FreePBX and Sangoma phones, advantages?
I have been using FreePBX for a few years to do many things but I am not concerned with putting phones
Now they ask me if it is worth using Sangoma, so I ask you who have experience with it, to use Sangoma phones with FreePBX what advantages does it give me compared to using Grandstream or Falvil?
A big advantage is the endpoint manager and phone apps modules are free to use with the Sangoma and Digium phones. The phone apps support on the Sangoma phones are great and Zero Touch configuration is also very useful.
Stay away from the Sangoma S-series phones, but the Sangoma/Digium D-Series phones might have a bright future.
I set up two production systems (freePBX14, Asterisk 13) with Sangoma/Digium D65 phones and I can tell the difference. The D65 phone is a voip phone with high quality audio (much much better than the s705) and a very good and stable SW. The Digium Visual voicemail is way better than the Sangoma phone apps stuff!
To configure the Digium/Sangoma D-series phones in freePBX you have to use the Digium phones module and the advanced DPMA configuration.
I never had a better Asterisk phone than the D65. The D80 might be even more impressive, but I need a phone which displays the status of several other extensions all the timeā¦and it seems, on the D80 you have to swipe to see the infoā¦
everything seems very interesting, I will propose the D65 for testing
After installing hundreds of Sangoma Phones, I disagree with that.
Zero touch provisioning is something that wasnāt mentioned, and works wonders.
Finally, you mentioned that he should āstay awayā but you didnāt mention why. So I will ask. Why is that?
I bought a 705s a year ago and was very, very disappointed. For many years I used Cisco 7975 and 8961 phones with freePBX and became tired of patching Asterisk.
Both Cisco phones have VERY good audio, when used with g722 codec (I hate alaw/ulaw) and the hardware is of highest quality.
When I first used the Sangoma s705, I thought it is a joke. The audio is like super cheap (in comparison to Cisco) and the phones required a reboot every month or so.
The Sangoma phone apps have the design of a former-East-German app and a latency which is not acceptableā¦whereas the Digium visual voicemail for the D65 is super cool and user friendly. Thatās the reason why I deactivated Sangoma Endpoint Manager and used the Digium phone module to configure the D65.
The only downside of the Digium/Sangoma D65 is that you are supposed to use the phonebook of the Digium phones module. If you want to use the freePBX contactmanager you need a conversion scriptā¦
I would not suggest stay away, but I would suggest testing it yourself.
I personally found the S-series to be slow and a bit flaky. I had no issues with sound quality.
The Phone Apps are horribly slow to use. I did not continue suing them long enough to figure out if it was the phone or the app itself that was slow. It did not matter really as whatever the cause, the end user experience was poor with it.
Regarding flaky, the BLF would not stay consistently displayed after a reload of the config. It would require a reboot for it to be brought back. It did not do it every time, but often. That is just silly. Again, I did not continue to use the device long enough to troubleshoot.
This kind of stuff should have had feedback before being released.
Maybe it is better now, I do not know. The S505 (or S500 I forget) that I have is still sitting powered off on the shelf in my office.
Compared to the Yealink T4X series that was current at the time, it simply was not worth the extra cost with those issues for the minor good features that it had over Yealink.
I get that Sangoma needs/wants a revenue stream to fund all the development for both the FOSS projects they lead as well as development of commercial solutions. Iām just not sure if their own line of phones was really the best choice. Or maybe there just was not enough R&D done to make it seem like it was a well designed device.
But it has now been 5 years since they acquired Schmoozecom and only a little more than a year since they acquired Digium. Personally, I am hoping they combine the Digium line and the Sangoma lines into a single GOOD phone line in the nearish future.
This is overrated. I can do the same thing with a solid DHCP scope setup and any model of phone. No need to even deal with a remote provisioning system to point devices to my local install.
Zero touch is a super nice thing for the rare instance where you drop ship a phone from your VAR straight to a remote home user where you have no IT control.
From a reseller point of view, it can also be a super good thing if they donāt stage things first. I do get the positive use cases.
Here is a link to a video of the visual voicemail of a Sangoma/Digium D65:
Once you switch a D65 phone on, you instantaneously realize that the Digium dev team is/was superior to Sangomas previous dev team (most left Sangoma already).
Thatās the reason why I am very optimistic regarding the future of Sangoma. It seems some of the former Digium devs replaced the ones who left Sangoma last yearā¦
I disagree. We dropship these phones to users all over the world working from home or tiny offices with no real network management. These phones are plug and play once configured with Zero Touch Provisioning.
A Digium/Sangoma D65 discovers a freePBX/Asterisk server automatically during startup too, if one uses the Digium phones module DPMA.
No, it requires a RPS, no different than Sangoma phones, or any other brand that has this feature.
The RPS has all the information that tell the devices where to go to get their provisioning information.
There is no magic. So when you have a controlled network you can already do this. Where this shines, as I clearly pointed out, is when you donāt have a controlled network.
I really want to like the S505. I ordered 20 of them. Had to pull all of them back from deployment. Within 2 weeks, 4 of them were boot looping and RMAād (which Sangoma handled speedily, I must add). 2-3 others would just not stay registered. I 2nd the laggy interface. Audio quality is not as good as Yealink or even old Cisco SPA504ās. Customer feedback was lukewarm on the ones that did work.
Installed some cheap Grandstream GXP-2135ās on the same PBX, same LAN, same WANā¦and they work like a champ.
I have to say, if you put a Sangoma S505 and a Yealink T46S next to each other, Iām picking the T46 every time.
Again, I want to like the S505, but I just donāt. have confidence in them.
The Sangoma phones are just rebranded HTEK phones. Buttons in slightly different places but the software running them is the same. Ive met the HTEK guys, drank with them etc. They did not reveal they manufactured them although I asked. Sangoma left the model number of the EHS adapter the same though which was my first clue, then I saw the software was the exact same.
You have to be specificā¦you are talking/writing about the inferior Sangoma S-series phonesā¦interesting, if true.
But the Sangoma/Digium D-series phones are definitely phones designed by Digiumā¦
HTEK is the manufacturer of the S-series phones, yes.
Simply rebranded, no.
Itās Sony guts.This is what you want.
I have two Sangoma S500. They work and do their job, but itās really not a phone Iāve actually liked at any time. It feels clumsy and everything is slow. Build quality is ok, but more sturdy than nice looking. The display has bad viewing angles.
Compared to a for example the Snom D765/D785 or a Mitel 6873i, they are just worlds apart (those cost more, but actually not a lot more). Sure, better FreePBX integration would be nice, but in the age of iPhone and highend Android phones, I really cannot ask anyone to live with a a desk phone which is slow, clumsy and has a display that is at best āokā.
At least the Sangoma S705 now has Bluetooth (finally). But those phones are hard to get here in Germany and I wonāt risk getting stuck with one if the Bluetooth implementation turns out to be unreliable. Itās not like they are available on Amazon and I can just send one back if it sucks.
Oh and yes, the latency of the phone apps: That feels like a 2400 baud Modem from 1990. Really really bad.
I think you nailed the feel of using the phone apps quite well. Going to remember this
One thing Iāve found with my Digium phones (that Iām hoping will be fixed at some point) is that call flow control based on the free/busy/away status of the phone doesnāt work as advertised. Iāve also found that a simple graphic on a D70ās display seems to have slowed down the entire menu system. Otherwise very happy, but it took a long time to get to this point. 
I actually enjoyed it, though!