atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Which IP system should we sell?

Trixbox is just an Asterisk based PBX.

Yeah I agree, name recognition is important in selling any product. I'm not in sales nor did I choose to go with Trixbox. We sell a bunch of ESI and probably 95% of customers don't know of them before we introduce it, but some how we're pushing them out there pretty well. Trixbox is definitely going to be more of a challenge to sell on the name but it may be a great product (maybe not) and it may sell itself on a demo.

I am sorry, but anyone from my generation will see the name "Trixbox" and think, "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!".
I cannot see that as helping a sale...

I AGREE TRIXBOX IS NOT A GOOD NAME, but if anyone who is introduced to a phone system with this name, and thinks "Silly rabbit, trix is for kids", and starts judging it on that is misguided and shouldn't be calling shots for their company's purchases.


Please watch your language and the manner in which you express yourself.

I recently had a competitor try to sell one of my customers on a Trixbox. My customer trusts me implicitly and had me sit in on the sales pitch. I was genuinely embarrassed for these guys, they were so totally unprepared. Nice guys and I'm sure they're good at data but by the time they left, they had that look on their face like they needed a strong drink or some Class A drugs.

Trixbox is Fonality's el-cheapo version of their PBXtra platform. It's a lot closer to its Asterisk roots. We talked with Fonality quite a bit about selling their PBXtra systems but it was always a circus.. They were very desperate to sign up established phone people but then they wanted nearly ten large for their NFR system.

You've obviously got no inclination towards sales and marketing. Beyond that, don't ever underestimate the inversely proportional relationship between competence and cash on hand.

We've been using Allworx for about 2 years now and are very happy with them.

Actually, Trixbox was a name picked by the group of open-source programmers who changed it from it's previous name of "Asterisk@Home" because everyone would call Digium for support.

Infact, it wasn't until the license was sold that it became a commercial product. So if you think the name Trixbox sounds funky, it's because it was never chosen (and kind of meant) to be a commercial product. The name was just chosen because they had to call it something. The fact that it's now "Commercial Open Source" is all thanks to the generation that came before us trying to make a buck.

I feel kinda sorry for 94astro. Just comes here for some help and gets his balls busted over and over about something he has no control over.

How bout everybody lighted up a little?

Figured I'd give my 2 cents from the customer point of view. :-) I am an end user (evil IT guy) who recently ended up purchasing a Mitel 3300 (all IP) over an ESI. The ESI was priced great, had some neat features, layout was nice, etc etc., however it seemed to be somewhat limited, ie-you have your choice of...one phone model, one software package, etc. The Mitel seems to be more of a platform that can be integrated in more ways than one, offers a plethora of phones and accessories to pick from, and it seems like they're more with the times when it comes to integration with new things like the Microsoft stuff.

A couple other things that stood out with the Mitel were that their phones use a base for their networking end; you can take your existing phone and put it on a wifi base, or a gigabit ethernet base (to piggyback with a computer with gigabit). They also have some tie-in with the new Microsoft Office Communications and all. To us, it seemed like a more well-rounded system.

I felt bad because our existing vendor (a small shop), I was very comfortable with them and wish we could have gone with them, but honestly I feel we're getting more bang for the buck with the Mitel. It was more the system than it was the vendor in this case. Its one thing to say that this system or that system can offer everything the customer needs (to make a phone call), but for us we looked at the whole picture.

I feel kinda sorry for 94astro.

Yeah well, you gotta expect some flack when you bring up this subject around here.

-Hal