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 Skeptic
Has seen "all calls included" that excluded mobile numbers abroad, a "five-minute setup" followed by six weeks of porting, and an "AI assistant" that sent every recorded call to a model in the US. Asks what porting the numbers back out costs and how long it takes, whether the desk phones still work after leaving, who carries the calls, what the SLA pays when the platform is down — and what the second year costs.
Placetel
sipgate
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Calling, numbers & call routing
Placetel
Numbers from all 5,200 German area networks and over 40 countries, free porting of single numbers and number blocks with the vendor handling correspondence with the old provider, IVR with time-based, holiday and lunch-break routing, queues, hunt groups, busy lamp fields with pickup, fax and call recording — the routing core is well documented. We found no public information on emergency calls (110/112) with a registered caller location, on porting timelines, or on recording rules with consent announcements, so a buyer cannot check the audit-critical parts from public pages alone.
sipgate
German local, mobile and international numbers, multi-stage IVR menus that link by location or concern, queues, busy lamp fields, fax, voicemail to email, transfers and 110/112 calls carrying the customer's address are all documented, and number porting in is advertised as free. We found no public information on number blocks, porting timelines, call park, conference calls, consent announcements for the per-minute recording, or the terms for taking numbers back out — so the port-in promise is easier to verify than the port-out.
Apps, desk phones & Microsoft Teams
Placetel
Desktop, mobile and browser apps with presence, devices sold or rented with auto-provisioning by MAC address, mobile integration per SIM or eSIM with the office number on the road, call pull between devices mid-call, and telephony inside the Teams client at "ab 6,90 € mtl. pro Nutzer". We found no public information listing supported desk and DECT makers beyond the Cisco backend, no statement whether the Teams connection runs through Direct Routing or Operator Connect with certification, and no app-store ratings or update notes for the clients themselves.
sipgate
Desktop and mobile apps with presence, the office number displayed on outgoing mobile calls and real telephony inside all Microsoft Teams clients are documented, and the fixed-mobile side is unusually concrete: a mobile network with Telefónica Germany, eSIM and MultiSIM. We found no public information on desk phones or DECT handsets from named makers, automatic provisioning, device sale or rent, or Teams certification through Direct Routing or Operator Connect — the devices page we captured documents apps, not hardware.
Call centre, analytics & AI
Placetel
Skill- and priority-based routing, agent sign-in/out with statuses, live monitoring with monitor, coach and barge-in, callback in queue, a live KPI dashboard with deep-dive reports, an AI voicebot for inbound and outbound with live transcription and summaries, and WhatsApp and live-chat add-ons at "69 € (700 Konversationen)". The captured pages give different figures for the maximum agents per queue — one says 500, another says 50 — and we found no public information on wrap-up time, scheduled exportable reports, sentiment analysis with its supported languages, or a power dialer.
sipgate
Skills- and service-level routing, a real-time service-level dashboard, listen-in coaching, queue position announcements, a 24/7 voice agent that answers and hands off with context, and transcription, summaries, tonality analysis and talk ratio are documented, with SMS priced beside calls. We found no public information on whisper and barge, callbacks in queue, dialers, exportable reports or WhatsApp, and the AI languages are not listed. To the vendor's credit the AI chain is disclosed: Microsoft Ireland, Google Cloud EMEA and Mistral in the subcontractor annex, an option to switch to OpenAI, and no processing by the subcontractor when the features are switched off.
CRM integration, API & administration
Placetel
A documented REST API covering numbers, users, VoIP targets, routing and call records, a Call-Control/Notify API pushing call events to the customer's own webserver, screen pops with caller data, named CRM and helpdesk integrations across an AppStore, SAML single sign-on on Enterprise, multi-site administration, a partner portal, and SIP trunks documented for Asterisk, Auerswald and any VoIP-capable PBX. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning, audit logs, bulk import or admin roles, and the API page ties compatibility to the Placetel Profi product.
sipgate
Fifty-plus integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zendesk and Zoho, contact pop-ups on incoming calls with notes, summaries and call logs written to the CRM, a documented REST API with OAuth2 covering call control and SMS/fax, real-time webhooks, an API console, SAML single sign-on and SIP trunking for existing VoIP PBXs are all on the record. The administration behind it stays thin: only administrator and user permission levels, and we found no public information on SCIM, audit logs, bulk import or partner accounts with sub-customers.
Reliability, call security & telecoms compliance
Placetel
"99,99 %" stated availability, redundant hosting in Germany and Europe with automatic failover "in Sekundenschnelle", TLS 1.2 and SRTP documented, a public status page, ISO 27001 certification of the cloud phone system, datacenter certifications including SOC 2 Type II, and the Bundesnetzagentur named as supervisory authority with telecom secrecy addressed. We found no public information on what the availability guarantee pays out when the platform is down, a public incident history, toll-fraud protection or spending limits, retention periods for recordings, or emergency calls from softphones and home offices.
sipgate
Two ISO 27001-certified data centres in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf with ongoing recertification, a public status page, TLS and SRTP explained in detail, retention periods of 14 to 30 days stated, premium-rate numbers blocked by default, emergency calls with the customer's address, and a TKG security concept regularly audited by the Bundesnetzagentur — more telecoms substance than most cloud vendors publish. But the 98 percent SIP-server availability carries no credits when it slips, we found no public incident history, and the captured pages give different figures for whether call encryption is standard or optional.
European sovereignty
Placetel
Gamma Placetel GmbH in Cologne is the contracting entity, a data processing agreement is downloadable, servers are stated to run "ausschließlich in Europa", and Placetel AI is claimed to process all call data exclusively on EU servers. The captured pages do not name the hosting infrastructure or list a single subprocessor — carriers, SMS gateways, AI models, payment or support — the platform runs on Cisco technology, and who stands behind the Cologne entity is not stated on the pages we read.
sipgate
A German contracting entity in Düsseldorf, hosting exclusively in Germany on named data centre operators in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt, processing committed to the EU and EEA unless the user consents, a published data processing agreement, and a subcontractor annex naming the carriers, the hosting operators and the AI services — Microsoft Ireland, Google Cloud EMEA in Ireland, Mistral in France. The edges of the chain are American: support runs through HubSpot Inc. in the USA and newsletters through ActiveCampaign in the USA, with standard contractual clauses stated as the safeguard, and the language-model setting can be switched to OpenAI, whose location the pages do not state.
Pricing transparency
Placetel
Three plans priced per user ("ab 6,90 € pro Nutzer/Monat" up to "ab 14,90 €"), per-minute rates outside the flat ("ab 1 Cent" fixed line, "ab 9,9 Cent" mobile, "ab 1,9 Cent" international), free activation and free number porting, priced add-ons (AI "ab 69,- € pro Monat" with 750 minutes, WhatsApp and live chat "69 € (700 Konversationen)", SIP trunking "1,- € mtl. pro Sprachkanal"), terms of 1 or 24 months, and six downloadable price lists. We found no public information on device purchase and rental prices, the monthly rental for a standard local number, VAT treatment, the notice period, or what taking the numbers back out at the end costs — so the real annual cost and the exit cost are not fully computable from public pages.
sipgate
Three business plans are priced per user and month — business S at 12,95 Euro, business L at 17,95 Euro, business XL at 22,95 Euro, minimum two users — with their inclusions, zero setup fee, monthly terms cancellable at one working day's notice to the month's end, VAT treatment stated, porting free, and several add-ons priced: Call Recorder at 3 ct./min., Web-SMS at 9,9 ct., a Zusatzanschluss at 4,95 Euro. The rest of the bill is not computable from public pages: we found no prices for numbers, devices, contact centre seats, the Teams add-on or the API's monthly base fee, per-minute rates appear only as floors such as "ab 0,5 ct/min", 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.