When to use ViciPhone instead of the Zoiper WebPhone

VICIdial has shipped two ways to put a phone inside the agent's browser: the older Zoiper WebPhone and the current ViciPhone. Both are a Webphone, a phone that runs in the browser rather than as an installed desktop app, but they are built on very different technology and only one is a real choice for a new setup. This post lays out the practical decision, item by item, so you do not waste an afternoon wiring up something that simply cannot register in a browser anyone uses today.

The short answer

For any new deployment, use ViciPhone. The Zoiper WebPhone relied on NPAPI, a browser plugin model that Chrome and Edge dropped in 2016 and Firefox stopped supporting in mid-2018. It was also Windows-only, licensed per fully-qualified domain name with no wildcards, and commercial software you had to pay for. ViciPhone, by contrast, is free, open-source, and built natively for VICIdial on WebRTC, the browser's own built-in voice standard, so it runs in current browsers without any plugin. The decision is rarely close.

How they compare

• Browser support: ViciPhone runs in modern Chrome, Edge, and Firefox; Zoiper needs retired browsers to run at all.
• Cost and licensing: ViciPhone is free and open-source; Zoiper is commercial and pinned to one domain name.
• Platform: ViciPhone is browser-based on any operating system; Zoiper is Windows-only.
• Requirements: ViciPhone needs Asterisk 13 or higher and authentic SSL certs on every server agents reach.

Is there ever a reason to pick Zoiper

Realistically, no. The only scenario where the Zoiper WebPhone still runs is a locked, legacy Windows fleet pinned to old Internet Explorer or pre-2018 Firefox, which is a security and support liability in its own right and a browser estate no security team would sign off on today. Even there, you are betting your phones on software that the browser vendors have already walked away from, so any future browser update can take the whole call center offline with no warning and no fix on your side. If that describes your environment, the right move is to retire the old browsers and move the fleet forward, not to keep the old phone alive on top of them. Both phones register as a SIP endpoint and carry audio over RTP, so switching to ViciPhone does not change how calls actually flow, only how the phone loads in the page. You may need to plan for NAT traversal when agents sit behind home routers, but that is true of any browser phone and is not a reason to favor one over the other.

flowchart TD
  A[Choosing a browser phone] --> B{New deployment}
  B -- Yes --> C[Use ViciPhone WebRTC]
  B -- No --> D{Stuck on old IE or Firefox}
  D -- Yes --> E[Plan browser upgrade]
  D -- No --> C
  E --> C

Each phone in VICIdial is a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) endpoint regardless of which front end loads it, so once you pick ViciPhone the rest of the campaign setup, dispositions, recordings, and reporting are all unchanged. The choice is really just about the phone front end, not the dialer behind it.

For how browser and external phones fit into a campaign, start with the pillar on VICIdial remote agents, then read how to set up the ViciPhone WebRTC softphone for the build steps. If you want a phone that simply works in any modern browser without sourcing certificates yourself, our managed plans include a branded WebRTC phone on every plan.