Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool
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@JaredBusch I rarely comment on anything... anywhere. However, I don't really have the words to express how refreshing it is to see ( read the words) of someone who actually gets what is going on in this space. It helps displace the FUD. So, Thanks!
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@JaredBusch said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
Honestly the market is fairly stable. What just happened is that a couple of older players, that were already failing, just finished collapsing.
This is a good way to look at it. The real market has been stable for quite some time. Some people have been misled by the "death throws" of a couple old vendors that had lost their way. If anything, this move is good. PIAF and Elastix have been hurting this industry a lot with promises of good products from long ago and essentially worthless or not even working ones today. Having them out of the way makes for a much clearer message.
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@cosmicwombat said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
@JaredBusch I rarely comment on anything... anywhere. However, I don't really have the words to express how refreshing it is to see ( read the words) of someone who actually gets what is going on in this space. It helps displace the FUD. So, Thanks!
Welcome to the community!
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Nice writeup @JaredBusch
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Thanks @JaredBusch . in order not to hijack, I started a new thred to ask a question about SipXCom:
https://www.mangolassi.it/topic/11923/anyone-hear-of-or-play-with-sipxcom -
@JaredBusch said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
@xrobau said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
@JaredBusch Yeah, I fixed the bug that was causing a 403. You were asked in there to try to connect to the URL yourself and see what error you got.
Yeah, I will tonight. System is in use and I may want to reboot during testing.
@xrobau It appears to be only a problem when HTTPS validation is requested. definitely a bug in FreePBX at this point IMO. I updated my thread over there.
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@JaredBusch said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
@momurda said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
This might be a bit OT, but would it be possible for someone with the knowledge to give an overview of the current landscape of open source pbx software/systems? This all seems very confusing to me. Who is 3cx, Elastix, PIAF, FreePBX, digium(im sure there are others). This market seems to be in major flux.
Honestly the market is fairly stable. What just happened is that a couple of older players, that were already failing, just finished collapsing.
3CX is a closed source Windows based (until last month) PBX. It costs about $700 to get a license for a decent set of feature and the ability to have 8 concurrent calls. This is honestly not a bad price point for the quality of the PBX.
Asterisk is the 900lb gorilla in opensource PBX world. It is owned by Digium. Asterisk is the PBX software that FreePBX uses and, PBX in a Flash and Elastix used to use.
FreePBX is a GUI to manage Asterisk. Elastix most famously used this plus their own GUI enhancements to make a great Asterisk PBX distro. PBX in a Flash was another distro that prepackaged Asterisk, FreePBX GUI and their own enhancements.
FreePBX then released their own distro of Asterisk and, to me, became the standard for any Asterisk based PBX installations from then on. I say this because everything else packaged the FreePBX GUI in as the main worker of their distro, so why add crap, just get the "clean" distro straight from the source.
Wazo is a relative new comer to the world of Asterisk based distros. It is far from ready for general production use by people that have not learned a lot about Asterisk.
Grandstream is also another option.
IMO, they've done a pretty nice job & it "ties in" to their ecosystem of products -
@JaredBusch said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
@momurda said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
This might be a bit OT, but would it be possible for someone with the knowledge to give an overview of the current landscape of open source pbx software/systems? This all seems very confusing to me. Who is 3cx, Elastix, PIAF, FreePBX, digium(im sure there are others). This market seems to be in major flux.
Honestly the market is fairly stable. What just happened is that a couple of older players, that were already failing, just finished collapsing.
3CX is a closed source Windows based (until last month) PBX. It costs about $700 to get a license for a decent set of feature and the ability to have 8 concurrent calls. This is honestly not a bad price point for the quality of the PBX.
Asterisk is the 900lb gorilla in opensource PBX world. It is owned by Digium. Asterisk is the PBX software that FreePBX uses and, PBX in a Flash and Elastix used to use.
FreePBX is a GUI to manage Asterisk. Elastix most famously used this plus their own GUI enhancements to make a great Asterisk PBX distro. PBX in a Flash was another distro that prepackaged Asterisk, FreePBX GUI and their own enhancements.
FreePBX then released their own distro of Asterisk and, to me, became the standard for any Asterisk based PBX installations from then on. I say this because everything else packaged the FreePBX GUI in as the main worker of their distro, so why add crap, just get the "clean" distro straight from the source.
Wazo is a relative new comer to the world of Asterisk based distros. It is far from ready for general production use by people that have not learned a lot about Asterisk.
Just the other day I found Ombutel, which by its looks appears to be Xorcoms Completepbx software, turned free to use but apparently not opensourced.
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@scottalanmiller Could we get an Ombutel vm setup in the lab to check it out?
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I would recommend giving the new Elastix converter from version 2.5/4 to version 5 a try and make up your own mind about 3CX and the features it offers. You can find the converter in the link below. Instructions are pretty straight forward and i think many people will find it very useful.
https://www.elastix.org/blog/elastix-converter-tool/ -
@YiannisH said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
I would recommend giving the new Elastix converter from version 2.5/4 to version 5 a try and make up your own mind about 3CX and the features it offers. You can find the converter in the link below. Instructions are pretty straight forward and i think many people will find it very useful.
https://www.elastix.org/blog/elastix-converter-tool/I have used 3CX. I do not need to try it again.
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@JaredBusch said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
@YiannisH said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
I would recommend giving the new Elastix converter from version 2.5/4 to version 5 a try and make up your own mind about 3CX and the features it offers. You can find the converter in the link below. Instructions are pretty straight forward and i think many people will find it very useful.
https://www.elastix.org/blog/elastix-converter-tool/I have used 3CX. I do not need to try it again.
We have as well and wont ever try again.
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@YiannisH said in Elastix and PBX in a Flash to FreePBX Distro Conversion Tool:
I would recommend giving the new Elastix converter from version 2.5/4 to version 5 a try and make up your own mind about 3CX and the features it offers. You can find the converter in the link below. Instructions are pretty straight forward and i think many people will find it very useful.
https://www.elastix.org/blog/elastix-converter-tool/I've used 3CX. It wasn't very good, certainly not good enough to be free, it wasn't on par with Elastix or FreePBX. The licensing cost are an additional problem. It's great that it is on Linux now, but it's just not competitive in the current market even if it were free. The limitations were too significant and there was no compelling value, it was harder to use and less capable. And the high cost and closed source put it worlds behind the competition. It's like from another era.
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3CX's behaviour as a company on the Spiceworks forums is additionally reason to not deal with the product.
