Hybrid Billing Solutions
Combine subscription fees, usage quotas, overage charges, and prepaid add-ons. All in one flexible billing plan that works for both you and your customers.
Supporting Hybrid Billing with EarnBill
EarnBill is a flexible billing system catering to hybrid billing requirements from companies that come up with innovative pricing plans to attract more customers and retain the existing ones. EarnBill's flexible Product Catalogue allows for setting up of pricing plans that can combine subscription fees, free usage quotas, overage charges and pay as you go rates for usage consumption fees.
This combined hybrid model of billing is essential for businesses to offer flexible pricing plans which can compete well in the market by providing a 'Value for Money' proposition to the end customers.
Subscription Fees
Recurring monthly, quarterly or yearly plan fees charged prepaid or postpaid
Usage Quotas & Overage
Included usage bundles with rate cards for charges beyond the quota
Prepaid Add-ons
Top-up packages customers can pre-purchase to extend their service quota
What is Hybrid Billing?
Hybrid Billing means charging the customers with a mix of different pricing strategies and pricing models. A service provider would opt for Hybrid billing when they want to offer innovative pricing which ensures that the customers are charged on a fair basis, yet the business does not lose out on the revenue.
Hybrid billing software strives hard to foster a win-win situation for the service provider and the service consumer.
In Hybrid Billing, a service provider may offer a 2-in-1 plan in which the prepaid and postpaid services could be combined together to the advantage of the customers. For example, while the subscription plan can be a post paid plan, the add-on packages could be allowed to be pre-purchased and used in a prepaid manner.
Hybrid Billing Plan – Example
A business communications company could offer a hybrid billing package to its B2B customers:
This includes:
- $99/month subscription fees (charged prepaid)
- 1 toll free number included
- Live Reception with active agent, 200 mins inbound calls
- SMS quota for 200 SMS text messages
- Additional inbound call minutes at $0.50/min (overage rate)
- Additional SMS at $0.25/SMS (overage rate)
- Option to buy a $25 prepaid add-on package (includes 200 additional SMS text messages)
EarnBill's Hybrid Billing Features
Here is how EarnBill's features support a Hybrid Billing Plan:
Subscription Fees & Product Catalogue
EarnBill's Product Catalogue allows you to set up a plan with Subscription Fees or Plan Fees for a recurring period. The recurring plan fee can be charged on a monthly or quarterly or yearly basis. The subscription could be charged in advance (prepaid) or in arrears (postpaid).
Usage Quota with Included Minutes
EarnBill comes with a feature called Free Usage Pools that allows businesses to define free usage quotas for different service offerings and attach them to a bundled offering (or a plan).
Rate Cards
A complex route based rate card could be set up which could be useful when there is call routing involved and the pricing for the calls depends on the route of the call. A simpler rate card could set up country based pricing while supporting international calls or SMS usage.
Add-on Packages
EarnBill allows to define an add-on package easily and conveniently. The add-on package can be defined for a specific single service or as a bundle of multiple different services as part of a single package.
Convergent Billing
EarnBill allows multiple services under the same account, supporting complex billing use cases where you could combine prepaid and postpaid offerings under the same user account. In telecom, the same customer can have prepaid as well as postpaid mobile connections with different SIMs and numbers.
Billing Mediation
EarnBill provides a comprehensive billing mediation feature which allows for usage billing or consumption billing required in various industries such as Telecom, Utilities, ITT, IoT and more. It provides a scalable and high availability solution that can be applied for large scale enterprise deployments.
Real-time Rating and Charging in Telecom
EarnBill comes with the OCS (Online Charging System) server that allows for real-time rating and charging in telecom for prepaid usage. Such prepaid usage scenarios are also observed with ISPs, eSIMs and utilities billing apart from telecom.
Use Cases
The following links take you to case studies where Hybrid Billing solutions have been implemented:
Ready to Offer Hybrid Billing to Your Customers?
EarnBill's flexible product catalogue and real-time charging engine make it straightforward to set up hybrid pricing plans that attract and retain customers.