to be true. For most Australian businesses, it no longer is.
Since the move to the NBN, the lines into most offices run over the same broadband connection as everything else. Many on-premise systems now reach the outside world through SIP trunks over that connection, or through NBN voice services that need the same equipment. If the office internet goes down, outside calls stop either way. The one thing an on-premise system keeps doing is extension-to-extension calls inside the building, which is rarely what anyone is worried about.
Power is similar. NBN equipment needs mains power, so in a blackout the phone service stops unless there is battery backup in place, whichever kind of system you have.
Where a cloud system has the edge is what happens next. The phone system itself is still running somewhere else, so it can follow its failover rules: send calls over an alternate route, or divert extensions to staff mobiles. Callers reach a person instead of a dead line. With an on-premise box, if the building is offline, so is the phone system.
None of this means the connection doesn't matter. It matters more than ever. But it is the same risk for both, and only one of them has somewhere else to send the calls.
Comparing the cost fairly
The trap here is comparing a cloud subscription against nothing, because the on-premise system feels paid for.
It isn't, quite. Pull out the last two years of invoices and add up what the old system actually cost to run:
- The maintenance contract
- Technician visits or remote sessions for changes, like adding a user or updating the after-hours message
- Licence upgrades when you needed a feature or more extensions
- Handsets you had to replace, often from one manufacturer's range
- The lines or SIP trunks, which you pay for with either system
Then set that against what a cloud system would cost: a monthly charge per user, call charges, any new handsets you need, and one-off porting charges to move your numbers across.
The money you spent on the box years ago doesn't belong in either column. It is gone whatever you decide. It isn't a reason to keep the system, and it isn't a reason to throw it out if it's still doing its job well.
The other cost that rarely shows up on an invoice is time. If changing a call flow means logging a job and waiting for a technician, things that should change, like holiday hours or a new person on the sales queue, often just don't. That has a cost too, even if nobody sends you a bill for it.
When staying on-premise is the right call
There are good reasons to keep an on-premise system, and we would rather you heard them from us than found out afterwards.
Your system is fairly new and well supported. If it was installed in the last few years, the manufacturer still supports it and it does what you need, there is no rush. Plan the move for when the support or contract runs out.
Your site has poor internet. Some rural and regional sites still can't get a connection good enough to carry a full office of calls reliably. Fix the connection first, or wait until you can.
Your phone system is wired into other equipment. Door intercoms, overhead paging, lift phones, nurse call systems and some hotel and aged care setups often connect directly to an on-premise PBX. A lot of this can work with a cloud system, but it needs to be checked device by device before you commit, not discovered on cutover day.
You rely on a monitored alarm or medical alert line. These often need their own line and aren't always supported over cloud voice services. Keep a separate service for them and check it with your alarm provider.
The signs it's time to move
On the other side, these are the situations where moving to a cloud system usually makes sense:
The maintenance contract is up, or the manufacturer has stopped supporting your model and replacement parts are getting hard to find. People work from home part of the week and the desk phones ring in an empty office. You're opening a second site, or already have one and run two separate systems. Every change needs a technician. Or you simply have no idea how many calls you miss, because the old system can't tell you.
If two or three of those sound familiar, it's worth getting a quote before you renew anything.
Handsets: the question that catches people out
Before you budget, find out what your current handsets are. Older on-premise systems often use proprietary digital handsets that only work with that manufacturer's box. Those won't carry over to a cloud system, and you will need new phones.
Newer systems often use SIP handsets, and those can frequently be reconnected to a cloud PBX. A good provider will ask for your handset models up front and tell you which can stay. Many businesses also find they need fewer desk phones than they think once people can use a softphone or have calls follow them to a mobile.
How a switch actually works
A sensible migration doesn't involve a day without phones. The new system is built and tested while the old one keeps running: users, call flows, menus and queues, all set up in advance. Then your numbers are ported across and calls start arriving on the new system.
Porting is the part with the least control. Your current carrier validates the numbers and confirms the port category, and the timeframe depends on them. One piece of advice that saves a lot of pain: don't cancel your old phone service before the port completes. Cancelling first can release your numbers, and getting a lost number back is hard and sometimes impossible.
If you want a wider look at the options, including Microsoft Teams calling and mobiles-only setups, our guide to choosing a business phone system covers those too.
Questions to ask before you sign
Whoever you talk to, these questions tell you a lot:
- If our office internet drops, where do calls go?
- Which of our current handsets can we keep?
- What will porting cost for our port category, and how long is it likely to take?
- If we leave, can we take our numbers with us?
- Who do we call when something's wrong, and where are they?
The answers should be specific. "It's very reliable" isn't an answer to the first one.
Where Metcom fits
Metcom Cloud PBX is the cloud phone system we run for Australian businesses. There's no phone system hardware on site, your numbers port across, multiple sites sit under one login, calls fail over to an alternate route or to mobiles, and it integrates with Microsoft Teams. You can port your numbers away at any time if you ever leave.
If your maintenance contract is coming up, send us the details of what you have now: the system, the handsets and the number of users. We'll tell you honestly whether it's worth switching yet.