5 New Reasons to Switch to Asterisk

Updated: August 20, 2012

There are already a lot of good lists of reasons why you might want to try out Asterisk. But not all the good reasons are the obvious ones. Here are five more that are just a little bit different (apart from the first one...)

1. Lower Costs. Asterisk users report up to 90 percent savings over proprietary IP-PBX technologies, including the elimination of per-phone license fees. Costs are also cut by the software's ability to run on standard, off-the-shelf hardware rather than high-end, proprietary systems,

2.Flexible Features and Power Functions. New functions can be created by writing scripts in Asterisk's language, by writing modules in C, and by writing scripts in Perl or other languages. As a result, adopters can easily create powerful, programmable PBXes, incorporating features that otherwise would cost many tens of thousands of dollars.

3. Compatibility With a Wide Range of Platforms. Users aren't locked into vendor-mandated systems. Asterisk users can choose between Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris.

4. Free and Abundant Support: The vibrant Asterisk user community provides no-cost support via the Internet.

5. Continuity. While telecom vendors vanish, merge, change focus and terminate product lines in a flash, the Asterisk community and support infrastructure will endure as long as a substantial user base exists.