To PBX or Not PBX

Do you guys have VoIP at home? are you using a PBX or Direct-Connection to a SIP trunk like Call-Centric?

I have been a customer of Call-Centric for a long while, even switched my dad over from Vonage (hes paying a quarter of the price for the same type of plan). For my dad I didnt want to deal with setting up a PBX so I just connected the phones directly to Call-Centric and this works great for them, The features they want like Caller ID, Blocked/Unknown Callers Filtering, and The ability to Block numbers are all things built-in to Call-Centric, However I need a full blown PBX for features like Custom IVRs, Custom On-Hold Music, Voicemail-to-Email, etc... so I have been running Kerio Operator PBX for almost a decade and I love it.

To start it is dead simple to install and setup, Basically just burn the ISO, Install via Baremetal or VM and paste your License Key into the web portal once instructed by the installer and your off to the races! Setting up a Routing is super easy too, I took my Call-Centric instructions for Asterix and just filled in the fields and hit save, I was up and running in less than 10 minutes and able to make and recieve calls!

I first started looking for a SIP Provider like Call-Centric when Google axed the hack-around to make a google voice number work with a PBX, Free is always better but if you cant get free then cheap is always nice, I am currently paying less than $10 a month for Unlimited In-Bound with 2 Channels and 120 Minutes Out-Bound (95% of my calls are in-bound to me so the low minutes is not an issue for me at all) and fully SMS enabled which is nice too, So all in all I am very happy with my setup and will continue to use Kerio Operator and Call-Centric unless something way better comes along!

let me know what your setup is like in the comments!

So long and Thanks for all the Fish!