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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
2nd
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
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP category, the mindshare of Astound Hosted Voice is 5.2%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FreePBX is 2.7%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Astound Hosted Voice5.2%
FreePBX2.7%
Other92.1%
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

"We've had 100 percent uptime so far. We haven't been down once, not even for a brief second, not even for a reboot. Nothing."
"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."
"We like the administrative features RCN has available. It is important that we can balance call loads through programming options, and have full control of our messaging, schedules, etc."
"As soon as we switched over to the RCN VoIP phone system, the clarity and quality of our calls improved and there has been no downtime."
"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."
"The sidecars on the main phones that we use, the ones that receive the calls, are really important. They help us to distribute calls to people, from reception. That's an important starting point for us."
"A lot of users use the voice to email, that's a nice feature to have. Voicemail will come to me as a .wav file and, if I have a phone, I can just click on the .wav file and listen to it. Or I can play it on my computer. Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, you'll be able to play it."
"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."
"FreePBX offers the best features for a small call center for a small company with 20 or 30 agents."
"FreePBX has made a positive impact on my organization, and we have completed many projects with it."
"It is the most user-friendly, flexible and resilient system for voice-over IP we have installed so far."
"Since it is a free solution, all the features FreePBX offers are valuable."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"I use the voicemail transcription feature on my phone and I think all staff members do. We also have voicemails that we receive from our main number and that can be really confusing. It's something that I've recently had some problems with: The way that these calls are bounced around from line to line before they land in a specific voicemail box that we have to check."
"If they had better ongoing-training options, for example, if they put something out on YouTube where you could just go and look for individual things that you need by looking at a video, that would be very helpful."
"Wireless needs improvement... We're still looking for the quintessential IP phone, the one phone that will actually be SIP-enabled and use the WiFi and be able to carry through three [different] buildings."
"It should be easier to set up new phone additions to the network."
"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."
"The way that you listen to your voicemail messages through the receiver so that you can't fast forward or rewind - I don't like that at all."
"It should be easier to set up new phone additions to the network."
"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..."
"Security would be the main feature that I wish was better because the FreePBX box can get hacked quickly."
"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."
"One area where they can continue to focus their improvements is support for third-party phones on the endpoint manager module."
"I think FreePBX can be improved by offering users the ability to design a call flow more easily through a drag and drop interface."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We felt that pricing was fair because we chose RCN over quotes from several companies. It was reasonable..."
"For us, the monthly price was 38 percent lower. We were paying somewhere between $5,600 and $5,800 every month for voice and data. We got it down to about $4,000 with tax."
"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."
"It's very affordable. We're very happy with the pricing."
"We're okay with the pricing and licensing... It's based on the number of extensions."
"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 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..."
"The pricing is very fair. They have very good pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FreePBX?
The standard licensing fee for FreePBX is really good. Remember FreePBX can be downloaded for free. If you want to add special features, you buy the modules, and the module price points are excelle...
What needs improvement with FreePBX?
They are a very mature product with continuous evolution and improvement. They focus on continual development and improvement. Throughout these 15 years of experience, it has never let us down. One...
What is your primary use case for FreePBX?
Some of the use cases with FreePBX involve deployment scenarios where they had commercial telephony and IP telephony. We have used it for businesses, for office environments with phones, local phon...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Astound Hosted Voice vs. FreePBX and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.