I am configuring my first phone with free pbx. I need to set up an app on my iphone that will work as soft phone over wifi. I also have an IP phone made for VOIP I bought off the Internet. To set up the soft phone (with an app like zulu or somehting) do I have to upgrade the endpoint manager to the commercial license?
you dont need the endpoint manager at all. Just create extensions in freePBX manuallyâŚ
To be a little more clear: EndPoint Manager is for Physical endpoints like ATAs and phones from brands like Sangoma, Yealink, Grandstream, Cisco, Polycom, etc.
Most Softphones do not offer a remote provisioning feature. Certainly no freeware softphones do. There are a few commercial products that offer an EndPoint Manager-like provisioning experience. The biggest (and most mature) option that comes to mind is Bria Enterprise from CounterPath.
Setting aside automatic provisioning, setting up just an extension you can manually configure for use in your softphone is just as @Charles_Darwin has sparsely touched upon:
GUI > Applications > Extensions - Youâll create your Extensions here, regardless of whether you are using physical phones or softphone clients.
To setup your iPhone softphone client, youâll setup the Extension as above first, then configure the softphone client with the IP/Hostname of the PBX, appropriate Port number for your chosen tech (Chan_SIP or Chan_PJSIP), Extension number, and the Password (Secret) you specified when you created the Extension on the PBX.
After I set up my softphone I also want to set up an IP phone for VOIP that I can just set on my desk. I was thinking of setting up the same phone number that I am using for the softphone on the IP phone, even the same extension. If I am going to sell some brand of phone like CISCO or whatever and give customers the capability to use most any IP phone should I use the EndPoint Manager? Can I set up regular IP phones for VOIP without the End Point Manager? I do want to have the freedom to set up a lot of different brands and models of IP phones for VOIP.
Thank you for clearing that up.
So long as youâve setup your Extensions with the PJSIP channel driver, you can use the same Extension # on both the softphone and desk phone.
EndPoint Manager does support a large number of physical IP phones and makes managing them much easier than manually configuring the phones. However, EndPoint Manager is NOT required to setup your physical deskphonesâŚit simply makes the setup a lot easier for both you and your clients. If setup properly with DHCP on the local networks of the phones, a client can factory reset the device and it will fully set itself back up automatically. Deploying new phones to a site is as simple as entering the MAC in Endpoint Manager and plugging the phone in on-site.
EndPoint manager supports a LOT of customization, as well. You can see an example of such in this thread I recently wrote up about using the Yealink VP59 (not a natively supported model in EndPoint Manager) with EndPoint Manager, Video Calls, SRTP, and even Sangoma Meet.
When it comes to softphones, beware of âfree.â Most freeware softphones out there are based on very outdated open-source SIP stacks that just donât function well with modern tech like PJSIP. Try out a few proper commercial/paid softphones and decide from those what you like best. Youâll find much frustration with freeware softphone clients like old Linphone and such.
Most? Such as? Since you mentioned Linphone, Iâll say itâs actively developed, not outdated at all, and works fine with PJSIP.
donât I also have to setup a number in addition to the extension? I have been using the guide on freepbx.org to guide me through the set up and configuration of the server and first phone line. I already got the phone number from bandwidth.com.
I have tried (but not used) a lot of softphones on windows and android. I confirm registration, inbound and outbound calls with 2-way audio and usually delete it the same day. The only softphone I have encountered that works with chan_sip and not PJSIP is the Yate soft client, and I have not ruled out a config issue on my part.
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My bad. Allow me to thoroughly expand on my remarkâŚ
Linphone finally started up active development and releasing updates again in earnest in June 2020 after a 3 year hiatus (beyond a few rather minor fixes). They finally released a Linux client for the first time in just the last 4 months. Prior to this recent reemergence, most of their source was years behind. NAT support was wonky, at best. Could you get it working? Sure. Was it easy and straight forward if you werenât on the same subnet as the PBX? Not a chance. Does it even properly support TLS/SRTP yet? 
Iâll admit, I havenât checked out Linphone in the 3ish months since they bothered to start putting out proper updates again, but their track record is far from stellarâŚso Iâve been in no rush. I surely wouldnât trust or rely upon it in a corporate environment where I want minimal headache and maximum productivity.
Another Example: X-Lite was a hardly working mess from the time CounterPath merged it with a stripped down (read: crippled) version of their âeyeBeamâ code until they finally scrapped it completely in lieu of their freemium Bria Solo product. Bria Solo works fine and is great for seeing if Bria, generally speaking, is to your liking before investing in the enterprise client -or- if you have a small team of people and donât mind paying the small annual fee per client for a full and proper set of softphone features - the âfreeâ end of the âfreemiumâ doesnât include basics like Transfer and Call Waiting, no TLS/SRTP support, and includes Ads. The point here is, X-Lite is effectively gone nowâŚBria Solo replaced it and X-Lite will not see a single update moving forward.
Another Example: 3CX Phone can be setup to work, but has its own limitations and YMMVâŚbecause it was written to target their own server software and they will prompt you to consider switching to 3CX server every chance they get. They, too, are in a transition away from a legacy freeware client towards an entirely new client, which appears to only be free for 1 year? (Their site gets real vague about this point, as if they intend to pull the rug out from under you on a whim.)
Credit where credit is due: MicroSIP.org has a great portable open-source PJSIP-based client, but itâs only for Windows.
If you know of some more free softphones still in active development that are worthy of mentioning, Iâm all ears. I truly would love to find a freeware softphone that just works as it shouldâŚthat doesnât give the users or the IT staff a massive migraine in setup or useâŚthat is up-to-date and secure. If it doesnât even have something as basic as TLS/SRTP support, then its stuck in 2001 and, while possibly just peachy for your local LAN-only deployments, can still prove to be a terrible choice when PBX fraud occurs every single day in the tens of thousands of dollars per incident and often results from a leaked/intercepted/unencrypted/weak set of extension credentials.
The takeaway is this: You get what you pay for and you almost always have to spend money to make money. I hate rampant Capitalism as much as the next person, but this is the world we live in. This isnât the âwild wild westâ of early-2000s VoIP anymoreâŚeveryone and their mother wants to make money on it. If you are trying to use softphones in a proper business environment, youâll almost certainly find the âfreeâ options lacking and/or frustrating, at the very leastâŚunusable, at worst. I didnât offer up referral links and stand to make exactly $0 telling you to avoid free softphone clients in a corporate environment - we donât even resell a softphone client, let alone develop oneâŚI say it because itâs just a fact of life these days. The truly free options are few and far between anymore, and most of them (NOTE: I didnât say a definitive âALL of themâ) just arenât suitable beyond the hobbyist or super small office environment, where you have to scrutinize and hard justify even a $10/year softphone license.
Youâve got the time to beat up a freeware softphone endlessly to get it working reliably in all the environments your employees are going to be in, now that tons of folks are working from home? Great! I bet youâre the boss or have an awesome boss to answer to. On the other hand, some of us just want to get back to the real work. Fussing with a softphone all day isnât making the company any money, after allâŚat what point have you spent more time (and potentially lost more revenue) than the money you would have spent investing in a softphone with some corporate development/support and stability behind it? Or worse, risk the financial hit of using a potentially unsecure solution that opens you up to attackâŚthen what have you really saved in the long run?? Sometimes, it just doesnât pay to be cheap.
To be clear, I only take such a harsh stance on this because fewer and fewer are using a PBX and phones, physical or otherwise, in a purely local-only environment. All of the example wares I present are way easier to deploy and troubleshoot in a local-only environmentâŚbut the instant you start adding NAT, firewalls, and proper internet-facing security considerations into the mix, the vast majority of âfreeâ out there starts to fall woefully shortâŚeither because the development resources arenât there, or the software in question is being limited by design to get you to pay for it anyway. When giving advice on critical infrastructure - if it can cost you $10k in 60 seconds of fraud activity AND may very well be routing things like 911 calls and your Elevatorâs emergency phones, youâre damn right itâs critical - Iâm erring on the side of security above virtually all other considerations. Security is more than just âdoes it support TLS/SRTP.â If you canât get it working out of the box and have to start disabling and altering random PBX settings to âmake it work,â you might just be sacrificing security in the process, possibly without even realizing it if youâre rather new to this and donât know the true meaning of some of the more âinnocent soundingâ options. Iâd rather avoid sending someone down a penny-pinching route in such matters, unless Iâm sure they are expert enough to recognize the potential risks involved.
If by ânumberâ you are referring to a public phone number (DID), then yes, you would still need to have one of those for Inbound calls from the public phone network. It sounds like you already do. You need to configure a Trunk connection to that provider so you can make and receive calls to the outside world via that number you acquired.
Bandwidth.com doesnât really provide much of a decent doc for the Trunk configurationâŚcertainly nothing Asterisk/FreePBX specific you can just walk through step-by-step. In their main doc, they mention having to reach out to your âImplementation Specialistâ for things like the proper Trunk IPs and such. 
Itâs a secret! 
https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/204138796-UC-trunking-integration-guide
Gs wave from grandstream has BLF functionality also does TLS and is free.
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Linphone has been my test standard for use with all kinds of systemsâAsterisk chan_SIP/PJSIP, freeswitch, opensips and moreâfor years. I never had any problem configuring any of the settings and nothing was âwonky.â I guess you just need to spend a little more time with it. Would I recommend deploying hundreds of Linphone extensions in a business environment? No, but that wasnât really the point, at least I didnât think so. OP is totally green, just trying things out at this point.
Iâd personally go with an Acrobits product when I have a little money to spend. ($10 or less per unit)
Free ones that work and I have currently installed for various testing purposes: Linphone iOS and desktop, GS Wave (as @dicko mentioned), Jitsi desktop, zoiper.
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