Chinese manufacturers are making some very affordable IP-PBX appliances based
on Asterisk and successfully marketing and supporting them worldwide. For
quite some time, several Chinese telecom companies have specialized in VoIP
hardware, such as Asterisk cards, gateways and other peripheral parts, but now
some of these companies have moved to selling complete small business PBX
solutions for users in the USA, including SIP based phones that match their
Asterisk appliance and offer English version GUIs and support documents. Several
of these companies have also established a presence for sales and marketing
efforts.
Yealink, a Chinese IP phone manufacturer, has been well received in the US for some years now and produces IP phones that have an excellent reputation for being well built, feature rich and affordable. Yeastar, one Asterisk appliance manufacturer that offers several small business VoIP PBX appliances has followed Yealink, and although there is a relationship with Yealink and recommends matching the Yealink phones for their Yeastar appliance, is its own distinct company. Yeastar offers an Asterisk VoIP PBX that is capturing an increasing portion of the world market and now the N. America small business phone system market. The S-Series VoIP PBX appliance is getting excellent reviews and is one of our top choices for a small business phone system.
Yeastar S20 VoIP IP-PBX Review
For affordable appliances that have lots of features check out these IP-PBXs.
The Zycoo CooVox-U20 IP Phone System is an affordable small business Asterisk based appliance (at around $300.00) that's scalable, secure and feature rich and runs Zycoo Coovox U20 Datasheet
with a DualCore A7(1GHz) that allows up to 15 concurrent calls,
many more than a typical small business would usually need. It includes an
Automated Attendant and Voicemail (and Voicemail to Email), Remote
Extensions, plus features like a Conference Bridge, Call Recording, Call
Detail Records (CDR), Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), and Web Dial.
Zycoo also manufacturers their own line of phones (two models) the
CooFone-D30P, an entry level and lower cost IP phone and the CooFone-D60,
still an extremely cost effective, but larger and capable if needed to
attach a side panel. These phones are matched with their Asterisk
appliance and offer easier installation and configuration, something that is
important, especially for customers looking for a good small business phone
system solution that the IT person can install and administer.
Atcom are manufacturers of IP phones, telephony cards, and Asterisk IP PBXs for the SMB market. They list themselves as the first company in mainland China who introduced IP phones to the market and have been in business, starting in Shenzhen, since 1998. Among their IP-PBX products they have an IP02 with 2 ports FXO/FXS and a IP08 with 8 ports FXO/FXS. They currently manufacture 5 different models of IP phones, from entry level up to a 6 line executive level dual display phone. Their phones include dual core processors for robust capabilities and are all Asterisk compatible. Expectations are of growth in the North America market and we look forward to another maker of lower cost quality systems. Support literature in English is paramount before their products
OpenVox
Communication Co Ltd, located in Shenzhen, China has been manufacturing a
large array of VoIP gateways, telephone cards and equipment and open source
Asterisk telephony cards since 2002. They also make an IP phone and their
Asterisk based appliances, the UC series. recently they opened a west coast
sales office in California to service the North American market.
The UC300 and UC500 appliances come with several different hardware configurations with the number of FXS and FXO ports.