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Astound Hosted Voice vs FreePBX comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Astound Hosted Voice
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FreePBX
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP category, the mindshare of Astound Hosted Voice is 5.3%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreePBX is 3.3%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FreePBX3.3%
Astound Hosted Voice5.3%
Other91.4%
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
 

Featured Reviews

BF
IT Director at a university with 201-500 employees
Admin features make it easy to customize and change, while Voicemail Transcription is fast and accurate
The most valuable feature is the admin platform that we work with. It allows us a very centralized approach for doing things and it allows us to manage and control everything right from the very top. We could do that before, but the features that we have with RCN seem more extensive than the previous company that we worked with. The Voicemail Transcription is more accurate than what we had with our previous company. Also, and I'm not sure if this is because it's a fiber line, we seem to get the responses and the transcription almost instantaneously, faster than what we had prior. We can do lots of things: We can do call groups, we can do work with our extensions, we can set up our account codes, we can take a look at call logs. There are a multiplicity of miscellaneous settings that are allowed for each user and for the Admin. There's a simplicity to it. It seems they use KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. It works for everybody because, when I'm not here responding to it, my technicians are; sometimes my network guy is; sometimes our students are interacting with it. It creates a very easy flow for working through the product and the interface. The automatic upgrades are the best thing that ever happened, because we don't see them, we don't feel them, we just know that they happened, after the fact. What they've done, at least for us, is that we haven't had or felt a crash whatsoever, nor have we felt the disruption as a result of the updates. That tells me that work goes into them to get them done right, and that they really test the code and test the information in updates so that they work properly.
DR
Sr Voip and Call center engineer at Superdave LLC
Migration projects have cut licensing costs and now support flexible call flows and hot standby
FreePBX can be improved as they come out with a new version every year or so. Their current version is FreePBX 17. The user community and the FAQ are great; you can search for just about anything you want to do on FreePBX and they're getting new AI engines and new text to speech engines from third party vendors all the time. So it's a very rich community. Sometimes the security is a bit odd with FreePBX, but security is a bit odd overall, so I don't know if that's a valid concern. I appreciate it; it's a good environment. Sangoma is the owner of the system. If I ever get stuck on something, and it doesn't happen very often, I can call and get help from Sangoma, and sometimes they want me to pay for it. It's fine if that's what it takes, but there's great support.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"In terms of deployment, if I could give a 200 percent rating, I would give it, as it was very well done and coordinated by the RCN team."
"I really like the portal. It makes listening to your messages so much easier as well as changing your voice mail."
"From the perspective of placing work orders, support is really good."
"This solution is easy... Right now we have a 48-port switch, and at any point, if I want, I can throw in a larger switch, or add an additional switch, and I don't have to call anybody to install it. I can do it myself."
"We're very happy with it."
"The solution’s reliability and disaster recovery are amazing. Since their uptime is way over 90 percent, it builds my confidence. Secondly, since it's cloud-based, it's not my problem if the system's down."
"We've been able to combine three separate operating companies into one phone system, and we're very happy."
"We haven't had to face any disaster recovery... [But as] a smaller company, it's nice to be able to pay for somebody else to take care of that."
"My advice for others looking into using FreePBX is that it is reasonable and most of the features are free, so I recommend it."
"FreePBX has positively impacted my organization, and if I were to compare it to Elastix, I find it a lot easier to manage since it does not have a lot of bugs and is very user-friendly."
"The call routing features with FreePBX have enhanced our customer service, with several sites all connected to a single central deployment, allowing people to work remotely from different locations using the same system."
"I have seen a return on investment with FreePBX; for example, the musical instruments group saved over $30,000 a year by moving from Cisco to FreePBX for their licensing."
"I find FreePBX cost-effective as it does bring the return on investment and measurable benefits to my clients."
"FreePBX offers the best features for a small call center for a small company with 20 or 30 agents."
"Since it is a free solution, all the features FreePBX offers are valuable."
"FreePBX has made a positive impact on my organization, and we have completed many projects with it."
 

Cons

"If they could improve on their response times, making them even faster than they are right now, that would be great."
"The analytic part of it, the control panel, those are their biggest areas where they have to improve. There are competitors out there where, when you open the control panel, they have tons of analytics, the ability to add lines, to see which people are on the phone.... RCN has a great product, but they could make it outstanding with the right analytics and control panel."
"One area for improvement is the Web Portal. It's not a full-view screen, it's more like a minimized screen. You don't get the full view of your desktop. It's more like a five-inch by five-inch view. I think they said the software was designed that way. I don't know if there's going to be a newer version coming out later."
"I use the voicemail transcription feature but I'm not sure about the security of the voicemail system, as you can only use numbers for a password, and your direct-dial number is your username. That's kind of vulnerable to brute-force attacks. The passwords are limited to six digits, so I'd be a little concerned about security on that end..."
"The analytic part of it, the control panel, those are their biggest areas where they have to improve."
"We had a lot of problems with the install, with the initial rolling out and using of the system."
"Wireless needs improvement. We have a manufacturing facility and the majority of the managers walk around with 2.4 gigahertz cordless phones and they have to walk, sometimes, throughout three different buildings."
"It should be easier to set up new phone additions to the network."
"However, when the call volume is large, sometimes FreePBX goes on halt, and because of that reason, I give it seven out of ten."
"There are some limitation issues with concurrent calls; when we have concurrent calls, sometimes the entire PBX fails."
"One area where they can continue to focus their improvements is support for third-party phones on the endpoint manager module."
"Sometimes the security is a bit odd with FreePBX, but security is a bit odd overall, so I don't know if that's a valid concern."
"Security would be the main feature that I wish was better because the FreePBX box can get hacked quickly."
"Sometimes when I receive reports that a user is not able to make a call out or they are having a call drop issue, viewing the dashboard provides no data."
"AI is not 100% accurate and at the end of the day, a machine cannot be blamed for a mistake it has done; it is always the user's responsibility."
"I believe FreePBX could be improved regarding the user interface. Sometimes the user interface has bugs, and when you apply configuration changes, they do not always apply properly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's very affordable. We're very happy with the pricing."
"We looked at about five or six other companies but when RCN came in, they beat everybody hands-down, on both the features and on the dollars side. It prompted our people to say they hadn't seen numbers so low for the services you get."
"The pricing is very fair. They have very good pricing."
"RCN, as part of the deal, leased us phones at a reasonable price and each line was extremely reasonable as well."
"We're okay with the pricing and licensing... It's based on the number of extensions."
"We felt that pricing was fair because we chose RCN over quotes from several companies. It was reasonable..."
"The solution is saving our company money, based on the initial, up-front cost that would normally be required. The monthly ongoing cost is comparable to prior solutions."
"The pricing is fairly fair... We had a really good rep and she did a great job of working out a contract and a pricing solution that was acceptable..."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
22%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FreePBX?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we only need to pay for the server through DigitalOcean billing. Since it is open source, you can have the ISO and install it on your own.
What needs improvement with FreePBX?
FreePBX has some monitoring and real-time monitoring features. They also have some SIP packet capturing. There is a third-party tool called Homer that is a great tool because it can capture call tr...
What is your primary use case for FreePBX?
I have implemented FreePBX in IVR features many times because I am a hardcore developer who first prefers customization. FreePBX provides many services, but sometimes we do not need all of them, so...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citi Open Tournament
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Find out what your peers are saying about Astound Hosted Voice vs. FreePBX and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.