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Guide · TelephonyCloud telephony vs traditional telephony: which to choose?
The honest answer depends on two things: whether your hardware is depreciated, and whether your teams sit in one place. Below, the comparison point by point — including the cases where staying put is the right call.
Published on 12 September 2026Team activity · Sales
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Two opposing approaches
Traditional telephony relies on a physical switchboard (PBX) and dedicated lines. Cloud telephony carries calls over the internet and is managed entirely online. Let us compare them on the criteria that matter.
Costs
A PBX means a hardware investment and an installation; cloud telephony works on subscription, with no heavy equipment, at predictable costs proportional to the number of users.
Flexibility and scalability
Adding an extension to a PBX is costly and sometimes slow. In the cloud, users are added or removed in a few clicks, and people work as easily from home as from the office.
Maintenance
A PBX requires on-site maintenance and exposes you to hardware failure. The cloud is maintained by the vendor, with automatic updates.
Features
The cloud natively includes IVR, queues, recording, statistics and above all the coupling to the CRM — hard to achieve with a traditional PBX.
| Criterion | Traditional telephony (PBX) | Cloud telephony |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | High (hardware + installation) | Subscription, no hardware |
| Scalability | Limited and costly | Immediate, in a few clicks |
| Remote work | Difficult | Native |
| Maintenance | On site | Handled by the vendor |
Who is it for?
Cloud telephony suits the great majority of businesses, from SMEs to call centres. See also the cloud PBX.
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Frequently asked questions
Is cloud telephony cheaper than a PBX?
Over the whole life cycle, usually yes — but the comparison only means something if you include installation, maintenance, every change request and the eventual replacement. Against a recent, depreciated unit on a single site, the answer can be no.
What happens if the internet goes down?
Telephony goes down with it. That is the real trade-off, and it is handled with a second link, a mobile fallback or automatic forwarding — designed in, not added after the first outage.
Can we keep our numbers?
Porting is assessed case by case by operator, country and number type. It is the point that sets the timetable, so deal with it before announcing any date.
Is a cloud system less secure than one in our own premises?
Different, not necessarily less. A unit in your server room depends on your own patching and physical security. Our approach to hosting and access control is set out on the security page.
How long does a migration take?
Almost entirely determined by number porting, which varies by operator and country. The rest — configuration, parallel running, training — is counted in days. Send us your number list and we will give you a timetable rather than an average.