Which Tool Should You Use to Manage Multiple 3CX Systems? (2026)

Key takeaways:

• We make one of the tools on this list (Controvo), so we’re disclosing that up front and telling you where the others genuinely beat us
• Sikurd’s verified, tamper-evident backups and four PSA integrations are real strengths worth crediting
• The 3CX Partner Portal is free inventory, not monitoring: no alerting, no health data
• General-purpose tools like PRTG and Zabbix work if you’re willing to build the 3CX-specific sensors yourself
• Partner feedback on Controvo is public on 3CX’s own community forum, so you can check it rather than take our word for it
• A full comparison table and a “how to choose” section are below if you want to skip straight to the decision

A Quick Disclosure Before We Start

We build Controvo, one of the tools you’re about to read about. That’s worth saying plainly, because a “best tools” list from a vendor is an easy thing to distrust, and it should be.

Here’s how we tried to earn your trust anyway: every claim about a competitor below is something you can verify on their own site. Where a tool beats us, we say so. Where we think we’re the better fit, we say that too, and we tell you why. If you find something here that’s wrong or out of date, tell us and we’ll fix it.

The Short Version

If you’re running 50 or more 3CX systems and want a policy engine, drift detection, and hands-on onboarding, Controvo is built for that. If verified, tamper-evident backups and a free tier for a handful of instances matter more to you right now, Sikurd is a real option. If you already run PRTG or Zabbix across all your infrastructure and don’t want another pane of glass, keep it, and budget the time to build 3CX-specific monitoring into it. If you just need an inventory list of what you manage, the 3CX Partner Portal already does that for free.

Controvo

Controvo is a complete management platform for 3CX. Monitoring is included. Your team runs the fleet from Controvo instead of logging into the 3CX console. It’s agentless: it connects through 3CX’s own APIs rather than installing anything on your systems.

Controvo is built to be used every day, not watched. It is designed to replace the 3CX console for tier-one and tier-two work: adding an extension, changing a ring group, re-recording a prompt, pulling a recording a client asked about, moving a DID.

The point was never to rebuild the same screens somewhere else, though. It is meant to be better than the thing it replaces, and that shows up in three ways.

Anything you would otherwise repeat, you do once. Where 3CX makes you work through one extension, one member, one system at a time, Controvo does it in bulk across the fleet, so a change that used to be an afternoon is a single action.

Some of it is putting back what 3CX took away. When a 3CX update retired the Welcome Email button, a partner told us they still needed it every day, so we rebuilt it inside Controvo. That kind of request is a recurring pattern rather than a one-off.

And some of it does not exist in 3CX at all: editing a call flow visually instead of reading it out of five separate screens, or managing prompts and greetings without leaving the extension you are working on.

Taken together that means more control over who can do what, fewer mistakes, and less work every single day.

The two halves depend on each other. Quality-of-life tooling on its own would just be a faster way to make a mistake, so the same platform carries the guardrails: on shared and multi-tenant systems the work stays scoped to the tenant you meant, and the things that only go wrong once you consolidate get surfaced per tenant. That is what makes handing the work to a tier-one tech a reasonable idea rather than a brave one, and it is the reason a consolidated fleet does not have to funnel every change through one senior admin.

The platform covers monitoring and alerting, and both halves are customizable: every threshold is yours to set, and so is how each alert is shaped and delivered. It covers CPU, RAM, disk, latency, jitter and license expiration. A policy engine defines your configuration standard and enforces it across every system, with drift detection and auto-remediation when something falls out of line. Configuration templates handle one-time setup at scale.

Backups work differently here than you might expect, and it’s on purpose. You can back up the whole fleet in one action, one-off or on a recurring schedule, get alerted when a backup is missing, and restore a system from the Controvo UI in a couple of clicks. What Controvo does not do is hold the files. Backups stay in your own 3CX environment and your own configured storage, and Controvo never stores the payloads. We decided early that an RMM has no business holding your clients’ backup data, so our job is running and watching the backups you control, and telling you the moment one does not happen.

Beyond configuration, Controvo tracks phone and extension assets, including HaaS leased hardware, monitors call quality, and includes an update manager and bulk SSL certificate renewal so patching and certificates stop being a per-system chore. A bi-directional ConnectWise PSA integration turns alerts into tickets and syncs back. Dashboards are customizable, and Microsoft 365 SSO covers login.

Pricing is $1.25 per simultaneous call, per month, with no tiers and no feature gating. Volume discounts start at 200 simultaneous calls and reach 35% on the largest fleets, and the first annual term carries a 60-Day Exit Right.

Controvo went generally available on August 1, 2026, but that date is the end of a longer story, not the start of one. It began in 2023 as an internal tool running on the builders’ own fleet (the company behind Controvo owns a VoIP business and is a Platinum 3CX partner managing hundreds of systems). In 2024 it was rebuilt for the wider reseller community, and public release notes have shipped every month since January 2025. More than six months of rigorous pilot testing followed, with MSPs ranging from boutique shops to Titanium 3CX Partners running their production fleets on it. An independent penetration test came before general availability; we don’t make security claims beyond that here, but you can read the details on our Battle-Tested page.

The other thing worth knowing is how the product gets decided. Controvo was shaped in a capped partner pilot, and the roadmap still comes from partners rather than from us: recorded calls, transcribed and read, turned into a ranked list of what partners actually asked for and checked against what shipped. That did not stop at general availability. Partners are still shaping it every day.

Every partner also gets access to our Slack channel, plus private DMs with us and the developers, with no ticket queue and no tier-one script in front of either. What we did not plan is what that channel became. It is now a peer-to-peer group of 3CX resellers helping each other every day, and often somebody answers before we do, with a better answer than ours because they run that exact setup. We would argue that access to each other is now worth as much as the software.

That engagement is also what sets the pace. Controvo is in constant active development, and in a busy fortnight that means several releases a week rather than a quarterly drop. The release notes are dated entry by entry, so the cadence is on the record instead of being a claim, and you can see which weeks were busy and which were not.

You do not have to take our word for any of this. When we announced general availability on the 3CX community forum, partners replied under their own names and company names, unprompted, and the thread is public.

Where we fall short today: one PSA integration (ConnectWise) against Sikurd’s four, and no native mobile apps yet.

Best for: MSPs and 3CX resellers who want their team doing the day-to-day work in one place instead of the console, across a fleet big enough that consistency and delegation matter, with tooling that extends what 3CX already does and makes administering it fundamentally easier.

Sikurd

Sikurd markets itself as “RMM for 3CX” and launched in mid-2026. It has real strengths.

The standout is verified backups: Sikurd restore-tests backups and issues public, tamper-evident certificates proving they’d actually work. That’s a genuinely clever answer to a problem every MSP has felt at least once. Sikurd also offers AI voice-call alerts, where an agent calls you and reads out the incident, which is a distinctive way to make sure a critical alert doesn’t sit unread in a channel. It connects to four PSAs (Autotask, ConnectWise, HaloPSA, and Syncro), ships native mobile apps, and has a free tier: the first three instances are free, then $10 per instance per month.

What it doesn’t have yet is a policy engine or configuration drift detection, and onboarding isn’t the hands-on kind. It’s also a new product. How it holds up at scale, over years rather than months, is an open question right now, and that’s a fair thing to weigh when you’re picking a platform to hold admin credentials to your phone systems.

Best for: one to three commercial instances on the free tier, or fleets whose single biggest worry is proving a backup would actually restore. Support is business hours.

PBXMonitor

PBXMonitor is the long-established player in this space, and what it does, it does reliably. Central visibility across your 3CX estate, and scheduling so a task runs later instead of now. Its automation works at the task level: you can defer a job to run later, rather than define a standard and have every system held to it. That is a narrower scope than a management platform, and for plenty of buyers it is the scope they actually want. The product has also stayed close to what it has always been, in look and in capability, which reads as reassuring or as limiting depending on what you are after.

For some buyers that trade is the right one. They want something basic that works, does not surprise them, and costs very little. On that basis PBXMonitor is a sensible choice, and cost is where it competes hardest. Pricing is not published, so you will need to ask them for a number.

Best for: basic monitoring at very low cost, from a tool that has worked the same way for years.

IPTechView (ABP Tech)

IPTechView comes from ABP Tech, a distributor, and it gets mentioned often enough in 3CX conversations that it belongs on this list. It is worth being straight about what it is today, though, because the answer surprised us when we checked in August 2026.

IPTechView is now an AI video security company. Their site is cameras, door stations, access control, environmental sensors and video analytics, and their own description of the product is cloud video security. 3CX appears nowhere in their navigation. Search their site for “3CX” and you get a single result, a page saying IPTechView integrates with 3CX for device management, monitoring and alerting.

So the integration exists, but 3CX is not where this company’s attention is any more. If you came across IPTechView on an older list of 3CX tools, that is probably why.

Best for: existing ABP Tech customers who want basic device monitoring alongside a video estate. If you are choosing a tool primarily to manage 3CX, this is unlikely to be the one.

3CX Partner Portal

Every 3CX partner already has access to the Partner Portal, and it’s free. It’s worth naming here because people sometimes ask if it covers monitoring, and it’s a fair question given how much it does show you.

The honest answer: it’s an inventory list, not a monitoring tool. It shows you which systems exist. It doesn’t alert you when something’s wrong, and it doesn’t give you health data like resource usage, backup status, or call quality. As a baseline view of your portfolio, it’s useful, and it costs nothing. As a way to catch a problem before a client calls you about it, it isn’t built for that.

Best for: knowing what you have. Not for knowing whether any of it is working.

PRTG and Zabbix (General-Purpose Monitoring)

PRTG and Zabbix are general-purpose infrastructure monitoring platforms, and a lot of MSPs already run one of them for servers, networks, or other infrastructure. They’re capable tools with a long track record outside the 3CX world specifically.

The catch is that neither understands 3CX out of the box. You’ll build and maintain the sensors, dashboards, and API polling yourself. 3CX evolves fast, so keeping that custom tooling current is a real, ongoing engineering investment rather than a one-time setup task.

Best for: teams already running one of these who have the engineering time to build the 3CX sensors themselves, and to keep rebuilding them as 3CX changes.

Comparison Table

How to Choose

There is really only one fork here, and it is not about fleet size or feature checklists. It is whether you want to run your 3CX fleet or watch it.

If you want to run it, that is one option on this list. Every other tool here observes from outside and hands the work back to you in the 3CX console.

If watching is genuinely all you need, then the rest of this list is one category with different trade-offs, and the honest way to choose is to pick the trade-off you can live with. Lowest cost and a product that has stayed the same for years, PBXMonitor. Free for your first three instances and restore-tested backups, Sikurd. Already buying through ABP Tech, IPTechView is worth a conversation. Free inventory with no alerting at all, the 3CX Partner Portal already comes with your licence. Willing to build and maintain 3CX sensors yourself, PRTG or Zabbix.

Three things that cut across that fork and are worth deciding deliberately:

Where your backup data lives. Sikurd stores backups off-site as part of the service and restore-tests them. Controvo runs and watches backups but never holds the files, so they stay in your environment. Both are defensible, they are just different answers, and your compliance requirements may pick for you.

Scale changes which mistakes hurt. At five systems, catching a misconfiguration is useful. At fifty, the problem is the same misconfiguration on eight systems because a deployment checklist had a gap, and that is a different class of problem from alerting.

Do not rip out what already works. If PRTG or Zabbix is running and the engineering time to maintain 3CX sensors genuinely exists, that is a legitimate path. If that time keeps not materialising, a purpose-built tool gets you there sooner.

FAQ

Do I need a dedicated 3CX monitoring tool, or will my RMM handle it?

A general-purpose RMM can monitor a 3CX system if you’re willing to build the sensors, thresholds, and API polling yourself, and keep that tooling current as 3CX evolves. A tool built specifically for 3CX ships that work already done, along with 3CX-specific features like extension tracking and license expiration alerts that a general-purpose RMM won’t have out of the box.

What does 3CX monitoring cost?

It ranges from free to a per-instance or per-call rate. The 3CX Partner Portal is free but limited to inventory. Sikurd’s first three instances are free, then $10 per instance per month. Controvo is $1.25 per simultaneous call per month with volume discounts starting at 200 simultaneous calls. PBXMonitor and IPTechView don’t publish pricing; you’d need to request a quote.

Can the 3CX Partner Portal do monitoring?

Not really. It shows you which systems you manage, which is useful as a baseline inventory, but it doesn’t alert you to problems and doesn’t surface health data like resource usage, backup status, or call quality. For actual monitoring, you’ll want a dedicated tool alongside it.

Is a newer tool like Sikurd a risk compared to an established one?

Newer doesn’t mean bad, but it does mean less time in production across a range of real-world fleets, which is worth weighing for a tool that holds credentials to your phone systems. Sikurd’s core feature, verified backups, is a strong and genuinely useful idea regardless of how long the company has existed. How the rest of the platform holds up over time is something only time will answer, for Sikurd and for anyone else newer to the market.

If you want to see where Controvo fits for your fleet, get started and a real person will walk through it with you. Or skip ahead and compare Controvo and Sikurd directly, feature by feature.