Download Jitsi Softphone
Doreatha Conneely
Jitsi has been around since 2003. We reviewed the desktop softphone app in 2011 and recently in 2017 for Linux. While Jitsi's functionality is fairly similar across platforms, we wanted to review Jitsi for Mac again to see what's changed. As the premier open source softphone solution, Jitsi certainly deserves a fresh look.
Jitsi Desktop for Mac has the same kind of functionality as most commercial softphones. There's no real gap in features, and the major difference comes down to the issue of reliability. As an open source project, Jitsi Desktop isn't beholden to the same quality assurance as other enterprise softphones. However, with the free pricing, that's likely the tradeoff a Jitsi user will have to deal with. The main features include:
The sound and video quality are excellent. Jitsi Desktop for Mac leverages the strengths of your computer to deliver both, which is impressive for an open source softphone. On a mid-2014 MacBook, we were able to stream full-screen video without a hitch, hampered only by the limitations of the devices from which we were streaming. Speakerphone and PSTN calling sounded okay, but SIP to SIP sounded pristine.
People rarely accuse Jitsi of being behind in features, and this latest version of Jitsi Desktop for Mac showed us that the softphone is doing just fine in terms of breadth of functionality. The main problem with Jitsi, as we discussed above, is one of reliability.
Besides the UI and reliability issues, Jitsi is nevertheless a solid softphone that is free to use. The developers on the Jitsi team did a phenomenal job creating and maintaining this open source SIP softphone. We see no issues with using Jitsi as a personal softphone. However, if you're looking for team or company-wide deployment, we recommend using a more reliable softphone like Bria or OnSIP.
Jitsi Desktop for Ubuntu is a mature open source softphone that has been under development since 2003 (in its original incarnation as SIP Communicator). It's maintained by the Jitsi community, which now also supports several other projects focused on video conferencing.
One of the flaws of Jitsi Desktop is that its interface has not matured along with the project. We found that some of the icons were not intuitive, such as the Conference icon, which is second from left and looks like the Add Contact icon standard. Likewise with the Record icon, which could look like a doughnut hole, a camera, a lens, or perhaps a vinyl record. To discover the functionality of each item, we had to hover the mouse and wait for the context menu, which works but does slow down usage. Other softphones have solved the visual ambiguity problem by putting labels on the buttons directly in the interface, but the Jitsi team has chosen not to do so.
Jitsi Desktop has the same kind of functionality as most commercial softphones do. There's no real gap in features, and the gap mostly comes down to an issue of reliability. As an open source project, Jitsi Desktop isn't beholden to the same quality assurances as other enterprise softphones. However, with the free pricing, that's likely the tradeoff a Jitsi user will have to deal with. The main features include:
Here is a short news just to inform our community that the SIP Communicator SIP softphone was renamed to Jitsi. There are several pages mentioning Kamailio and SIP Communicator out there, among them our participation to Google Summer of Code 2010 as well as the full SIP SIMPLE Presence configuration with XCAP:
I always have an active call through one SIP account as it is connected to Vicidial auto dialer. When I go to make a call with another SIP account the Vicidial call disconnects. I previously used Jitsi softphone which would just put the Vicidial call on hold.
How do I prevent it disconnecting?
It is weird behaviour because it also doesn't call the second line after it disconnects. I have to call a second time for it to actually call.
On my system OpenJDK14 (default) and OpenJDK8 are installed. And I want to keep openJDK14 as standard for other purposes. During Build, got the error:
/jitsi/src/jitsi-5633/build.xml:269: Compile failed; see the compiler error output for details.
As a partial solution it seems like there are some plans to get jitsi meet / jitsi video-bridge ( -meet/ ) to be somewhat compatible with the JSXC chat and for the jitsi video-bridge there is also a SIP bridge:
(But I have not tried setting it up, so no idea if it works)
With the arrival of modern PBXs the hardware requirements and cost has significantly reduced. Gone are the days when POTS (plain old telephone sets) were the king of every telephony installment. With modern PBXs we have the flexibility to go for the hardware based phones or softphones (software based phones). Most of the corporate environment are now shifting to IP enabled telephony handsets, some of the best brands in this domain are by Cisco, Snom, Yealink, Polycom, Aastra, Siemens and Digium, to name a few.
Softphones on the other hand can be used on Desktop, Laptops or smart phones to connect to the organizational PBXs. Some of the softphones are feely available, while for other a license is required. Some of the good names in softphone market are Cisco, Bria Xlite, Eyebeam, 3CX, Zoiper and Jitsi. All of these softphones are available with many features, like codec control, voice messages; call conferencing, NAT tunneling and many more!
Proper testing and fine tuning should be performed, before making the network live, like latency of softphones, servers, and sip trunks should be in normal range so voice communication is smooth and without any issues. Servers should always be selected via proper planning, as selecting servers with low specs can result in issues during peak time. For some modules a user is usually required to purchase licenses from different vendors, like using FAX and G729 codecs etc. Incoming voice numbers (DIDs) should be properly planned according to the region, so there is no latency on its way.
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