Top 4 Reasons to Get a Hosted PBX Business Phone System
By Nathan Zych, Chief Executive Officer · · Updated July 10, 2025 · 4 min read
Top 4 Reasons to Get a Hosted PBX Business Phone System
Voice over IP (VoIP) phone systems are becoming increasingly popular with businesses, as the technology has become more stable and reliable. When migrating to VoIP solutions, most companies are choosing to go with an IP-PBX system, for which there are two options: an on-premise IP-PBX, or a hosted IP-PBX.
An on-premise IP PBX system is similar to a traditional business phone system, in that, the PBX phone server is located within the company’s premises. The main differences are that the on-premise system uses IP phones for telephone devices, and IP routing for placing phone calls.
With a hosted PBX system, the PBX phone server is hosted by the service provider, allowing much greater flexibility in communications over both traditional business phone systems and on-premise PBX systems.
Most business organizations when switching to VoIP, or buying a new business phone system, choose to go with a Hosted PBX. In this article we discuss the 4 main reasons these organizations are choosing Hosted PBX systems over the alternatives.
1. Communications Flexibility
Research by Gartner in 2017 found that, “Follow Me”, mobile, and remote work features were the driving factors for the adoption of voice over IP telephony technologies for between 50% and 72% of companies. Today with the COVID-19 pandemic, this functionality is of even greater importance as most companies have implemented remote work for their employees.
Hosted PBX phone systems offer mobile applications that allow employees to appear to be calling from the office while working remotely. From the recipient’s end, a call made this way is indistinguishable from a call made directly from the office.
Employees can also take calls on their work number remotely without setting up call forwarding. Incoming calls can be routed to an accessible device (whether that be a mobile device app, soft phone, or an IP phone) so that users can answer even when they are not in the office.
Additionally, users working remotely can dial other team members directly using assigned phone extensions for voice calls, video calls and even conferencing. This flexibility is allowing hosted PBX systems to be the number one choice for companies with staff working remotely.
2. Presence Tracking
Hosted PBX phone systems have a really great feature called presence. This feature allows users to see if another user is available, busy, on the phone, or away at any given time. It can be integrated into calendars, scheduling applications, and IP phones, whether desktop, softphone, or mobile. Some phone systems even have instant messaging capabilities which utilize presence. With presence business organizations can be more productive, save time and avoid playing phone tag.
3. Scalable Capacity
With traditional phone systems as well as on-premise IP-PBX systems, there is usually a limit to the number of extensions they can support. As a result, adding even one extension could require a hardware upgrade, expensive on-site work, downtime, or even a business disruption.
On the other hand, companies using hosted PBX systems can add additional extensions without modifying physical hardware configurations. This is because hosted PBX systems are provisioned using cloud servers which can scale their capacity as needed.
This scalability also allows companies to provide phone capabilities to multiple office locations with a single hosted PBX system. While on-premise PBX systems could do the same, a hardware upgrade might be required to support the additional extensions.
With hosted PBX, employees working at a secondary location can make and receive calls, similar to users in the main location, without needing a new system at that location. Adding new extensions is a simple task, and similarly, if a company needs to scale down the number of phone lines or locations, they can do so quickly and efficiently.
Additionally, a single phone system will have fewer points of failure compared to deploying multiple systems at different locations.
4. Predictable Costs
Without physical equipment to manage and maintain, companies can more accurately predict costs with a hosted PBX telephone system. The phone provider shoulders risk, handles maintenance and software, helps set up physical extensions, and manages the intricacies of the phone system. As a result, operational costs are predictable and fixed.
Additionally, on many hosted PBX systems, calls to North American phone numbers are the same cost as local calls. Most systems also offer extremely competitive pricing on long distance, and even flat rate long distance pricing as well, allowing businesses to easily predict their monthly phone expenditure.
Outsource Your Business Phone System
Hosted PBX makes business telephony easy, flexible, and predictable. Capacity scaling and remote work support are all easier with hosted IP-PBX. Companies can avoid the complexities of old-fashioned business telephone systems, and the limitations of on-premise IP-PBX systems, and focus on what they do best.
Outsource IT offers a reliable and secure business phone solution which utilizes the best in hosted PBX technology. Our solution allows business organizations to keep their phone system maintained, backed up, secured, and monitored without needing internal IT resources. Contact your Outsource IT account manager to learn more.
About the author
Nathan Zych, Chief Executive Officer
Written and reviewed by the Outsource IT team, a Burlington, Ontario managed IT services provider supporting businesses across the GTA for over 20 years. Meet the team.
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