Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) vs. FreePBX

The Cisco Unified Communications Manager platform would be most suited for the below scenarios. 1. An organization with very restricted policies and compliance where can't move to cloud-based solutions for data security. They can install the CUCM on-premises. 2. An organization that is still on a legacy phone system could adopt CUCM to save costs and have better services.

FreepBX is a great product if you are able and willing to manage your own PBX system. It requires some know-how to set up but once running, it works very well. There is a large community that helps answer questions, but it isn't "plug and play" so you will need to be able to research and troubleshoot your own issues (or pay for support).

Incentivized

• Customizability - The program allows for a lot of specific features and ways to use the program.
• Traditional - The system is a very traditional phone system, with everything you would expect and need from an enterprise phone system.
• Expandable - The system allows from a small amount of users to a large amount, with no upper limit.

Incentivized

• Standard telephony.
• VM to email.
• Firewall
• Expandable extensions.

Incentivized

• CUCM is overly complex and requires a very capable engineer to maintain it. Similarly, implementing anything new requires a great deal of specialized knowledge of CUCM.
• CUCM is difficult to troubleshoot because of it's complexity.
• CUCM is expensive licensing and they nickel and dime you with a plethora of tiny little license charges for every little feature. They have the most convoluted licensing models, ever, for their CU products in general.

Incentivized

• Phone integration/firmware can be clunky and has a learning curve.
• Relies on crowd sourcing information as expected for open-source.
• Requires some moderate expertise for setup.

Incentivized

We have been using this product for 20+ years and will continue too. This is a great product and new features are always coming out.

Incentivized

Although it's very easy to use, once you understand the concepts of IP telephony, as I said before, I think Cisco could have improved the management interface of the platform, adding modern technologies and the design language of the other platforms like DNA Center, etc. This interface hasn't had a substantial improvement for about 10 years

Incentivized

CUCM is supported by most third-party vendors for related products, so it makes finding solutions to specific needs easy. Also Cisco TAC is very knowledgeable, and we have never run into a problem they have not been able to resolve. Usually they are resolved without the need to escalate tickers either.

Incentivized

This was the first phone system we implemented that could span multiple locations. We were very satisfied once fully implemented

Incentivized

The Cisco Call Manager application has been around for much longer than many of the competitors. As such, they have had plenty of time to resolve bugs and increase the feature set that comes natively with this solution. One of the biggest factors for us was the professional services/support that comes along with using any Cisco product.

Incentivized

FreePBX is as functional and easier to set up and manage, at least compared to the version of UCM we were on. The menus are more intuitive and you do not need to have Cisco command-line memorized to make things work. Plus, there is no cost overhead with an open-source software.

Incentivized

• Return on Investment as one shot investment was made then only licensing contract renewing is needed.
• Virtualized environment and centralized administration tools.
• Money saving as a result on using features like TEHO.
• Business continuity assured on environments with SRST and Multi site Deployment with Distributed Call Processing.

Incentivized

• Drastically reduced our direct telephony cost as we don't need to have the hardware and support.
• Very functional and added new functionality that we did not have previously.

Incentivized