Billing & suspension
What telephony costs
Two separate things are billed, and it’s worth keeping them apart.
The number costs a flat monthly rental in credits, charged whether or not anyone calls it. The current rate is shown in the provisioning dialog before you confirm, in the Your Plan card on the Exotel page, and on each number’s card as Monthly Cost.
The conversation costs whatever the agent’s work costs — speech-to-text, the model, text-to-speech. Those are the standard voice rates in Pricing & credits, the same ones a browser voice session would incur. Telephony adds no separate per-minute charge of its own.
There is no per-minute telephony charge and no separate provider invoice. Everything comes out of your subscription credits.
Availability by plan
Starter Telephony is available from Starter upwards. Free and App Lite don’t include it: the Exotel card on the Integrations hub shows an Upgrade badge instead of a link, and the Exotel pages won’t open.
On a paid plan there’s no cap on how many numbers you can hold. The practical limits are your credit balance and what’s free in the shared pool.
The Your Plan card reflects your actual subscription — plan name, the number allowance, and the current rate.
The monthly cycle
Each number carries a Billing Start and a Next Billing date, both on its detail page. Once a day qRaptor charges every number whose next billing date has passed and moves the date on a month.
The rate is looked up fresh on every run. If the published rate changes, every number moves to the new rate at its next cycle — including numbers you’ve held for months. The figure recorded against a number is what it was quoted at provisioning, not what it will be charged forever.
When the charge fails
If there aren’t enough credits, the number is suspended:
- Incoming calls are rejected. The caller hears the call fail.
- The number stays yours — nothing is released yet.
- A 7-day clock starts.
- The charge is retried daily rather than piling up. You’re never billed for a month you couldn’t pay.
The number’s card and detail page show a warning with the exact date it will be released.
After 7 days the number is released for real and returned to the shared pool, where another customer can take it. That cannot be undone, and you cannot get the same number back.
Recovery is automatic
Top up your credits and the number reactivates on its own. There’s no button to press and no ticket to raise — the next daily run charges the outstanding rental and puts the number back into service, and the warning disappears.
That’s why the suspension notice says there’s nothing to click. Add credits under Billing and wait for the next cycle.
Losing telephony from your plan
Telephony isn’t on every plan, so a subscription can end up on one that excludes it while still holding working numbers.
When that happens the numbers are suspended rather than released. Calls stop and the rental is no longer charged, but the numbers are held — so restoring the plan brings them back. A daily eligibility check runs shortly before the billing run, so a number that has lost access is already suspended before it would next be charged.
Restore telephony to the plan and those numbers reactivate automatically at the next check.
A number suspended for plan loss recovers when the plan is restored. A number suspended for non-payment recovers when the rental is paid. Restoring a plan does not settle an unpaid rental — if both applied, both have to be resolved.
Notifications
There is no email. The platform has no email integration for this yet, so the in-app warning against the number is your only signal.
Practical consequence: if you rely on telephony, check your credit balance deliberately. A number can be suspended and rejecting calls without anyone being told, and the first sign will be a customer saying your line doesn’t work.
Stopping the charge
Two options, and they’re not the same:
- Detach the agent — calls stop being answered, but the number is still yours and still billed.
- Release the number — billing stops and the number is gone for good.
See Manage your numbers for the full comparison.
An unattached number bills exactly like an attached one. If you provisioned a number for a project that never shipped, release it — detaching isn’t enough.
Common issues
- A number went to Suspended with credits in the account — check whether telephony is still part of your plan. Plan loss and non-payment both show as Suspended.
- Credits added but the number is still suspended — recovery happens on the next daily run, not instantly.
- A number vanished — if it was suspended for more than 7 days it has been released. Provision a new one, and tell your callers the new number.
- The cost shows as a dash — the rate couldn’t be resolved. It’s a display failure, not a free number; reload the page.
- You want a per-call cost breakdown — telephony doesn’t bill per call. Voice usage appears under the standard voice rates in Pricing & credits.