AWS FreePBX v17 with included Technical Support

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.