SOLVED Asterisk vs FreeSwitch

[John]

Hi all,


I love FreeSwitch and using it for years for my business and later for family and now for extended friends and family. I want to decide if it is worth getting stuck in one GUI. I have found asterisk open-source GUI providers giving support, way more features, and incredible value. For example, just look at VitalPBX plans here https://www.vitalpbx.org/pbx-system-plans/


I wonder if FreeSwitch is worthy of having no option other than FusionPBX.


Does it really make such a big difference?

 

[Bifur]

Asterisk is not truly multi tenant so depending on your setup, that could be a con. It mainly starts becoming and issue when you need to keep locations separate. I've used FreePBX a lot and each install seemed different and had it's unique quirks. It works but having to have a separate server for each client makes it hard to manage. Module updates seem to break things often.

I am new to Fusion and still learning but I like it. It's more of a learning curve but it is more open in the sense of knowing how it's working. FreePBX shoots out so many errors and warnings on a clean install on startup. Freeswitch is/was also developed by the original asterisk team to shore up asterisks shortcomings.

The only thing you can do is give it a shot and see how it works for your needs. Asterisk had been around a long time and if still used by millions of people.

Good luck!

 

[DigitalDaz]

I have installed this, it threw no errors and seems very slick and IS multitenant. I'm very impressed with it so far.

 

[John]

Hi @DigitalDaz,

Do you mean you actually installed VitalPBX? Does the community version come with the multitenant too? I am also very interested in this and want to have more options than just getting stuck in one GUI. Please share more

John

 

[John]

Well, I just checked the community version brochure. https://vitalpbx.org/download/13970/, it seems that the multitenant module is not included in the community plan and can be purchased for $100 one time payment per tenant. However, the unlimited tenants module is included in the carrier plan https://vitalpbx.org/download/13925/ which is $125/month (when paid yearly) or $150/month when paid monthly. Which also includes unlimited support tickets and very reasonable hourly rate when they work on your server.

The pricing it is not bad, and all commercial modules are included.

 

[ricktendo]

I have deployed VitalPBX and I can report it works great, yes it is multi tenant and interface is very similar to FreePBX (which is not multi tenant)

The endpoint manager (autoprovision) was OK, but as I understand since I have last worked on it they have updated this.

Note: one thing that was kinda difficult twas how to get all tenants to use the same trunk, but I was able to figure it out.

 

[John]

I have deployed VitalPBX and I can report it works great, yes it is multi tenant and interface is very similar to FreePBX (which is not multi tenant)

The endpoint manager (autoprovision) was OK, but as I understand since I have last worked on it they have updated this.

Are you now using Fusion or Vital?

 

[ricktendo]

I am using Fusion, learning loads about it and making excellent progress.

Autoprovision is my forte, hoping I get approved as a contributor so I can submit some of my updated Grandstream config files

 

[John]

Hi @ricktendo. Thanks for your reply. Since you know both Vital and Fusion, could you please kindly tell me why you chose Fusion over Vital or Freeswitch over Astrisk?

 

[ricktendo]

You cant go wrong with either, if you do not want to spend any money on licensing go with Fusion

 

[ricktendo]

To throw in another option I also been messing around with is Vodia PBX.

It is also multi tenant, you pay per extension (prices vary on the type of extension) and its great for Hotels that require integration with PMS (property management software)

Edit: it is neither Asterisk nor FreeSwitch, it is its own beast (and its a single executable "pbxctrl" that runs on many platforms )

 

[John]

Let's back to the primary subject. I already can see Vital is more stable than the Fusion and it is a big company with a lower price for serious businesses. Probably because there is a bigger market for astersik than Freeswitch. My fundamental question is about the underlying engines. Does FreeSwitch kick asterisk's chair as of 2021?

 

[DigitalDaz]

My interest is stability, I think it is now well over 3 years since we have had a stable release of FusionPBX. I want a PBX that I am not terrified of upgrading.

My only concern at the moment re vitalpbx is cross datacenter availability but I'm sure I will be able to skin that cat.

 

[hfoster]

To throw in another option I also been messing around with is Vodia PBX.

It is also multi tenant, you pay per extension (prices vary on the type of extension) and its great for Hotels that require integration with PMS (property management software)

Edit: it is neither Asterisk nor FreeSwitch, it is its own beast (and its a single executable "pbxctrl" that runs on many platforms )

Hard to believe it's still going. We had a fleet of them when they were 'PBXnSIP'.

One thing that's currently missing from both Vital & Fusion PBX is a working and supported SMS module. It's 2021, I for the life of me cannot understand how neither one of these platforms don't have a functional SMS module at the moment.

I cannot remember the last time I got an SMS to be fair. Probably Dominos pizza spam!

My interest is stability, I think it is now well over 3 years since we have had a stable release of FusionPBX. I want a PBX that I am not terrified of upgrading.

Same here. I'd also like to be able to square the hole of updating FreeSwitch is a nice manner. All of my service affecting problems with 'FusionPBX' have actually been dodgy releases of FreeSwitch (RTP bugs, REFER issues, etc). I fear it's regressed a bit with the switch to Ubuntu and compiling FreeSwitch too.

 

[John]

The SMS was very important for me to have FreeSwitch as an alternative to cellphone plans for my my large family. I paid a developer 6 years ago to implement SMS. She built it but never gave me the source code. So while I do not have an immediate need for SMS, it might stop working at some point, as it hasn't been updated for years.

@Kenny Riley said he is paying $500/month and his support and feature requests thrown on the back burner. I was thinking the weather is warmer for purple members lol. It seems Mark treats everyone fairly with no discrimination

I think he should really give up some minority shares of his company and grow the business. Otherwise, it does not seem that those features and a stable release are coming soon. I am also afraid after a long wait, only the top level members can have the SMS and WebRTC.

BTW, yesterday I called Vital to get more info about their billing module, support, etc. They said besides the community version, anyone can download their full commercial version for free. The only limitation on the free commercial version is the number of tenants etc. So it is fully open to testing with no commitment and time limit.

The only reason I am still with Fusion is the FreeSwitch. but did @hfoster say now FreeSwitch is also not stable? What is going on FreeSwitch side?

 

[hfoster]

@John - Stable, but it's from source instead of the distro packages or a FreeSwitch repo. Here's the current config, you get when you follow the websites instructions. (Ubuntu 20.04). Not the end of the world, but it's a pain in the hole if you want to add a module or bump the version number due to a bug. I'm in two minds about it, on the one hand Ubuntu is slightly better than Debian in regards to support releases, but none of them really hold a candle to CentOS (even with that CentOS 8 Stream debacle).

 

[DigitalDaz]

I also wouldn't mind betting asterisk is far more resourced than Freeswitch too. Also, much of the failings of asterisk, from my limited understanding, revolved around the chan_sip module. Now that its using pjsip, things may be much different.

 

[John]

When I started this thread, I purposefully posted here, because I know all of us are FreeSwitch people with years of time spent on it. I expected to hear a lot of negative things about asterisk. This way, I could compare these two. It seems nobody is against asterisk here and interestingly all of us have some positive feelings for VitalPBX.

My conclusion is I can consider asterisk and VitalPBX as an alternative and I have a choice whenever I want to. Thanks for all your inputs!

 

[bcmike]

I feel somewhat compelled to chime in. I'm on the other side of the coin, I was in the asterisk world for 15 years and have lived through the FreePBX wars. I came to Fusion for the stability that Freeswitch offers and the true multi tenant nature of Fusion PBX. Freeswitch just fundamentally does things a little better than Asterisk in my mind. The downside of course is that Fusion is very much a cloistered environment in the sense that Mark doesn't open it up as much as he probably should. I've downloaded Vital but haven't installed it yet, however with a cursory read of the docs it seems like they're doing what we always did to achieve multi tenant in asterisk and that's use prefixes and phone dial plans to jail people (I could be wrong). That approach works but you always run into gotchas as you're trying to make asterisk do something it wasn't intended to do.

Of course the Asterisk community is huge and you'll usually find help just by googling, which is not so much the case with Freeswitch and Fusion, although this forum has been a literal life saver in that department. I almost want scrape and archive the entire site just as insurance.

Oh and upgrading Fusion is such a disaster that I just don't do it in production. I usually just spin up a new box and and migrate people as necessary. That defiantly needs to get fixed! FreePBX had its upgrade issues but it was a far more automated and reliable process.

There is a definite lack of UC stuff in all of these environments and 3CX is eating our lunch in that department, but a lot of times I find customers say they want all of these things and end up never using them. Besides Teams, and all of their Ilk are far better suited for UC at the end of the day.

I still think moving from Asterisk/FreePbx to Freeswitch/Fusion was the right move, although I must admit I am a little disturbed to find so many disillusioned folks commenting. Is Fusion losing it's user base?

 

[John]

Thanks @bcmike for your valuable input.