Top 5 Reasons for an in-house Asterisk based PBX

Choosing whether to buy an on-premise phone system or sign up for cloud based business phone service is often a hard choice. Much depends on your business needs and the size of your organization and how many extensions you will require. If you have 12 or less employees or multiple small offices, then hosted business VoIP from a provider might be the best choice, however, if your company is larger or has existing traditional phone lines, a PRI (T1), then other variables need to be considered.

Open source Asterisk PBX software was what helped hosted cloud based phone companies become popular and affordable. The same open source Asterisk has now made new on-premise appliances affordable and popular.

There are Advantages to having your own Phone System

One important item that precedes all others is your current carrier and if you have a contract. Do you want to switch or add other cost saving options? An Asterisk based PBX system can connect to any type of a telephone provider's service whether it's traditional copper phone lines, a PRI circuit or SIP/VoIP.

An On premise Asterisk Based phone system:

• You have control over your network- An Asterisk based premise phone system resides on your network. This eliminates any long distance signaling that occurs with off-premise or cloud based based VoIP systems. Communication from the phone to the PBX server is almost instantaneous, so signaling distance and latency should be non-existent as it does not travel over the Internet and other networks. Failover: If you have traditional phone lines the PBX can be configured to use them if the Internet goes out.
• Non-proprietary Open Source System- Asterisk based phone systems can use non-proprietary phones and other hardware. This will lower costs and allow for open market choices for vendor neutral hardware. Need a phone, buy it from many online sources.
• Lower ongoing operational costs- Having your own in-house PBX saves money over time when compared to a hosted model, which probably has lower upfront costs. A business owned phone system will typically result in lower monthly operating costs when spread out over time. This is especially true for larger company systems with a higher number of users. The larger the system the more the savings when compared to a cloud based service.
• Extra cost savings when SIP trunking- Using SIP trunks for low cost calls, both domestic and International, will save money over traditional carriers. When you have your own phone system you can choose which carriers to buy service from. This gives you pricing flexibility.
• Expandability- Lower cost to add users and extra extensions. Since Asterisk systems are non-proprietary adding more capacity only requires the hardware, not extra licensing fees. Users at home can set up remote extensions easily without additional software licensing.
  

Asterisk based VoIP systems are lower in cost, easy to setup and easy to administrate.

Just in the last three or so years, several manufacturers of Asterisk IP-PBX appliances have built systems that when matched with their own SIP based phones have become some of the best in-house unified communications phone systems available for the SMB market. Several of these companies have been well known for other products, like Grandstream, which has been making IP phones for quite some time and Sangoma, known for great gateway cards used in Asterisk installations (now owner of both FreePBX and Asterisk). Some companies are now recognizing that traditional manufacturers of PBXs are perhaps not worth the large cost compared with Asterisk based systems.

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Asterisk has proven to be extremely stable and with so many installations more and more people are hearing first hand that these systems are hard to beat. See some great examples:

Top 3 Asterisk PBX Systems for SMBs

Costs for Top 3 VoIP Appliances

Some of the benefits of a Hosted VoIP Phone System

If you are looking at a cloud based business phone (also known as hosted VoIP), you may be interested to learn its benefits. Benefits of a Cloud Based Phone System