Hello Everyone!
I've been planning a customized EspoCRM production deployment for my company's 25-person inside sales team! For our phone system, we currently use Comcast Business VoiceEdge (BVE) which is an absolutely horrible half-baked VoIP system that we've had countless issues with. It doesn't even integrate with our current Zoho CRM, which supports over 120 VoIP systems out there... My job is always to reduce the complex interaction between my end-users and their technological systems so they can utilize their skills in more value-adding ways, and migrating to EspoCRM is a big part of this. Therefore, we need a phone system that compliments the CRM well, and an Asterisk-based system seems like the best route to go here.
The company Sangoma essentially owns Asterisk & FreePBX (still Asterisk-based I believe), and they've extended these backends with GUIs via their Switchvox and PBXact software offerings. Switchvox, as their employees have explained to me, is a fully-featured turn-key solution that can be deployed via Cloud-Hosted or On-Prem, while PBXact is a very configuration-heavy, highly-customizable, feature-targeted and modular system that can be deployed in either way as well. 2 days ago my IT guy and I saw a demo of the Switchvox system and DAMN is it a very cool, cutting-edge and super robust system. It has almost triple the built-in features of our current Comcast system, is a third of the price of our current Comcast system in the first year and then is a fraction of our current monthly-recurring cost thereafter. To us this is a no-brainer, we're excited about it and want to move forward.
HOWEVER, we're concerned it won't integrate with EspoCRM... Which is absolute drop-dead requirement! I've made a Reddit post on r/Asterisk about this, and apparently the Switchvox system for some ridiculous reason does NOT come bundled with the Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI), as a user on that post explains, which from EspoCRM's VoIP extension, seems like what this integration is predicated on entirely...
SO, my question is if anyone has had any luck or experience with integrating Switchvox into their EspoCRM instance, whether through AMI or otherwise? I'm open to any options here and if any custom development might be needed, we'll do it and share this with the community of course. Asterisk is an entirely open-source platform, and is what's implemented within the Switchvox application. So there MUST be some way or solution here to achieve an integration between EspoCRM and Switchvox? I really would rather not opt for their PBXact offering because we need something that's ready-to-go and easy-to-manage so my IT department can tackle other projects and initiatives of course...
The Sangoma employees I've been working with have also mentioned they've tried to reach-out to EspoCRM's internal team for more information about this situation, but I don't think they realize it's a small team based out of Ukraine, so they're of course very busy and don't have similar daylight hours as us here in the US.
So here I am tapping this wonderful community... Lemme know ANYONE's thoughts/opinions/experiences here... It's all very much appreciated!!!![Big Grin](https://forum.espocrm.com/core/images/smilies/biggrin.png)
I've been planning a customized EspoCRM production deployment for my company's 25-person inside sales team! For our phone system, we currently use Comcast Business VoiceEdge (BVE) which is an absolutely horrible half-baked VoIP system that we've had countless issues with. It doesn't even integrate with our current Zoho CRM, which supports over 120 VoIP systems out there... My job is always to reduce the complex interaction between my end-users and their technological systems so they can utilize their skills in more value-adding ways, and migrating to EspoCRM is a big part of this. Therefore, we need a phone system that compliments the CRM well, and an Asterisk-based system seems like the best route to go here.
The company Sangoma essentially owns Asterisk & FreePBX (still Asterisk-based I believe), and they've extended these backends with GUIs via their Switchvox and PBXact software offerings. Switchvox, as their employees have explained to me, is a fully-featured turn-key solution that can be deployed via Cloud-Hosted or On-Prem, while PBXact is a very configuration-heavy, highly-customizable, feature-targeted and modular system that can be deployed in either way as well. 2 days ago my IT guy and I saw a demo of the Switchvox system and DAMN is it a very cool, cutting-edge and super robust system. It has almost triple the built-in features of our current Comcast system, is a third of the price of our current Comcast system in the first year and then is a fraction of our current monthly-recurring cost thereafter. To us this is a no-brainer, we're excited about it and want to move forward.
HOWEVER, we're concerned it won't integrate with EspoCRM... Which is absolute drop-dead requirement! I've made a Reddit post on r/Asterisk about this, and apparently the Switchvox system for some ridiculous reason does NOT come bundled with the Asterisk Manager Interface (AMI), as a user on that post explains, which from EspoCRM's VoIP extension, seems like what this integration is predicated on entirely...
SO, my question is if anyone has had any luck or experience with integrating Switchvox into their EspoCRM instance, whether through AMI or otherwise? I'm open to any options here and if any custom development might be needed, we'll do it and share this with the community of course. Asterisk is an entirely open-source platform, and is what's implemented within the Switchvox application. So there MUST be some way or solution here to achieve an integration between EspoCRM and Switchvox? I really would rather not opt for their PBXact offering because we need something that's ready-to-go and easy-to-manage so my IT department can tackle other projects and initiatives of course...
The Sangoma employees I've been working with have also mentioned they've tried to reach-out to EspoCRM's internal team for more information about this situation, but I don't think they realize it's a small team based out of Ukraine, so they're of course very busy and don't have similar daylight hours as us here in the US.
So here I am tapping this wonderful community... Lemme know ANYONE's thoughts/opinions/experiences here... It's all very much appreciated!!!
![Big Grin](https://forum.espocrm.com/core/images/smilies/biggrin.png)
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