VoIP based communication tools have become household names in all industry verticals. Certainly, VoIP has the power to provide quality communication services and that also at a much cheaper rate than traditional telephony options. There are multiple ways to use VoIP based communication tools and one of the most popular ones is using hosted solutions or leasing these software platforms to meet business communication and collaboration needs. One vital platform in this industry is a FreeSWITCH billing solution and we are going to discuss further details about this platform.
This billing system is available to use for anyone. However, it is more useful for service providers. We will discover more about users of a FreeSWITCH billing software solution in the real world in the upcoming sections. Moreover, we are going to cover insightful details about using this solution and what makes it more popular in this blog post.
So, without any further delay, let’s jump in to learn more about this powerful and popular tool.
1. What is FreeSWITCH?
FreeSWITCH stands at the vanguard position of open source VoIP technologies and frameworks. FreeSWITCH takes pride in successfully working as the driving force for some of the world’s largest telephony infrastructures such as Amazon, Zoomphone, and more.
SignalWire maintains and sponsors FreeSWITCH technology. Notably, SignalWire was founded by the core developers of FreeSWITCH, an open source platform. Fundamentally, it serves as a versatile solution for deploying software-based telephony solutions, more specifically in the cloud. FreeSWITCH is popular for its modular architecture, low-code and reusable code facility, and several similar offerings. Moreover, it supports quick and easy deployment.
Optimize your billing processes with our tailored FreeSWITCH Solution.
This open source telephony stack excels in building a wide variety of simple to complicated communication applications such as VoIP gateways, IP PBX solutions, FreeSWITCH billing open source and enterprise platforms, conferencing solutions, and more.
FreeSWITCH supports a broad range of concurrent calls on a single infrastructure because of its robust scalability, exceptional flexibility, and modular architecture. Its advanced features, including SIP support, voice codecs, and sophisticated call routing, make it a powerful and adaptable solution for communication across various services. In short, FreeSWITCH is a stellar and ideal technology for building any communication or telephony system.
2. What is a FreeSWITCH Based Billing System?
A FreeSWITCH based billing system is a VoIP billing solution that is developed using FreeSWITCH. In other words, FreeSWITCH is used as a base technology to develop this billing and invoicing platform.
A VoIP billing system is a tailored software based solution that is specifically designed to effectively manage the billing and invoicing processes associated with VoIP services. Unlike traditional telecommunication systems, VoIP relies on internet protocols to transmit voice and multimedia content.
The key functionalities of a FreeSWITCH based billing system include call rating, which enables the calculation of call costs based on factors like duration and destination. Moreover, it also includes invoicing, which generates detailed bills for customers. Additionally, it includes rate management for configuring and managing call rates. Besides, it also includes different features such as usage monitoring, real time call usage tracking, fraud detection, account management, reseller management, payment processing, comprehensive reporting and analytics, and many more.
Overall, FreeSWITCH billing systems play a pivotal role in ensuring accurate and timely billing, enhancing customer satisfaction, and contributing to the financial stability of VoIP service providers.
We would like to recommend an interesting reading on the Positive Impact of FreeSWITCH Service on an Organization. It shares all the major advantages of FreeSWITCH for your business.
3. Who can Benefit by Using the FreeSWITCH Invoicing and Billing Platform?
Undoubtedly, FreeSWITCH based system for billing and invoicing is useful for any user who is interested in taking advantage of this powerful tool to automate the process of invoicing, billing, rating, and payment processing. There are several advantages of using a FreeSWITCH billing solution. Let’s explore the major advantages of using this billing system developed using FreeSWITCH development services.
Let us share three major users of the FreeSWITCH invoicing and billing platform.
3.1 VoIP Service Providers
Undoubtedly, VoIP providers have to use a billing system to automate their invoicing and billing parts. They need to use it with their existing solutions that are used to offer communication and other telephony services. Clearly, this software aims to provide automation of the most tedious and error-prone jobs. Therefore, it is necessary for providers to automate jobs of account management, rate card mapping, tracking user access, generating usage based invoices, sending bills, and getting paid for all bills.
Using a FreeSWITCH billing software solution has added advantages because it unleashes the potential of FreeSWITCH. For example, it is highly scalable. A VoIP service provider will need to scale up its infrastructure rapidly. The modular architecture and scalable nature of FreeSWITCH have the required bandwidth to provide the required scalability. Likewise, there are multiple advantages of using a FreeSWITCH based billing system for VoIP service providers.
3.2 Enterprises and MNCs
Generally, enterprises and MNCs will not use any type of service. Conversely, these organizations own VoIP based communication tools. In other words, they will have their own infrastructure to meet routine communication and collaboration tools. Still, they need to use a billing system due to multiple reasons.
Firstly, it will help them allocate communication funds to specific locations or branches. Secondly, it will help to ensure fair usage of telecommunication resources across all branches. Thirdly, it helps in making communication tangible expenses and performs budget forecasting, as and when needed. In short, there are several substantial advantages of using the FreeSWITCH based billing system for MNCs and enterprises having multiple business branches.
3.3 Hosted VoIP Solution Users
Hosted VoIP solution users will not own the VoIP communication software. However, they will have access to this communication tool. They will use this software as a hosted or rented model. Generally, VoIP service providers and hosted solution providers will send periodic bills to postpaid users. On the other hand, prepaid users will have to recharge their accounts to continue using their service. These users can also use a FreeSWITCH based billing system if they have multiple users within their office or business. This will give them the required tracing of accounts and their usage.
These are three major users of FreeSWITCH billing systems. However, the fact is FreeSWITCH based invoicing and billing systems are necessary to use for any user.
4. What are the Major Benefits of the FreeSWITCH Solution for Billing?
There are several advantages of using the solution under discussion for billing and invoicing. Let’s look at the major benefits.
4.1 Highly Compatible
Generally, a billing system is integrated into a third party solution, which would operate on any system. Thus, it is necessary to use a platform that is compatible with any platform. Undoubtedly, FreeSWITCH is one of the most versatile platforms to develop telephony solutions. Therefore, it is ideal to develop a billing system that usually works with a variety of systems and platforms. FreeSWITCH is compatible with all popular operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu, RHEL, Debian, CentOS/Fedora, and Debian.
Additionally, FreeSWITCH works well with all major programming languages such as Python, Lua, Perl, Java, JavaScript, .Net, C, and more. This ensures that the development company can build the frontend and backend of the billing software using any programming language. The absence of limitations or restrictions positions FreeSWITCH as a reliable cross development platform for billing systems. It empowers developers to create tailored solutions that align with their specific requirements and preferences.
In essence, FreeSWITCH supports multiple operating systems, programming languages, and frameworks that contribute to its reliability as a development platform. This type of extensive compatibility ensures seamless integration with any type of technical environment. As a result, users of this software can leverage a higher degree of compatibility and performance.
4.2 Excellent Performance
High performance has been a competitive advantage of FreeSWITCH. In fact, a majority of development companies are selecting FreeSWITCH for building their telephony solutions due to this particular benefit. FreeSWITCH based billing platform can deliver the equivalent performance of Asterisk and it needs 50% fewer hardware components for the same.
In fact, FreeSWITCH can provide high quality voice, video, and data exchange with minimal hardware requirements. Additionally, SignalWire and other innovative companies are constantly adding new APIs, plug-ins, and more to help developers in the process of developing high performing FreeSWITCH based solutions, including, but not limited to a billing system.
4.3 Hosted and Multi Tenant Billing Systems
This open source VoIP billing and invoicing platform development framework has several built-in libraries. Moreover, it is a highly scalable and robust platform that supports multiple tenants or subaccounts. This software will build a highly scalable, reliable, and elastic multi tenant solution for billing. Therefore, businesses like VoIP service providers prefer using FreeSWITCH for the development of billing systems to make their revenue generation process simplified and seamless.
Additionally, the service provider can manage all customers from the admin panel. This gives them flexibility in monitoring and managing clients. Certainly, this makes FreeSWITCH their preferred language for building tools like a VoIP billing solution.
4.4 High Scalability
This is certainly the most appreciated advantage of using FreeSWITCH based billing systems. Billing is a complicated job, which monitors a variety of factors to bill clients as per their usage. Additionally, there are several other fixed and variable costs to add to each bill.
For example, a client must pay an account management fee and taxes in addition to their usage fee. Moreover, some service providers offer discounts on certain call minutes or cheaper rates during certain times of the day or night. This will also get added to the bill depending on the conditions added. All these intricate calculations make accounting and billing a complicated job.
Additionally, a billing system needs to manage hundreds of clients whose communication needs vary. Moreover, the number of users may keep increasing exponentially or rapidly. In any which way, having a scalable solution is a must for the service provider. In the VoIP industry, FreeSWITCH enjoys the top position as the most scalable platform that also supports seamless failover and recovery. This helps service providers to enjoy service level agreement of uptime up to 98.99%.
4.5 High Value Over Money
First of all, FreeSWITCH is an open source platform that clearly reduces the capital investment of anyone investing in this system. Moreover, it can give excellent performance with the basic infrastructure setup. Certainly, this is reflected in expenses, too. It will further reduce operational expenses. Moreover, it will reduce expenses related to account management, hosting platform management, and many more. As a result, you can enjoy excellent performance at a substantial cost.
Conversely, you can continuously grow users, accounts, billing capacity, platform features, and more because your software is highly robust, scalable, compatible, and secure. As a result, you can persistently increase your revenue generation. As a result, you can enjoy high value for money for your business by using a FreeSWITCH based billing system.
Concluding Note
FreeSWITCH is the most powerful platform to develop any telephony platform. It is renowned for its high performing nature, unparalleled features, excellent scalability, and consolidated security. Certainly, there are several other characteristics that make this framework inevitable in developing a billing system.
A FreeSWITCH based billing system will be highly compatible and platform independent, so that it can work with any other VoIP telephony solution. Moreover, it will provide the advantage of multi tenancy, elasticity, and scalability, which are must have in any billing and invoicing system.
FreeSWITCH based billing solutions have offered revolutionary benefits to service providers, enterprises, and even individual users. Therefore, it has become the top choice for any business that requires a billing system. Furthermore, it is perfect for building any type of billing software, whether it is a single tenant or multi tenant. In fact, ASTPP, one of the most powerful FreeSWITCH billing open source solutions, is developed in FreeSWITCH. To learn more about FreeSWITCH billing solution and its unmatched advantages, contact us.
