Forget www.pbxes.com
 

Have been using www.pbxes.com for many years. Good service but the last year it has become worse and worse.

To get some sort of support one has to be a paying member and post on the forum. This is where the problem starts, major problems have to be solved by iptel the owner. Not only is he rude he also does not give good support. Sure you cvan buy support and have to pay for this. Also be carefull to critiize him as he will make your post unreable !

also pbxes is good in taking money. One can pay only thru payapl, every month, 3 month or year. I you have paid say 1 june 2010 for 1 year and you cancel you subsrcibtion at paypal, pbxes will automatically shutdown your paid account to a non paid account loosing all your paid for services.
You have to request for a money back and the minium amount seems to be 10 euro. If they owe you less than 10 euro it's gone.

There are many free account and paid account on the same server. You wonder why paid accounts don't get a seperate more reliable server instead of sharing them with free account.
But wait in case a server does go down after 30 minutes your account is moved to another server automatically. On paper this seems to work, in reality it hardly works. Many times when a server has problems you will notice this and if you can still reach the server you can try to move your account manually. If like many times the server can't be reached you will have to wait wait and wait.

PBXEs is not expensive at 11 euro per month but given the many reliability problems the last years I have moved to a vps running asterisk/elastix. It has taken some time to get everything moving but I am more than happy now having a full server, no calback limits like pbxes (3 number limit).

I would advice anyone get a vps server 512 mb minimum, 1 core and stay away from pbxes.com

Forget to mention another important thing. Many people are using a betamax brand to call thru sip. Betamax and pbxes have always been tricky.
Since you share your ip with many many other users this means that you can't use the betamax free days. Betamax limits this to 300 minutes per 7 days per ip. You can imagine if you have 500 users these 300 minutes are used fast.
The next problem is that since last week betamax has blocked most of pbxes ip addresses, meaning no one is able to use a betamax clone to make calls.
When looking at the errorlog you are requested to use there wholesalebrand Voice Trading. Wholesale VoIP solutions instead.

The only reply pbxes.com give on this topic is that they think you should just use another provider. This is another example on how arrogant the operator of this service is.
They have never really tried to solve the problem between betamax brands and pbxes.
Yes another reason to stay away from pbxes.

running asterisk/elastix
 

bbob,

I have been using pbxes.com as well and noticed the same problems. I am mainly interested in the callback feature and make outcalls using a Betamax company.(VoiceTrading)
Could you give me a working flow to setup my own asterix/elastix server for callback. I am totally unaware on how to proceed.How long would it take to setup, what are the costs involved, where to buy the equipment.
Thanks

There are 2 ways to do this. you can buy a used so called thin clinet pc. These are typically amd 1 ghz or simular type small pc's. You can install eleastix or freepbx (asterisk based on these) and hook them up to your own computer.

I just rented a vps that had asterisk/elastix installed. Minimum is 512 mb for it to run well and som good cpu speed. Depending on your location this should cost between 8 and 20 euro per month.

Setup is not as easy as on pbxes, you need to setup trunk and supply some config lines.
Outbound / inbound routes work simular but take some testing to work.

My company only works on voip and I have 10 inbound trunks, did numbers from different countries. Took me 1.5 days to setup but if works fine now. There is no 3 callback numer limit.

I also use voicetrading for callback to my uk cellphone but you might want to checkout SmartVoip | The smart way to save on your calls! they only charge 5.5 cents (without vat) to english mobile number. You can transfer money for your voincetrading account to smartvoip.
Smartvoip does not allow forwarding of caller id so you will not see who is calling you. also smartvoip like other betamax clones (except voicetrading) are now blocked on most pbxes servers.

English mobile number? Don't let a Scott, Welsh, Northern Irish, Channel islander etc. hear you saying that! ;)

Anyhow...better advice would be to ditch smartvoip and use another one of their clones VoipGain | For the cheapest international calls who only charge 3 cents without VAT to a UK mobile. Also they give you 30 more freedays than smartvoip.

Thanks for the voipgain tip, will try them next week. There are so many betamax brand that one forgets some of their brands.

Hope I can tranfer money from my voicetrading account, this ways is without tax and truly 3 eurocents per minute. Just downloaded their client ans seems like a finarea brand so sending money from voicetrading might not work.

How about Free PBX? I think this is similar to PBXes but haven't tried it yet.

freepbx is a software that runs asterisk. Freepbx just makes asterisk easier to configure.

You can download freepbx for free run it on your own server or on a dedicated or virtual server connected in a datacenter.

I am running elastix that also includes freepbx and is also.

pbxes.com also runs on asterisk and they have made their own system around it so you can confiuge your settings. Just read their forum again and they keep on having problems. Several users from Brasil had problems with 1 server, reported this on the forum (their is no other way to contact pbxes) I took them almost 1 day to resolve the issue. In that time companies could not use their voip phone system. Again another proof to stay away from this serivce. You just don't get support and if you complain to much they kick you out.

pbxes
 

i used pbxes.com for several years and had the same experience.

i switched to callwithus.com , they offer a virtual freebpx server - $35 per month. i don't like the hassle of running my own hardware. they are very reliable and support is excellent.

i also use sipsorcery.com as an alternate server - $35 per year, however, you need to be familiar with asterisk or ruby source coding. if you have time to learn, it is well worth it.

hope this helps

pbxes
 

I have used for a full 1 year, using the callthru and callback featres in many countries and must say that has worked very well.
Sometimes when their server goes down, they will email you abou this, you still have to go online to bring up your account.
But this is the only glitch I had, for the rest excellent.