Platform Overview

Platform Overview

SIPSTACK is a cloud communications platform built for businesses of all sizes. It combines a hosted business phone system, an SMS messaging platform, and an AI layer into a single product suite — all managed through one portal called Switchboard.

This page is the map; each product has its own detailed documentation section linked throughout.

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Nova PBX — Hosted Business Phone System

Nova PBX is a full-featured cloud PBX (Private Branch Exchange) that replaces traditional on-premise phone hardware. It runs on SIPSTACK’s managed infrastructure, so there is no server to maintain.

Core capabilities:

• Extensions — Numbered SIP endpoints for your team. Works with desk phones, softphones, and the Pulse mobile app.
• Call Routing — Map each phone number to an extension, ring group, queue, IVR, or voicemail — with time-of-day schedules or operator-controlled branching.
• IVR Menus — Interactive voice menus (“Press 1 for Sales, 2 for Support”) with multi-level nesting.
• Ring Groups — Ring a set of extensions simultaneously or in sequence until someone answers.
• Call Center — Queues with skills-based routing, agent states, a real-time wallboard, and reporting.
• Voicemail — Per-extension mailboxes with custom greetings and voicemail-to-email delivery.
• Devices — Zero-touch provisioning for Yealink, Grandstream, and Poly desk phones — phones self-configure on first boot.
• Media — Greetings and hold music, generated by AI text-to-speech, uploaded, or recorded by phone.
• Analytics — Call history (CDRs), usage, and a configuration change log with restore.

Note

Nova PBX uses a staged-commit model: configuration changes save immediately but only go live when you click Apply Changes in the pending-changes banner. See the commit system.

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Flare SMS — Business Messaging Platform

Flare SMS is SIPSTACK’s A2P (Application-to-Person) SMS platform. It handles everything from simple two-way text conversations to large-scale outbound campaigns.

Core capabilities:

• Conversations — Real-time two-way SMS threads organized by contact.
• Campaigns — Broadcast SMS to contact lists, with link tracking and A/B-tested variants.
• Contacts — CSV import, tags, source tracking, and opt-out status.
• Templates — Reusable message templates for faster sends.
• Auto-Responders — Automatic replies to inbound messages based on keywords or rules.
• Signup Forms — Embeddable opt-in forms with consent tracking.
• Compliance — Opt-in/opt-out management and consent records.
• Analytics — Delivery rates, response rates, and campaign performance.

Tip

Sending A2P SMS from local numbers to US and Canadian recipients requires 10DLC registration (brand + campaign). Manage it from the 10DLC tab on Account → Phone Numbers — see 10DLC Brands & Campaigns.

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Aura AI — Intelligent Communications Layer

Aura AI is SIPSTACK’s artificial intelligence platform. It adds AI call answering, synthetic voice, and conversational assistance to your communications stack.

AI Voice Agents

Build conversational agents that answer calls on your phone numbers. Agents follow flows you design in a visual builder — they can collect information, branch on caller intent, call your external APIs through Connections, fire webhooks, and transfer to a human. Aura Insights shows what your agents are handling.

Voice Studio

Text-to-speech and voice cloning for generating audio used throughout the phone system:

• Create Audio — Convert text to natural-sounding speech using a library of AI voices
• Clone Voice — Create a custom voice model from reference audio (with recorded consent)
• Generated audio drops directly into Nova PBX greetings, IVR prompts, and announcements

SARA

A conversational AI assistant available from the top bar on any Switchboard page. Ask it questions about your account or the platform and get help without leaving what you’re doing.

Call Transcription

AI analysis of recorded calls — transcription, sentiment, and summarization — controlled per-extension, with entitlements set by your plan tier.

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How Switchboard Unifies Everything

Switchboard is the single web portal that provides access to all three products from one login:

Feature	Benefit
One login	Single set of credentials for Nova PBX, Flare SMS, and Aura AI
One billing account	All subscriptions, invoices, and payment methods in one place
Shared user base	Invite a team member once; assign them seats on the products they need
One number inventory	Phone numbers are bought, ported, and configured in one place for voice and SMS
One sidebar	Each product is a section in the same navigation — no switching portals
Notifications	Account and system alerts in one notification center

Note

Each product is licensed separately — you can run Nova PBX without Flare SMS, or the reverse. Aura AI features are included with paid Nova/Flare plans (what’s enabled depends on your tier). Add a product or change tier from Managing Subscriptions.

See Navigating Switchboard for a tour of the interface.

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Architecture Summary

SIPSTACK runs on a multi-region cloud infrastructure. Carrier traffic enters through SIPSTACK’s SIP edge layer, is processed by regional Nova PBX nodes (per-tenant PBX logic), and is managed through the platform API. Switchboard is the frontend portal that connects to that API. Data is encrypted in transit, and your organization’s PBX region follows your billing country for data-residency purposes.

For developer access to the platform, see the Developers section and the Integrations Overview.