Hello,
I’m building a (libvirt guest) VM to discover and demonstrate FreePBX features to prospective customers. The main feature I’ll be testing are Yealink, softphone, and some legacy (Aastra) phone integration.
I installed FreePBX 17 on Debian 12 for this.
Which EndPoint Manager licence shall I look for ? I’ve seen references here and there to Open Source EPM but does it still exist ?
Is it possible to move a VM to a different host without touching “running” licences ?
Best regards
Yes OSS EPM still exists. I posted instructions for installing it in this post:
OSS Endpoint Manager keeps crashing - FreePBX / Applications / Modules - FreePBX Community Forums
However, my recommendation to you is to buy some used Sangoma phones off Ebay and use those for demos as well as load some softphone programs like Linphone. The reason is that the commercial EPM module does not cost anything if you are using it with Sangoma phones, only with other models of phones. And it’s support for other models of phones is not that great because FreePBX makes phone makers pay to play with EPM. Only a few of those makers have gone through certification for EPM.
The OSS endpoint manager is good for situations where you are trying to sell into a site where they have 500 extensions all on Polycoms or something like that which are compatible with FreePBX but are not well supported by the commercial EPM. You will need to tinker with it.
You should also get a Grandstream H813 which has a FXO port on it, and can be setup as an incoming POTS trunk gateway. That way you can bring your laptop with the PBX on it, a couple phone extensions and the 813 and temporarily plug a FAX line into the 813 and then demonstrate incoming and outgoing calls on the PBX. Sangoma also has a POTS gateway product.
Note that many phones (such as the Yealinks) have their own provisioning webinterface right on the phone so you don’t actually need EPM if the number of phones is small.
If your selling into a SOHO situation they likely will have 16 or 32 proprietary digital extensions so will be looking for a complete system replacement. If they want desk phones and you get all Sangoma instruments then you can explain that this passes the “bus factor” that is if you get hit by a bus they can buy support pack incidents from Sangoma that will not only cover the PBX but the phones also. They will be used to the idea that a phone system replacement means a forklift replacement of everything, and while you can demonstrate that the system can easily support multiple makes and models of phones, that is only going to be a selling point if they have a house full of VoIP phones already that you want to preserve.
Thank you very much for this very valuable comments.
On one hand, I think customers appreciate “certified IP phone support”. On the other hand, they also appreciate a backup plan if this certified support ends, for any reason.
I wonder if OSS and commercial can be both installed on the same host. If possible, that may address both previous needs.