Best PBX Software?
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FreePBX seems quite popular, but I am sure there is other options that work as well.
What's your favorite? Why?
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FreePBX is quite good. In the past I have preferred Elastix but they effectively disappeared for a long time and their product fell dramatically behind. Now Elastix 4 is getting close to release, it seems nicer than FreePBX again but they haven't done well at instilling confidence in their users.
3CX is decent, but is very limited compared to the FreePBX/Elastix camp. It is harder to use, crippled unless you pay rather high licensing fees and requires a Windows license on which to run (which means either a server, or VDI, or a desktop OS running on a desktop limited to ten users.) So the cost, even of the "free" version becomes ridiculously high considering the market.
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Are you looking for the software to be free? Or are you just asking in general what is the best?
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@TeleFox We would be happy to pay for a solution
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@anonymous
Well having worked with all the major systems including free ones I would be glad to discuss this in a little more detail with you. The reality is that each have their advantages depending on what your business needs are. Is there any way we might be able to chat in more detail together about this?
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@anonymous said:
@TeleFox We would be happy to pay for a solution
What do you have today?
I attempted to move to a FreePBX solution, but the changes in functionality is what pushed me away from leaving Mitel. Don't get me wrong - I wanted to leave - for the cost savings if nothing else (around $30K), but we use the following features that weren't available or configurable for us:
- allows a person to put a call on hold on any other extension in the system
- pull a call that's on hold from a phone to any other phone
- parking lots are a great way to loose calls
- admin console options were had great functions our current consoles don't have, but missing other fuctions (like being able to set DND status on a phone)
One of the biggest issues I had, still have, wrapping my head around asterisk solutions is that phones don't really seem to be centrally controlled by PBX. What I mean by this is... when you use the DND button on a Yeah link phone, the phone itself goes into a DND mode, but the PBX has no idea that the phone is in DND. When you call the extension, you just get a busy signal back from what I assume is the phone endpoint itself.
Now, if you use the feature codes of FreePBX (*76) this would toggle the DND status off at the PBX level and other phones would give you a display status of the person being on DND.
(yes it is possible to have the DND button on the Yeahlink do a *76 - but that still doesn't mimic what I have today, which is the ability to hit the DND button, then type in a 2 digit number which designates why I'm on DND (meeting, lunch, gone home, vacation, etc) This is completely lost on FreePBX)These are the two main reasons I can recall off the top of my head why we bailed on moving to an Asterisk based PBX.
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@Dashrender said:
One of the biggest issues I had, still have, wrapping my head around asterisk solutions is that phones don't really seem to be centrally controlled by PBX. What I mean by this is... when you use the DND button on a Yeah link phone, the phone itself goes into a DND mode, but the PBX has no idea that the phone is in DND. When you call the extension, you just get a busy signal back from what I assume is the phone endpoint itself.
Now, if you use the feature codes of FreePBX (*76) this would toggle the DND status off at the PBX level and other phones would give you a display status of the person being on DND.
Basically you have two different features. The phone itself has DND and the PBX does. You have more options and need to configure what you want. Mitel, I guess, just limits the options so that you have less to think about. Remember that SIP phones work without a PBX so have to have those features on their own. They can't rely on a PBX to provide them. But when you have the PBX, you can decide where and how to handle it.
It's just more power.
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Looks like you are not the only one that wants AWAY PRESENCE states.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
One of the biggest issues I had, still have, wrapping my head around asterisk solutions is that phones don't really seem to be centrally controlled by PBX. What I mean by this is... when you use the DND button on a Yeah link phone, the phone itself goes into a DND mode, but the PBX has no idea that the phone is in DND. When you call the extension, you just get a busy signal back from what I assume is the phone endpoint itself.
Now, if you use the feature codes of FreePBX (*76) this would toggle the DND status off at the PBX level and other phones would give you a display status of the person being on DND.
Basically you have two different features. The phone itself has DND and the PBX does. You have more options and need to configure what you want. Mitel, I guess, just limits the options so that you have less to think about. Remember that SIP phones work without a PBX so have to have those features on their own. They can't rely on a PBX to provide them. But when you have the PBX, you can decide where and how to handle it.
It's just more power.
yeah - that's what was weird for me for the longest time - but once I understood that, things moved along quickly.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Looks like you are not the only one that wants AWAY PRESENCE states.
Well I would have to assume anyone coming from one of the major name brand non Free PBXes probably does.
TeleFox is telling me that my Parking on Hold is the way that many of those other system also work - so again, a feature once you are used to is something very hard to give up.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Looks like you are not the only one that wants AWAY PRESENCE states.
in reading that post, I'm reminded that FreePBX does have PRESENCE, it was app based on the phone. This was considerably different than Mitel, but was doable.
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All of the things you disliked were legacy key system features that only still persist in PBX systems that have that legacy mindset.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
One of the biggest issues I had, still have, wrapping my head around asterisk solutions is that phones don't really seem to be centrally controlled by PBX. What I mean by this is... when you use the DND button on a Yeah link phone, the phone itself goes into a DND mode, but the PBX has no idea that the phone is in DND. When you call the extension, you just get a busy signal back from what I assume is the phone endpoint itself.
Now, if you use the feature codes of FreePBX (*76) this would toggle the DND status off at the PBX level and other phones would give you a display status of the person being on DND.
Basically you have two different features. The phone itself has DND and the PBX does. You have more options and need to configure what you want. Mitel, I guess, just limits the options so that you have less to think about. Remember that SIP phones work without a PBX so have to have those features on their own. They can't rely on a PBX to provide them. But when you have the PBX, you can decide where and how to handle it.
It's just more power.
The other phones only know about status through a subscription to the PBX. So if you don't properly configure the DND feature code in your phone, it would be no surprise the no other system knows your phone is not available. I mean even the PBX did not know you were unavailable and would have sent the call to the extension only to get bounced back. When the proper coded were put in the phone, then the PBX would never even try to send the call.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
One of the biggest issues I had, still have, wrapping my head around asterisk solutions is that phones don't really seem to be centrally controlled by PBX. What I mean by this is... when you use the DND button on a Yeah link phone, the phone itself goes into a DND mode, but the PBX has no idea that the phone is in DND. When you call the extension, you just get a busy signal back from what I assume is the phone endpoint itself.
Now, if you use the feature codes of FreePBX (*76) this would toggle the DND status off at the PBX level and other phones would give you a display status of the person being on DND.
Basically you have two different features. The phone itself has DND and the PBX does. You have more options and need to configure what you want. Mitel, I guess, just limits the options so that you have less to think about. Remember that SIP phones work without a PBX so have to have those features on their own. They can't rely on a PBX to provide them. But when you have the PBX, you can decide where and how to handle it.
It's just more power.
The other phones only know about status through a subscription to the PBX. So if you don't properly configure the DND feature code in your phone, it would be no surprise the no other system knows your phone is not available. I mean even the PBX did not know you were unavailable and would have sent the call to the extension only to get bounced back. When the proper coded were put in the phone, then the PBX would never even try to send the call.
I understand that, NOW....
But you're saying that other PBXs have this old school mind set - ok fine.. and so do MANY IM clients that are software only.
I'm willing to pay for an autoconfiguration utility that will program my phones to basically become dumb devices like old digital phones, and have all the brains be in the PBX itself - in a corporate environment, do I really need the phone to have more local smarts?
It's one thing to use a stand alone VOIP phone with a direct connected SIP trunk, but I don't know any corporations that operate their phone systems that way.
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@Dashrender said:
It's one thing to use a stand alone VOIP phone with a direct connected SIP trunk, but I don't know any corporations that operate their phone systems that way.
So don't configure that for use. It's not a negative, it's just an extra feature.
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@Dashrender said:
- parking lots are a great way to lose calls
I never understood your lock up on this. Parking lots have been standard for decades. They will not lose a call because once the call has reaching the parking lot timeout, it will ring back to the ext of the person that parked it. If that person does not answer, it will ring back to a default extension. The call never goes away.
With the proper phone, it is simple to see which parking spots have calls. On top of that, I believe that I worked up a method of creating a huge parking lot that you cold use to replicate your behavior with minimal retraining.
Also just in case, you can have a dedicated person or two using something like FOP2 to see all parked calls easily.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
It's one thing to use a stand alone VOIP phone with a direct connected SIP trunk, but I don't know any corporations that operate their phone systems that way.
So don't configure that for use. It's not a negative, it's just an extra feature.
Your phone talks to the PBX over a standard SIP trunk.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
It's one thing to use a stand alone VOIP phone with a direct connected SIP trunk, but I don't know any corporations that operate their phone systems that way.
So don't configure that for use. It's not a negative, it's just an extra feature.
Your phone talks to the PBX over a standard SIP trunk.
Right. I thought that he was talking about the DND on the Phone feature.
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@Dashrender said:
I'm willing to pay for an autoconfiguration utility that will program my phones to basically become dumb devices like old digital phones, and have all the brains be in the PBX itself - in a corporate environment, do I really need the phone to have more local smarts?
It's one thing to use a stand alone VOIP phone with a direct connected SIP trunk, but I don't know any corporations that operate their phone systems that way.
Autoconfiguration is not hard, but it will be manual for the level of configuration that you want. Even 3CX could not do all the things you want without manual configuration.
But once you setup the config files, you only need replicate them for the new extension when you add users so that work is not hard.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
It's one thing to use a stand alone VOIP phone with a direct connected SIP trunk, but I don't know any corporations that operate their phone systems that way.
So don't configure that for use. It's not a negative, it's just an extra feature.
Your phone talks to the PBX over a standard SIP trunk.
Right. I thought that he was talking about the DND on the Phone feature.
I was - I am saying I want the phone to be completely dumb - all functions should be passed along to the PBX - which I was definitely working toward.
I had managed to disable most of the default configurations. You're right it's not a negative, just a feature I don't need.
