Usage charges in Aloware are fees for activities not covered by your base subscription plan. These charges are separate from the fixed monthly fees associated with your licenses and plan term.
You can view a summary of your usage charges in account > usage.
What are usage charges?
Usage charges account for costs related to automated activities, phone number rentals, many others that are not covered by your base subscription. You can find the list of items/ services here.
To get a detailed look, export your usage summary for offline review in account > usage. In this report, you'll see a detailed breakdown of these charges:
Paid usage - shows costs for services used beyond your base plan.
Included usage - displays services covered by your subscription.
Amount - the total cost of each service utilized.
How usage charges are billed
Usage charges are generally deducted from your Aloware credits in real-time, which act as a prepaid balance.
If you send automated texts as part of a campaign, each message incurs a charge. For example, if your rate is $0.015 per SMS and you send 10,000 messages, you’ll be charged $150.
For large volumes of messages or calls, charges may be aggregated and billed at the end of the day. This could result in a noticeable decrease in your balance overnight. For further details, see the end of day charges.
Tracking usage charges
You can monitor your usage charges by navigating to account > usage. This section helps you keep track of spending on automated activities, rentals and adjust as needed to manage costs effectively.
Key components include:
What's included in your plan? - this section provides a summary of the total minutes and services your organization has consumed. Regular monitoring helps you stay within plan limits and avoid unexpected usage charges.
Export summary - the dashboard allows you to export your usage summary for record-keeping or detailed financial review.
Cost & usage summary - by clicking the "cost and usage summary" button, you get detailed breakdown of all items within your selected date range where you can also understand your resource consumption:
Paid usage - tracks services used beyond your base plan.
Included usage - shows usage covered within your base plan.
Quantity - details the amount of each service used.
Amount - displays the total charge for each service.
Aloware tracks and charges for various items, and it’s important to understand which services are included and which incur costs. The cost of each item is based on your rate plan, and while some items may not have charges, most will.
Item | Description |
Local phone numbers | Monthly fee for each local phone number purchased |
Toll-free phone numbers | Monthly fee for each toll-free number purchased |
Local minutes* | Per-minute charge for outbound local calls |
Toll-free minutes | Per-minute charge for outgoing and incoming calls to toll-free numbers, regardless of the unlimited pledge |
Local text messages* | Per-segment charge for outbound SMS messages |
Toll-free text messages | Per-segment charge for inbound and outbound SMS messages on toll-free numbers, regardless of the unlimited pledge |
Short code text messages | Per-segment charge for outbound SMS sent via automation |
Local MMS* | Per-segment charge for outbound MMS messages |
Toll-free MMS | Per-segment charge for inbound and outbound MMS messages on toll-free numbers, regardless of the unlimited pledge |
Short code MMS | Per-segment charge for outbound MMS messages sent via automations |
Ringless voicemails | Charge per ringless voicemail sent |
LRN lookups | Charge per local routing number lookup |
Spam lookups | Charge per spam lookup |
Answering Machine Detection (AMD) | Charge per occurrence of answering machine detection |
Emails sent | Charge for sending/receiving email messages |
Faxes sent/received | Charge per fax sent or received |
Transcription minutes | Charge per minute for transcriptions exceeding the included plan minutes |
Enrollment | Pay-per-enrollment (PPE) charge for sequences, rarely used |
*Local rates are considered local if the phone source and destination is within US, Canada territories.
Usage history - you’ll find a comprehensive list of all services and communications utilized, including:
Date - indicates the date when the services was used.
Item - the specific service used.
Quantity - occurrences of the service.
Unit Price (USD) - rate of the service.
Cost (USD) - total cost of the service.
You can filter this data by specific items, allowing you to pinpoint cost drivers and take control of your expenses.
