Asterisk
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Asterisk is a powerful free PBX engine for teams with in-house VoIP/Linux engineers.
Comparison
Asterisk vs FreePBX
Asterisk and FreePBX both land on Depends.
FreePBX
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Buy if you have Linux/VoIP admin skills and will patch fast . the core is free and deep.
| Compare | Asterisk | FreePBX |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Depends | Depends |
| Best for | Teams with in-house VoIP engineers | MSPs managing many client phone systems |
| Who it's not for | Small offices wanting a phone that just works | Non-technical teams wanting plug-and-play phones |
| Privacy | Mature project with a real security process . but a steady CVE flow, including 2026 RCE and privilege-escalation flaws; patching is your job.⁴ | Multiple critical 2025 vulnerabilities, including actively exploited unauthenticated RCE; requires rapid patching and lockdown16 |
| Support quality | Peer forums only; poor-experience reports exist | Community forums; paid support is Sangoma-only |
| Public sentiment | Users value the flexibility and zero license cost but warn it demands real VoIP expertise, with community-only support.⁵ | Users praise FreePBX's flexibility and free price but flag the security burden, paid module creep, and uneven support. |
| Biggest gotcha | Internet-exposed Asterisk servers are frequent fraud targets; hardening is mandatory, not optional. | August 2025 zero-day let attackers root unpatched, internet-facing servers; emergency patch required |
Pick Asterisk when
- Teams with in-house VoIP engineers
- Custom IVR and call-center builds
- Budget-driven self-hosters
- Developers embedding telephony
When Asterisk is not a fit
- Small offices wanting a phone that just works
- Anyone without Linux/VoIP admin skills
- Teams that can't patch CVEs within days
- Buyers needing vendor support SLAs
Pick FreePBX when
- MSPs managing many client phone systems
- Companies with in-house VoIP/Linux admins
- Call centers needing full control
- Homelabbers learning telephony
When FreePBX is not a fit
- Non-technical teams wanting plug-and-play phones
- Anyone without staff to patch zero-days within days
- Small businesses that just need a dial tone . buy hosted VoIP
- Servers you'll expose to the internet and forget
Sources
- The official Asterisk Project repositorygithub.comofficial
- Asterisk . Get Startedasterisk.orgofficial
- Asterisk Security Vulnerabilities (official docs)docs.asterisk.orgsecurity
- CVE-2026-23740: Asterisk ast_coredumper RCEsentinelone.comsecurity
review
- Terrible forum/support experience (Asterisk community)community.asterisk.orgreview
- Companies that use Asterisk . TheirStacktheirstack.comnews
- Digium Asterisk Appliance press releasesangoma.comnews
- FreePBX official sitefreepbx.orgofficial
- FreePBX Add-Ons (licensing)freepbx.orgofficial
- FreePBX Hosted / PBXact Cloudfreepbx.orgofficial
- G2 reviews . FreePBXg2.comreview
- checkthat.ai FreePBX rating (7.9/10)checkthat.aireview
- Reddit r/msp . Thoughts on FreePBX?reddit.comreview
- FreePBX forum . brilliant but features lag VitalPBXcommunity.freepbx.orgreview
- NVD . CVE-2025-57819nvd.nist.govsecurity