4PSA VoipNow Review

very good
key review info
application features
  • Standard PBX features
  • (3 more, see all...)

If you are an enterprise, ISP or HSP, and you try to find a PBX solution that's easy to use and deploy, 4PSA VoipNow might be the answer. It comes in two flavors, a free one - 4PSA VoipNow Express - and a commercial edition - 4PSA VoipNow Professional. For those of you who don't know, a PBX - Private Branch Exchange - is a telephone exchange that serves a particular business or office and VoIP is a protocol for the transmission of voice on packet switched networks or over the Internet. Now let's take a deeper look and see what's in 4PSA VoipNow.

What are the differences between the two versions? The Express one is good for residential and small organizations and it is limited to maximum ten extensions. This could be also used by persons who want to learn more about this technology. VoipNow Professional is fully featured, but has different licenses, going from those designed for only ten to those with unlimited extensions.

There are four ways of installing VoIPNow, by using a .sh installer, an ISO image or Virtuozzo templates. The last one is used on Virtuozzo Hardware Nodes, and you should know that VoIPNow is compatible with only three OS templates, on the i386 architecture. These templates are centos-4, redhat-as4 and fedora-core-5.

I recommend using the ISO installation, because you won't have to deal with a lot of manual configuring. To make things even easier, when you'll boot the CD with the ISO image, you should use the autopartitioning option, unless you want to make the partitions manually. It seems there is a problem with the ISO if you have a SATA hard drive, so it won't install.

If you use the script, and not the CD, you will have a big surprise in case you have a non-RPM based distribution: the setup process will fail! To add more bad news, there are only a few supported RPM-based distros, which are also a little old.

After configuring the server, the client machines can connect to it by using any usual web browser. You only have to type in the server's address. The next step is to login with the default username and password. These are "admin" and "welcome", respectively.

The End-User License Agreement will appear. You should take your time and read it, and if you agree with it, scroll down and check the "Agree to the license" box. Underneath it, there's another box which if checked will not show the license the next time you login. I don't think it was necessary to have a button and a checkbox for the same function - accepting the license.

The first screen you'll see is the Admin Contact Information. Here you'll fill in the fields with the necessary information, a very simple step that won't take too long to complete. Next the PBX Preferences show up, where you can change the extension settings - extension number length, number of seconds to call, maximum call duration, etc -, message notifications, voicemail and global SIP preferences, etc. I think you should add a diagnostic extension password, to make things more secure.

I went to Billing Plans, option located in the left pane, so I could set up a new billing plan. Afterwards, I added a reseller for which I used the previously created billing plan. I changed the permissions of the newly created reseller, but I noticed an awkward thing: I don't know why it required once more to define a billing plan, as I already made one and I've set it as the default for the reseller.

If you go to Options-> PBX - located in the left pane - you'll see all the features of the PBX. If you've purchased the Professional Edition, you can upload your license from this menu, by going to "License Management". A few details will be presented here like your server IP, license key status, number and the type of ownership. Uploading the file will be done very simple and fast.

The server can be stopped and restarted from the admin panel, in case you get into a situation that might require it. Whenever a new client/reseller is created, you will be notified by e-mail about its details - user and password, address, etc - and the billing plan used for it. The notifications can be changed from Options -> PBX -> Email Template Management, which is a simple and intuitive table with all the events for which you, the reseller or client, receive notifications.

If you want to see who has logged in recently you can go to Sessions and you'll have a complete list with all the users, when they've logged in and from which IP they've connected. A very useful option is Report Management which can be accessed from Options -> Reports. The menu is made up of three tabs (Overview, Call cost, Call flows), which will give you more than enough info about the current situation.

The Good

VoipNow could be described with the following three words: stable, reliable, complex. I really liked the way it guided me to the next thing I should do - it showed a message above the options notifying me about this.

The Bad

The bad... I think the developers should have thought about making the program compatible with newer Linux distributions. Another aspect that should be covered is its availability on non-RPM distributions. The tutorials offered on VoipNow's site aren't complete, because they skip some important steps, like the configuring of a VoIP phone.

The Truth

VoipNow is a little bit expensive if you want to buy a license with unlimited extensions. However, I might be wrong, because it is affordable to companies with a high income. VoipNow doesn't focus too much on users with medium VoIP knowledge, but more on the advanced ones.

Here are some screenshots with VoipNow in action:

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user interface 5
features 4
ease of use 3
pricing / value 3


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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