Alternatives to FreePBX - VitalPBX?

Software & Web Applications
1

Has anyone used VitalPBX before? I’ve used FreePBX for years, but I’m trying to find some alternatives. Just wondering if anyone has used or tested it out before.

I’m also open to any other free/open source PBX suggestions.

2

Could you detail why? What features are you missing or looking for?

3

@onthegrind

  1. I just had an awful experience a few weeks ago trying to upgrade from FreePBX 13 to 15. I couldn’t find any way to easily upgrade in place, and I finally stumbled upon some documentation on the FreePBX Confluence that said to create a backup of v13 then restore to v15. I tried this but no matter what I did, the backup would not restore. I wasted so much time and ended up needing to leave the system on v13.

  2. I’m not impressed with their GUI. I’m really surprised they haven’t given it a facelift over the years. There are so many free/open-source front-end development frameworks they could use.

  3. Another thing that drives me crazy is how long it takes to apply changes.

  4. It seems like so many features are Commercial Modules that you have to pay for, for example, Parking Pro for multiple parking lot support, and Endpoint Manager.

I looked at the demo of VitalPBX and it seems quite a lot better from first glance:

VitalPBX even includes multiple parking lot support, and an Endpoint Manager, for free.

4

I’m not sure if Vital is better. You could try installing it in a VM/Test server and just messing with the interface and seeing how you like it.

From my understanding, many of these systems are built off asterisk. So they may all suffer some of the same problems. It’s seems certain solutions provide better interfacing.

I’m not really a PBX person other than messing around with it, so my knowledge is limited. Take it with a grain of salt.

5

I’d recommend giving 3cx a shot.

6

I’ve been using straight Asterisk built from source in an enterprise environment (~500 extensions spread out over 50 sites on a municipal government MAN) since 2006. Editing text files is much easier in the end than figuring out how to do things in crappy GUI’s, like FreePBX. Asterisk config files are very straight forward and human readable.

1 Like
7

If you want something not Asterisk based, you can look at openSIPS or kamailio…but I haven’t found anything that beats Asterisk at this point