Jitsi Meet Desktop
A maintenance-mode Electron wrapper that reworked its window model and now gates remote control on consent.
Comparison · Meetings
3CX vs HOMER
A side-by-side editorial comparison of 3CX and HOMER — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
3CX vs HOMER: at a glance
What is 3CX?
3CX is rebuilding the PBX around MCP and a dedicated AI server, then letting admins self-serve the rest.
The V20 line is where the product is changing: Update 10 in alpha brings MCP support, a dedicated AI Server for deploying AI infrastructure, and more administrative control, while Update 9 already ships email delivery of AI agent call details, summaries, and transcripts. Around that core, the surfaces are being tidied — the Windows Softphone V5.7 migrates extensions and accounts to the desktop app in one click, and the customer portal now lets subscribers downgrade a self-managed edition or remove hosting without going through support. Routine IP phone firmware updates and a summer support-hours notice fill out the rest of the feed.
What is HOMER?
A tight patch train is still paying off HOMER's move to a DuckLake storage engine.
HOMER 11 is shipping point releases every few days, and nearly all of them touch the DuckLake-backed storage layer it now runs on: partition hygiene, snapshot expiry, tiered-volume reclaim, corrupt metadata detection. The capture and correlation side is getting real work too, most notably transitive B2B call-leg resolution. This is a project stabilizing a storage migration in public rather than adding surface.
3CX vs HOMER: editorial side-by-side
3CX
6.3MEETINGS
3CX is rebuilding the PBX around MCP and a dedicated AI server, then letting admins self-serve the rest.
◆ Current state
The V20 line is where the product is changing: Update 10 in alpha brings MCP support, a dedicated AI Server for deploying AI infrastructure, and more administrative control, while Update 9 already ships email delivery of AI agent call details, summaries, and transcripts. Around that core, the surfaces are being tidied — the Windows Softphone V5.7 migrates extensions and accounts to the desktop app in one click, and the customer portal now lets subscribers downgrade a self-managed edition or remove hosting without going through support. Routine IP phone firmware updates and a summer support-hours notice fill out the rest of the feed.
◆ Where it's heading
3CX is treating AI as infrastructure a customer runs rather than a service it resells: a separate AI Server to deploy and manage, knowledge sources you prepare yourself as Markdown, and MCP as the interface for connecting outside assistants. That fits the self-hosted, admin-controlled identity the product has always sold on, and it is the opposite of the hosted-only approach most of the unified-communications field is taking. The portal changes point the same way — the subscription mechanics that used to require a conversation are becoming self-service, which is what a vendor does when it wants administrators, not account managers, driving the relationship.
◆ Prediction
Expect Update 10 to move from alpha to general availability with the AI Server as its headline, and expect the MCP surface to grow from connecting assistants into exposing call data and agent actions as tools other systems can call.
HOMER
5.0MEETINGS
A tight patch train is still paying off HOMER's move to a DuckLake storage engine.
◆ Current state
HOMER 11 is shipping point releases every few days, and nearly all of them touch the DuckLake-backed storage layer it now runs on: partition hygiene, snapshot expiry, tiered-volume reclaim, corrupt metadata detection. The capture and correlation side is getting real work too, most notably transitive B2B call-leg resolution. This is a project stabilizing a storage migration in public rather than adding surface.
◆ Where it's heading
The pattern across these releases is a backend that works but hasn't yet been made operationally boring. Storage bugs keep arriving from the field — future-dated partitions from bad RTPengine timestamps, obsolete files never physically deleted, corrupt table ids — which is what a young lakehouse layer under real VoIP capture volume looks like. Correlation and the coordinator API are where the actual feature work is landing, aimed at operators running multi-B2BUA chains and GitOps-managed deployments.
◆ Prediction
Expect the patch cadence to continue on storage correctness and retention until field reports thin out; the aliases CRUD API documented in 11.0.301 suggests config-as-code deployment is the next area to get real attention.
Alternatives to 3CX and HOMER
Other Meetings products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either 3CX or HOMER.
Fourwaves
Daily one-line releases, currently pointed at multi-event payment administration.
PeerJS
PeerJS keeps publishing release candidates that restate the same two fixes.
Slack (Huddles)
This feed is an archive of old Slack desktop releases, not current product news.
Discord
Discord is turning the chat client into a storefront and Nitro into a rewards program.
Google Meet
Meet is bolting consent controls onto the AI features it spent the last year adding.
Recent activity from 3CX and HOMER
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 8h ago3CXLatest 3CX Portal Updates: Downgrade SC & Remove Hosting
- 1d agoHOMERSanitizes bad HEP timestamps that created future-dated partitions
- 1d ago3CX3CX AI Server Upcoming Updates
- 2d ago3CX3CX Summer Shutdown Working Hours
- 2d agoHOMERCall-IDs with SQL keywords no longer blocked by the query guard
- 3d agoHOMERDashboard layout persists across resize; PostCSS bump
- 3d agoHOMERDuckDB 1.5.5 and dependency bumps
- 4d agoHOMERValidates event_type identifiers and detects corrupt DuckLake table ids
- 6d ago3CXV20 Update 10 Alpha: MCP, AI Server & More Admin Control ⚡
- 6d agoHOMERTransitive B2B leg correlation resolves multi-B2BUA call chains
- 8d ago3CXEmail Transcripts from AI Agents in V20 Update 9
- 9d ago3CXWindows Softphone V5.7: One-Click Desktop App Migration
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between 3CX and HOMER?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. 3CX is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is 3CX better than HOMER?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. 3CX is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Meetings products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to 3CX?
Top 3CX alternatives in Meetings are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "3CX alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/3cx for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to HOMER?
Top HOMER alternatives in Meetings are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "HOMER alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/homer-voip for the full list with editorial commentary on each.