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Your own phone system, with Asterisk underneath, either on your site or in our UK data centres. It is dedicated to you, it can be configured however your business needs, and adding a member of staff does not add a line to the monthly bill. The alternative most businesses are sold is renting seats on a hosted platform: a charge per user, per month, for as long as you stay, rising every time you take someone on.
On-site or hosted, it is the same switch and the same capability, so the choice is really a question of where your people sit. If all of your extensions are in one place, put the switch on site. If they are spread across offices, homes or the road, host it with us.
Published UK prices for hosted per-seat phone platforms typically run from about £10 to £25 per user per month, with the features most businesses actually want often sitting in the higher tiers. The calculator starts at £15, the middle of that range; put in the price you are paying or have been quoted.
Against it we set our own hosted switch prices. Up to 30 endpoints, a self-managed switch or one managed by us; up to 100, the larger plans; above 100 we quote individually. At 30 users and £15 a seat, the managed switch is £99.95 against £450 a month.
Both sides exclude call charges, trunks and handsets, which you pay for whichever model you choose. The calculator counts one endpoint per user; someone with a desk phone and a mobile app uses two. For very small offices the gap is narrower, and that is why the self-managed and on-site options exist.
Each plan is a dedicated switch running FreePBX 17 on Asterisk, hosted on our own hardware in our own UK data centres. On a self-managed plan we host and look after the platform and you configure the switch; on a managed plan we configure, secure and maintain the switch for you, and handle any issue on it. Adding extensions costs nothing until you reach the plan's endpoint limit. Service levels are set out in our SLA.
| Plan | Description | SLA | Monthly | |
| PBX10 | FreePBX 17, self-managed, 30 endpoints | SLA3 | £19.95 | |
| PBX10M | FreePBX 17, managed by GEN, 30 endpoints | SLA3 | £99.95 | |
| PBX50 | FreePBX 17, self-managed, 100 endpoints | SLA3 | £39.95 | |
| PBX50M | FreePBX 17, managed by GEN, 100 endpoints | SLA3 | £199.95 |
Where you would rather not share a virtualisation platform, we can host the switch on a physical server dedicated to you, which we maintain for the duration of the contract and replace periodically in line with its expected service life. PBXact and larger configurations are quoted individually.
A seat on a shared platform gives you the features on that platform's price list. A switch of your own gives you Asterisk, and with it anything the business can describe. The AI behind these features runs on our own hardware in our own UK data centres.
No menu to listen to. The switch asks callers what they need, converts the answer to text, and an AI model decides which department should take the call before it is transferred, with a message telling the caller where they are going.
The inbound number is looked up in your CRM, helpdesk or contacts, so you know who is calling before you answer, and the call can go straight to the account manager who knows them. We do exactly this on our own switches.
Premium or contracted customers enter a support PIN and go straight through to the right team, while everyone else joins the general queue. A simple way to run separate telephone support channels.
Callers waiting in a queue, or calling out of hours, can leave their name and number for a callback instead of holding. The details go to your CRM, by email or into a dialler queue, which is far easier to work through than voicemail.
Calls and voicemails converted to searchable text and attached to the customer record in your CRM, so what was said is on file without anybody typing it up.
The switch calls the customer and plays a spoken message generated from your data, for appointment reminders, cancellations and similar notices.
Beyond these, we write custom dialplan and AGI around your process rather than a vendor's feature list. The platform detail, from bare Asterisk to FreePBX and PBXact, is on our Asterisk and FreePBX support page, and the software we build on it, from smart queues to CRM integration and browser dialling, is under Telephony software.
Intercepting an unencrypted IP call is straightforward for anyone in the path, so we encrypt the voice between the handset and the switch as standard, at no extra cost. With a hosted switch, that covers every call between the phones in your office and the switch in our data centre. Calls to any other phone system at GEN, or any GEN provided telephone system, are encrypted in transit throughout.
The same applies to mobile SIP: a call made through the switch from the app on your mobile is encrypted all the way from the phone to the switch, whereas an ordinary mobile call is decrypted inside the mobile network.
Any SIP handset is supported, with Yealink, Snom and Grandstream as common choices. Mix basic desk phones, touchscreen executive phones, wifi handsets and softphones as each role needs, and we will supply and support them, or support the ones you already have.
Analogue and ISDN lines are being withdrawn nationally, so most businesses will move to SIP whether or not they change their phone system. We handle the move end to end, and it does not have to mean replacing everything at once.
Keep an existing phone system and bridge it onto SIP with gateways at 1, 2 or 4 lines per unit, up to 60 lines, fully managed and maintained.
Numbers moved from a traditional line provider or another SIP provider, handled with care: the switch and routes are in place before the port completes, so traffic is answered from the moment it arrives.
We are not tied to any trunk provider and work with them all. Multiple trunks from different providers give resilience, and least-cost routing sends each call the cheapest way.
An app turns your mobile into an extension: your office number on outbound calls, transfers and the directory to hand, and calls carried over data rather than minutes. Desk phone and mobile can ring together.
If your internet connection or the switch is unreachable, inbound calls are re-routed to mobiles at source, so callers still reach someone.
Gateways holding mobile SIM cards, on site or hosted, for outgoing and incoming calls over a mobile tariff, from two to 16 lines per gateway, with SMS where the software supports it.
Businesses making and receiving calls in the UK carry legal obligations, and regulators can ask you to show how you meet them. The switch does not discharge those obligations for you, but it supports them: call recording, encrypted storage in the UK, access control and audit trails of who listened to what.
A recorded call that includes personal data needs a lawful basis for recording it, callers must be told the call may be recorded, and recordings should be kept no longer than their purpose requires. Holding them in the UK keeps international transfers out of the picture.
Ofcom's rules require the number presented on outbound calls to be valid and dialable, and to identify the caller. We set up presented numbers per route, team or campaign so that every call goes out with one that meets them.
Firms within the FCA's recording rules must record relevant telephone conversations and retain them for the required period. The switch records the calls in scope, including those made through it from mobiles, and keeps them secure, retrievable and audited.
For most offices, yes, by a wide margin. At 30 users and £15 a seat, a per-seat platform costs £450 a month, £5,400 a year and £27,000 over five years. GEN's managed switch for up to 30 endpoints is £99.95 a month, £1,199.40 a year and £5,997.00 over five years. Both figures exclude call charges, trunks and handsets. For very small offices the gap is narrower, which is why self-managed and on-site options exist, and the calculator on this page lets you put in your own numbers.
Yes. Whether it sits on your site or in GEN's UK data centres, it is a switch dedicated to you, not a share of a platform used by many other businesses. It runs Asterisk, it can be configured however you need, and adding an extension adds nothing to the monthly bill until you outgrow the capacity of the plan or the hardware.
Yes. Numbers can be ported from a traditional line provider or from another SIP provider. Porting needs to be handled with care, so GEN put the new switch and routes in place first and make sure they are ready to take the traffic as soon as the port completes, so there is no interruption in service.
Inbound calls can fall back to mobiles at source, so if your connection or the switch is unreachable, callers still reach someone. With an on-site switch, calls between extensions never leave the building and carry on working regardless. Mobile SIP users keep working over mobile data.
Yes. Recording can be set per extension, queue or route, with recordings held in encrypted storage in the UK and access controlled and audited. The recording is the easy part: you still need a lawful basis for it, to tell callers it is happening and to set a retention period, and GEN will set the system up to support those decisions.
Any SIP handset. Yealink, Snom and Grandstream are common choices, alongside wifi handsets, touchscreen executive phones, conference units and softphones on mobiles and desktops. GEN can supply them, or support the ones you already have.
Analogue and ISDN lines are being withdrawn nationally. GEN can move you onto SIP trunks with a new switch, or keep your existing phone system and bridge it with analogue gateways at 1, 2 or 4 lines per unit, up to 60 lines, fully managed and maintained.
Yes. The self-managed plans leave the switch configuration in your hands, but the HelpDesk is there around the clock if you need help, at GEN's published rates. On the managed plans GEN configure, secure and maintain the switch for you.
Tell us how many people you have, where they sit and what you pay now, and we will set out what an on-site or hosted switch would cost you, with the figures side by side. Our telephony engineers are UK based and in-house, and GEN's own telephony runs on the same Asterisk and FreePBX switches we build for customers.
Already running Asterisk or FreePBX and need help with it? See Asterisk and FreePBX support, or raise a ticket on the HelpDesk.
