Asterisk NOW vs. sipXecs vs. SwitchVox vs. Trixbox Pro – Comparing User Benefits
From SIPfoundry sipXecs IP PBX, The Open Source SIP PBX for Linux – Calivia
Comparing Asterisk NOW, SwitchVox and Trixbox Pro with sipXecs
It is indeed difficult to provide a fair and in-depth comparison between Asterisk NOW, SwitchVox, Trixbox Pro and sipXecs, but we think that sipXecs has surpassed Asterisk based solutions both in terms of ease of use, features, scale, resiliency and quality by quite a large margin. The comparison below is not looking at what you could do using a Linux command line. It compares user accessible features through a Web UI or TUI. The comparison is based on freely downloadable and usable versions of the respective solutions, where Switchvox and Trixbox include closed source components.
Asterisk was the first open source IP PBX that started to gain traction in 1999. sipXecs was introduced in 2004 as a second generation open source IP PBX with a clear path towards ease of use and unified communications (UC). Another key difference is that sipXecs is built as a true Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) solution. Asterisk is a hybrid solution where SIP is one of the possible transport protocols connected to a proprietary core.
What do we mean by “unlimited” trunks and simultaneous calls? This is not a configuration option but a fundamental architectural choice made right at the beginning when starting the project to build an IP PBX. sipXecs is a SIP proxy that by definition only handles signaling and no media. Asterisk is a Back-to-Back User Agent (B2BUA) based design that by definition anchors media. Therefore, sipXecs is a distributed system where media is routed peer-to-peer and Asterisk is a system where calls go through the server. “Unlimited” in this context therefore means that sipXecs can handle as many simultaneous calls as can be supported by the bandwidth of your LAN / WAN.
The comparison is based on freely downloadable and usable software, namely Asterisk NOW 1.0.1, SwitchVox 1.0 Free Version, Trixbox Pro (Standard) v1.0.3.23 and sipXecs 3.10. Asterisk NOW, Trixbox Pro and SwitchVox are all Asterisk based solutions. Only Asterisk NOW is open source. The other Asterisk management systems are proprietary and closed source. sipXecs is a new solution built from the ground up and not based on Asterisk.



