Just learned via TMCs' VoIP Forums that Click4PBX just announced hosted trixbox plans starting at $109/month (1-10 extensions) and going up to a maximum of $279/month (1-300 extensions). It's unclear from the website if that monthly fee is per extension or the total cost for each particular plan. I believe it is the total cost since the alternative (per extension) would be cost prohibitive. Not to mention the price would go down per extension as you scale up where as the plans listed increase in price as you increase the number of extensions. It just seems so cheap to only pay $109/month for up to 10 extensions. A more typically example for the SMB is 50 extensions and that's still only $139/month.
Actually, all Click4PBX is doing is hosting the trixbox software. Well, they are hosting the PC hardware as well and providing some failover redundancy I suppose. So there is some value in that if you are an SMB that doesn't want to maintain hardware & do periodic trixbox software upgrades.
In any event, with this solution all you need is DID numbers and SIP trunking termination services from Click4PBX's list of certified VoIP providers. Your IP phones connect directly with the SIP service provider, while Click4PBX hosts the trixbox management interface, which leverages FreePBX, a web front-end to several Asterisk-based solutions.
I'm very high on SIP trunking as you know, so it'll be interesting to see if more hosted trixbox or hosted Asterisk-based solutions come to market. We already have thousands of website hosting companies - could a plethora of hosted PBX providers be far behind?
I should add that Click4PBX also hosts VICIDIAL, a set of programs that are designed to interact with the Asterisk Open-Source PBX Phone system to act as a complete inbound/outbound call center suite. It includes predictive dialing capabilities, inbound, Outbound and Blended call handling and more.
Hosted trixbox IP-PBX
Just learned via TMCs' VoIP Forums that Click4PBX just announced hosted trixbox plans starting at $109/month (1-10 extensions) and going up to a maximum of $279/month (1-300 extensions). It's unclear from the website if that monthly fee is per extension or the total cost for each particular plan. I believe it is the total cost since the alternative (per extension) would be cost prohibitive. Not to mention the price would go down per extension as you scale up where as the plans listed increase in price as you increase the number of extensions. It just seems so cheap to only pay $109/month for up to 10 extensions. A more typically example for the SMB is 50 extensions and that's still only $139/month.
Actually, all Click4PBX is doing is hosting the trixbox software. Well, they are hosting the PC hardware as well and providing some failover redundancy I suppose. So there is some value in that if you are an SMB that doesn't want to maintain hardware & do periodic trixbox software upgrades.
In any event, with this solution all you need is DID numbers and SIP trunking termination services from Click4PBX's list of certified VoIP providers. Your IP phones connect directly with the SIP service provider, while Click4PBX hosts the trixbox management interface, which leverages FreePBX, a web front-end to several Asterisk-based solutions.
I'm very high on SIP trunking as you know, so it'll be interesting to see if more hosted trixbox or hosted Asterisk-based solutions come to market. We already have thousands of website hosting companies - could a plethora of hosted PBX providers be far behind?
I should add that Click4PBX also hosts VICIDIAL, a set of programs that are designed to interact with the Asterisk Open-Source PBX Phone system to act as a complete inbound/outbound call center suite. It includes predictive dialing capabilities, inbound, Outbound and Blended call handling and more.