On-Premises soft PBX
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The cloud hosted PBX topic spurred some thinking juices.
We landed a 500/500 fibre connection at the shop this summer and have moved our voice over to their coax based setup which is a separate cost and SLA. I'd be more than happy to drop the extra cost of their phone POTS replacement and run our own.
It's been a very long time since I've ventured into or even thought about VOIP.
We have our own redundant systems built-up on Hyper-V, Storage Spaces, and Storage Spaces Direct (HCI) along with the requisite power protection.
As far as guest operating systems we have the given with Microsoft but also Ubuntu has been a go-to for our Grafana/InfluxDB/Telegraf graphing, monitoring, and history setup.
What would all y'all recommend for us?
We're in Alberta, Canada so that may play into the final setup I think?
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Almost always FreePBX is what we recommend. Battle tested, super popular, has loads of features, and lots of experienced users (and two consultancies... @Bundy-Associates and @ntg ) here in the community.
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3CX runs on Windows and is "okay". Having been a partner with them, we dropped them because they were more expensive, less capable, and harder to use than FreePBX. So their value was... zero. If FreePBX didn't exist, then 3CX might have a place in the market. As it was, we couldn't find a reason for anyone to even test it. Too complicated, expensive, etc.
It'll run on Linux now, so quite a bit cheaper than before. But the fundamental issues still remain.
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Wazo is interesting, but not mature like FreePBX. Same with Isabella (the direct descendant of Elastix.)
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The other player worth looking at is FusionPBX and they are here in the community themselves. @markjcrane
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@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
3CX runs on Windows and is "okay". Having been a partner with them, we dropped them because they were more expensive, less capable, and harder to use than FreePBX. So their value was... zero. If FreePBX didn't exist, then 3CX might have a place in the market. As it was, we couldn't find a reason for anyone to even test it. Too complicated, expensive, etc.
It'll run on Linux now, so quite a bit cheaper than before. But the fundamental issues still remain.
Actually, that is incorrect info.
Yes 3CX is more expensive because it isn't free but to say it is less capable & harder to use is wrong info. -
@FATeknollogee said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
3CX runs on Windows and is "okay". Having been a partner with them, we dropped them because they were more expensive, less capable, and harder to use than FreePBX. So their value was... zero. If FreePBX didn't exist, then 3CX might have a place in the market. As it was, we couldn't find a reason for anyone to even test it. Too complicated, expensive, etc.
It'll run on Linux now, so quite a bit cheaper than before. But the fundamental issues still remain.
Actually, that is incorrect info.
Yes 3CX is more expensive because it isn't free but to say it is less capable & harder to use is wrong info.Having run both, it was dramatically less capable and moderately harder to manage. It took more work to do the same tasks, and some key common tasks could not be done. There was a decent capability gap between the two. If you only do really basic or specific things, 3CX might seem to be up to par, and maybe they've closed the gap a bit, but it seems unlikely. But when we were a 3CX partner, it just wasn't up to par with FreePBX and was way too much work to justify using it, even when free.
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@scottalanmiller When was the last time you ran 3CX?
What exactly is "dramatically less capable"?
What key common tasks could not be done? -
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@FATeknollogee said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
3CX runs on Windows and is "okay". Having been a partner with them, we dropped them because they were more expensive, less capable, and harder to use than FreePBX. So their value was... zero. If FreePBX didn't exist, then 3CX might have a place in the market. As it was, we couldn't find a reason for anyone to even test it. Too complicated, expensive, etc.
It'll run on Linux now, so quite a bit cheaper than before. But the fundamental issues still remain.
Actually, that is incorrect info.
Yes 3CX is more expensive because it isn't free but to say it is less capable & harder to use is wrong info.Having run both, it was dramatically less capable and moderately harder to manage. It took more work to do the same tasks, and some key common tasks could not be done. There was a decent capability gap between the two. If you only do really basic or specific things, 3CX might seem to be up to par, and maybe they've closed the gap a bit, but it seems unlikely. But when we were a 3CX partner, it just wasn't up to par with FreePBX and was way too much work to justify using it, even when free.
The free version of 3CX has too many limits to have any use for anything.
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@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@FATeknollogee said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
3CX runs on Windows and is "okay". Having been a partner with them, we dropped them because they were more expensive, less capable, and harder to use than FreePBX. So their value was... zero. If FreePBX didn't exist, then 3CX might have a place in the market. As it was, we couldn't find a reason for anyone to even test it. Too complicated, expensive, etc.
It'll run on Linux now, so quite a bit cheaper than before. But the fundamental issues still remain.
Actually, that is incorrect info.
Yes 3CX is more expensive because it isn't free but to say it is less capable & harder to use is wrong info.Having run both, it was dramatically less capable and moderately harder to manage. It took more work to do the same tasks, and some key common tasks could not be done. There was a decent capability gap between the two. If you only do really basic or specific things, 3CX might seem to be up to par, and maybe they've closed the gap a bit, but it seems unlikely. But when we were a 3CX partner, it just wasn't up to par with FreePBX and was way too much work to justify using it, even when free.
The free version of 3CX has too many limits to have any use for anything.
Wasn't the free version that we used. But you are correct, the free version is totally useless. But the paid version isn't good enough given other options in the market. It just lacks benefits. It's not "bad" per se, just bad in the market landscape.
Kind of like Minix. It's an OK operating system, but there is always something else free that does it better (Linux, BSD, etc.)
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@JaredBusch said in On-Premises soft PBX:
The free version of 3CX has too many limits to have any use for anything.
You're not telling us anything that we don't already know. I already said 3CX is more expensive than FreePBX.
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@FATeknollogee said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller When was the last time you ran 3CX?
Been a couple of years, ran into serious ethical issues with the vendor and would never do business with them since, they require unethical behaviour from their VAR partners (they are contractually required to say the product is good no matter what they found in testing) so under no condition would I trust anyone involved with them.
What exactly is "dramatically less capable"?
Simple things like flexible SIP trunks had to be done in very specific ways and using standard SIP clients wasn't an option (officially, not a configuration thing, they said straight up that it couldn't be done.) You needed special end points for things to work.
What key common tasks could not be done?
We could not roll it out to existing infrastructures without ripping and replacing. Whereas all open products like FreePBX, Elastix, FusionPBX, etc. are interchangeable with the same end points, no rip and replace needed.
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3CX monitors SW for negative reviews and goes after partners if they don't claim it to be the best product (or keep silent.) If you have issues with it, you are forbidden to talk about it publicly. Nothing can tell you what a bad product it is more than that. Think Nutanix.
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@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@FATeknollogee said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller When was the last time you ran 3CX?
Been a couple of years, ran into serious ethical issues with the vendor and would never do business with them since, they require unethical behaviour from their VAR partners (they are contractually required to say the product is good no matter what they found in testing) so under no condition would I trust anyone involved with them.
What exactly is "dramatically less capable"?
Simple things like flexible SIP trunks had to be done in very specific ways and using standard SIP clients wasn't an option (officially, not a configuration thing, they said straight up that it couldn't be done.) You needed special end points for things to work.
What key common tasks could not be done?
We could not roll it out to existing infrastructures without ripping and replacing. Whereas all open products like FreePBX, Elastix, FusionPBX, etc. are interchangeable with the same end points, no rip and replace needed.
Re SIP trunks & existing infrastructure...now you're just making stuff up...that info you stated above is just not correct!
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@FATeknollogee said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@FATeknollogee said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@scottalanmiller When was the last time you ran 3CX?
Been a couple of years, ran into serious ethical issues with the vendor and would never do business with them since, they require unethical behaviour from their VAR partners (they are contractually required to say the product is good no matter what they found in testing) so under no condition would I trust anyone involved with them.
What exactly is "dramatically less capable"?
Simple things like flexible SIP trunks had to be done in very specific ways and using standard SIP clients wasn't an option (officially, not a configuration thing, they said straight up that it couldn't be done.) You needed special end points for things to work.
What key common tasks could not be done?
We could not roll it out to existing infrastructures without ripping and replacing. Whereas all open products like FreePBX, Elastix, FusionPBX, etc. are interchangeable with the same end points, no rip and replace needed.
Re SIP trunks & existing infrastructure...now you're just making stuff up...that info you stated above is just not correct!
I'm not, direct SIP to certain end points was not supported.
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I believe the issue was off LAN, it wouldn't work without a VPN to make it all appear as LAN.
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We had a look at what was available for our own small office about two years ago. We are not resellers of voip so could care less about that. We wanted something that would fulfill our needs, would require a minimum amount of work to setup and maintain and would work well with Yealink phones. We installed and tried a couple of the popular options during a few weeks and for our needs 3CX was the clear winner.
We are running the debian version of 3CX on xenserver. It has worked very well.
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@Pete-S said in On-Premises soft PBX:
We installed and ran a couple of options to see what would work best for us and for our needs 3CX was the clear winner.
We are running the debian version of 3CX on xenserver. It has worked very well.
What did you test against? Was FreePBX one of the options?
There are loads of things worse than 3CX, like Mitel or Cisco that we've found. No question there.
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@Pete-S said in On-Premises soft PBX:
We had a look at what was available for our own small office about two years ago. We are not resellers of voip so could care less about that.
I can't think of any time I don't care about the ethics of my vendors. Not sure how being a reseller would change that. It's not being a reseller that affects us the most.
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@scottalanmiller said in On-Premises soft PBX:
@Pete-S said in On-Premises soft PBX:
We installed and ran a couple of options to see what would work best for us and for our needs 3CX was the clear winner.
We are running the debian version of 3CX on xenserver. It has worked very well.
What did you test against? Was FreePBX one of the options?
There are loads of things worse than 3CX, like Mitel or Cisco that we've found. No question there.
Of course we tried freepbx.
