
25-07-2010, 16:29
I have been using pbxes for 4 years now.
I was a happy user but not anymore. I use pbxes for all my call, incomming did number, outgoing trunks etc.
Reliability has been become a problem the last year.
First they had lots of trouble with their paris server, too unstable to the point where they closed it.
Some hdd problems on several servers. Seemed like thet were using a simple raid 1 software based.
The have a failsafe system where paid accounts are moved to another server in case a sever has problems. Problem is that this takes time and most of the time it you will notice problems and if you are lucky you could still reach the control panel to move to a different server by hand. Many times this is not possible and you have to wait.
As said I have been using them for 4 years or so and reliability has become less and less. It might be that they fill their servers with free accounts at the cost of paid accounts.
communication is almost zero and rude. So you have to rely on the forum and other users to help you. You should know a bit about configuarion to get it to work.
Price for a premium account is still ok 11 euro but vps servers where you can for example run your own asterisk based pbx like elastix are becoming cheaper and cheaper.
Free account have no callback and premium is limited to 3 callback numbers.
The main problem with callback is caller id. For example my dutch phone can have 3 caller id's depending on network and where I am.
+316xxx
00316xxx
316xxx
This means you will have to fill in all 3 to activate a callback. using these 3 you have used the maximum number of callback number.
For this reason I just setup a dedicated did number that responds to any call and calls me back on my cellphone.
As for videocall I have seen a online demo and looks nice but I don't know if it's really that usefull. Other user has to login to a special page to see the video stream and it's more something they made for themselfs to paly with than really usefull. They could have better spent more time on reliability.
At the end of the year I am looking at moving over to running elastix new 2.0 version on a cloud based vps. This should give me more reliability and more options, no limit to callback numbers.
1 Big advantage also of having your own sever is not sharing an ip with ther users. 1 big pbxes problem is the use of betamax accounts and free minutes. These minutes are limited to an ip address and on pbxes you share this with 50 or60k other users. This really means no free minutes.
Using online pbx you can setup your own cheap callback system.
I am now using smartvoip.com costing 5 eurcents to call a uk mobile.
voipgain.com should even be cheaper at 3 eurocents.
When I would use voicetrading I pay 9 cents but would have the advantage that I could forward callerid of numbers that are forwared to my mobile.
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