As of 6 Nov 2026, the panel rates Placetel 3.5/5 and sipgate 2.5/5 in Cloud Telephony (VoIP & Cloud PBX). Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick Placetel and 2 pick sipgate. Placetel scores higher on 6 of 7 criteria (Pricing transparency, Apps, desk phones & Microsoft Teams, CRM integration, API & administration, plus 3 more). sipgate scores higher on 1 of 7 criteria (European sovereignty). Provenance — Placetel: EU origin, foreign-owned; sipgate: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Placetel's means sit higher on calling and routing 7.0 vs 5.3 (four leans, two ties), apps and devices 6.7 vs 4.7 (six leans), contact centre 7.2 vs 5.7 (three leans, three ties), integration and administration 6.8 vs 5.0 (five leans), pricing transparency 6.8 vs 4.7. sipgate leads sovereignty 6.7 vs 6.0 (five leans sipgate, one Placetel); network and compliance splits one lean each way, four ties (6.3 vs 5.5). Weighted totals read higher for sipgate with the data protection officer (6.8 vs 6.7) and skeptic (6.3 vs 6.5); Placetel reads higher on the other four. Verdicts place sipgate's hosting exclusively in Germany (ISO 27001-certified data centres, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, subprocessors named by location); Placetel's servers run exclusively in Europe, and no published subprocessor list, named hosting infrastructure or ownership behind the Cologne entity was found. Both attribute sets read unknown; no overall winner — the split is the answer.
Choose Placetel if
You run a contact centre needing skill-based queues with supervisor monitor, coach and barge-in, live KPI dashboards and an AI voicebot writing structured data into the CRM: contact centre leans Placetel on three judges with three ties (mean 7.2 vs 5.7), and the verdict gives it the highest single score in the results, an 8, on this criterion.
You must port existing numbers in blocks and source numbers across markets: the verdict lists free porting of single numbers and blocks with the vendor handling correspondence with the old provider, plus numbers from all 5,200 German area networks and over 40 countries; calling and routing leans Placetel on four judges with two ties (7.0 vs 5.3).
Your procurement needs a computable annual bill: pricing transparency leans Placetel on six judges (6.8 vs 4.7); sipgate's verdict lists public prices only for business S, L and XL at 12.95, 17.95 and 22.95 Euro per user per month from two users, with contact-centre seats, numbers, devices and the Teams add-on carrying no public price — Placetel's verdict still flags device prices, VAT treatment and the call-centre module price as gaps.
Your team standardises desk phones and apps across sites: apps and devices leans Placetel on six judges with zero ties (6.7 vs 4.7), and the sipgate verdict found no public information on desk-phone models or provisioning.
Your administrators need broad integration and administration tooling: integration and administration leans Placetel on five judges with one tie (6.8 vs 5.0).
Choose sipgate if
You require hosting exclusively in Germany: the verdict cites ISO 27001-certified data centres in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, and sovereignty leans sipgate on five judges with one lean Placetel (6.7 vs 6.0); Placetel's verdict states servers run exclusively in Europe, with no named hosting infrastructure found.
Your data protection officer signs the contract: that bench's weighted total reads sipgate 6.8 vs Placetel 6.7, backed by a published data processing agreement committing processing to the EU and EEA unless the user consents.
You need subprocessors disclosed before signature: the verdict names sipgate's subprocessors by location, while Placetel's verdict reports that no published subprocessor list, named hosting infrastructure or ownership behind the Cologne entity was found.
Your vendor policy requires a German contracting entity: the verdict names sipgate GmbH of Düsseldorf, and the provenance label reads EU-made for sipgate versus European foreign-owned for Placetel.
Your buying process includes a challenger review: the skeptic bench's weighted total reads sipgate 6.5 vs Placetel 6.3.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Office Manager
Runs the office of a tax advisory firm with twenty-five staff in Hanover, where the old phone box in the server cupboard is being switched off by the carrier. The firm's number has been on every letterhead for thirty years and must not change. Wants the number ported without a gap, a greeting and a queue during the tax deadline weeks, voicemail by email, the desk phones kept, and a monthly bill the partners can read without calling anyone.
Placetel
This judge's pick
sipgate
Criterion by criterion
Calling, numbers & call routing
Placetel
Porting of single numbers and blocks is documented as free, with the vendor handling correspondence with the old carrier, which answers my chief worry about our thirty-year-old Hanover number. Local numbers from all German area networks, international numbers in over forty countries, IVR with time-based and holiday routing, queues, ring groups, voicemail to email with transcript, fax, busy lamp fields and call recording are all described. We found no public information on emergency calls with a registered location or on porting timelines.
sipgate
German local numbers from our own area code, free number porting, multi-level voice menus, a waiting queue, call groups, busy lamp fields, voicemail forwarded to email, fax and emergency calls to 110 and 112 using our stored address are all documented — that covers almost everything our switch-off deadline needs. Before signing, though, I found no public information on the porting process and its timeline, on number blocks, call park or pickup, which is precisely the gap that worries me with a number that has been on our letterhead for thirty years.
Apps, desk phones & Microsoft Teams
Placetel
Apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android with presence and browser use are documented, with call handover between desktop and mobile, and desk phones, DECT handsets and headsets sold or rented with automatic provisioning by MAC address — so we could keep proper desk phones. Microsoft Teams telephony is described as free in the plans and the office number can be used on a SIM or eSIM; we found no public information on a supported-phone model list, Teams calling certification or firmware management from the portal.
sipgate
The sipgate app for various operating systems with status display, the office number shown when calling from the mobile, parallel ringing of the VoIP phone and the mobile, and real telephony inside the Microsoft Teams clients without extra hardware are documented, along with an own mobile network with SIM, eSIM and MultiSIM. However, I found no public information on which desk phones from which makers are supported, how they would be provisioned, or whether devices can be bought or rented — and keeping our existing desk phones is exactly what I need to be sure of.
Call centre, analytics & AI
Placetel
Queues with skill and priority routing, agent sign-in and statuses, listen, whisper and barge coaching, callback, live KPI dashboards and real-time plus historical reporting are all described — what my deadline-week rush needs. AI transcription and summaries, an AI receptionist answering around the clock and WhatsApp and live chat beside calls are documented; we found no public information on sentiment analysis, the AI languages or scheduled exportable reports.
sipgate
The contact centre is documented as part of the phone system: routing by availability, service level or skills, a real-time dashboard with call volume, waiting times and reachability, announcements with queue-position hints, listen-in for coaching, agent-filtered statistics plus a paid group-statistics add-on, call recording, and a free AI agent (sipgate sona) answering around the clock and handing over with context, backed by automatic transcripts, summaries and talk-ratio analysis. I found no public information on whisper or barge, callbacks from the queue, outbound dialers, scheduled or exportable reports, or messaging channels beyond SMS.
CRM integration, API & administration
Placetel
The AppStore with over 2,500 integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk and, usefully for a tax office, DATEV, plus screen pops and a REST API covering numbers, users, routing and call records with a notify API for call events, is well documented. SIP trunks for any VoIP-capable PBX and SAML single sign-on in the top plan are stated; we found no public information on admin roles, two-factor authentication, SCIM provisioning, audit logs or bulk user import.
sipgate
Ready integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zendesk and Zoho are listed with contacts shown automatically on incoming calls, notes and summaries written back and call logs synchronised, and a REST API with OAuth2 can dial, transfer, hold, record and send SMS and fax, with real-time webhooks for incoming and outgoing calls; there is SIP trunking for an existing PBX, an admin and a user account level, two-factor authentication, and SAML single sign-on on the enterprise plan. I found no public information on SCIM provisioning, audit logs or bulk user import.
Reliability, call security & telecoms compliance
Placetel
99.99 percent availability with automatic failover in seconds between redundant data centres in Germany and Europe, a public status page, TLS 1.2 and SRTP encryption, and ISO 27001 plus a set of datacentre certifications including SOC 2 give me reasonable comfort for a bad day. The imprint names the Bundesnetzagentur as supervisory authority and the privacy policy addresses the secrecy of telecommunications; we found no public information on SLA credits, toll fraud protection or emergency calls from home offices.
sipgate
Data centres in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf certified to ISO 27001, TLS and SRTP encryption, a public status page, a stated minimum SIP-server availability of 98 percent averaged over 365 days, the Bundesnetzagentur named as supervisory authority, a security concept under §166 TKG regularly audited by the regulator, emergency calls with our stored address, and 30-day retention for voicemail, fax and events give me reasonable confidence for the deadline weeks. Call encryption is documented as optional rather than on by default, and I found no published SLA with credits and no public incident history.
European sovereignty
Placetel
The contracting entity is a German company in Cologne registered in Düsseldorf, the platform is stated to run exclusively on servers in Europe, and a data processing agreement and TOM annex are published for download. Datacentre certifications including ISO 27001 and SOC 2 are stated; we found no public information listing the subprocessors with their locations, nor on the parent company behind the German entity.
sipgate
Everything that matters to our client data is European and named: sipgate GmbH in Düsseldorf as contracting party, hosting exclusively in Germany on named infrastructure (Myloc in Düsseldorf, Interxion in Frankfurt), a published data processing agreement at no extra fee committing to processing only in the EU/EEA, and a subcontractor annex naming the German carriers and the AI services through Microsoft Ireland, Google Cloud Ireland and Mistral in France, with the assurance that disabled AI features mean no processing by Microsoft. US providers such as HubSpot and ActiveCampaign appear in the privacy policy for website, newsletter and enquiry handling, with EU standard contractual clauses named as the mechanism, and I found no statement on the company's ownership.
Pricing transparency
Placetel
All three plans are priced per user with minimum user counts, activation and number porting are free, contract terms of one or twenty-four months are stated, and call rates are listed from 1 cent fixed line, 9.9 cents mobile and 1.9 cents international with flat rates in the higher plans — a monthly bill I could explain to the partners. Add-ons such as Teams, mobile SIMs, AI and WhatsApp carry prices and downloadable price lists exist for numbers and international numbers; we found no public information on device prices, call-centre seat prices or VAT treatment.
sipgate
The three business plans are public at 12,95, 17,95 and 22,95 Euro pro User/Monat (mind. 2) with their main inclusions, landline calls "ab 0,84 ct" and outgoing calls "ab 0,5 ct/min", free number porting, no set-up fee, a one-month term cancellable with one working day's notice to month end, and all prices plus VAT — enough for a rough budget. But I cannot compute our real annual bill: I found no published price for numbers, devices, contact centre seats, the Teams integration, group statistics, or the extra extensions and SIM cards from the third onward, and enterprise is quote-only.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Placetel
sipgate
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 6 Nov 2026, the panel rates Placetel higher: 3.5/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick Placetel and 2 pick sipgate. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Placetel or sipgate European?
Placetel is European (EU origin, foreign-owned). sipgate is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do Placetel and sipgate store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — Placetel: Default not stated; pages mention the EU. sipgate: Default not stated; pages mention Germany.