How billing works
This article explains how the Voximplant billing process works in detail.
Account balance
Once you top up your account balance, you can spend this money on the chosen services or features. The current prices are available on the Voximplant pricing page or in the control panel.
You can enable your account to auto-charge funds if your balance is insufficient. To do this, you need to make a payment to link your card and send a request to technical support. You can specify the threshold amount and the amount to withdraw from the card.
By default, we notify you by email when your balance reaches $5.00. You can set any threshold to be notified of in the notification settings of the control panel. When your balance reaches the specified limit, a warning appears near your account balance in the control panel.
If a call is in progress when your balance reaches $0, it may result in a negative balance. Once you top up your balance, you can use all the features as before.
IP messages and MAU (monthly active users)
Voximplant offers a variety of subscription plans with different limits of MAU and IP messages.
The IM free plan lets you send up to 50K messages per month for free. When you exceed this limit, messages stop being sent.
The MAU free plan lets you have up to 1000 active users per month for free. When you exceed this limit, new app users cannot log in.
If you need more messages or more users, you can choose one of the following plans: small, medium, or custom. Unlike the free plan, once you exceed the limit here, you are charged for a pack of 100 additional messages (IM) or every new user login (MAU). Voximplant charges a subscription fee on the first day of every month following. See pricing here for details.
You can see the number of already used messages or monthly users at the main control panel dashboard or at the subscription plans page.
The message counter is triggered every time you call sendMessage, editMessage, or removeMessage within a parent account. It means that when counting messages, we take into account all your actions, including sending (regardless of the delivery status), editing, and deleting.
Voximplant considers a user active if they log in to the application at least once a month. We take into account only the user’s credentials, which means they can log in from different devices and still be counted as one user.
- Active users of child accounts are counted only in the parent account. That is, if the parent account has two child accounts and each of them has 2000 MAU, the parent pays for 4000 MAU, the child accounts pay nothing.
Plan change
You can upgrade your subscription plan yourself in the Billing section of the control panel or via the ChangeAccountPlan method of our management API. If you need to downgrade your plan, contact technical support.
If you need to change the plan before it has ended, we put the money reserved for this plan back into your account. Then, you are charged for the period you already used, excluding the changing day. We reserve the money for the new plan under the pricing and the number of days left in the calendar month. You can use the new plan right after that.
You can also use the GetAccountPlans method to show the current state of your plans and the GetAvailablePlans method to show all the subscription plans you can choose.
Grace period (USD and EUR accounts)
The grace period allows you to renew MAU and IM plans when your balance is insufficient and we fail to withdraw money from your card. We give you credit for the amount of the subscription fee(s) for a month. You need to fully repay it by the 1st day of the next month, to prevent account suspension. The grace period feature is enabled by default. If you want to disable it, contact technical support.
If the subscription fee is $100 and you have only $10 on your balance, the grace credit still equals $100. $10, in turn, can be spent on calls or subscription renewal but not on new plans or subscriptions until the credit is repaid.
You can use the GetAccountInfo method for the grace credit details. If there is no credit, the grace_credit parameter value equals zero, otherwise, it is positive. The money_on_hold value includes your grace credit. The grace_credit_due_date parameter is to show the date by which you should make a payment, including this date.
Phone number subscriptions
When you purchase a phone number, we charge the following:
A one-time setup fee. Some phone numbers are free to set up.
A one-time setup fee tax.
Subscription fee. We reserve the monthly fee on your balance for the upcoming month.
Subscription fee tax. We reserve the tax on your balance, the actual tax can be different from the reserved amount.
We reserve the monthly fee on your balance each month on the day when you purchased the phone number. On the first day of each month, we calculate the actual fee and charge it from the reserved funds.
Subscriptions in some countries are available only after you pass verification.
If you have enough funds on your balance, we reserve the subscription fee each month and prolong the phone number subscription. If you do not have enough funds on your balance, the phone number is suspended on your account for one month and if you do not pay for it, it unbinds from your account and returns to the available phone numbers pool for rent.
To enable notifications about insufficient funds, go to Settings → Notifications. To enable automatic top-up, bind a banking card in the Billing → Make a payment, and then make a request to our support to set up a recurring payment.
To cancel the phone number subscription, go to Phone numbers, choose the necessary phone number, and click Delete in the three dots menu.
Invoices and taxes
Users pay taxes based on the results of their spending and the billing address. We charge money at the end of the month because the tax rates may change during the month or a user may change their billing address. The invoices are sent on the first day of every month. You can find the report of your spending in the Billing section of the control panel and download invoices.
USD and EUR accounts
Taxes are charged upon location. Tax rates vary depending on the types of services customers are spending money on and their billing address. Without a valid billing address, you cannot add money to your account. A VAT number should also be valid.
Use the GetAccountInvoices method to obtain all the invoices for a certain account and the DownloadInvoice method to download invoices.
RUB accounts
Tax rates are the same for all customers, so we immediately withdraw the price with tax from your account. In the received invoices, a legal entity gets the prices and taxes separately; an individual gets the total amount of money paid.