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 Inside Sales Lead
Leads twelve inside sales reps at a B2B software company in Munich who call prospects in Germany, Austria and Switzerland from HubSpot. Wants click-to-call and a power dialer in the CRM, every call and its recording logged on the contact, local numbers in each country, the mobile app showing the company number at trade fairs, and AI notes that a rep can trust before the follow-up email.
Placetel
This judge's pick
sipgate
Criterion by criterion
Calling, numbers & call routing
Placetel
Numbers from all 5,200 German area codes plus international numbers from over 40 countries, free porting of single numbers and blocks with the vendor handling the old provider, IVR with holiday and time-based routing, queues, hunt groups, voicemail to email with transcript, fax, call recording, group call park and busy lamp fields — that covers the routing my twelve reps need across DACH. We found no public information on emergency calls to 110 and 112 with a registered location, or on porting timelines.
sipgate
German local numbers from our own area code, free porting of existing numbers, multi-level IVR menus, queues, ring groups, voicemail to email and a call recorder at 3 ct./min are all documented, and emergency calls to 110 and 112 go out with the customer's stored address. International numbers from many countries and a visual routing builder push this above the middle of the scale. We found no public information on time-based and holiday routing, call pickup, number blocks or porting timelines.
Apps, desk phones & Microsoft Teams
Placetel
Free apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android with presence, desk phones, DECT and headsets that auto-provision from the MAC address and can be bought or rented, a SIM or eSIM that lets a rep call out on the office number from a trade fair, call pull between desktop and mobile mid-call, and real telephony inside Microsoft Teams at no charge in the Webex packages. We found no public information on which device makers are supported or on Direct Routing and Operator Connect certification.
sipgate
The mobile app showing the office number on outgoing calls from a rep's own phone, parallel ringing on desk phone and mobile, a presence status display and iOS/Android apps are documented — exactly what my reps need walking a trade-fair booth — with an eSIM on the Telefónica Germany network. Telephony inside all Microsoft Teams clients works through trunking without extra hardware. We found no public information on desk phones from named makers with automatic provisioning, on devices for sale or rent, or on a browser softphone.
Call centre, analytics & AI
Placetel
Skills and priority routing across queues of up to 500 agents, agent states with queue sign-in and sign-out, monitor, coach and barge-in, callback, real-time and historical reporting with a live KPI dashboard, live transcription with automatic summaries and action points, a 24/7 AI phone assistant, and WhatsApp or live chat beside the calls. Outbound is documented as AI-driven campaigns from the Professional plan rather than a power dialer for human reps, and we found no public information on sentiment analysis, transcription languages, or scheduled exportable reports.
sipgate
Skills-based routing, a real-time service-level dashboard with wait times and reachability, listen-in coaching, statistics per agent and an AI receptionist answering calls around the clock are documented, and after hang-up the AI Assist writes transcripts, summaries, topics and to-dos straight into the CRM. SMS beside calls is priced. We found no public information on a power dialer, callbacks from the queue, whisper or barge, or scheduled and exportable reports — the missing dialer hurts an outbound team like mine.
CRM integration, API & administration
Placetel
A HubSpot certified app that shows caller information in the CRM, screen pops with status notes, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Zendesk and more than 2,500 further integrations, a REST API covering numbers, users, routing and call records plus a call-control and notify interface, SAML single sign-on, multi-site administration and a partner portal. We found no public information on automatic logging of the call and its recording onto the CRM contact record, SCIM provisioning, audit logs or bulk user import.
sipgate
HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Zendesk are all listed as integrations, with contacts popping up on incoming calls, call notes and summaries written into the CRM and call logs synchronised — the heart of what my team needs. A REST API with webhooks covering dial, transfer, record and SMS, OAuth2 clients, SAML 2.0 single sign-on, two permission levels and two-factor authentication are documented. We found no public information on SCIM, audit logs, bulk user import or several sites in one account.
Reliability, call security & telecoms compliance
Placetel
Redundant datacentres in Germany and Europe with automatic failover within seconds, a 99.99 percent availability figure, a public status page, TLS 1.2 and SRTP free in every package, ISO 27001 alongside SOC 1 and SOC 2 and further datacentre certifications, a telecom secrecy commitment, and the Bundesnetzagentur named as supervisory authority in the imprint. We found no public information on SLA credits, toll fraud protection, emergency calls from home offices, or retention of recordings and call records.
sipgate
ISO 27001-certified data centres in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, TLS and SRTP encryption plus AES-256 at rest, a public status page, a stated 98 percent SIP server availability, Bundesnetzagentur supervision with a TKG security concept audited by the regulator, and 30-day retention for events, faxes, SMS and voicemails are documented. Premium-rate number ranges are blocked by default. We found no public information on an SLA with credits, a public incident history, or emergency calling from home offices specifically.
European sovereignty
Placetel
Gamma Placetel GmbH of Cologne is the contracting entity, the servers are stated to run exclusively in Europe in redundant EU datacentres, a data processing agreement and technical measures annex are downloadable, and ISO certifications are published. We found no public information on the subprocessors and their locations — including which provider runs the AI transcription — or on the ownership behind the German entity.
sipgate
The contracting entity is sipgate GmbH in Düsseldorf with hosting exclusively in Germany on named data-centre operators (Myloc in Düsseldorf, Interxion in Frankfurt), and the published data processing agreement commits processing to the EU/EEA and lists the subcontractors: the mobile network runs on Telefónica Germany, and the AI transcription chain goes through Microsoft Ireland, Google Cloud EMEA in Ireland and Mistral in France. Marketing, survey and support tools in the privacy policy such as Google, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign and Qualtrics are US providers tied with standard contractual clauses. That is a European chain end to end for the product itself.
Pricing transparency
Placetel
All three plans carry public per-user prices from 6,90 € to 14,90 € a month with scaling rules, per-minute rates for German landline from 1 Cent, mobile from 9,9 Cent and international from 1,9 Cent, free porting and activation, terms of 1 or 24 months, and priced add-ons from TAPI at 5,90 € through WhatsApp and live chat at 69 € to Placetel AI from 69 € a month, plus six downloadable price lists. We found no public information on VAT treatment, device prices, the price of German local numbers, or the cost of the call-centre module.
sipgate
All three business plans are public — 12.95, 17.95 and 22.95 Euro per user per month from two users — with no set-up fee, a one-month term and one working day's notice, VAT treatment stated, porting free, and add-ons priced such as the call recorder at 3 ct./min and Web-SMS at 9.9 ct. We found no public information on the price of numbers, devices, the contact centre or the AI features, and Enterprise is by quote.
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.