About Asterisk

The open source easy to use and easy to deploy VoIP server with wide range of customization.
Asterisk Features and Benefits
Asterisk has several benefits and some disadvantages.  The benefits of using Asterisk have made it a increasingly popular solution for several organizations.  Some of the benefits of using Asterisk as a pose to proprietary PBX software are:

• Individuals and companies can modify the software to suit their particular needs
• The obvious benefit of no cost is a major advantage for budgeted organizations
• Asterisk is versatile and modifiable to work with a vast array of hardware
• Access to thousands of tutorials on the internet for creating different PBX solutions
• Technical support and access to forums with low cost monthly tech support memberships
• Many of the features of a proprietary professional PBX solution are often offered

Some of the disadvantages that open source PBX software solutions have are:

• Support is an extra cost in most of these solutions
• Difficulty in implementation or understanding how to use the software
• For businesses: there are time and resources that are required to be spent on training employees to install, program, and use the software

Asterisk has several GUIs or graphic user interfaces that allow intuitive access and manageability of the software.  Free PBX is one of the most popular ones.
Free PBX Features and Benefits
Free PBX is a free implementation of Asterisk that offers all of the above mentioned benefits of Asterisk and also offers several features that make it an excellent competitor to proprietary solutions.  Here are some of them:

• Voicemail
• Extensions
• Call forwarding 
• On-hold music
• Digital receptionist
• Shared administration
• Incoming fax reception ability
• Backup of system capability
• Audio records of calls
• Company directory by name
• Call center type queuing system
• And several more features

Free PBX is clearly a feature rich solution for any organization’s PBX needs, and it offers this functionality and these features with only the base software.  Further features may be added with ease to Free PBX, and there are many add-on features that are available online.