Aculab Cloud vs Asterisk

Aculab Cloud provides APIs for building applications that handle voice and video calls, messaging, and inbound or outbound fax. It supports calls to telephone numbers and SIP addresses, and its WebRTC interface can place live calling in a web page. Listed capabilities include live speaker detection, speech recognition, translation, text-to-speech, voice biometrics, SMS, and MMS. The REST API works with Python, C#, VB, Java, PHP, or other scripting languages; REST applications run on a web server you host. The UAS API supports Python, C#, VB, F#, and C++, with applications running in a User Application Server installed on your platform. Speech recognition uses Google Speech-to-Text, while text-to-speech supports Amazon Polly and Cepstral engines. Aculab Cloud runs on AWS; web services use HTTPS, UAS connections use SSL by default, and customers can encrypt media files with keys supplied at runtime. Accounts are assigned to Europe, USA-East, or USA-West (beta). The free Trial includes $10 in credit for one month. Production is pay-as-you-go, with rates shown in the Cloud Console; Premium usage is invoiced and requires contacting Aculab.

Asterisk is a free, open-source framework for building communications applications and turning an ordinary computer into a communications server. It powers IP PBX systems, VoIP gateways, conference servers, call centers, voicemail servers, and IVR systems. Listed functions include call routing, recording, queuing, conferencing, voicemail, automated attendants, and call transfers. Computer-telephony interfaces include AGI, AMI, and the Asterisk REST Interface (ARI); listed VoIP protocols include SIP, H.323, IAX, Jingle/XMPP, MGCP, and SCCP. Asterisk can connect communications to applications, including CRM systems through AMI. The source code can be downloaded, and the project points users to installation on a modern cloud Linux instance. Building applications requires working knowledge of Linux, scripting, networking, and telephony. Asterisk is distributed under GPLv2; Sangoma offers commercial licensing for uses incompatible with that license. The Asterisk forum provides community help with installation, upgrades, and operation.