The PBX costs nothing. Kahevo is free for MSPs and it will stay free for MSPs: no license key and no fee per user or per channel. The one thing we charge for is the mobile app license, $25 a month for 50 reusable app codes. That is 50 cents a code, and you set your own price for your customers. It is how we keep a roof over our developers' heads.

By becoming a partner. There is no public download yet. Tell us what you run today and we will set you up with the software, the install steps and someone to do the first one with you.

One server for all my customers?

It is built and in testing. One server can hold several customers, each kept strictly apart from the others, with its own extension numbers, limits, logo and usage figures for your billing. In production today, each customer still gets an install and a database of their own. A small office fits on a four-core mini PC with 2 to 4 GB of memory.

Emergency calls go out through your SIP provider, so they work only if your provider supports them and you add an outgoing rule for them. The one-button US and Canada rules do not include 911, and Kahevo does not manage the address sent with the call. Set it up and test it with your provider before a customer goes live.

What moves over from my current PBX?

Phone numbers stay with, or are ported to, your SIP provider. Contacts import from a CSV file. Extensions, menus, ring groups and hours are set up again on the pages, and supported desk phones take their new settings from a link. Old voicemail, recordings and call history do not come across.

How do I back it up and upgrade it?

Kahevo has a backup of its own. The Backup page downloads the whole system as one file: the database, the stored audio and the settings. The same backup can run on a schedule from the command line. Restoring is done from the command line and is still being proven on real systems, so for now we recommend running Kahevo in a virtual machine and keeping snapshots as well, with one before every upgrade. To upgrade, replace the program files and start it. Changes to the database apply themselves.

What happens when something fails?

Most failures never reach a call. You can restart the web pages while people are talking, and if the database drops out, phones stay registered and calls carry on. For a whole server going down, Kahevo has high availability of its own, built and in testing: two or three servers on your own network running as one phone system. When one fails, another takes over in seconds and the calls carry on, and restarting or updating a server moves its calls to another first, with no clustering software for you to buy or build. Until you have tried it yourself, the failover tools on Linux remain a sound standby.

Who supports it, and who is running it?

Support comes straight from the people who wrote it. We are on Hawaiʻi time, two to three hours behind the West Coast. Kahevo is in production at many sites today, and we move more of our own customers to it as their contracts with their current phone providers end. What gets built next follows what each of those businesses needs.

Kahevo PBX for MSPs: No License, No User Caps

How you would deploy it.

One install per customer, or one for all

In production today, each customer gets their own Kahevo and their own database, in your rack, your cloud or their office. Several customers on one server is built and in testing: each walled off from the rest, with limits and usage figures for your billing. A customer's branch offices do not need one each: Kahevo Hākuʻi, in production at many sites, joins them to the main office.

Your trunk account

Kahevo registers to a SIP trunk with a username and a password. You hold the provider account, you set the price, and the margin on minutes and numbers is yours.

Linux, for stability

Kahevo runs on Linux: the platform phone systems have always trusted to run for years without a reboot, with no forced updates and no license for the server itself. It is installed, tested and supported on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, with a SQL Server database. One installer sets up the whole server, with everything it needs inside it.

What one server carries.

There is no license key for the PBX, no user count and no channel count. Capacity is a hardware question.

The floor: A mini PC with a four-core Intel N100 processor and 2 GB of memory; 4 GB is more comfortable. By our estimate that carries 130 to 200 calls at once on the Kahevo Rust Engine, in about half a gigabyte. See the table below.
The ceiling we have measured: 800 calls at once between extensions on one Apple M4 desktop, no audio lost, under three of its ten cores. The test's network gave out before Kahevo did.
With the Rust engine: Now live: 500 calls on about half a processor core, less than half of what they took before, and a call set up in about a third of the time.
Adding people: The hundredth extension costs what the first did: a few minutes on the Extensions page.
Adding calls: Limited by processor, network and the audio ports you open. The only call limits in the product are safety settings you set yourself.

What a branch box needs.

A Kahevo Hākuʻi box does real work: it converts every call for the trip to the main office. It still fits on a mini PC the size of a paperback.

Estimates, not yet measured on this hardware

Estimated calls at once on a branch box with a four-core Intel N100 processor
The branch's phones	Comfortable calls at once	Flat out	Memory in use
Standard sound (G.711)	130 to 200	270 to 430	About 0.5 GB
Wideband (G.722)	90 to 140	180 to 280	About 0.5 GB

The box: A mini PC with a four-core Intel N100 processor, running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The figures above are for that chip.
Memory: 4 GB is comfortable. 2 GB also works. The figures include the operating system.
What "comfortable" means: About half the processor. That headroom is what keeps every call's audio on time. "Flat out" is the whole processor, which is a ceiling and not a plan.
The line: At 100 calls at once, voice needs about 2.5 Mbit/s up and 3.5 Mbit/s down. A branch of ten phones needs a tenth of that.

These are estimates, scaled from our load test on a faster desktop. We have not measured them on an N100 yet, and will replace them with measured figures when we have.

The tickets you get every week, and what each one takes.

No modules to hunt down and no configuration files to edit. On Kahevo, each of these is a single web page.

"We signed a new customer.": Enter the provider's host, username and password, and see at once whether it connected. One click adds US and Canada dialing rules.
"We hired someone.": Add the extension and Kahevo gives you a link. Enter it in a supported desk phone and the phone sets itself up.
"Sales wants the same keys on every phone.": Make one key profile and apply it to the department. Preview first, undo if it was wrong.
"Can you change a button on my phone?": Change it on the page and send it. The phone updates where it sits, and nobody drives to the office.
"That call was silent.": Open the log. It shows each step of the call and how much audio each side sent and received, so you can see who went quiet.
"Is there an update?": Install it during business hours. The admin pages and the call service are separate programs, so updating the pages drops no calls.
"Incoming calls stopped.": Usually the office router has closed the connection. Kahevo keeps the way in open by itself.

What you would ask us first.

We asked the same things of every PBX we looked at. Here are our answers, including the ones we are not proud of yet.

What does it cost?: The PBX costs nothing. Kahevo is free for MSPs and it will stay free for MSPs: no license key and no fee per user or per channel. The one thing we charge for is the mobile app license, $25 a month for 50 reusable app codes. That is 50 cents a code, and you set your own price for your customers. It is how we keep a roof over our developers' heads.
How do I get it?: By becoming a partner. There is no public download yet. Tell us what you run today and we will set you up with the software, the install steps and someone to do the first one with you.
One server for all my customers?: It is built and in testing. One server can hold several customers, each kept strictly apart from the others, with its own extension numbers, limits, logo and usage figures for your billing. In production today, each customer still gets an install and a database of their own. A small office fits on a four-core mini PC with 2 to 4 GB of memory.
What about 911?: Emergency calls go out through your SIP provider, so they work only if your provider supports them and you add an outgoing rule for them. The one-button US and Canada rules do not include 911, and Kahevo does not manage the address sent with the call. Set it up and test it with your provider before a customer goes live.
What moves over from my current PBX?: Phone numbers stay with, or are ported to, your SIP provider. Contacts import from a CSV file. Extensions, menus, ring groups and hours are set up again on the pages, and supported desk phones take their new settings from a link. Old voicemail, recordings and call history do not come across.
How do I back it up and upgrade it?: Kahevo has a backup of its own. The Backup page downloads the whole system as one file: the database, the stored audio and the settings. The same backup can run on a schedule from the command line. Restoring is done from the command line and is still being proven on real systems, so for now we recommend running Kahevo in a virtual machine and keeping snapshots as well, with one before every upgrade. To upgrade, replace the program files and start it. Changes to the database apply themselves.
What happens when something fails?: Most failures never reach a call. You can restart the web pages while people are talking, and if the database drops out, phones stay registered and calls carry on. For a whole server going down, Kahevo has high availability of its own, built and in testing: two or three servers on your own network running as one phone system. When one fails, another takes over in seconds and the calls carry on, and restarting or updating a server moves its calls to another first, with no clustering software for you to buy or build. Until you have tried it yourself, the failover tools on Linux remain a sound standby.
Who supports it, and who is running it?: Support comes straight from the people who wrote it. We are on Hawaiʻi time, two to three hours behind the West Coast. Kahevo is in production at many sites today, and we move more of our own customers to it as their contracts with their current phone providers end. What gets built next follows what each of those businesses needs.

In production, and steered by the MSPs who run it.

Jakub Wójcik Channel Partner Manager Ask Jakub about offering Kahevo

Andrew LiuBusiness Partner Coordinator
Hiromi UedaLead Developer

Kahevo is in production at many sites today. We are not looking for resellers to manage. We are looking for MSP partners who are tired of the same things we were, to decide with us what gets built.

Partners set the feature list. What our MSP partners need for their customers is what gets built next, ahead of anything we thought of ourselves.
Partners choose the devices. Setup by link covers more than forty models from two brands today. The next ones we support are the ones our partners actually have on desks.
We show you ours. See Kahevo running, and ask the people who wrote it what went wrong along the way.
We help with the first one. Installing it, connecting your provider, and moving one customer's numbers and phones across.

Read what it does today, including what is not finished, and where it is headed, before you decide.

Questions first? Write to Jakub, our channel partner manager. Ready? Register as a partner.

Will it still be here in five years?

You should ask that before you put a customer's phones on anything, especially something free. Here is how Kahevo is paid for.

Today, we pay

We pay for the development ourselves. Kahevo has no investors and no shareholders to answer to, and does not depend on selling seats to keep going.

The PBX stays free for MSPs

That is decided. No license key, no fee per user, no fee per channel. Before we add any other way of funding it, we will ask the MSPs and offices who use Kahevo what they are comfortable with, and tell you what they said.

The mobile app carries its own weight

The one thing we charge for is the mobile app, and we kept it generous: $25 a month for 50 app codes. That keeps the lights on and keeps Kahevo competitive, without touching the PBX.

The goal is to pay for itself

We hope SIP providers and phone manufacturers will sponsor the project, because they sell more when Kahevo does well. Then it no longer depends on one company.

The mobile app license

What the mobile app license costs and includes
Price	$25 a month
What you get	50 app codes for your customers
That works out to	50 cents a code, each month
Reusable	When someone leaves, their code goes to the next person. You do not buy it twice.
What you charge	Up to you. Set your own price and keep the difference.

Why the app, and only the app. A mobile app can only ring while it is closed if a notification is sent through the phone maker's service. That takes servers we run for everyone who uses the app, every month, for as long as Kahevo exists. It is the one cost that never goes away, so it is the one thing we ask you to share. Desk phones and the phone in your browser need no code at all.

Where the money goes. Whatever is left after those servers goes straight back into Kahevo. It keeps our developers employed and answering to the people who use Kahevo, not to shareholders. And it buys hardware to test with: new desk phones and devices as they come out, so that going forward Kahevo always has the newest phones supported for you.

One MSP to another.

Tell us what you run now and how many seats. We will tell you honestly whether Kahevo is ready for it. Mahalo for asking.

Talk to Jakub

Kahevo for MSPs and IT companies.