Is what I want to say on another forums pinned post right now… But maybe OUR silence is even sweeter…
Uhm, FreePBX isn’t going any where. Tango is going to be FreePBX underneath. Code committed to Tango will also be committed to FreePBX as well.
Edit: Just to clarify, I’m speaking from my own conclusions.
sigh 
… UHM. I didn’t say FreePBX was going anywhere.
FreePBX isn’t going anywhere but a lot of us have discovered FusionPBX and FS PBX as a viable replacement to Asterisk and FreePBX. I’ve migrated most of my systems already. Freeswitch and a number of GUI’s for it have come a long ways.
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Hi @kenn10, I appreciate you sharing your opinion on that. I have been wanting to try FS PBX, can you share some pros and cons? I am hoping TangoPBX takes some big leaps soon(no pun intended), but I can see the ClearlyIP team, has a lot of other things going on.
I’m tired of all the existential threats about FreePBX and Sangoma. I’m sure it will be around for a long time and Asterisk continues to be solid. I just got tired of the hype, the short-handedness of Sangoma, and the general stagnation of the product. So I tried something different.
It took me months to wrap my head around FusionPBX and I have pretty much gotten comfortable with it now. Currently, FS PBX is mostly a front-end to FusionPBX but they are rewriting their code in bits and pieces to eliminate using FusionPBX altogether.
Having used both, they have good and bad aspects. You can’t expect much help on the FusionPBX forums. FusionPBX has paid support available and people on the discussion board either don’t answer your questions or sometimes just make snarky comments. With FusionPBX, you have more granular control over things and the ability to customize parts of it and FreeSwitch if you can figure it out. FusionPBX does include basic Call Center functionality but FS PBX has enhanced and commercialized their version.
FS PBX has an easier GUI for people just getting started with it and until its fully rewritten to eliminate FusionPBX, you can still pull parts of FusionPBX to the surface and use them. A unique feature of FS PBX is built-in TTS for recordings/announcements and STT for voicemail transcription. On the FS PBX forum, Dexter who is the lead developer for FS PBX, is responsive and helpful but they also have paid support. They have commercial modules for Call Center and STIR/SHAKEN available. Both systems support true multi-tenant functionality. I generally set up an administrative umbrella partition and then have separate domains for different sites.
You definitely need to be able to spend some quality quiet time (and possibly drink several adult beverages) to train you mind to look at a totally different approach to the PBX from what you know on FreePBX.
Some other differences are that you can run FusionPBX in as little as 1 or 2 GB of memory depending on the amount of traffic on the system. FS PBX requires a minimum of 4 GB of memory and 60 GB of disk and it can run on Debian-13 with the release of V1.0.1. That puts you into a more expensive tier for cloud VM’s. Either system can be run locally on a dedicated server or a VM. Colo Crossing and Rack Nerd have some good deals on 4 GB VM’s.
FreePBX is still the most feature rich of the open source crowd but I do not use at least 50% of features. The FreeSwitch based GUI’s are good for just solid day-to-day calls, voicemail, ring groups, and basic call center. FS PBX and FusionPBX have excellent endpoint management built in with many popular brands included. Neither system has a GUI based backup/restore function. You have to dig into directories to pull out the backup and I’m not real clear on how you would move the backup to the correct locations if you had to.
The best way to find out about them is to jump off the cliff and download them into a local VM or spare cloud instance and pound away. I used my test IncrediblePBX-2025 system and went about duplicating functionality with Fusion and FS PBX. That’s how you learn what the systems can and cannot do.
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Great write up, I really appreciate the in depth perspective. I know in time I will get my hands in it. I deployed IncrediblePBX and FreePBX Deployments for years, now I maintain several very large systems for school districts in Oregon.
I will say the most difficult thing is, our districts are quite accustomed to many of the commercial modules FreePBX offers today. So looking at another solution, I have to be able to meet or beat what they are currently used to.
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The past weekends disaster from Sangoma pushing out a Framework update that prevented users from logging into their FreePBX systems is yet another example of being inept. Again, another of my reasons for going with FusionPBX.
Most FreePBX-based systems were in trouble after the updates went out. This FreePBX forum thread shows some of the frustrations.
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Interesting you say this. I’m curious on what FusionPBX or FSPBX are going to do if SignalWire’s stagnant development on the free/community version of FreeSwitch keeps going. Since Oct 2021 there have been six releases/updates for free/community FreeSwitch with the last one being about 14 months ago.
On the flip side, the FreeSwitch Advantage version (paid commercial) has seen 21 releases which the last five being in that same 14 month period. However, in 2025 FreeSwitch Advantage development has slowed as well as there’s only be about 50% of the updates released than the last 4 years of updates.
Which leaves the question, what will FSPBX or even FusionPBX do in the future if the FreeSwitch development keeps getting more stagnate? At some point that stagnation will impede future development of both those projects since without the engine being maintained properly they will end up with roadblocks due to it.
FreeSwitch: Rather stagnate on releases, bug fixes and updates
FusionPBX: Unreliable release schedule with a lot of dead time between updates.
FS PBX: Overly active playing catch-up, 55ish version releases in 12 months. In some cases multiple version releases in the same day and week.
FS PBX is already experiencing the same problems FreePBX had many many years ago and still does. Too many releases being pushed out too fast and end up having bugs in them. Since you started using this back in July there’s been 10 versions released and you have personally opened 9 bug reports of the 24+ opened in that time frame. Which indicates their QA needs work too.
Don’t let the new car smell detract from problems that are there and if not addresses could end up turning into another FreePBX situation.
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This may be a real concern, but it’s not an argument in favor of FS PBX or FusionPBX, both of which are one-man shows.
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I don’t disagree with @billsimon and @AMI but there are limits to new features in the pbx realm. FreeSwitch doesn’t seem to have issues with glaring errors that prevent you from using your system. The open source Freeswitch has pretty much every feature Asterisk has if you can deal with XML and LUA on it. It is a very mature product at this point as FreePBX ought to be.
FusionPBX is stagnant in that it hasn’t added a lot of new features. Their “one man” is not easy to deal with in many cases and the forum is pretty useless. There is a lot of good information on the setup and deployment of FusionPBX on the web and Youtube.
FS PBX is young, for sure, but also very responsive. The bugs I’ve posted have usually resulted from something I’d like to see them implement or because the intermingling of FusionPBX with FS PBX has caused some misunderstanding on my part. Their development is fast and raw, but they are making progress as a replacement for FusionPBX. The latest version is running on Debian-13, for example.
I’m kind of rooting for the underdogs, I know, but Sangoma has just gotten too sloppy and slow to adapt to changing OS release, PHP releases, etc. Look at all the deprecated bits and pieces they still install. I have high hopes for these two GUIs for FreeSwitch and its not too difficult to replicate many functions of FreePBX using them. It is a challenge to equate things on FusionPBX to things in FreePBX, but I’m figuring them out bit by bit.
Its good to have choices and be ready to deploy them.
There’s more to it than having a mature feature set. As it has just been brought to light, the FreeSwitch source fails to fully build on Debian 13. You have to install the things that fail to build with package installations. This is the answer from the FreeSwitch team. At some point though, FreeSwitch’s failure to build fully on an newer OS may not be fixed by installing the missing dependencies by package installs.
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Yes. And FreePBX can’t run on Debian-13 either unless PHP 8.2 is back-ported to it. FS PBX runs perfectly on Debian-12 with all the features of what it has on Debian-13. I don’t know what modules aren’t compiling in FreeSwitch but someone will figure it out. In the meantime, Dexter has figured out how to make it all work. So far, no one has been locked out of their systems by a careless update of a module.
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Anthony and Brian both great guys but definitely have their quirks. Nothing SNG level, not trying to imply that at all. In any case I tried to replace asterisk with FreeSwitch 15ish years ago and honestly Asteriskisms are a little to ingrained in to me. This many years later it is probably worse. I am not sure about FreeSwitch as a PBX engine nor its testing in that configuration. Note most FreeSwitch installs are used as a Switch and for much grander tasks. It almost feels like taking a jack-hammer to a screw. I like the right tool for the job.
Ignoring or accepting the above note as a guy who has maintained a UI/Frontend for a long time you can only account for so much. At some point you will need to dig in to the plumbing to do a task. So know if you think the GUI is in itself the answer, it isn’t. You will eventually need to know FreeSwitch for both troubleshooting and configuration not available within the UI.
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I am not sure why you keep conflating the GUI software with the telephony engine. Asterisk installs fine on Debian 13. My point is that FreeSwitch can’t install on newer Debian without breaking.
If FreeSwitch can’t install on newer OSes than the GUIs (Fusion or FS) aren’t much help.
Not to mention that FusionPBX and FSPBX offers true multi-tenancy too.
Having been an Asterisk guy for the last 20+ years (I remember with FreePBX was brand new and just a management frontend GUI, andhad to be downloaded manually after Asterisk was installed). I agree with the comments about trying Freeswitch or FusionPBX back then in it’s infancy. They do take a different approach from FreePBX and Asterisk, because they are different platforms. So with that, you will have to spend time to learn something new when trying it out just like @kenn10 explained. I couldn’t handle the differences between the two back then either because I was also (and still am) used to working with Asterisk.
But as we kept growing, we have been in search of a multi-tenant platform for better management and efficiency, not to mention cutting down our expenses. We are currently utilizing VitalPBX Carrier Plus platform for this, which is very similar to FreePBX, but they have much better support and is much cheaper. Not to mention by using them, we were able to consolidate over 125 FreePBX VPSes down to 4 VitalPBX multi-tenant systems. The problem with VitalPBX, which will be the same for all Asterisk based platforms, is it utilizes one database. So if you want to move a tenant from one server to another, or to their own…you have to manually move them with limited items that can be exported and imported. If you perform a backup to restore on another server, it’s the whole system including ALL tenants and not just the one you want. At least with Freeswitch (FusionPBX or FSPBX), you have true multi-tenancy to be able to handle these issues.
Asterisk can do this in the future, but will have to rewrite the whole code on how it utilizes the Database and the way it’s set up. So, not anytime soon. Both Sangoma and CIP offer a multi-tenant solution too. But Sangoma is just doing the same thing we used to do, which is basically creating a new VPS for each tenant, and then charging you for that. Not sure about CIP yet as I have a call scheduled with them to discuss this. So once again….probably not any time soon.
The only other solution I know that would have true multi-tenancy is NetSapiens, in which we couldn’t afford the OpEx or the CapEx at this time. And if you think Freeswitch and their PBX distros are a hard thing to learn about, try migrating to that and understanding it. But at least with NetSapiens, you also have the ability to have Geo Redundancy as well, being able to cluster systems in different datacenters (i.e. New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, etc.)…and still be utilized as a single system. Which if your goal is to become a competing Telco like we’re attempting to grown into and not just a PBX vendor, these are features we’re looking for without breaking the bank.
Just to clarify, which database are you referring to? Asterisk doesn’t require a database backend to run. So just want to make sure which database you are referencing.
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OK that was announced a couple months back. FS PBX installing on Debian 13 isn’t the same as FreeSwitch requiring extra manual steps because their installer craps out on Debian 13.
Right now Asterisk installs and runs just fine on Debian 13 but FreePBX might not. They are not the same thing.