FreePBX Reviews

My main use case for FreePBX is that I've had instances where somebody had a Cisco call center and the licensing fees were too high, and I migrated their call flows from Cisco to FreePBX. Mostly it's smaller systems, but I've been in one place in El Segundo, where the in-house phone system was FreePBX and it had over 100 stations. It's quite a good system, as it's a Windows wrapper around an Asterisk-based system.

A quick specific example of how I used FreePBX in one of those migrations is the one client I had with the Cisco call center; they had their call flows laid out in Visio and I was able to replicate them on a FreePBX system. They did sales of musical instruments for schools from upstate New York. But they were so enamored with the solution that they had two call centers, so they bought two FreePBX systems, and there's a hot standby that you can do where if one goes down for any reason, everything switches over to the standby system.

I developed a demo for a university on the West Coast as my main use case, and we were going to do 900 phones, something along that line. They decided to go with something else, but I was able to stand up a demo on a DigitalOcean droplet, a system in the cloud, and restore one of my old demo systems and modify it. I was able to stand it up within a week and be able to show them the call functions and the call flows and give them softphones and really flesh out the demo. I've had demo systems on DigitalOcean for many years and it's been quite beneficial.

The best features FreePBX offers are that the software is free, but usually for someone to install it, there's a cost.

FreePBX positively impacts my organization because I'm a one-man organization. I get some work doing FreePBX installs and migrations and maintenance. For my clients, they call me up and ask for an address move change or some new call flow and I can have it done in very short order.

The speed at which I can make changes with FreePBX depends on the change, but I know the system well enough that I can make normal call flow and announcement changes and IVR changes in very short order, sometimes in less than an hour, with testing. Depending on what they want, it can take some time. When I've done large systems, some of the migrations took three or four weeks, and some have taken a couple of months depending on what they're asking for.

FreePBX can be improved as they come out with a new version every year or so. Their current version is FreePBX 17. The user community and the FAQ are great; you can search for just about anything you want to do on FreePBX and they're getting new AI engines and new text to speech engines from third party vendors all the time. So it's a very rich community.

Sometimes the security is a bit odd with FreePBX, but security is a bit odd overall, so I don't know if that's a valid concern. I appreciate it; it's a good environment. Sangoma is the owner of the system. If I ever get stuck on something, and it doesn't happen very often, I can call and get help from Sangoma, and sometimes they want me to pay for it. It's fine if that's what it takes, but there's great support.

I have been using FreePBX for 10 to 15 years, over 20 installations, and maintenance and migrations.

FreePBX is stable in my experience; I've run into clients who run the server for years without anybody touching them. In fact, their call recordings sometimes would choke the hard drive out of free space.

The scalability of FreePBX is all about memory and CPU. FreePBX has an appliance, and I use that as a baseline for scalability. The big one is 400 users and 350 simultaneous calls. That uses an Intel i7 and 8 gigabytes of RAM. You can do that pretty easily in a cloud environment. For my demo system, I had 4 gigabytes of RAM and a two-core processor and 80 gigs of hard drive, and it worked great, flawlessly.

The customer support for FreePBX is very good. I can search for just about anything. I can call VoIP-Supply, who's the retail supplier of Asterisk and FreePBX and some other systems as well from Grandstream. But if I really get in a pickle over something, I can purchase support hours and get an answer.

I previously used different solutions including Cisco, Avaya, and NICE CXone, and I have some experience with AWS. This is such a rich environment where the base software is free, and that's quite attractive to people.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for FreePBX indicates that most of the general features are available for free. But if you want to do a hot backup or an AB style backup system, there's a fee for that, and some of the call center reporting options can be very expensive, but nothing compared to what Avaya or Cisco would ask for that sort of thing.

I have seen a return on investment with FreePBX; for example, the musical instruments group saved over $30,000 a year by moving from Cisco to FreePBX for their licensing.

Before choosing FreePBX, I evaluated other options, including Avaya, Cisco, and NICE CXone. They're very expensive in comparison, and that tends to be the differentiator.

The user interface of FreePBX is web-based. You just hit the URL as an admin and log in with your username and password. It's very flexible. The logging is tremendous. In Linux, you can get out to the command line and do certain diagnostics for things that are not working or how to get around the problem. It's such a rich environment that there are add-on products for just about anything you would want to do. I've worked on very large Avaya and Cisco and NICE CXone systems and some of those things are much more difficult and exponentially more expensive.

I advise others looking into using FreePBX that if you're not familiar with it, I would recommend having someone to walk you through the process, and I can give whatever level of support that you would want. I'm not the only one; there are some very good groups out there who would do the install or even host the server in the cloud for you.

There are softphones, some of which are free, some of which charge. With softphones, if somebody's PC is very busy, it can't give it enough CPU cycles to sometimes answer the phone. There have been instances where the president's secretary had a large Excel spreadsheet and she was doing something that required a lot of CPU cycles and she was backing up the receptionist. So softphones can have their own set of oddities. Hard phones are beautiful; I've got some Polycoms that are very durable and very reliable. I rate my overall experience with FreePBX as a 9 out of 10.

I have implemented FreePBX in IVR features many times because I am a hardcore developer who first prefers customization. FreePBX provides many services, but sometimes we do not need all of them, so customization is necessary. I have banking customers, hotel customers, and hospital customers, and their IVR requirements are all different.

FreePBX has a lot of GUI that sometimes we do not need. The first problem is reloading. When you do customization, you need to reload every time. This reload process should be fine-tuned because in production servers, we do not need to reload everything. These are suggestions for FreePBX improvement.

There are some limitation issues with concurrent calls. When we have concurrent calls, sometimes the entire PBX fails. We use the channel dump command to check what is wrong with FreePBX.

FreePBX is a solution that gives you the entire communication happening between party A and party B, where party A is your consumer and party B is your producer. The entire communication, discussion, and negotiation happen in one platform, which is what we call PBX. FreePBX is not only about your calling system; it is about solving customer problems. When the customer is having a problem and the producer is not able to solve it, we have that solution through a contact center solution that will provide answers to their higher management. This entire system will ease life.

Let me give a simple example. Suppose you have a company selling printers or electronic devices. I bought electronic devices from you and got a problem with my device. If you build the device, you know what type of problem customers face. At that time, you can place an agentic or AI assistant. When I call the number, they will verify my product ID. Once the product ID is verified, they will check the warranty period and immediately solve the problem with their app. This is fantastic because it provides proactive support from the customer 24 into 7 across the world.

Suppose I am running more than five or ten hotels and hospitals. If I have that type of PBX, my job will be easy because I can monitor the entire team and my agents. I can handle customer queries in a more robust and communicated way, providing proactive support. Customers will get feedback on time.

FreePBX has some monitoring and real-time monitoring features. They also have some SIP packet capturing. There is a third-party tool called Homer that is a great tool because it can capture call traces and SIP session logs and SDP logs. I can see what is going on with a particular call flow. Usually, for each call, you have the activity of that call, what happened with the call, and why the call is dropping. Are the correct codecs being received? Is there a NAT issue? Is there a firewall issue? Is there any packet loss during the call? These are the things we really need in FreePBX, but they are not currently included.

I have been using FreePBX for the last decade, more than 10 years.

I do utilize FreePBX's call recording feature because without call recording, you cannot take proof from the customer or consumer side. Proof is really required. Sometimes customers are not favorable, but sometimes your agent is not working seriously and is not giving the right solution, so you need voice recording as proof.

FreePBX has some pros and cons like every product. For pros, FreePBX is very scalable, very flexible, and open source. It is also easy to be available for open source FreePBX, not for paid. For open source, it is very compatible with CentOS, Linux, and all kinds of open source systems. There is HA availability, high availability, and fault tolerance.

For cons, suppose you have a small company where FreePBX size is comparative to larger systems. Sometimes some customers want minimalistic requirements, and FreePBX is okay for that, but they have plenty of options. We do customization where they need only a very simple inbound and outbound and IVR flow. We need to work on that type of simplex form.

Also, in FreePBX, there is no API exposed as far as I understand. There is no third-party API, plugins, or webhooks. These webhooks would integrate with third parties, but that part is missing.

If you go with paid support, there will be a dedicated customer support team. For free support, they have a forum. You have to post your query on the forum, Asterisk community, or FreePBX community forum. There you can raise your concern, and the team will revert within four hours or within four to 24 hours response time. Tech support for FreePBX, I would rate it six to seven out of ten.

Apart from FreePBX, I have worked on Asterisk, core Asterisk, VoIP, SIP, Amazon Connect, AWS, and all kinds of AWS services, DevOps, Terraform, Jenkins, and Docker. I am not only dedicated to the telephonic system. I explore things in different ways. The competition is very tough in the market. Amazon launched their services called Amazon Connect, which is a complete CCaaS platform. Contact Center as a Service provides customers with an entire GUI and requests them to use their services without worrying about the backend.

It is very straightforward and not complex. However, it depends on which version you are working with. The latest versions have some time-taking parts, but you have to know about the entire setup.

From my side, we have to take extra precautions while migrating. From a global side, we usually worked intra, and once we take the services and install the software, it becomes our responsibility to take care of it. In that case, we should take care of migrating with no downtime. We already take care with extra logics.

I have mostly worked on the Asterisk side, and core Asterisk and FreePBX are both the same. What I have observed in the last couple of years is that I am learning FreeSWITCH as well. Asterisk is a console layer where you have to build everything. FreeSWITCH is the same. The FreePBX UI version name is FreeSWITCH UI, and the FreeSWITCH UI name is FusionPBX. FreeSWITCH in terms of performance is better when you have a huge call tech center solution and when you have third-party scripting using Lua or GoLang or Python. You can go with FreeSWITCH.

SIP is really needed because you do not need to add any external DGM card. You have an ethernet port, and you plug the ethernet port into your system if you are providing services physically to the data center. If everything is on cloud, then the cloud will take care of your SIP. If this PBX is not there, manual work using the phone with one-to-one communication, maintaining data, and tracking records would not be possible. FreePBX also has some monitoring and real-time monitoring features. They also have some SIP packet capturing with a third-party tool called Homer. Homer is a great tool because it can capture call traces and SIP session logs and SDP logs to see what is going on with a particular call flow. I give this review a rating of 7 out of 10.

My main use case for FreePBX is for the PBX functionality. A quick specific example of how I use FreePBX for PBX functionality is that we have a toll-free number. When a call comes into that, we route the call to the time condition and then from the time condition to the IVR for sales support. Then, each sale and support will have the ring group or a find me/follow me. So, it will have that call connected with the concerned person. That is pretty much the core of what I do with FreePBX.

Since it is a free solution, all the features FreePBX offers are valuable. I would like to bring up the support of FXO and FXS hardware via DAHDI. The FXO and FXS hardware support has helped my organization because these are the gateways, SIP gateways for the analog phones. We had that gateway implemented for us as well as for one of our clients for the conversion of the analog ports.

The features are easy to use, and the FXO and FXS support is excellent. We can also have good community support for that. FreePBX has positively impacted my organization as the call routing can be handled very quickly via the interface. There is no need to have a CLI job or execute commands via SSH into the server. The interface made it very easy to configure everything.

Regarding the numbers, any route can be changed within a couple of minutes or a maximum of 10 minutes, whatever logic we want to have for the call routing when it is not a complex configuration.

Since it is an open-source product, FreePBX can be improved. There are a few commercial models available in the market, which are paid solutions. The presence, infrastructure, and UX/UI can be more friendly than what currently exists.

Security would be the main feature that I wish was better because the FreePBX box can get hacked quickly. Security needs to be implemented at a higher level. I have not seen any other improvements needed for FreePBX besides what I mentioned earlier about security and UI.

I have been using FreePBX for almost two-plus years.

FreePBX is stable.

It is not too scalable, to be honest. If you are running for one instance or one customer, then it is good. It does have a scalability issue with multi-tenancy.

The customer support for FreePBX was overall good. The community-based support was good, and there is some paid support as well from Sangoma. From the community support, I would rate it an eight out of 10.

Before FreePBX, we tried with 3CX, but it was a paid solution. All the features we needed were fulfilled with FreePBX, so we chose to use that.

My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

I have definitely seen a return on investment. Money was saved, as opposed to taking a subscription-based model for each of the extensions. FreePBX provides an unlimited solution. Time-saving is definitely there since anyone with technical knowledge can configure it.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we only need to pay for the server through DigitalOcean billing. Since it is open source, you can have the ISO and install it on your own.

Before choosing FreePBX, we did not evaluate other options. We were looking for an Asterisk solution, so we went with FreePBX.

My advice to others looking into using FreePBX would be that it is overall good. If you are looking for a single-tenant solution that can fit in-house, cloud, and in-house servers, it will be an overall good experience. If you are going with analog cards or analog devices, then it is a good solution. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for FreePBX is the web management panel for all VoIP Asterisk servers.

A quick specific example of how I use the management panel for my VoIP Asterisk servers is to configure everything related to Asterisk voice over IP services, so I build automated menus, extensions, create connections between providers, and whatever is needed for Asterisk configuration.

The best features FreePBX offers include, first of all, a really easy-to-use UI for Asterisk, which is pretty tricky in configuration, and this UI makes life much easier, especially in building voice over IP menus, creating voicemails, and having dashboards to see the current operation and status of my system.

The ease of use in FreePBX's UI impacts my daily workflow by giving great visibility over the system, speeding up the configuration, and adding new features and information inside the system, so even setting up a new system is much easier with FreePBX.

FreePBX positively impacts my organization because it would not be able to work properly without it, as a lot of server configurations are built on it and we fully rely on this system.

FreePBX helps my team operate efficiently; it allows me to grant access to non-experienced, non-technical colleagues to do their jobs, such as adding new extensions, adding new trunks, or managing some of the voice features, which helps a lot to distribute the workloads, speeds up the process, and visualizes the system and its state for the management team, including non-technical persons.

It is hard to say how FreePBX can be improved, as I have not worked with it the last few years, but in general, there is always room for improvements for any system, though I do not have any specific suggestions.

I have been using FreePBX for about five years.

I would rate FreePBX an eight out of ten.

I give FreePBX an eight out of ten because it makes my life as an engineer in the VoIP field much easier, faster, and reliable, so I consider it a really good product for anyone who works with voice over IP, regardless of the size of the organization.

I am not aware of FreePBX's AI capabilities because when I worked with it, there was no AI, but in general, if you keep your system up to date with all the modules installed and all system updates, it is pretty secure, as any vulnerabilities were related mostly to the coding language and framework itself, so just keep your system up to date.

I never used the AI features of FreePBX, so I cannot comment on the accuracy and reliability of its output.

My advice for others looking into using FreePBX is to learn about all the great features embedded in the system; it makes your life much easier. My overall rating for FreePBX is eight out of ten.

I use FreePBX for a specific use case in our call center for internal communication and customer support. FreePBX fits into our e-wallet system by handling customer queries. When customers call, we do not directly integrate with the e-wallet system, but we use FreePBX for our customer care representatives who receive the phone calls. I use FreePBX as a BPO service as well as for customer needs.

The best features FreePBX offers stand out to me as most valuable. I find that customizing IVRs in FreePBX is straightforward and does not require a lot of technical know-how, as a layman can also use it. However, most of the time, a person should have VoIP knowledge and DTMF knowledge, especially when we are integrating with FXO and FXS equipment, and we should have that knowledge as well as SIP integration in case of SIP.

FreePBX has positively impacted my organization with IVR service and queue management, especially when we have a lot of calls in the queue and customers are not able to get answers from the customer care representatives. In those cases, we may route the calls to specific representatives or go for voicemails. I found valuable functions including queue management, IVR, and many other functions such as call routing to specific designated numbers.

For hospitals as well as internet ISP companies that need IVR services, we can customize FreePBX, which is very useful in those cases. FreePBX is very suitable for small organizations and SMEs, but for bigger organizations, I think we have to pay for that. I have already used their paid version at the subscription level, and I think it is average. However, when the call volume is large, sometimes FreePBX goes on halt, and because of that reason, I give it seven out of ten.

I have been using FreePBX for seven or eight years.

My advice for others looking into using FreePBX is that it is reasonable and most of the features are free, so I recommend it. It is stable, easy to set up, and good for queue management, IVR integration, and SIP integration which is currently available in Nepal for SME organizations. FreePBX is one of my first VoIP systems in my career, so I highly recommend most companies to use it. I gave this review a rating of seven out of ten.

My main use case for FreePBX is to design IVR, manage queues, extensions, and Find Me/Follow Me features. I also configure inbound routes and especially design custom destinations and recordings. I set up backup schedules as well.

When I have a new application, I create a new IVR, such as pressing four to route the call to my application. The IVR asks the caller questions and routes them to the queue. I also created extensions to answer the calls.

FreePBX offers the best features for a small call center for a small company with 20 or 30 agents.

FreePBX has positively impacted my organization because it allows quick setup for a small call center and is easy to use. I can create announcements, design an IVR, and use SIP phones for agents. The cost is reasonable.

I think FreePBX can be improved by offering users the ability to design a call flow more easily through a drag and drop interface. Currently, the user has to create a queue, an extension, an IVR, and an announcement in different menus. Combining them on one page would be beneficial.

I am familiar with using FreePBX and I think the current state is acceptable regarding the needed improvements.

I have used FreePBX for about eight years.

FreePBX is stable in most cases.

FreePBX's scalability is good.

FreePBX customer support is great. I had some questions and received support.

I previously used Asterisk, the core Asterisk, as a different solution. I can customize Asterisk for my purpose because it is an open-source solution.

I rate the initial setup as 8 out of 10 because it is a lightweight framework that is easy to set up and use. That is the main reason I chose this rating.

I learned about the features through online research on Google and the internet.

I use a free version of FreePBX, but my customer uses a commercial version. I do not know exactly how much they have to pay for the license.

Before choosing FreePBX, I evaluated it because my customer uses FreePBX and I need to support them. FreePBX has built-in features and security.

Since I started using FreePBX, I think it could serve as a customer service tool. The company can build a quick team and use FreePBX for customer service to gather customer feedback and improve their products.

I will invite some of my friends to use FreePBX if they want to build a small call center with quick setup and do not need complicated features. I rate this product 8 out of 10 overall.

I use FreePBX in many different ways depending on the need. Sometimes I use it as a contact center solution with a third-party plugin such as FOP. I do integrations with the operator panel so that operators can assign calls and manage queues. I also use FreePBX as a Session Border Controller (SBC) because some customers still run FXO or PRI lines. To convert those to SIP, I prefer to use FreePBX since I compile my own version and can compile additional drivers such as DAHDI to make PRI or FXO lines work.

When I use FreePBX as an SBC or for integrating with operator panels, I recently had a customer with a Grandstream device connected to what is called a SIP MLS, which is a private SIP line obtained from a local provider. The Grandstream device was unable to support that PRI interface, so I compiled Asterisk and the DAHDI drivers, configured the PRI interface, and delivered it to the customer.

FreePBX is an IP PBX that I sometimes use as an SBC to move traffic from one box to another, making one FreePBX instance act as an SBC for PRI to SIP conversions or FXO to SIP conversions. I have also used FreePBX for outbound dialers and outbound dialing, though that was a custom project involving custom dial plans and call files developed specifically for a customer.

I believe the best thing FreePBX offers is the ease of use to get it running and the features it provides. From my perspective, the greatest feature is the community support forum. Since FreePBX is a free product, the responsibility to fix issues falls on the user, making the community forum invaluable. Additionally, FreePBX is built on Asterisk, so anyone who understands Asterisk can accomplish anything with FreePBX.

Customization is the primary feature I appreciate about FreePBX. As long as you understand how to work with dial plans and Asterisk, and you have some programming knowledge and understand how APIs work, you can make many things happen. You could even build your own cloud PBX with FreePBX by integrating WebRTC and building your own SIP client with your custom design to create your own version.

FreePBX has made a positive impact on my organization, and we have completed many projects with it. It is a great application and one of the best open-source projects available. As an engineer, I appreciate working with FreePBX because I love Asterisk. It improves ease of configuration since we are all familiar with it, and for many situations, FreePBX is simply the better solution.

I believe FreePBX could be improved regarding the user interface. Sometimes the user interface has bugs, and when you apply configuration changes, they do not always apply properly. I have needed to access the command line interface and run commands to complete tasks. A more modern, responsive, and faster user interface would be beneficial.

I have been familiar with FreePBX for at least ten years.

I love FreePBX and Asterisk. The pricing for FreePBX is reasonable, and the licensing is fair. I use the free tier because I support the product, so I do not use the paid version of FreePBX. The free version is excellent. Regarding cloud providers, I use Linode, which sometimes has occasional issues, but they always resolve them and are easy to use. I would like to use other cloud providers, but I am more familiar with Linode. I rate this review a ten out of ten.

My main use case for FreePBX is troubleshooting. I use it to set up inbound and outbound routes, configure trunks, manage SIP configuration, and listen to CDR recordings.

A specific example of a troubleshooting task I have handled using FreePBX is when a call is not dialing. I go to the Asterisk CLI, try to make a call, and then see what is wrong there. If the issue is the dial pattern inside FreePBX, then I troubleshoot from the dial pattern of the outbound routes.

In addition to my main use case with FreePBX for troubleshooting, we also have our own line, and we use it to set up our trunk. Whenever they make calls, we ensure the call is routed to our trunk to get the revenue from there, and we have to properly set it up to make sure that outgoing and incoming calls are all working.

The best features FreePBX offers in my opinion are the ability to listen to recordings because usually when I make calls, sometimes I want to listen back to the recording. For a call that is being cut off or a call not finding the one we are calling, we can check the dial status, whether it is auto busy or the number is invalid. The CDR report is probably one of the best features and one of the things that I use the most to investigate a problem.

It is easy for me to access and use these features day-to-day because we handle a lot of clients and have full access to FreePBX. Usually, I just log in and check from there, and there is no real trouble in using the features.

I also appreciate that FreePBX is UI-based, making it easier to change things. For example, changing the outbound number in the Asterisk CLI is more challenging because you have to know where to go and what code to use, but in FreePBX, you can just go and click to change from there. It is easier to use compared to using the Asterisk CLI by itself.

FreePBX has positively impacted my organization, and if I were to compare it to Elastix, I find it a lot easier to manage since it does not have a lot of bugs and is very user-friendly. When I first used FreePBX, it was a lot easier to learn compared to when I first used Elastix, which was about nine or ten years ago.

Its user-friendliness has helped my team because for the extension settings, if we have 1,000 extensions and need to adjust one setting, it takes time if we have to click one by one, maybe taking two minutes per extension. However, if we use the bulk handler, the 1,000 extensions can be done in around five to ten minutes, saving a lot of time.

FreePBX could be improved by adding the feature to identify how many people are in a call right now on the dashboard, which would be quite helpful. Sometimes when I receive reports that a user is not able to make a call out or they are having a call drop issue, viewing the dashboard provides no data. If we have the live call feature, similar to the one in ViciDial, we can right away acknowledge that this is a real issue, not just that the person is dialing wrongly or something of that nature.

That is one of the downsides I can see with FreePBX, but other than that, the other features are working great, including the CDR report, queue, ring group, announcement, and IVR. Everything else is satisfactory, and only the dashboard part that I mentioned needs improvement.

I have been using FreePBX for about two years.

My advice for others looking into using FreePBX is to not be afraid to use trial and error because when I first started using it to troubleshoot, I was afraid to change things. In a controlled environment with FreePBX, try to change some config and see the effect on the call. For example, if you change the outbound route in the Asterisk CLI, what will be displayed? If you change the dial pattern, what will be displayed? Try to route the inbound to an IVR or a ring group and see what will change. Do not be afraid to trial and error the features that FreePBX has because all of the features are very useful in my opinion. Experiment with it to fully understand its capabilities.

Some of the use cases with FreePBX involve deployment scenarios where they had commercial telephony and IP telephony. We have used it for businesses, for office environments with phones, local phones on each desk, and smartphones connected to the system. We connect this with the PRI SIM and for the cell phone providers, and we can provide IP features to our customers.

The call routing features with FreePBX have enhanced our customer service. For instance, we have customers that have several sites all connected to a single deployment, a central deployment. We can have a PBX in Maracaibo, and we can have people with the call center working in Caracas. We can have people working there with the services from Maracaibo. That gives flexibility of work that does not compare with others.

In my opinion, some of the most valuable features with this product are that it is very extensible. You can configure a lot of it because it is open source, so you can work around the configurations you desire. It is a very flexible application, so you can personalize configuration for customers.

Another valuable aspect is the modules that you can add. Its modularity helps as you can purchase modules through the Sangoma portal. You can purchase modules for endpoint manager, call center, and call center queue wallboard. With this module, you can supervise and get analytics on all of your call center queues that you are running currently. It is a very extensible solution.

They are a very mature product with continuous evolution and improvement. They focus on continual development and improvement. Throughout these 15 years of experience, it has never let us down.

One area where they can continue to focus their improvements is support for third-party phones on the endpoint manager module. I think they need to include more brands and newer models on third-party brands. That is the one thing I would really ask them to improve.

I still have experience with HPE, similar to the experience we had last year so far.

In terms of stability, FreePBX is rock solid. It is really stable. It has been our first recommendation. We have not had any trouble. Customers only call us to make changes to extension numbers and system upgrades.

I would rate the scalability of FreePBX a ten. You can actually run it in a cluster environment.

They have a support package you can buy by hours of support. If you run into anything that needs to be taken to their support specialist, you can open a ticket. You have a customer portal where you can open a ticket with the case. They will call you right away depending on the impact the issue has on the system.

I would score their support ten out of ten. They have the best support. If you buy an FXS gateway from Sangoma and you receive it with some issues, if you get a better rival or anything, you get immediately an RMA from them, and they will ship you a new one.

With WatchGuard, we have had the same experience with Palo Alto and endpoint protection or EDR. That is basically what we have been doing, staying with our customers. We have a current project, but we have not started, and we are going to be doing something with Sangoma.

The initial setup is really straightforward for us because we have many years of experience. If you were to configure that for the first time, it has a very friendly graphical user interface. You can have training on how to configure things.

For FreePBX, it takes us around a couple of weeks to deploy it. We do a lot of planning before, so we have everything planned on paper before we start configuring.

In the deployment process for FreePBX, we usually have two to four people involved. We have one engineer configuring everything, then we can have two more technicians working locally. For instance, if you have analog extensions, you are going to need technicians to check, test those extensions and run the cabling. If these cables are already done on the premises and you need to run cables or wires, you need to have technicians. If you already have a network working and you are just going to have the PBX and the phones, it requires one engineer, one technician, and the cabling is already done.

With this type of solution, our target for ROI is at least on implementation costs. The hardware we provide connects to this system. Most of our customers use analog extensions. Once we provide our system with the FreePBX installation, we need to provide gateways, phones, and if they do not have cabling, we need to run cabling. For us, it is the implementation and the service. Since the system is very stable, our customers will not call us for issues or problems. They will call us to improve their solutions and ask what we can do next.

The standard licensing fee for FreePBX is really good. Remember FreePBX can be downloaded for free. If you want to add special features, you buy the modules, and the module price points are excellent.

On the pricing scale, where ten is the highest price, I would rate them a four. They have very low prices compared to others.

We do not use HPE's Alletra Storage or GreenLake. Regarding HPE's SimpliVity, we have not had experience managing or configuring it yet. We are currently quoting something with SimpliVity and waiting for a customer to decide. If they decide, we will go on training and start getting experience configuring it.

FreePBX supports AI initiatives through their module called Sangoma Scribe AI. It transcribes voicemails and call recordings with ASR, voice station, sentiment analysis, and multilingual support.

I would rate FreePBX ten out of ten. It is the most user-friendly, flexible and resilient system for voice-over IP we have installed so far.