Cloud PBX Pricing in Luxembourg: What SMEs Should Expect

by pbx.lu Editorial on June 18, 2026

Two phone-system price tags look nothing alike. One reads "0 euros, open source." The other reads "10 euros per user, per month." An SME owner cannot compare them, because they are not measuring the same thing. This article puts both routes in euros, builds one running example around a 10-person Luxembourg company, and shows the three-year total cost of each, including the staff time that the "free" option quietly assumes.

We keep it concrete. Every cost below carries a figure or a range, drawn from mid-2026 published rates for providers active in Luxembourg and the Greater Region. Where pricing is quote-only, we say so and state the assumption used.

What you are actually paying for

Every business phone system, hosted or self-hosted, bills across the same six components. Knowing them turns a confusing quote into a checklist.

Per-user (or per-system) licence. The right to use the phone platform. Hosted systems charge per user, per month. Some self-hosted systems charge per simultaneous call, per year. Open-source systems charge nothing here.

SIP trunk and call charges. The connection that carries calls to the public phone network, the modern replacement for old ISDN lines. A SIP trunk costs around 8 to 25 euros per channel, per month in Europe, or a metered rate from about 0.005 euros per minute for EU calls. One channel carries one call at a time.

Numbers and porting. Your phone numbers (DIDs). Keeping an existing number means porting it: a few euros per number, three to ten working days.

IP phones. Desk handsets run from about 60 euros for an entry model to 250 euros for a colour-screen or conference unit. A softphone app on a laptop or mobile costs nothing extra.

Setup and onboarding. One-time configuration. Hosted providers often charge little or nothing; a custom build costs real money, covered below.

Support and maintenance. Keeping the system patched, secure and working. On a hosted plan this is built into the monthly fee. On a self-hosted box, someone has to do it, or be paid to.

The two routes treat these six lines very differently. That is where the real gap appears.

Route 1: ready-to-go Cloud PBX (the subscription model)

A hosted Cloud PBX is a phone system run from a provider's data centre. You pay a monthly fee per user and the provider handles the servers, security patches and software upgrades.

Pricing is per user, per month, in tiers. Luxembourg and Greater Region operators publish standard tiers from roughly 5 to 17 euros per user, per month on metered plans, or about 12 to 24 euros per user for flat-rate unlimited national and international calling. International platforms publish in US dollars: RingCentral lists around 20 to 35 dollars per user; Microsoft Teams Phone adds about 10 dollars per user for the calling licence on top of a Microsoft 365 plan, plus a calling plan or your own SIP trunk.

💡 Where the variable and hidden costs hide

Bundled minutes are not unlimited everywhere. Microsoft's domestic calling plan gives EU users about 1,200 minutes a month, against 3,000 for US and UK users on the same tier. International and premium-rate calls are usually metered on top. Add-ons such as call recording storage, advanced analytics or AI transcription often sit in higher tiers or carry a small per-user fee. Premium support and a hardware refresh every few years are the other lines buyers forget.

Worked example: 10-person Luxembourg SME, hosted. Take a standard tier at 10 euros per user, per month with the SIP carrier included. That is 100 euros a month, or 1,200 euros a year. Ten mid-range desk phones at about 120 euros each add a one-time 1,200 euros, though many teams now run the app on laptops and phones and buy fewer handsets. Setup runs from nothing to a few hundred euros.

📊 Three-year hosted TCO: roughly 1,200 euros a year in subscription, plus a one-time 1,200 euros for handsets and up to 300 euros setup. That lands near 4,300 to 5,500 euros across three years. Internal IT effort: close to zero, since the provider patches, secures and upgrades the system.

Operators active in Luxembourg

A few operators that run Cloud PBX for businesses in Luxembourg and the Greater Region. Profiles on pbx.lu cover each in detail.

📡 Mixvoip. Luxembourg operator with published per-user Cloud PBX pricing.

Read the profile

🏢 DEEP Telecom. B2B brand of POST, the national incumbent; pricing on quote.

Read the profile

🔗 Cegecom. Alternative operator with its own Greater Region fibre network.

Read the profile

🟠 Orange Luxembourg. National operator with business voice and mobile bundles.

Read the profile

Route 2: open-source and self-hosted (the "free" software model)

Here the software is free or cheap, and you (or someone you pay) run the system. First, a distinction that the "free PBX" label blurs.

Asterisk is a raw, genuinely free framework. It is a toolkit rather than a finished product, powerful but expecting an engineer to build and run the whole system.

3CX is not strictly open source. Its free self-managed tier was discontinued in early 2026; paid editions are licensed by simultaneous calls, from about 290 euros a year.

FreePBX is a free graphical distribution built on top of Asterisk. It is far easier to manage than raw Asterisk, but still runs on your server and your responsibility.

So the licence line reads 0 euros for Asterisk and FreePBX, and from about 290 euros a year for a paid 3CX edition. That is the only line that is cheap. The rest does not disappear.

The costs that remain regardless of free software: hosting on a VPS runs 8 to 30 euros a month (both Hetzner and OVH raised prices on 1 April 2026), or an on-premise appliance with a lifespan of a few years. A SIP trunk is still required, at the same 8 to 25 euros per channel as the hosted route. IP phones cost the same 60 to 250 euros each. Then comes the part that decides the whole comparison: the effort.

🔧 IT effort, in hours and euros

Someone has to install, configure and secure the system: SIP and firewall hardening, fail2ban, then ongoing patching, monitoring, backups and upgrades. A proper secured build by a Luxembourg or Greater Region integrator takes around two to five days. At local day-rates of 600 to 900 euros, that is 1,200 to 4,500 euros, call it 3,000 euros for a clean build. Upkeep then runs perhaps four to eight days a year. At integrator rates that is 2,400 to 7,200 euros a year; handled by salaried internal staff it is lower in cash but still consumes real time.

🤝 Commercial and HR effort, the costs with no invoice

Commercial effort: choosing an integrator, negotiating the SIP-trunk and support contracts, and managing that relationship over time. HR effort: deciding who owns the system internally, training them, arranging on-call cover, and carrying the single-point-of-knowledge risk. When the one person who understands the dial plan leaves, the knowledge leaves with them. Hiring or retaining that skill in Luxembourg is not cheap; experienced IT staff command salaries well above 50,000 euros.

🔒 Security, toll fraud and GDPR, as a costable risk

An internet-facing self-hosted PBX is a target. A single compromised weekend can generate 10,000 to 100,000 euros or more in fraudulent international calls, and the business is usually liable for the bill. On top of that, once you host your own call recordings you become the data controller for that voice data under GDPR, with the retention, access and security duties that follow. A hosted provider carries much of this burden for you; self-hosting hands it back.

Worked example: same 10-person SME, self-hosted. Licence 0 euros with FreePBX. VPS at 15 euros a month is 180 euros a year. A SIP trunk with a few channels and metered minutes runs around 60 euros a month, 720 euros a year. Handsets 1,200 euros one-time. A secured integrator build, about 3,000 euros one-time.

📊 Three-year self-hosted TCO: if you already employ capable IT staff and absorb the labour, the hard cash is around 7,700 euros over three years, plus roughly 15 to 25 days of internal staff time and the fraud and bus-factor risk. If you pay an integrator to build and maintain it, the realistic total is closer to 12,000 to 18,000 euros across three years.

Side by side: what a 10-person Luxembourg SME really pays

The headline prices invert once effort is counted. Here are both routes, with the labour line called out.

✅ Ready-to-go Cloud PBX. Three-year total around 4,300 to 5,500 euros. Predictable monthly opex. Near-zero internal IT effort. Provider owns patching, security and fraud monitoring. Setup in days.

⚠️ Self-hosted, labour absorbed in-house. Hard cash around 7,700 euros over three years, but only if you already have the IT skill on staff. Add 15 to 25 staff-days and the single-point-of-knowledge risk.

🔻 Self-hosted, build and upkeep outsourced. Realistically 12,000 to 18,000 euros across three years once integrator day-rates are paid. The "free" software is the smallest line on the invoice.

📈 The pattern. At ten users, hosted is cheaper and far simpler. Self-hosted economics improve as seat count grows, because the fixed costs of a server and a build spread across more users while per-user cloud fees keep climbing. The crossover depends on your numbers, but it sits well above a typical small office.

Who actually runs it: three operating models

The hosted-versus-self-hosted split is really a question of who carries the work. There are three answers, and the cost lines above map onto them.

☁️ Cloud PBX, operator-run. You rent the platform from a telecom operator. They own the servers, patching, security and fraud monitoring. You depend on a third party, but the work and most of the risk sit with them. Choose this for predictable per-user opex and no in-house telephony skill. This is Route 1 above.

🏠 In-house self-managed, open source. You run Asterisk or FreePBX on your own server. Lowest licence cost and full control, but every duty is yours: hardening, patching, backups, toll-fraud, GDPR, on-call cover. Needs a capable engineer on staff and carries key-person risk. This is the labour-in-house line under Route 2.

🤝 Integrator-managed. A local partner builds and runs an open-source or 3CX system for you. You get customisation and a named owner without hiring the skill yourself, but you pay day-rates or a support contract and depend on that partner staying responsive. This is the build-and-upkeep-outsourced line under Route 2.

Same six cost components, three very different answers to who fixes it at 2am. To weigh named options, compare operators active in Luxembourg.

How to decide

This is a question of fit, not of which option is "better."

Choose ready-to-go Cloud PBX if you want predictable monthly costs, have no in-house telephony engineer, and want the system live in days with security and fraud monitoring handled for you. This describes most SMEs under about 30 to 50 users.

Consider self-hosted if you already employ capable IT staff, you want deep customisation that a hosted plan will not allow, or you are large enough that per-user licensing has grown more expensive than running your own platform. Go in with eyes open on the labour, the security duty and the key-person risk.

The right answer is the one that matches your team, not the one with the smallest sticker price.

📚 Want to go deeper on the components behind these numbers? Explore the features guide for what each capability does, or compare providers active in Luxembourg and the Greater Region. The glossary covers terms like SIP trunk, hosted PBX and DID in plain language.

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