I have been offering web hosting to my customers for 3 years now, and i have a simple curiosity, how to offer voip? wich software i need? perhaps asterix? i have no idea about that, anyone is doing that?

perhaps (i don't know) i can put some software in a simple server to offer voip too

um ... i think that it's not soo easy as install cpanel and start selling web hosting sure?

thanks!

Voip is abit complicated. You need to get your hands a bit dirty with asterisk and perl.
You can offfer web based virtual pbx service on per user bases.
But if you are thinking to offer cheap calls that requires big investment as you will need to have partners everywhere.

Yes it is a bit complicated, but you can hire any expert in your location so he can make certain "standard setups" and then give you remote support.

Hi pueblosnet,

There is an easy way to offer pure internet VoIP. theswitchboard.ca would allow you to offer your clients an internet phone that can be embeded in their webpages.

Not sure if this is exactly what you want, but it is a cheap way to offer your clients the ability to add text messaging, audio calls, audio conferencing, and voicemail to their websites.

Malcolm

What exactly would you be advertising this as, just as an added feature to your hosting? An addon at an additional cost? You'd have to beat out the big boys in pricing if it is just an addon. Just something to think about.

What exactly would you be advertising this as, just as an added feature to your hosting? An addon at an additional cost? You'd have to beat out the big boys in pricing if it is just an addon. Just something to think about.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm thinking as an addon at extra cost. Also there is nothing stopping any hosting company from offering it as an addon. At $40 a month, and nothing more complicated, setup wise, than adding a bit of javascript, I think it is pretty aggressively priced.

What do you think?

malcolm

As others have mentioned you could use asterisk, but it depends what you want to offer.

I run an asterisk server, but it's for our own use, it runs things like our own voice mail and our main switch board. That in it's self is fairly easy, it has a modem connected to our main line, and has a number of voip trunks to another sip provider. Calls can be routed out through the main BT line, or out through the sip provider. Incoming calls can come through either. (BT have a single phone number, and there is another phone number from the sip provider).

You could in theory, use it as a way to resell the services of another sip provider - and when you get plenty of customers you'll be buying in bulk and therefore able to make a reasonable margin. However, asterisk wouldn't help you with the billing, the logs are reasonable but you'd need to ensure they are good enough that you could process them into a phone bill (per user) - you'd need some software to actually process the logs and I think you'd have to write that.

Also if you're users wanted incoming calls, you'd have to sign up for a new phone number with your sip provider, (or just offer then an extension number from your main incoming number) and set that up in asterisk each time - you maybe able to automate that but you'd have to find a friendly sip provider who you could work with as many have human-readable-only numbers on their sign up page preventing automated scripts - and I'd guess such provider would most likely have a reseller scheme anyway.

In short, it would be a lot of work to get running and maintain, it is in theory possible, but I for one don't fancy it! :)

I second or rather third in motion going with an Asterisk based solution. We're currenlty working on a remote PBX solution for small to medium businesses using Asterisk. Sign up for one of the Asterisk mailing lists and you'll find many developers that would gladly assist you in creating your own solution. It's not as easy or as cheap as it sounds - even though Asterisk is open source. You might want to resell VOIP first and if you're successful reselling it build your own solution.

And whatever you do, try to include a branded billing solution, that is what most resellers look for.

Originally posted by albatroz
And whatever you do, try to include a branded billing solution, that is what most resellers look for.

After I have the system up and running for a few weeks without any major issues I plan on releasing a customizable reseller program. Thanks for your suggestion.