In brief: Yeastar P-Series PBX can be deployed directly from Microsoft Azure Marketplace in minutes, giving SA resellers a fast way to provision cloud-hosted phone systems for clients — without managing physical servers.
Why Deploy Yeastar P-Series on Azure?
The Yeastar P-Series Software Edition is available on Microsoft Azure Marketplace, allowing resellers and IT teams to spin up a fully functional cloud-hosted PBX directly from their Azure account. For SA resellers already working with Microsoft partners or managing Office 365/Azure tenants, this creates a natural upsell: the same Azure portal that manages a client’s cloud infrastructure can now host their phone system too.
The core advantage is speed. A Yeastar P-Series instance can be running on Azure in under 30 minutes — no hardware to rack, no data centre colocation to arrange, and no separate server to maintain. Licence and call routing go live the same day.
Step-by-Step: How It Works
- Apply for a trial licence on the Yeastar Partner Portal — a 30-day free trial code is issued immediately, allowing full testing before any customer commitment
- Choose your extension capacity — the P-Series Software Edition scales to 10,000 users per licence instance; select the appropriate starting tier
- Deploy from Azure Marketplace — search for “Yeastar P-Series” in the Marketplace and deploy the virtual machine image to the client’s Azure subscription or your own hosted infrastructure account
- Activate the licence — use the activation code from the Partner Portal to register the instance; the PBX web portal becomes accessible via the Azure public IP address
- Configure SIP trunks and extensions — connect SA SIP trunk providers (Wanatel, Saicom, Switchtel, etc.) and add user extensions as normal
The entire process uses Yeastar’s standard P-Series administration interface — there is no Azure-specific configuration beyond the initial VM deployment.
Azure vs On-Premise vs Yeastar Cloud Edition: Which to Choose?
This is the question SA resellers most often face when quoting a new Yeastar deployment. Here is the practical breakdown:
Yeastar P-Series Software Edition on Azure
Best for: Clients with 50–500 users who want full system control, specific disaster recovery requirements, or an existing Azure relationship. The software edition gives you complete access to every P-Series feature — Hot Standby, Remote Access Service, custom dial plans, advanced SIP trunk settings — with infrastructure running in Azure’s SA or European data centres.
Requires internal IT resource to manage the Azure VM, apply patches, and monitor uptime. Licensing is annual through Yeastar’s partner portal, not through Azure Marketplace (Azure only provides the compute infrastructure).
Yeastar P-Series Cloud Edition (Yeastar-hosted)
Best for: SMBs under 50 users that want no infrastructure responsibility. Yeastar manages server maintenance, software upgrades, and backups. Resellers can white-label the service. Scaling up or down takes minutes via the Yeastar Central Management (YCM) portal. Best option for the reseller building a recurring managed UCaaS service without running their own servers.
On-Premise (Physical or Virtual)
Best for: SA businesses with load-shedding concerns (keep PBX running locally on UPS even when internet fails), regulatory data-residency requirements, or high call volumes that make cloud compute costs uneconomical. The on-premise option also supports Hot Standby for zero-downtime failover — relevant for call centres.
Key Reasons SA Resellers Choose Azure-Hosted P-Series
- Single Azure billing — infrastructure and phone system on one invoice; simplifies managed service billing
- Azure compliance and security — ISO 27001, SOC 2, and GDPR-compliant infrastructure out of the box
- Geo-redundancy — deploy across multiple Azure regions for high availability; critical for customers with zero-downtime requirements
- Scale on demand — upgrade the Azure VM tier when a client grows from 50 to 200 users without replacing hardware
- Yeastar Central Management integration — manage all Azure-hosted instances from one YCM portal, regardless of how many clients are on the platform
Licensing and Costs
The Yeastar P-Series licence is purchased separately from the Azure compute cost. Azure charges for the virtual machine running the PBX (typically an Azure B-series or D-series VM, costing R400–R1,200/month depending on sizing). The Yeastar annual licence is priced per extension tier through the partner portal.
For SA resellers, the combined Azure compute + Yeastar licence + SIP trunk cost for a 50-user system typically lands between R2,500 and R5,000 per month — competitive with local hosted PBX providers, with the added advantage of full white-labelling capability.
What This Means for SA Resellers
Yeastar on Azure is the right pitch for any SA customer already in the Microsoft ecosystem. If they are on Office 365, they are almost certainly paying for Azure compute in some form — adding a Yeastar P-Series instance to that subscription is a natural conversation. The white-label option on Yeastar Cloud Edition allows resellers to present it as their own product; the Azure deployment gives clients more control if they want it.
Start by applying for a 30-day trial licence through the Yeastar Partner Portal, then test a deployment on Azure Marketplace before quoting any customer — the entire process takes under an hour.
About the Author
Mechelle Gindra
Mechelle Gindra is the managing editor and lead content strategist at Telecoms-Channel, South Africa's dedicated intelligence platform for telecoms resellers, ICT distributors, and channel partners. She oversees the editorial team's AI-assisted content production pipeline, ensuring vendor news, market analysis, and regulatory updates are accurate, timely, and actionable for the SA telecoms channel community. With deep expertise in the South African telecoms reseller ecosystem, Mechelle directs coverage of vendor partner programmes, ICASA regulatory developments, wholesale market dynamics, and channel business strategy. She is responsible for maintaining Telecoms-Channel's editorial standards, fact-checking processes, and corrections policy.
