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Frequently asked questions

Is the Community Edition really free?

Yes — free, up to 2 concurrent calls, with all core PBX features (extensions, ring groups, IVR, voicemail, recordings, reports). No trial timer, no credit card, no account required. It never phones home.

What exactly is a "channel"?

One simultaneous call — counting both outside calls and calls between your own extensions. If 6 calls are happening at the same moment, you're using 6 channels. Rule of thumb: 1 channel per 3–4 office staff.

Do you charge per user or per extension?

Never. Create as many extensions and users as you like on any plan — you only pay for concurrent call capacity.

What happens if my license expires or your license server is unreachable?

Your PBX keeps working. Licensing failures never interrupt calls: you get a 30-day offline grace period, and even a fully expired license simply falls back to Community limits. Emergency calls are always allowed, in every state, no exceptions.

Which SIP providers work with LinuxPBX?

Any provider offering standard SIP trunking — registration or IP-based auth. Guided setup templates for Twilio, Telnyx, Flowroute, Skyetel, VoIP.ms, Callcentric, Bandwidth, SignalWire and ClearlyIP are on the roadmap.

Which desk phones are supported?

Any standard SIP phone or softphone works today. Zero-touch auto-provisioning is coming in waves: Yealink, Grandstream and Fanvil first, then Snom, Poly and Cisco (MPP).

Can I migrate from 3CX or FreePBX?

That's exactly who we built this for. CSV extension import works today; dedicated 3CX and FreePBX importers are planned. Tell us about your setup — migration feedback shapes the tooling.

Is my data mine?

Completely. Self-hosted means your call records and recordings live on your server. Backups are downloadable archives you can take anywhere — leaving LinuxPBX must always be easy, that's the point of self-hosting.

How is security handled?

Encrypted SIP credentials at rest, generated strong passwords, role-based access with hard tenant isolation (proven by automated tests), audit logging of every change, protected recording playback, and a built-in security audit page. Config deploys are validated and backed up before anything goes live.

What support do I get?

Community Edition: community forum. Professional: support tickets with next-business-day response. Enterprise: SLA-backed support. Documentation and knowledge base are free for everyone.

Is LinuxPBX open source?

LinuxPBX is proprietary commercial software built on proven open-source infrastructure. The installer and phone provisioning templates will be public repositories. We publish our security practices and our roadmap openly.