Been taking a long look at Grandstream. Really impressed so far. No licensing. Very reasonable pricing.

We are primarily a Samsung Officeserv dealer and the name sells, but Samsung has been dangling the carrot on a small-med IP platform for a long time and a few months back the word came down that it isn't going to happen.

Looked at ESI also.

Selling the Grandstream gives us a leg up on competing against hosted systems because of trunking leverage, SIP commissions (ClearFly), and the customer ownership/ROI.

IF anyone is installing the newer line of Grandstream products please chime in.

I am OLD SCHOOL and still pro-digital exts to the bitter end in MOST installs.

Most times there simply is no benefit to IP phones and they are a pain. What is the benefit of installing (specifically) a Samsung IP phone in house vs digital - answer - none.

But systems like this Grandstream are a completely different animal.

Large color Android display phone for the cost of a 90s-looking Samsung iDCS or DS phone.

I mean finally there is a real reason to (possibly LOL) get excited about selling an IP system.

Well after more experience with it, the Grandstream is truly an amazing system for the price.

Their new GXV3240 video phone is a marvel. Audio quality is the best I've ever heard. HDMI port on the phone, out to a TV.

All for less than the 'basic digital' phones we used to carry.

The built-in 32-party call-in conference bridge - all in an extremely cost competitive package the size of a doorstop.

Are they perfect? - no - they have their issues and obstacles, but I just do not see losing many bids to proprietary IP PBXs.

So, almost a year later - how is the Grandstream line holding up? Have you installed many of them?

Good question, would like to know too.

HI! Noisycow ,, can you make some logistical noise on the Grand stream ,, i'm about to buy a system to train with and offer . Thanks for any pros and cons .

Since Noisycow hasn't made any noise, here are a few of my observations.

Pros:

CHEAP! very reasonable pricing. They offer a basic phone for less than $50 MSRP. Android Softphone app is FREE.
Small form factor. The 6102/6104 is about the size of a home router. The other models are 1RU rack mountable (with wall mount holes on bottom)
Most all of the features you could expect from a small PBX mode system. Queue's, ring groups, auto attendant, VM, call recording, parking, forward, etc etc
SIP and IAX trunking/extensions. Easy to link systems and/or remote workers.
"Zero config" extension provisioning for their phones. Set up a template and plug in the phone. (almost that easy but much better than manual xml files or web gui on phone)
Integration with their IP camera's. Allows users to "call" the camera and have video on phone and/or pass audio to/from camera.
Multiple sizes to choose from depending on number of analog or digital trunks you need. 2,4,8,16 FXO or T1/PRI
And many more I can't think of at the moment. Did I mention CHEAP? for a couple of hundred dollars get yourself one to try out.

Cons:

The name recognition. Either people don't know it, or associate it with Grandstream of earlier years (3+ years ago) when their "cheap" equipment meant HORRIBLE equipment
Lack of custom "xxx.conf" files. Not a huge deal to a new comer to Asterisk or VOIP, but a real pain to be limited to only the features they decide to include.
NOT a KEY system. There is no good "line appearance" option. They do offer "SLA trunks" but it breaks virtually all of the other features you might want.
Not expandable like traditional systems. If you want to add a 5th analog to a 6104, you need an external SIP based adapter. (they are really designed for SIP trunks)
Like most systems, different firmware versions present their own quirks. (some versions allow single button parking, others require transfer to park)
No built-in external paging interface. Sure you can use plenty of ways to connect a paging controller, but a good old audio out line is handy.

Noisycow isn't active in the phone business anymore, but he still checks in from time to time. That would explain his not having responded to your questions for follow-up, but I'm also anxious to hear from others about their experiences.

My 6102 arrives tomorrow (Friday). I did an Ipitomy and I have to say, I'm impressed. It reminds me of the passion I had in the early Mitel days (1982) where you learned and applied some really neat technology. I have a Yeastar and Grandstream IP system and trunks from my friendly SIP provider. The 6102 is going to end up in my office where I have a 2-line sip trunk connected to an ATA that I'll bring in on the 2 FXO's, and a SIP trunk group from Flowroute that's costed per minute (less than 1 cent) that I'll configure to the SIP ports. The 2160 phone will be my main station and the handful of VoIP phones will act as backup. I'm most excited about using an external USB memory stick and the IP cameras to see if it really integrates and I have a new iPhone 6 coming tomorrow to try remote viewing.

I bought a Yeastar MyPBX a year ago, but I could never get the SIP trunks working. It turns out that my OpenDNS was not resolving the SIP address. I can fix that :-)

The usability is going to be how well IP systems adapt to Hospitality, both flags and non-flags. The Grandstream non-flag solution looks to be plug and play, without PMS and Check-in check-out. The Yeastar soluton has a price that no one seems to be able to give me. Ebay has been my friend for both PoE and FXS switches. Someday, I'm sure I'll have to pay the piper and buy real products.

This won't happen. Their IP cameras save to either their NVR boxes or a server of your choice with their software.

The USB and SD card slots are for vm storage, backups, prompts, etc.

The integration part is where you can setup an IP camera as a SIP endpoint and make/receive calls to/from the camera. So if you have a GXV3240 for example, you can place a video call to the ip camera and see it right on the phone screen.

Well my bad luck, but I need to learn to walk before I can run so maybe the motion detection can call my iPhone? I'm a couple of weeks out from buying an IP camera, I have several analog cams and 2 four and 1 8 port security system so it's not likely that I'll be hurrying to make a change.

That, it CAN do. Alarm triggers can optionally call a phone or other fun things. I have only had a chance to play with one camera so far....still on my to do list for my home.

Wow. In about 15 minutes, I got my 2 analog lines and my 2160 phone up and running. I actually made a call outbound and everything! Now to set up the SIP trunks....

Just a little follow-up to my Grandstream experiment. I like this system. Through the magic of Voipsupply.com and eBay, I now own THREE phones on my system and I picked up a 4-port box for analog cameras(GXP-3504). Tech support gave me the instructions to interface my Yealink T-28 phone to the UCM and I'm playing with the features. Kinda sneaky, but there is a blacklist feature that plays SIT tones and a disconnect message. I haven't played with the wildcard commands, but it could be that the wily telemarketer that uses a fake CID can be blanket blocked by area code and/or exchange.

My desk workstation now displays the weather https://public.carl.airpost.net/misc/Wx.jpg st the push of a button. I think in a couple of weeks, I might even be able to propose this system as an alternative or primary product to prospects who want to "get one of those VoIP systems".

Once you get the hang of them and really learn all of things it can and can't do, they are great little systems. When you get wholesale pricing on the equipment, it it easy to make a fair amount of profit and still come in way under almost any other competing setup.

We have sold several to a customer of ours with several large(ish) sites running networked IP Offices and they wanted a cheaper way to tie in their "micro-sites" (small remote office trailers with 2-5 phones). We can sell them a grandstream with phones for cheaper than just the base IP500 before licenses.

It isn't a perfect system (what system is?), but is very nice having it as an option.

Saturday i'm removing a Grandstream system and replacing it with Avaya IP Office. Customer Very unhappy with system. He truly got what he paid for. Not much.

Any more recent experience?

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I have been finding many, many positive things about Grandstream UCM6100 series systems on the internet. Most everyone is saying that the trade-off of a "more restricted" asterisk server with the "more easily configured" Web GUI is the best idea yet. As anyone knows: Flexibility usually leads to Complexity.

I have not yet worked with one of these. I have messed around with Asterisk a bit, but have not supported a customer on this platform.

What completely blows me away, is the FXO/FXS ports built-in. To buy this hardware separately (for an Asterisk server) costs more than the UCM61xx itself!

I have watched the 4 hour training seminar on YouTube from the Grandstream "head of engineering" (recorded by "LucidPhone")

IMHO, I think that this system with the latest firmware and the latest phones is really going to be a game changer.

The FSX gateways (GXW42xx) let you add up to 48 analog phones via gigabit ethernet (I am thinking for a small motel?) A few grandstream cameras work as doorphones. Nothing restricts this system from using third-party hardware. Should be possible to add a YeaStar TG400 GSM Gateway as backup phone trunks.

My curiosity is piqued.

Important to note: You want this phone network to be separate from the SMB customer's network (VLAN or separate POE switch). There are a lot of "dirty" networks out there that can cause issues (too many broadcasts). Plus internet upload bandwidth can be sucked up by employees playing WOW on the network. A separate ISP connection or a router with BWM enabled is advised. See as an example from one SIP provider:
https://kb.intermedia.net/Article/3041