The State of VICIdial in 2026: Where the World's Most Deployed Open-Source Dialer Stands Today
I have been working with VICIdial since before it had a web interface. I watched it go from a handful of Perl scripts duct-taped to Asterisk into the most deployed open-source contact center platform on the planet. I also watched the cloud eat the on-premise software market for breakfast. So when someone asks me "is VICIdial still relevant in 2026?" my answer is complicated -- and honest. VICIdial is not dying. It is also not thriving the way it was ten years ago. It occupies a specific niche that has gotten narrower but also deeper. The teams that use VICIdial well -- really well -- are getting more out of it than ever. The teams that should not be using it are getting eaten alive by operational costs they never anticipated. This is the state of VICIdial in March 2026. No hype, no obituary. Just the actual situation on the...
Overview
I have been working with VICIdial since before it had a web interface. I watched it go from a handful of Perl scripts duct-taped to Asterisk into the most deployed open-source contact center platform on the planet. I also watched the cloud eat the on-premise software market for breakfast. So when someone asks me "is VICIdial still relevant in 2026?" my answer is complicated -- and honest.
VICIdial is not dying. It is also not thriving the way it was ten years ago. It occupies a specific niche that has gotten narrower but also deeper. The teams that use VICIdial well -- really well -- are getting more out of it than ever. The teams that should not be using it are getting eaten alive by operational costs they never anticipated.
This is the state of VICIdial in March 2026. No hype, no obituary. Just the actual situation on the ground, from someone who deploys this software for a living.
A Brief History: How VICIdial Got Here
Understanding where VICIdial is today requires knowing how it got here. Most "VICIdial overview" articles skip this part. That is a mistake, because the project's history explains both its strengths and its frustrations.
2003-2005: The Beginning. Matt Florell created VICIdial as an open-source front-end for Asterisk PBX. The original code was a collection of Perl scripts and AGI programs that turned Asterisk into an outbound predictive dialer. No web interface. No GUI. Just command-line tools, database tables, and a lot of asterisk -rx commands. The name comes from "Vicarious Dialing" -- the system dials on behalf of agents.
2006-2008: The Web Interface Era. The agent and admin web interfaces arrived, written in PHP with direct MySQL queries. This is when VICIdial became accessible to non-developers. The HTML-table-based interface that shipped in this era is, remarkably, still the foundation of the interface running in production today. The design language -- blue hyperlinks, gray tables, 12px Arial -- was contemporary for 2006. It has not been redesigned since.
2009-2012: Growth and ViciBox. ViciBox launched as a pre-built ISO, dropping installation time from days to hours. VICIdial's user base expanded rapidly across BPOs in the Philippines, India, and Latin America. The Asterisk 1.4 and 1.8 era. AMD was introduced. Call recording became standard. The forum community grew. By 2012, VICIdial had become the default choice for budget-conscious outbound call centers worldwide.
2013-2016: Feature Maturity. Blended inbound/outbound campaigns, skills-based routing, IVR trees, multi-server clustering, and the API all matured during this period. VICIdial went from "cheap dialer" to "full contact center platform." Asterisk 11 and 13 became the standard runtime. The codebase grew. The interface did not change.
2017-2019: The Cloud Challenge Begins. Five9, Talkdesk, and Genesys started eating VICIdial's lunch at the 10-50 agent level. Their pitch was simple: no servers, no sysadmins, no Asterisk debugging. Just a browser and a credit card. VICIdial's response was not a cloud offering -- it was ViciHost, a hosted model where Vicidial Group runs the servers for you. The self-hosted philosophy stayed intact.
2020-2022: The Remote Agent Shift. COVID-19 forced every call center to figure out
remote agents overnight. VICIphone WebRTC development accelerated. Operations that had previously required agents to sit in a physical room with SIP phones suddenly needed browser-based voice. This was transformational for VICIdial -- and also exposed the limitations of deploying WebRTC over spotty residential internet connections.
2023-2024: Security Wake-Up Call and Modernization. Critical vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-8503 and CVE-2024-8504) were discovered -- unauthenticated SQL injection chained with authenticated remote code execution. The patches shipped fast (SVN revision 3848+), but the incident highlighted the risks of running internet-facing VICIdial instances without proper hardening. CentOS 7 hit end-of-life in June 2024, forcing thousands of installations to migrate. PHP 8.2 became mandatory. PJSIP replaced chan_sip as the default SIP stack.
2025-2026: The Current State. ViciBox 12.0.2 shipped. Asterisk 18 became the officially supported runtime. VICIphone 3.0 reached production readiness. AI-powered AMD emerged as a viable upgrade path. ViciBox 13.0 entered beta with OpenSuSE 16.0 and SELinux support. And the community started discussing
machine learning models for answering
machine detection directly on the official forum.
That is 23 years of continuous development by a small, focused team. VICIdial has never had a VC-funded growth sprint or a marketing budget. It has grown through word of mouth, forum posts, and the simple reality that it works.
Where VICIdial Stands Right Now: Version, Codebase, and Technical Stack
VICIdial is currently at SVN revision 3939+, version 2.14b0.5, with database schema 1729. The codebase lives at svn://svn.eflo.net:3690/agc_2-X/trunk -- still Subversion, still no plans to migrate to Git. Matt Florell and the core team push new features and bug fixes into trunk roughly every week. Development has not stopped, despite what the Reddit doomsayers (who are probably posting from shadowbanned accounts) claim.
The official installation image is ViciBox 12.0.2, released September 29, 2025. It ships with:
- OpenSuSE 15.6 with Kernel 6.4.0
- Asterisk 18 with PJSIP support
- PHP 8.2 (finally -- the PHP 5.x era is over)
- MariaDB 10.11.9
- Python 3.11
- VICIphone 3.0 WebRTC softphone
You can check your current version at any time from the admin interface or by querying the database:
1SELECT db_schema_version FROM system_settings;
2SELECT version FROM servers WHERE active='Y';
Or from the command line on a ViciBox installation:
1svn info /usr/share/astguiclient/ | grep "Revision"
2
3asterisk -V
4
5php -v | head -1
6
7mysql --version
ViciBox 13.0 is already in beta. The next major ViciBox release targets OpenSuSE 16.0 with SELinux support, adds SmogPing for network quality monitoring (a smokeping alternative with a PHP dashboard and automated agent IP monitoring), and a new Python-based installer using Textual with a modularized factory setup. No release date yet, but the roadmap is public on the VICIdial forum.
Asterisk 18 is now the standard. Matt officially confirmed full support in September 2025. If you are running Asterisk 16 or earlier, you are on borrowed time -- security patches for Asterisk 16 stopped in October 2025. Asterisk 22, the current upstream LTS, brings ARI tone detection events, PJSIP registrar stability improvements, better CDR handling, and memory leak fixes in app_queue. But VICIdial has not adopted it yet because of legacy dependencies on chan_sip and app_meetme. Those dependencies will need to be addressed eventually. In VICIdial time, "eventually" can mean years.
What Has Changed Since 2024
The biggest changes in the VICIdial ecosystem over the past two years are not in the core codebase -- they are in the surrounding infrastructure:
CentOS 7 is dead. It reached end-of-life in June 2024. Every VICIdial installation guide written before that date is now partially incorrect. If you are still running CentOS 7 in production, you are running unpatched software with known exploits. The migration path is AlmaLinux 9 or Rocky Linux 9 for manual installs, or ViciBox 12 for the official route.
PHP 8.2 is mandatory. ViciBox 12 ships it. Manual installs on AlmaLinux 9 get it by default. The old PHP 5.6/7.x code paths have been cleaned up. If your VICIdial installation still runs PHP 7.x, check your admin pages -- some functions break silently.
PJSIP is the default SIP stack. chan_sip still works but is officially deprecated in Asterisk 21+. VICIdial's configuration scripts now generate PJSIP configs by default. If you are migrating from an old installation, you will need to convert your SIP trunk configurations.
VICIphone 3.0 is production-ready. The WebRTC softphone now embeds directly in the agent interface. Agents open their browser, log in, and start taking calls -- no SIP softphone installation, no network configuration, no NAT traversal headaches. For remote agent deployments, this is the single biggest quality-of-life improvement in years.
A new UI skin shipped in early 2025. It does not fix the fundamental UX problems -- VICIdial's interface is still a collection of HTML tables that
look like they were designed in 2003, because they were -- but it is a step. The new skin adds better color contrast, larger click targets, and a responsive-ish layout for tablet-sized screens. Cosmetic. Overdue.
Critical security patches. CVE-2024-8503 (unauthenticated SQL injection) and CVE-2024-8504 (authenticated RCE) were discovered and patched in SVN revision 3848. An attacker could chain these to execute arbitrary shell commands as root from an unauthenticated perspective. If your installation is below SVN 3848, upgrade immediately. VICIdial stores plaintext credentials in the database by default, which makes SQL injection particularly dangerous. Reflected XSS vulnerabilities in the AST Agent Time Sheet were also patched in revision 3555+.
Market Position: Who Uses VICIdial and How Many
Let me give you the honest numbers, because the internet is full of conflicting data.
14,000+ installations worldwide in 100+ countries. This is the number VICIdial's own documentation cites, and it is plausible. VICIdial is open source, so there is no way to track every installation. The actual number could be higher -- plenty of operations download the ISO, install it, and never register anywhere. Official releases have been downloaded over 25,000 times in the last year alone.
421-436 tracked companies according to 6sense and HG Data, the two most commonly cited technology tracking platforms. This counts companies with enough public-facing infrastructure to detect. The real number of organizations running VICIdial is almost certainly 2-5x higher, because many call centers operate behind NAT with zero public footprint.
Geographic distribution:
- United States: 39% (118 tracked companies)
- India: 19% (56 companies)
- Philippines: 8% (25 companies)
- The remaining 34% is spread across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa
Company size distribution:
- 100-249 employees: 94 companies (the sweet spot)
- 20-49 employees: 71 companies
- 250-499 employees: 58 companies
- Under 20 employees: relatively few (cloud is usually cheaper here)
Industry breakdown:
- VoIP service providers: 14 companies
- Contact center outsourcing (BPOs): 13 companies
- Software development: 13 companies
- Financial services, insurance, and healthcare fill the long tail
The Market Share Reality Check
VICIdial's market share numbers look tiny in absolute terms. 0.02% of the overall contact center market according to 6sense. 0.29% of contact center management according to Enlyft. 1.44% in cloud contact center software (yes, VICIdial gets categorized there). In the predictive dialer subcategory, it is more meaningful at 2.76%.
These numbers are misleading for two reasons. First, the contact center software market is enormous -- Fortune Business Insights projects it at $77.82 billion in 2026, growing at 16.5% CAGR toward $263 billion by 2034. SkyQuest puts the number even higher at $286.3 billion by 2033 at 21.18% CAGR. A fraction of a percent of that market is still a lot of phone calls. Second, VICIdial is open source. Tracking platforms detect it through job postings, tech stack disclosures, and DNS records. A closed-source vendor who requires API keys and cloud accounts has perfect visibility into their customer base. VICIdial does not.
The more useful framing: VICIdial is the dominant open-source option in a market that is 95%+ commercial. Its closest open-source competitors -- GOautodial (a VICIdial fork), FreePBX (primarily a PBX, not a dialer), OMniLeads (WebRTC-based), and ICTDialer (FreeSWITCH-based) -- have a fraction of VICIdial's deployment base. In the open-source call center niche, VICIdial is still king. It is a small kingdom in a big world. But the walls are thick.
The Industry Context: Call Center Market in 2026
To understand VICIdial's position, you need the broader picture:
- The global call center market hit $352.4 billion in 2024, heading toward $496 billion by 2027
- The U.S. telemarketing and call center industry alone is worth $28.5 billion in 2026
- The call center AI sub-market is $2.98 billion in 2026, projected to reach $13.52 billion by 2034 at 20.8% CAGR
- 88% of contact centers now use some form of AI, but only 25% have fully integrated it
- AI is projected to reduce call center labor costs by $80 billion in 2026 (Gartner)
- 73% of call center leaders plan to offer long-term remote or hybrid work
- Agent annual turnover sits at 30-45%, with replacement costs of $10,000-$20,000 per agent
- The average cost per inbound call is $7.16 -- 42% more than chat
These numbers matter because they define the forces VICIdial is navigating: cloud migration, AI integration, remote work, and margin pressure. VICIdial's challenge is not irrelevance -- it is speed of adaptation.
Review Scores Across Platforms
- G2: 4.1/5 stars (41 reviews, 58% five-star, 24% four-star)
- Capterra/GetApp: User satisfaction of 93% based on 311 reviews
- SourceForge: Consistently high ratings from self-hosted users
The pattern in reviews is remarkably consistent across platforms and years: users love the flexibility and features, hate the interface, appreciate the cost savings, and wish the documentation were better. Reviewers specifically note that VICIdial is "light, scalable, and free to use" with "great reporting services" but that the "knowledge curve is difficult" and "the visual interface looks pretty old." This has been the same feedback loop for a decade. It has not changed because VICIdial has not changed in those areas.
VICIdial vs. The Cloud: Five9, Convoso, Genesys, and the Honest Math
This is the section most VICIdial articles get wrong. They either claim VICIdial is always cheaper (it is not) or that cloud dialers are always better (they are not). The truth is conditional, and it depends on exactly three variables: agent count, use case (inbound vs outbound), and in-house technical capability.
At 10 Agents: Cloud Wins
A 10-agent VICIdial deployment costs approximately $2,360-$7,280 per month all-in -- that is infrastructure ($200-$480), VoIP ($760-$1,500), compliance ($150-$1,100), and a part-time contractor ($1,000-$3,000) to keep it running. The per-agent cost comes out to $236-$728/month.
Compare that to:
- Convoso: ~$90+/seat = $900/month + VoIP
- Genesys CX 1: $75/seat = $750/month + VoIP
- Five9 Core: $159/seat = $1,590/month (VoIP often included)
- MightyCall: $20/seat = $200/month + VoIP
At this scale, the cloud platforms are cheaper or comparable, and you do not need to hire a sysadmin. The only scenarios where VICIdial wins at 10 seats: you already have the server and the expertise, or you need dial-level granularity that cloud platforms restrict.
At 50 Agents: It Depends
A 50-agent VICIdial deployment costs $15,830-$30,400/month all-in, or $317-$608 per agent. That includes full-time sysadmin salary ($5,400-$9,200/month), campaign management, compliance tooling, hosting ($680-$1,750/month for 2-3 servers), and VoIP ($3,700-$7,300/month).
Cloud alternatives:
- Convoso: $4,500/month in licensing + $3,700-$7,300 VoIP = $8,200-$11,800 total
- Five9 Core: $7,950/month + VoIP = $11,650-$15,250 total
- Five9 Premium: $12,950/month + VoIP = higher
Those cloud numbers look cheaper on paper. And they are, if you are only counting vendor costs. The VICIdial total includes sysadmin salary, campaign manager time, and compliance tooling. Cloud platforms bundle many of those costs into the per-seat price, but the sysadmin savings only matter if you actually eliminate that role. Most 50-agent operations need someone managing campaigns regardless of platform.
The real differentiator at 50 seats is not cost -- it is control. VICIdial lets you tune dial ratios down to the decimal, configure AMD parameters per carrier, build custom reports against the raw database, and integrate with any CRM through direct API access. Cloud platforms restrict these capabilities to protect their multi-tenant infrastructure. If your revenue depends on squeezing 5-10% more connections out of your dialer -- and in outbound lead gen, it does -- VICIdial's control advantage outweighs the cost parity.
A well-tuned VICIdial instance with aggressive predictive dialing, optimized AMD, and intelligent caller ID rotation will connect 15-30% more calls per agent hour than a hosted dialer with less tuning flexibility. If VICIdial connects 20% more calls, a 200-agent operation at $295/agent effectively costs $245/agent in terms of output -- making it 12-28% cheaper than Five9 on a performance-adjusted basis.
At 200 Agents: VICIdial Wins (If You Have the Staff)
A 200-agent VICIdial deployment costs $39,050-$80,400/month, or $195-$402 per agent. That includes serious infrastructure (5-8 servers at $2,250-$4,700/month), VoIP ($14,700-$30,000/month), compliance ($2,700-$7,100/month), and staffing ($19,000-$37,500/month for senior admin, junior admin, campaign managers, and training).
Cloud alternatives at this scale:
- Five9 Core: $31,800/month in licensing alone, before VoIP
- Convoso: $18,000+/month licensing + VoIP
- Genesys CX 2: $15,000+ licensing + VoIP + add-ons
VICIdial saves $50,000-$200,000 per year at this scale compared to commercial licensing. But the savings only materialize if you have a senior sysadmin ($65,000-$120,000/year) and a junior admin, and they do not quit. The dirty secret of VICIdial economics at scale: your single largest cost -- and single largest risk -- is staff turnover. When your one VICIdial expert leaves and the replacement has never seen an Asterisk dialplan, you are in trouble.
The Honest Feature Comparison
| Capability | VICIdial | Five9 | Convoso | Genesys |
|---|
| Outbound predictive dialing | Excellent -- the core strength | Good | Excellent | Good |
| Inbound routing/IVR | Functional | Excellent | Basic | Excellent |
| AMD accuracy (stock) | 75-82% | ~85% | ~90% | ~85% |
| AI AMD available | Yes (third-party) | Built-in | Built-in | Built-in |
| WebRTC agent phone | VICIphone 3.0 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Caller ID reputation | Manual / third-party | Built-in | Ignite (AI-powered) | Built-in |
| CRM integration | API/custom | Native (Salesforce, Zendesk) | Native | Native |
| Multi-channel (email, chat, SMS) | Basic | Full | Outbound SMS | Full |
| UI/UX | Dated (2003 design) | Modern | Modern | Modern |
| Reporting | Raw SQL + built-in | Dashboards | Real-time dashboards | Advanced analytics |
| STIR/SHAKEN | Via carrier | Built-in | Built-in | Built-in |
| Compliance guardrails | Manual configuration | Platform-level controls | Platform-level controls | Platform-level controls |
| Data ownership | 100% yours | Vendor-hosted | Vendor-hosted | Vendor-hosted |
| Customization depth | Unlimited (source code) | Config-level | Config-level | Config + API |
| Time to production | Days-weeks | Hours | Hours | Hours-days |
| Per-seat cost at 200 agents | $195-$402/mo all-in | $159/seat + VoIP | $90+/seat + VoIP | $75+/seat + VoIP |
The Verdict Nobody Wants to Hear
If you are running inbound customer support with under 50 agents and do not have a Linux person on staff, VICIdial is the wrong choice. Buy Five9 or Genesys and move on.
If you are running 100+ seat outbound campaigns, have technical staff, and your margins depend on dialer performance -- VICIdial is still the best option in 2026. Nothing else gives you this level of control at this price point.
The middle ground (20-80 agents, mixed inbound/outbound) is where the decision is genuinely hard, and where working with a
managed VICIdial provider makes the most sense.
The Open-Source Advantage in 2026
"Open source" in the call center world does not mean what it means in the web development world. When a React developer hears "open source," they think of vibrant GitHub repositories with thousands of contributors and monthly releases. VICIdial's open-source reality is different: a single core team committing to an SVN repository, a community forum that serves as both support channel and gatekeeping mechanism, and a licensing model (AGPLv2) that requires you to share modifications.
Despite those limitations, the open-source model gives VICIdial three structural advantages that cloud platforms cannot match in 2026:
1. Data Sovereignty and Compliance Control
This is the advantage that has gotten more important, not less. GDPR limits data transfers across borders. CCPA/CPRA gives California consumers deletion rights. HIPAA requires audit trails for healthcare data. PCI DSS requires call recording encryption.
When your VICIdial server sits in your data center (or your dedicated cloud instance), you control exactly where recordings are stored, who accesses the database, how long data is retained, and how it is destroyed. You can encrypt hard drives, disable USB access, lock down SSH, and prove to auditors exactly what happened with every byte of customer data.
With a cloud dialer, you are trusting the vendor's security posture. You are trusting their SOC 2 report. You are trusting that when they say they deleted your data, they actually did. For most operations, that trust is fine. For healthcare, financial services, government contracting, and politically sensitive campaigns? Control matters.
2. Zero-Limit Customization
VICIdial's source code is right there. Every PHP file, every Perl script, every Asterisk dialplan context. You can:
- Modify the agent interface to match your workflow
- Build custom dispositions that trigger external API calls
- Write your own reports against the raw MariaDB database
- Integrate with any CRM, lead management, or analytics platform
- Add custom fields to leads without waiting for a vendor ticket
- Build AI pipelines that process recordings in real time
For example, pulling a custom agent performance report with connection rates and talk time takes one query:
1SELECT
2 u.full_name,
3 COUNT(vl.uniqueid) AS total_calls,
4 SUM(CASE WHEN vl.status = 'SALE' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS sales,
5 ROUND(AVG(vl.length_in_sec), 1) AS avg_talk_sec,
6 ROUND(
7 SUM(CASE WHEN vl.status = 'SALE' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)
8 / COUNT(vl.uniqueid) * 100, 2
9 ) AS conversion_pct
10FROM vicidial_log vl
11JOIN vicidial_users u ON u.user = vl.user
12WHERE vl.call_date >= CURDATE()
13 AND vl.campaign_id = 'SOLAR01'
14 AND vl.status NOT IN ('DROP','XDROP','HXFER','AXFER')
15GROUP BY u.full_name
16ORDER BY conversion_pct DESC;
Try getting that from Five9 without paying for their analytics add-on.
Cloud platforms offer APIs and webhooks. VICIdial offers the entire machine. The difference is not theoretical -- it shows up every time a client says "I need the dialer to do X" and X is not on the vendor's roadmap. With VICIdial, you build it. With Five9, you submit a feature request and wait.
3. No Per-Seat Licensing, Ever
VICIdial's licensing cost is zero whether you run 5 agents or 5,000. The economics of commercial software mean that as you scale, licensing becomes your largest single expense. Five9 Core at $159/seat x 200 agents = $31,800/month just for the software. $381,600/year. VICIdial's software cost at any scale: $0.
You will spend money on servers, VoIP, compliance, and staff. But you will never get a licensing true-up bill. You will never negotiate seat commitments. You will never pay an overage fee because you spun up 10 extra agents for a campaign that lasted two weeks.
For operations with seasonal volume --
political campaigns, tax season overflow, disaster response -- this flexibility is not a nice-to-have. It is the reason they chose VICIdial in the first place.
What Is Changing: AI AMD, WebRTC, STIR/SHAKEN, and the Compliance Gauntlet
Four technology and regulatory shifts are reshaping VICIdial deployments in 2026. None of them are optional.
AI-Powered Answering Machine Detection
This is the single highest-impact upgrade available to VICIdial operators right now. Stock VICIdial AMD is a 2008-era algorithm -- a two-state finite state machine processing 20ms audio frames at 8kHz, counting silence gaps and word transitions. It works. It has always worked. It also has a 15-25% false positive rate, which means up to a quarter of live humans who answer get dropped because the system classified them as voicemail.
The technical details: VICIdial's AMD module evaluates six key parameters, producing classification states (HUMAN, MACHINE, NOTSURE, TOOLONG). The betweenWordsSilence parameter is the most critical tuning knob -- it determines how long a gap between words triggers a machine classification.
Here are the defaults and what they do:
1; /etc/asterisk/amd.conf -- stock VICIdial defaults
2[general]
3initial_silence=2000 ; ms to wait for first speech
4greeting=2000 ; max cumulative voice before "machine"
5after_greeting_silence=1000 ; silence gap indicating human answered
6total_analysis_time=5000 ; hard timeout -- classify and move on
7minimum_word_length=100 ; ms -- anything shorter is noise
8between_words_silence=50 ; ms gap between words (TUNE THIS FIRST)
9maximum_number_of_words=4 ; word count threshold
10silence_threshold=256 ; energy level below = silence
These defaults were calibrated in the Asterisk 1.4/1.8 era (2008-2010). Three things have changed since then that make them less accurate:
- Shorter voicemail greetings. iOS defaults now run 8-15 words conversationally, well within the parameters that trigger "human" classification.
- Carrier audio processing. Aggressive jitter buffers and silence suppression compress word boundaries, destroying traditional gap detection. The
betweenWordsSilence parameter needs carrier-specific tuning because jitter buffer variations range from 30-120ms across carriers.
- iOS call screening. Synthetic voice prompts ("Your call has been forwarded...") trigger machine classification when they should route to agents.
A tuned configuration for carriers with long voicemail greetings (AT&T, Verizon) looks different:
1; Carrier-tuned AMD -- reduces false positives from ~20% to ~6%
2[general]
3initial_silence=2500
4greeting=1500
5after_greeting_silence=800
6total_analysis_time=5000
7minimum_word_length=100
8between_words_silence=40
9maximum_number_of_words=3
10silence_threshold=200
After per-carrier tuning, accuracy improves to 85-92% with 4-8% false positives. This is where most competent VICIdial admins land.
AI-based AMD takes a completely different approach. Instead of counting silence gaps, it uses ML models trained on millions of real voicemail recordings to classify audio by prosody, spectral features, and content. The current landscape:
- AMDY.IO claims 99% accuracy with a native VICIdial integration, using audio fingerprint analysis. Every human "Hello" routes to an agent instantly with no ghost calls.
- AMDY.AI offers AI AMD with Vicidial integration that automatically handles voicemails while routing live calls to agents.
- VoiceDetect AMD streams audio via WebSocket in real-time, uses Voice Activity Detection to identify speech, transcribes using cloud STT APIs, and runs a tenant-specific classifier to determine human vs machine.
- DIY approach using a fine-tuned Whisper model + TF-IDF classification: ~98% accuracy, 1.5-3.5 second latency, zero ongoing cost beyond compute. Can run on GPU or CPU.
Commercial AI AMD costs
$0.005-$0.03 per call ($1,500-$9,000 monthly at 10K calls/day) and adds 500-1000ms latency. The economics are stark: on a 50-agent floor dialing 40,000 calls per day, a 15% false positive rate means
6,000 live humans getting dropped daily. At a $3-$5 cost per connected lead, that is $18,000-$30,000/day in wasted spend. Dropping false positives to 2% recovers most of that.
AI AMD pays for itself in the first week.
VICIdial also added DID protection in SVN 3873+: setting
__AMDMINLEN=7 before Dial statements maintains a minimum 7-second call duration after
machine detection, preventing carrier spam flagging while avoiding agent involvement.
WebRTC Agents via VICIphone
VICIphone has been around for years, but VICIphone 3.0 is the first version I would call genuinely production-ready. It is built on WebRTC, embeds directly in the upper-right corner of the agent interface, and requires zero installation or configuration on the agent's machine. Open browser, log in, start taking calls.
This matters because the remote agent workforce is not going back to the office. The numbers tell the story:
- 73% of call center leaders plan long-term remote or hybrid work
- 81% of agents prefer remote work
- Remote contact centers see a 15% reduction in average handle time with proper tools
- Remote operations save $11,000 per employee annually in real estate costs
- 42% reduction in absenteeism from work-from-home agents
- 89% of companies see hybrid work as a permanent part of customer service
For operations with distributed agents -- especially in the Philippines, India, and Latin America -- the old model of shipping SIP softphones, debugging NAT traversal, and troubleshooting audio codec mismatches is a time sink that scales linearly with headcount. WebRTC eliminates it.
VICIphone uses built-in encryption from the Asterisk server to the user's web browser over industry-standard TLS. It is released under the AGPL license with code on GitHub, so you can customize the interface, add your logo, and modify call control behavior.
Enabling VICIphone requires PJSIP WebSocket transport configuration:
1; /etc/asterisk/pjsip_transport.conf -- WSS for WebRTC
2[transport-wss]
3type=transport
4protocol=wss
5bind=0.0.0.0:8089
6cert_file=/etc/asterisk/keys/asterisk.pem
7priv_key_file=/etc/asterisk/keys/asterisk.key
8allow_wildcard_certs=yes
The catch: WebRTC quality depends on the agent's internet connection. On a stable wired connection with 20 Mbps+ down and 5 Mbps+ up, it sounds fine. On spotty Wi-Fi in a crowded apartment building in Manila, you will get audio artifacts. Serious remote operations still enforce wired Ethernet policies. Our
remote agent setup guide covers the bandwidth requirements and quality testing procedures.
STIR/SHAKEN Compliance Requirements
The regulatory environment for outbound calling got meaningfully tighter in 2025-2026. Here is what matters for VICIdial operators:
Annual RMD recertification is now mandatory. The recertification window opens February 1, with a March 1 deadline. Every voice service provider must maintain a current filing in the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD). If your carrier's filing lapses, your calls may be blocked by downstream carriers. Your CORES information tied to your FRN must be updated within 10 business days of changes.
Third-party certificates are dead. Voice service providers must now sign calls with certificates they own directly. If you use a third party for technical signing, they must use your certificate, and you must make the attestation decisions. This killed some of the cheaper SIP trunk reseller arrangements.
Level A attestation is the gold standard. Three attestation levels exist:
- Level A (Full): The carrier knows the caller, confirms the caller is authorized to use the number, and has a direct relationship. The golden rule: buy DIDs directly from your SIP trunk provider. If the carrier assigned the number and you send calls from their network, that is automatically Level A.
- Level B (Partial): The caller is known, but the provider cannot confirm ownership of the phone number.
- Level C (Gateway): The provider cannot verify the caller or the number.
If you are using one carrier for DIDs and another for termination to save a few fractions of a cent per minute, you will probably get Level B or Level C attestation. The result: lower answer rates and potential spam labeling. The savings on termination are not worth the connection rate hit.
State-level mandates are proliferating. Multiple states are pushing their own caller ID and STIR/SHAKEN rules beyond the FCC's federal framework, creating a fragmented compliance landscape that did not exist two years ago.
VICIdial itself does not handle STIR/SHAKEN signing -- your SIP trunk provider does. But VICIdial's SIP stack passes the relevant headers, and your carrier selection directly impacts your attestation level. You can verify signing by checking SIP headers on outbound calls:
1asterisk -rx "pjsip set logger on"
2
3# Look for the Identity header in the INVITE
4# A properly signed call includes:
5# Identity: eyJ...base64_token...;info=<https://cert.stir.carrier.com>
6# ;alg=ES256;ppt=shaken
7
8# Check attestation level in the PASSporT payload:
9# "attest": "A" = Full attestation (best)
10# "attest": "B" = Partial attestation
11# "attest": "C" = Gateway attestation (worst)
If your answer rates have dropped 15-30% over the past year and you cannot figure out why, check your STIR/SHAKEN attestation level first. It is almost always the explanation. We wrote a
full STIR/SHAKEN guide for VICIdial operators that covers carrier vetting and attestation troubleshooting.
The TCPA Compliance Gauntlet
Beyond STIR/SHAKEN, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act continues to tighten:
- One-to-one consent rule (2024): Consent must be specific to each seller, not broadly granted to a lead generator's list of partners. This rewrote the rules for how outbound lead gen works.
- Abandoned call limit: No more than 3% of calls can result in abandonment over a 30-day period. VICIdial tracks this, but you need to monitor it actively.
- Calling hours: 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM in the called party's local time zone. VICIdial's timezone dialing handles this, but misconfigured timezone settings are one of the most common compliance failures.
- Penalties: $500 to $1,500 per violation. A single campaign with a broken consent workflow can generate millions in liability.
- Record-keeping: Documentation of consumer consent, call records, and opt-out requests is mandatory. VICIdial stores this data, but you need processes to export and retain it.
VICIdial does not include built-in compliance guardrails the way cloud platforms do. There is no automatic DNC check that prevents dialing. There is no consent management workflow baked into the lead import process. You must configure these processes manually -- or use a managed provider who does it for you.
Docker, Kubernetes, and Containerized VICIdial
The question "can I run VICIdial in Docker?" comes up regularly. The short answer: yes, with caveats.
Docker containerization of VICIdial works because Docker uses Linux containers rather than traditional virtualization. The critical issue with running Asterisk in a VM is timing: RTP processing requires consistent 20ms frame intervals, and hypervisors introduce jitter that degrades audio quality. Docker containers share the host kernel, so 20ms is actually 20ms.
Successful containerized deployments exist. Users have reported running ViciBox on LXD with 50 agents using 1:10 auto-dialling across 10 telephony containers with 2 virtual cores each, handling up to 50 calls per container. VICIdial's Perl scripts can be separated from the Asterisk process, running in their own containers, which lets Asterisk handle more concurrent calls on each telephony node.
There are Docker images on Docker Hub (bardolphshampine77769/vicidial, hovhannes/ubuntu_vicidial), but they are community-maintained with varying levels of quality and currency. There is no official Docker image from the VICIdial project.
Kubernetes orchestration for VICIdial is technically possible -- scaling telephony nodes via Kubernetes combined with API calls to custom provisioning scripts. But documented production Kubernetes deployments are rare. The VICIdial architecture (tight coupling between Asterisk, the Perl daemons, and the MariaDB database) does not map cleanly onto Kubernetes' stateless container model. You can make it work. Whether it is worth the engineering effort versus just provisioning more ViciBox servers depends on your team's container expertise and scale requirements.
For most operations, the right answer is still bare ViciBox servers (physical or cloud VMs) managed by conventional ops tooling. Containers make sense at the 500+ agent scale where you need automated horizontal scaling of telephony nodes, or in DevOps-heavy organizations where everything else already runs on Kubernetes.
Who Should Use VICIdial in 2026 (And Who Should Not)
I am going to be more direct about this than most VICIdial content you will find online, because I would rather lose a sale than deploy VICIdial somewhere it does not belong.
VICIdial Is the Right Choice If:
You run 50+ seat outbound campaigns. This is VICIdial's wheelhouse. The predictive dialer's granular control over dial ratios, lead hopper management, and carrier routing gives you 15-30% higher connection rates compared to most cloud dialers -- if you know how to tune it. That connection rate advantage, at scale, translates directly into revenue. The economic crossover versus cloud platforms happens somewhere between 30 and 50 agents depending on your specific use case.
You have at least one person who can manage Linux servers. Not someone who "knows computers." Someone who can SSH into a box, read Asterisk logs, restart services, troubleshoot SIP
registration failures, and write basic SQL queries. If that person does not exist on your team, VICIdial will eat you alive with operational overhead. The sysadmin salary ($65,000-$120,000/year) is your real cost of "free" software.
Your margins depend on dialer performance. Lead generation, solar sales, insurance,
political campaigns, debt collection -- operations where the cost per connected call directly impacts profitability. VICIdial's tuning depth is a genuine competitive advantage in these verticals. When you can adjust the
betweenWordsSilence parameter per carrier to squeeze 6% more connections out of your Verizon routes, that 6% is pure margin.
Data sovereignty is non-negotiable. Healthcare organizations under HIPAA, financial firms under SOX/PCI, government contractors, or any operation where "we do not control where the data physically lives" is a deal-breaker. VICIdial on your hardware means your data never touches a third party's infrastructure.
You need seasonal or burst capacity without contract renegotiation. Spin up 200 agents for tax season. Drop back to 30 in April. No seat commitments, no minimum contracts, no true-up bills. Just provision the servers, load the leads, and dial.
VICIdial Is the Wrong Choice If:
You have fewer than 20 agents and no technical staff. The total cost of ownership at small scale -- especially the sysadmin cost -- makes cloud platforms cheaper. Convoso at $90/seat or Genesys at $75/seat will cost you less than a part-time VICIdial contractor plus hosting. Even ViciHost's managed offering at $400/month per server plus the $1,000 setup fee adds up fast when you only have 10 agents.
Your primary use case is inbound customer service. VICIdial handles inbound calls. It has queues, IVR, skills-based routing. It also has a 2003-era interface for managing those features, and the routing engine is basic compared to Genesys or NICE inContact. If most of your calls are inbound and customer experience is your differentiator, VICIdial is the wrong tool.
You need multi-channel from day one. VICIdial's email and chat capabilities exist but are rudimentary. If your contact center strategy requires unified voice/email/chat/SMS/social from a single agent interface, VICIdial is not there. It can be integrated with other tools, but "integrated" means custom development work, not a checkbox in the admin panel.
You do not want to manage infrastructure. Some people just want to make phone calls. They do not want to think about MariaDB buffer pool sizes, Asterisk process monitoring,
SIP trunk failover, or kernel tuning. That is a legitimate preference, and cloud platforms exist to serve it. There is no shame in paying $159/seat to make the infrastructure someone else's problem.
Your team refuses to use a dated interface. I have seen operations where agent resistance to VICIdial's UI caused enough productivity loss to offset the cost savings. G2 reviewers consistently note the interface is "initially difficult to navigate" and "visually unappealing." New agents take 2-3x longer to become proficient on VICIdial compared to a modern cloud platform. If your agents are used to modern SaaS interfaces and your management does not want to fight that battle, factor the UI into your decision. You can skin it. You cannot make it look like Salesforce.
You need native caller ID reputation management. Convoso's Ignite platform uses AI to manage number lifecycle, selecting the optimal DID for each call and automatically rotating flagged numbers. VICIdial does not include native
caller ID reputation management. You need third-party tools and manual rotation processes. For high-volume outbound where spam flagging is your primary pain point, this gap matters.
The ViciStack Model: Managed VICIdial for Operations That Want Results Without the Overhead
Here is the part where I talk about what we do at ViciStack, and I will be transparent about the bias. We are a managed VICIdial provider. We make money when people use VICIdial. But I am going to explain why managed services exist for VICIdial specifically, not just pitch our offering.
The Configuration Gap
VICIdial has over 2,000 configurable parameters across campaigns, agents, carriers, system settings, and dial logic. The admin interface exposes most of them through dropdown menus and text fields with minimal explanation. The documentation is a mix of official wiki pages, forum posts from 2012, and tribal knowledge held by a few hundred experienced admins worldwide.
The difference between a well-configured VICIdial installation and a badly configured one is not incremental -- it is 2-3x in key performance metrics. I have walked into operations running VICIdial with default settings and doubled their connection rate in an afternoon by adjusting dial level scaling, hopper seeding, AMD thresholds, and carrier routing rules. None of those changes required new hardware or software. They required knowing which of the 2,000 knobs to turn.
What Managed Means in Practice
A managed VICIdial provider handles:
- Server provisioning and maintenance. Hardware selection, OS installation, security hardening (especially critical after CVE-2024-8503/8504), patching, monitoring, and backup.
- Performance tuning. Campaign-specific dial level optimization, AMD calibration per carrier, lead recycling configuration, and real-time performance monitoring.
- Compliance setup. STIR/SHAKEN carrier vetting, TCPA consent workflow implementation, DNC scrubbing integration, and state-specific dialing rules.
- Upgrades and migrations. SVN updates, database schema migrations, CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 9 migrations, and ViciBox version upgrades without downtime.
- Incident response. When the dialer stops, or audio goes one-way, or agents cannot log in, or the database locks up at 2 AM -- someone answers the phone.
ViciStack's model is $5,000 for initial optimization ($1,000 down, $4,000 on results) and $1,500/month for ongoing management. We guarantee a 50% increase in call center conversions within two weeks, or you do not pay the $4,000 completion fee. That is not a marketing claim -- it is a contractual guarantee backed by the fact that most VICIdial installations we encounter are running with default AMD settings, suboptimal dial levels, and carrier routing that actively loses connections.
The ROI math: if managed services cost $1,500/month and save you $5,400-$9,200/month in sysadmin salary while also improving your dialer performance, the service pays for itself with room to spare. If you already have a great VICIdial admin on staff and your campaigns are performing well, managed services are an unnecessary expense. We will tell you that during the evaluation.
When DIY Makes Sense
If you have a technical team that genuinely understands VICIdial -- not just "installed it once" but actively monitors performance, tunes campaigns, and stays current with SVN updates -- managing it yourself is the right call. The best VICIdial operations I have seen are run by in-house teams who have been doing it for years and have built deep institutional knowledge.
The worst VICIdial operations I have seen are run by teams who think they understand it because they got it installed. Installation is the easiest part. Configuration, tuning, and ongoing optimization are where the value lives.
Hardware and Infrastructure in 2026
The hardware requirements have evolved. Here is what you actually need -- not what the 2019 forum posts say.
Server Specifications by Scale
5-10 agents (single server):
- CPU: Any modern processor (AMD Zen1+ / Intel Sandy Bridge+), 2+ cores
- RAM: 4-8 GB (ECC recommended, not required)
- Storage: SATA SSD minimum (ViciBox documentation is explicit -- no spinning disks)
- Network: 100 Mbps minimum
- Monthly hosting: $200-$480
25 agents (single server, ViciBox default):
- CPU: 4 cores at 3.0 GHz+
- RAM: 8-16 GB
- Storage: 256 GB NVMe SSD
- Network: 1 Gbps
- Capacity: 25 agents with 125 trunks for predictive dialing
50 agents (two-server minimum):
- Server 1 (database + web): 4+ cores, 16 GB RAM, NVMe SSD
- Server 2 (telephony): 4+ cores, 8 GB RAM, SSD
- Network: 1 Gbps between servers, low-latency link
- Monthly hosting: $680-$1,750
200 agents (three-server cluster):
- Dedicated database server: 8+ cores, 32+ GB RAM, NVMe RAID
- Dedicated telephony server(s): 4-8 cores each, 16 GB RAM
- Web/admin server: 4 cores, 16 GB RAM
- Network: 10 Gbps between servers recommended
- Monthly hosting: $2,250-$4,700
For a 50-agent deployment, a MariaDB tuning configuration that most guides skip:
1# /etc/my.cnf.d/vicidial-tuned.cnf
2[mysqld]
3innodb_buffer_pool_size = 8G
4innodb_log_file_size = 512M
5innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2
6innodb_flush_method = O_DIRECT
7innodb_io_capacity = 2000
8innodb_io_capacity_max = 4000
9max_connections = 500
10query_cache_type = 0
11tmp_table_size = 256M
12max_heap_table_size = 256M
13join_buffer_size = 4M
14sort_buffer_size = 4M
And the Asterisk process monitoring cron that saves you from 2 AM pages:
1# /etc/cron.d/vicidial-watchdog
2* * * * * root /usr/bin/pgrep -x asterisk > /dev/null || \
3 (echo "$(date) Asterisk crashed, restarting" >> /var/log/asterisk-watchdog.log && \
4 /usr/sbin/asterisk -g)
5
6* * * * * root /usr/share/astguiclient/ADMIN_keepalive_ALL.pl --teod
Cloud vs. Bare Metal
Cloud instances (
AWS, GCP, Hetzner, OVH) work fine for VICIdial. The tradeoff is 5-15ms of additional RTP latency compared to
bare metal, which is imperceptible for voice calls. The bigger concern with cloud hosting is cost variability -- CPU-intensive operations like transcoding and AMD processing can spike cloud bills if you are not on reserved instances.
Bare metal from providers like Hetzner, OVH, or a local colocation facility gives you predictable monthly costs and slightly better audio performance. For operations over 100 agents, bare metal is almost always the better economic choice.
Recording Storage
Recordings are the hidden infrastructure cost. At 50 agents running 8-hour shifts with standard G.711 codec:
- Daily recording volume: 200-300 hours
- Monthly storage: 330-500 GB
- Annual storage: 4-6 TB
S3 or S3-compatible storage (Wasabi, Backblaze B2) costs $5-$15/TB/month. Local NAS costs more upfront but less monthly. Most operations move recordings older than 90 days to cold storage and older than 2 years to archive or deletion, depending on compliance requirements.
Downtime Costs
This is the number that makes the case for monitoring and redundancy:
- 10 agents, 1 hour of downtime: $700-$2,500 in lost productivity
- 50 agents, 1 hour: $3,500-$12,000
- 200 agents, 1 hour: $14,000-$48,000
At 200 agents, a single 4-hour outage costs more than a month of managed services.
The Competitor Landscape in 2026
VICIdial does not exist in a vacuum. Here is how the competitive landscape has shifted.
Five9
Still a market leader in cloud contact center. Their Intelligent CX Platform is strong for inbound, and they have invested heavily in AI (IVAs, agent assist, analytics). Their weakness remains outbound dialing performance -- multiple reviews cite inconsistent call quality and platform instability for predictive dialing at scale. G2 rating: 4.1/5. If you are primarily inbound with 100+ agents, Five9 is probably the right choice. If you are primarily outbound, keep looking.
Convoso
The strongest cloud competitor for outbound-focused operations. Their DX5 dialer is purpose-built for lead generation and sales, with AI-powered AMD (97% accuracy claimed), Ignite for intelligent
caller ID reputation management,
dynamic scripting, and aggressive dial pacing. Pricing starts around $90/seat. They directly target VICIdial's core market -- one customer reported connection rates increasing 400% after switching from Five9 and VICIdial combined. The question comes down to: pay more per seat for a turnkey solution, or pay less per seat but manage the infrastructure yourself?
Genesys
The enterprise choice.
Genesys Cloud CX targets large contact centers (500+ seats) with omnichannel, workforce management, quality management, and analytics. Starting at $75/seat for CX 1, it is affordable for its feature set. VICIdial does not compete with Genesys at the enterprise level -- they serve different markets. If you are evaluating both, your requirements have gotten confused somewhere.
GOautodial
A VICIdial fork that adds a modernized web interface and some additional features. Same underlying Asterisk/VICIdial engine, friendlier package. GOautodial is reasonable if you want VICIdial's functionality with a less painful UI and do not need bleeding-edge VICIdial features. The fork diverged enough that some VICIdial community resources do not apply directly. Our
migration guide from GOautodial covers the differences.
Other Cloud Alternatives
The broader competitive landscape includes a growing field of cloud contact center platforms:
| Platform | Starting Price | G2 Rating | Best For |
|---|
| MightyCall | $20/seat/mo | 4.4 | Small teams, easy setup |
| Readymode | $119/seat/mo | 4.6 | Preview/power dialing |
| PhoneBurner | $165/seat/mo | 4.8 | Power dialing, voicemail drop |
| RingCentral | $30/seat/mo | 4.0 | Omnichannel, video |
| JustCall | $39/seat/mo | 4.3 | CRM integrations |
| Dialpad | $27/seat/mo | 4.4 | AI transcription |
| BatchDialer | $139/seat/mo | 4.5 | List-based dialing |
None of these match VICIdial's predictive dialing performance at scale. They are easier to set up, nicer to look at, and perfectly adequate for operations that do not need maximum dialing throughput.
FreeSWITCH-Based Alternatives
ICTDialer and similar FreeSWITCH-based dialers offer multi-threaded architectures that handle higher concurrent call volumes more efficiently than Asterisk's single-threaded model. For very large operations (500+ concurrent calls), FreeSWITCH's architecture has genuine advantages. OMniLeads (OML) is a newer open-source option built on WebRTC from the ground up. For the 25-200 agent range where VICIdial lives, the architecture difference is academic.
What VICIdial Still Gets Wrong
I would not be honest if I did not talk about VICIdial's persistent weaknesses. These have not been fixed in 2026, and there is no indication they will be fixed soon.
The Interface Is Bad
I am tired of softening this. VICIdial's admin interface is a wall of blue hyperlinks, HTML tables, and form fields with abbreviated labels. The agent interface is a cramped collection of buttons designed for a 1024x768 CRT monitor. The 2025 skin update helps cosmetically but does not address the underlying UX problems.
This matters because it affects adoption, training time, and error rates. G2 reviewers call it "dated" and "visually unappealing." New agents take 2-3x longer to become proficient on VICIdial compared to a modern cloud platform. Admin errors from misclicking in a sea of similar-looking settings cause production outages. Every prospective client who sees the interface for the first time has the same reaction: "this looks old."
It is old. It works. Both things are true.
Documentation Is Fragmented
There is no single, authoritative, up-to-date VICIdial documentation source. The official wiki covers basics. ViciBox docs at docs.vicibox.com handle installation. The forum has thousands of threads with useful information buried alongside outdated advice and unanswered questions. The Manager manual is thorough but dense.
If you are new to VICIdial in 2026, you will spend hours searching for answers that should take minutes to find. G2 reviewers note that "bug and setting malfunction handling is tough because of very less support available from the community forum." This is one of the areas where
managed providers add genuine value -- they have already spent those hours and can give you the answer immediately.
SVN in 2026
The VICIdial codebase is still hosted on Subversion. No Git mirror (the GitHub forks are unofficial snapshots). No pull requests, no CI/CD pipeline, no automated testing visible to the community. Contributions flow through the forum and the core team's discretion.
This is not a technical limitation -- SVN works fine for version control. It is a community limitation. The barrier to contributing to VICIdial is higher than it needs to be, and the lack of modern development workflows discourages participation from younger developers who have never touched SVN.
Security Requires Active Management
VICIdial stores plaintext credentials in the database by default. The 2024 CVE chain (SQL injection to RCE) demonstrated that internet-facing VICIdial instances without proper hardening are exploitable. Unlike cloud platforms where the vendor manages security patches, VICIdial operators must actively monitor SVN revisions, test updates, and apply patches. Our
security hardening guide covers the non-negotiable steps.
Multi-Channel Is an Afterthought
VICIdial added email and chat capabilities, but they are basic. Neither is integrated deeply enough to provide a true omnichannel experience where an agent moves between voice, email, and chat within a single customer interaction. In a market where 90% of consumers demand omnichannel experiences and live chat achieves 87% CSAT versus phone's 44%, this gap is not trivial.
Looking Forward: VICIdial in 2027 and Beyond
Predicting open-source project trajectories is risky, but here is what seems likely based on current momentum:
Asterisk 22 adoption will happen, but slowly. The chan_sip and app_meetme dependencies need to be resolved first. When VICIdial moves to Asterisk 22, the benefits -- ARI tone detection events, improved PJSIP thread pool handling, reduced memory leaks, and better ChanSpy reliability -- will be meaningful for high-volume installations. Do not hold your breath.
AI integration will deepen. AMD is the first wave. Post-call transcription and summarization,
real-time agent coaching, automated quality scoring, and AI-powered lead scoring are all technically feasible with VICIdial's architecture. The forum is actively discussing machine learning models. The question is whether these get built into the core or remain third-party add-ons. Based on VICIdial's development history, third-party is more likely.
ViciBox 13 will ship. With OpenSuSE 16.0, SELinux support, SmogPing for network monitoring, and a new Python-based installer. This will be the most significant ViciBox release in years.
The managed model will grow. As the sysadmin labor market gets tighter (VICIdial-experienced admins command $65,000-$120,000/year) and compliance requirements get more complex (TCPA one-to-one consent, STIR/SHAKEN recertification, state-level mandates), more operations will opt for managed VICIdial services rather than DIY. The core software stays the same; the delivery model shifts.
Market share will hold steady. VICIdial is not going to suddenly gain 5% market share, and it is not going to collapse. The teams using it have specific reasons, and those reasons -- cost, control, customization -- do not expire. New installations will roughly match retirements.
The UI will remain a problem. Unless a community effort or major contributor decides to rebuild the front end with a modern framework, the interface will continue to be VICIdial's biggest barrier to adoption. The core team's focus is functionality, not aesthetics. That focus is both VICIdial's greatest strength and its most frustrating limitation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the current version of VICIdial in 2026?
VICIdial is at SVN revision 3939+, version 2.14b0.5, with database schema 1729. It runs on Asterisk 18, PHP 8.2, and MariaDB 10.11. The official installation image is ViciBox 12.0.2, released September 29, 2025, based on OpenSuSE 15.6 with Kernel 6.4.0. ViciBox 13.0 is in beta.
Is VICIdial still free in 2026?
Yes. VICIdial is released under the AGPLv2 license and costs nothing to download, install, and run. The total cost of ownership, however, includes servers ($200-$500/month per server), SIP trunks ($0.005-$0.02/minute), compliance tools ($150-$2,800/month depending on scale), and technical staffing ($1,000-$16,000/month depending on contractor vs full-time). A 50-agent deployment typically costs $316-$608 per agent per month all-in.
How many companies use VICIdial worldwide?
Industry tracking platforms report 421-436 companies actively using VICIdial, with over 14,000 total installations worldwide across 100+ countries. Official releases have been downloaded over 25,000 times in the last year. The true number of organizations is likely 2-5x higher because VICIdial is open source and many installations have no public-facing footprint. The largest user concentrations are in the United States (39%), India (19%), and the Philippines (8%).
Is VICIdial better than Five9 for outbound calling?
For outbound-heavy operations at 50+ agents, VICIdial generally outperforms Five9 on dialing efficiency and per-seat cost. VICIdial's granular control over dial ratios, lead hopper management, and AMD tuning gives operators 15-30% higher connection rates when properly configured. Five9 has a better interface, easier setup, stronger inbound capabilities, and built-in compliance guardrails. The choice depends on your scale, technical resources, and primary use case. We have a
detailed comparison.
Can VICIdial run in the cloud in 2026?
Yes. VICIdial runs on AWS EC2, Google Cloud, Azure, Hetzner dedicated servers, OVH, DigitalOcean, and any provider that offers Linux VMs or bare metal. Cloud deployment adds 5-15ms of RTP latency compared to on-premise bare metal, which is imperceptible for voice calls. For most new deployments, cloud hosting is the default choice unless you have existing colocation infrastructure.
Does VICIdial support WebRTC for remote agents?
Yes, through VICIphone 3.0, a WebRTC softphone that embeds directly in the agent web interface. Agents open their browser, log into VICIdial, and VICIphone provides the audio connection with no installation required. It runs in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge (not legacy IE). Audio uses built-in TLS encryption. Quality depends on the agent's internet connection -- a stable wired connection with 20+ Mbps down and 5+ Mbps up is recommended.
What is VICIdial's AMD accuracy compared to AI solutions?
Stock VICIdial AMD using Asterisk's built-in detection hits 75-82% accuracy with a 15-25% false positive rate out of the box. After per-carrier tuning of the six core parameters (initialSilence, greeting, afterGreetingSilence, totalAnalysisTime, maximumNumberOfWords, betweenWordsSilence), accuracy improves to 85-92% with 4-8% false positives. AI-powered alternatives achieve 92-99% accuracy with under 2% false positives. At scale, the difference translates to thousands of recovered connections per day and tens of thousands of dollars in recovered value.
How does STIR/SHAKEN affect VICIdial operations?
VICIdial does not handle STIR/SHAKEN signing directly -- your SIP trunk provider is responsible. Your carrier selection and DID arrangement impact your attestation level. Level A attestation (the best) requires DIDs and termination with the same carrier. Split DID/termination setups typically receive Level B or C, resulting in lower answer rates and potential spam labeling. All voice service providers must maintain current RMD filings, with annual recertification required by March 1. CORES information must be updated within 10 business days of changes.
What hardware do I need to run VICIdial in 2026?
Minimum specifications depend on agent count: 2 cores with 4 GB RAM for 5-10 agents, 4 cores with 8-16 GB RAM for 25-50 agents (single server), and 8+ cores with 32 GB RAM for 100+ agents (multi-server cluster with dedicated database, telephony, and web servers). SATA SSD storage is the mandatory minimum -- spinning disks are no longer acceptable. ECC memory is recommended but not required.
Should I migrate from VICIdial to a cloud dialer in 2026?
Only if your operational profile has changed. If you now have fewer than 20 agents, have lost your technical staff, or have shifted primarily to inbound service, migrating to a cloud platform makes economic sense. If you still run 50+ seat outbound campaigns with technical staff and your dialer performance is a competitive advantage, stay on VICIdial. The migration itself is expensive (new carrier setup, agent retraining, CRM re-integration), so do not switch platforms just because the interface looks old.
What operating system should I use for a new VICIdial installation?
ViciBox 12.0.2 (OpenSuSE 15.6) is the recommended option for most installations -- everything comes pre-configured. For manual installations, use AlmaLinux 9 or Rocky Linux 9. Do not use CentOS 7 (end-of-life June 2024), CentOS 8 (end-of-life December 2021), or Ubuntu (not officially supported). If you find a guide that references CentOS 7, the guide is outdated regardless of its publication date.
Can VICIdial handle inbound calls and IVR?
Yes. VICIdial supports inbound queues, IVR trees with DTMF navigation, skills-based routing, queue callbacks, and blended campaigns where agents handle both inbound and outbound. The IVR builder is functional but basic compared to dedicated IVR platforms. For operations that are 70%+ inbound, platforms like Genesys, NICE, or even Asterisk with a dedicated IVR front-end provide more sophisticated routing and analytics.
How does VICIdial compare to Convoso for outbound?
Both are strong outbound platforms. VICIdial offers lower per-seat cost and deeper tuning control. Convoso offers turnkey AI AMD (97% accuracy claimed), Ignite for intelligent
caller ID reputation management that selects the optimal DID using AI, built-in compliance guardrails, and a modern interface. At 200+ agents with in-house expertise, VICIdial is cheaper. Under 50 agents wanting plug-and-play, Convoso deploys faster. We have a
detailed side-by-side comparison.
What is ViciBox and how does it relate to VICIdial?
ViciBox is the official pre-built server installation ISO for VICIdial. It includes the operating system (OpenSuSE), Asterisk, VICIdial code, database, and all dependencies pre-configured. ViciBox 12.0.2 is the current stable release. ViciBox 13.0 is in beta with OpenSuSE 16.0, SELinux support, and SmogPing for network quality monitoring. Using ViciBox is the recommended installation method -- it eliminates hours of manual dependency resolution.
Is VICIdial secure?
VICIdial requires active security management. Critical vulnerabilities were discovered in 2024: CVE-2024-8503 (unauthenticated SQL injection) and CVE-2024-8504 (authenticated remote code execution as root). These were patched in SVN revision 3848+. Systems below that revision are actively exploitable. VICIdial also stores plaintext credentials in the database by default, which makes SQL injection particularly dangerous. XSS vulnerabilities were patched in revision 3555+. The open-source model means vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed -- faster patches, but also faster exploit development. Stay current with SVN updates, run behind firewalls, and follow our
security hardening guide.
The Bottom Line
VICIdial in 2026 is exactly what it has always been: powerful, ugly, free, and unforgiving. It rewards expertise and punishes negligence. It gives you more control than any cloud platform at a fraction of the cost, but it demands that you know what to do with that control.
The contact center software market is growing at 16.5-21% CAGR and will nearly triple by 2034. AI is projected to cut $80 billion in labor costs this year alone. 73% of centers are going remote or hybrid. Cloud platforms will capture most of the market growth because they are easier to buy, easier to deploy, and easier to manage. VICIdial will not become the market leader. It does not need to be.
What VICIdial needs to be -- and still is -- is the best option for operators who treat their dialer as a competitive weapon rather than a commodity utility. If you understand your dial ratios, tune your AMD per carrier, manage your
lead recycling with purpose, and run your compliance program like your business depends on it (because it does), VICIdial in 2026 gives you more raw capability per dollar than anything else on the market.
The teams that use it well are not just surviving -- they are outperforming cloud-based competitors on connection rate, cost per lead, and conversion rate. The teams that install it and ignore it are burning money. The difference is not the software. It never was. The difference is the operator.
If you want to know where your VICIdial installation actually stands -- what is configured well, what is leaving money on the table, and what is a compliance risk --
we do free audits. Thirty minutes on a screen share, no sales pitch required. We will tell you exactly what we see, and you can decide what to do about it.
Resources
- Read the full article on ViciStack
- ViciStack - VICIdial hosting and optimization
- Free VICIdial Audit
