Does anyone have any good recommendations for a self-hosted or on-prem PBX that isn’t from Sangoma or 3CX? I’m not liking a lot of things I’ve heard about FreePBX and having just installed the latest version, I like it even less… Does anyone know of a comparable system that’s either free or has a perpetual license? I’m somewhat tempted to try the Grandstream PBX hardware but having never done VOIP before, it’s difficult to know what the options are and Google spams you with “top 10” websites.
I am in the middle of a Grandstream install. I am coming over from NEC, and am pretty impressed with the feature set and ease of setting it up. Willie Howe has been an incredible help guiding me through this new system, but I am looking forward to getting it live. The price was great!
I’m just starting to check out FusionPBX (which is based on freeswitch). So far it seems pretty good. I’ve run FreePBX for years and was looking for a multi-tenant option. Early days still, but I’m impressed with some of the things that are built in that freepbx would have required a paid module for (like the endpoint management templates).
This may all be ill-informed, But they didn’t respond well to that security flaw in their system a while back and looks like they also blocked third-party add-ons from being signed. Then when I actually tried it, the UI was awful, and they keep trying to sell you their telephones or a plugin with a popup that takes forever to go away only for the page to eventually refresh with another popup. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was less intrusive and the plugins that you don’t have access to don’t show in the menu as if it was available. Plus, although not a dealbreaker, why not give me a perpetual license instead of a silly 25-year one? All put together, it leaves a bad taste!
I went with the Grandstream PBX in the end. Very happy with it. Some thoughts/notes below.
The user interface is so much nicer, and there are many unexpected features such as a Web-based sip client and admin call control dashboard. There is also a call admin desktop application and SIP client
It looks feature-packed to me, although (I think) FreePBX has more things to click on, but I’m not sure if that means more clutter or more features, maybe both
Many things in FreePBX are behind a paywall with no perpetual licence options. Some of the licenses are for 25 years, but the UCM hardware immediately becomes a much cheaper option after you purchase a few FreePBX licenses
I’m not sure what Grandstream is like with security, but I liked that they don’t appear to be China-based (surprisingly for the price) and they have fairly detailed release notes for firmware updates which I appreciate. The PDF documentation is pretty good too and very comprehensive.
The UCM hardware has built-in FXO and FXS ports which meant that I was able to use our existing BT landline for outgoing calls and use our existing POTS phone wiring in some rooms. It seems to not detect our landline hangup tones, but I haven’t been able to figure out why
The UCM hardware supports HA which is something I will look to implement in the future
The built-in intercom feature worked out of the box with Cisco phones on MPP firmware but not our Polycom ones. Polycom seems to have a built-in property intercom feature
There is built-in support for video which means it works out of the box with our Paxton Entery Access control system
There is an app, but on iOS at least, there is quite a delay before it rings. I haven’t tried to troubleshoot it yet
There is a Web API and access to the underlying Asterisk AMI
Built-in OpenVPN support
Some good troubleshooting tools including signalling and packet capture
Zero-config only works for Grandstream phones which we don’t use
LDAP and external stroange support
No cloud or account creation requirements
It was very difficult for me to find any comparisons and I’m very new to VOIP, so I hope that’s helpful! There are loads of other built-in features, but these are what I looked at. I did a lot of research into Grandstream, FreePBX and Cisco, but was only able to try the first two. 3CX was out for me because of the subscription and UniFi didn’t look very mature. The biggest surprise to me is the price and the features + hardware you get for the money. I went with the UCM6301 and it really is incredible value. I was able to pick one up on eBay for £100, but even the retail price is only £270ish. That’s the price of two or three FreePBX add-ons!