Looking for a good open source billing system (ASTPP, BillRun, MagnusBilling?....)

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wouam31

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Jul 1, 2022
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Hi everyone,

I'm currently looking for a solid and open-source billing solution to handle SIP call billing for my clients. Ideally, something I could integrate with FusionPBX or use alongside as a standalone SBC/billing platform.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

  • BillRun: Looked promising on paper, but I couldn’t get it to install properly. Also, the project seems inactive—the forums and GitHub don't seem very alive, which makes me hesitate.
  • ASTPP: I managed to get it running after some workarounds. It works, but I was quite surprised (and concerned) to see that when a security vulnerability is found by the community, the patch is only available to paying users for 30 days. That’s a big red flag for me.
  • MagnusBilling: Just starting to look into it. It seems active and modern, but I’d love to get real user feedback.
So my main question is:
What billing software are you using for SIP billing with FusionPBX (or in general), and how has your experience been so far?

Thanks a lot in advance!
 
Been using ASTPP for at least 10 years. It was pretty buggy so we spent our own money on development to fix up a bunch of bugs and to add some features that make it easier for us. We only use it for “back end billing” - to bill for toll free and international. We have another front end billing system that customers can access. This front end billing system runs a MySQL query against the CDR database in order to grab the international calls and charges. We insert the customer domain in the sip header in so that the separate ASTPP server can differentiate between customers. We also use ASTPP for inbound call routing - to route the calls to the proper PBX server

ASTPP is completely closed off to the public internet (with some IP Address exemptions, of course), in order to minimize any security vulnerability risks

Can’t speak for the other billing solutions as I’ve never tried it
 
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I use a heavily modified version of pyfreebilling. Also, cgrates should always be considered, its just an engine and would need much configuration. For me the number one priority is stopping fraudulent calling. Most of the other, I believe ASTPP included, rate the call at the END. This means if you had for example, a client with 500 credit and they were able to make 20 concurrent calls, if a bad actor could start 20 calls concurrently you could stand to lose roughly 20 x 500. Both my pyfreebilling and cgrates can do real time billing that prevents this from happening.
 
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Thanks so much everyone for taking the time to share your experiences, really appreciate it!


@junction1153 : That's a solid setup, and I totally understand the need to keep ASTPP isolated. Your approach with the MySQL query for the front end sounds smart. I might borrow a few ideas from that!


@digiwolf : Thanks for mentioning Yeti Switch, I hadn't looked into it yet, but I definitely will now and see if it could fit my use case.


@DigitalDaz : That’s a great point about real-time billing and fraud prevention. I’ll take a closer look at pyfreebilling and cgrates as well. I hadn’t fully considered the implications of end-of-call rating, so that insight is super helpful.


Thanks again to all of you for taking the time to respond, it really means a lot!
 
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