How does usage billing work between Votel, my agency and my clients?

We bill you, and you bill your clients. You are our customer, and we never bill or deal with your clients. Usage is credit based and passed through: we bill you our cost, you bill your clients your price, and the difference is your margin.

Everybody has a built-in wallet. You have a wallet with Votel, and each client (sub-account) has its own wallet and balance with you. Every time a client sends an SMS, gets a phone number, makes an AI call or uses another service, it is billed automatically from their wallet, and usage and services you attach to your plans are billed the same way. Each sub-account has a card on file, which can be your client's own card, and it is charged automatically. You can set your own limits, and have an account top itself up by charging the card whenever the balance reaches an amount such as $5 or $10. Your clients do not need accounts with other providers or their own API keys, and neither do you.

You set the prices your clients pay, and they can see their per-minute and per-service prices. For example, if we charge you 5.8 cents a minute for voice you might charge 10 or 12 cents, and if we charge you 25 cents a credit for AI you might charge 50 cents. On the Founders plan ($297 a month) you can add markup and custom pricing. The 2x button charges your clients twice our cost so you make a margin automatically, and whatever we charge you for the built-in AI passes through the pricing you set, so you never rebill it by hand. If you or your clients use an AI through MCP with their own Claude or ChatGPT subscription, there is no AI cost from Votel.

Whether to make a margin on usage depends on your price point and the client. Because pricing is usage based, you earn more when clients use more, and how much they use depends on the type of client and their volume, so there is no single average. For a high value client paying a high monthly price you may simply include usage such as SMS in the plan, since the costs are small compared with what they pay, while an agency whose clients make heavy call volumes may bill usage on top of a plan.