ISP Billing System Price in Kenya: 4 Pricing Models

ISP Billing System Pricing Models in Kenya

ISP billing software is priced in several ways. Understanding the differences will help you avoid overpaying and find the best value for your ISP. The advertised price is rarely the full picture, so this guide also covers how to work out your true monthly cost.

Per-Customer Monthly Pricing

The most common pricing model for ISP billing systems in Kenya. You pay a fixed amount per customer per month. This scales fairly — small ISPs pay less, larger ISPs pay more, and your bill tracks your business.

Example: Jasiyo charges a flat KSh 25 per customer per month, with no volume tiers. With 100 subscribers you pay KSh 2,500/month. The minimum monthly fee is KSh 1,000 across the whole account.

Best for: ISPs with steady subscriber counts who want predictable costs.

Revenue-Share Pricing

Some ISP billing software — including Jasiyo's Hotspot plan — charges a percentage of revenue instead. Jasiyo's Hotspot billing plan costs 3% of Hotspot revenue per month, so if you collect KSh 50,000 in a month you pay KSh 1,500. This suits smaller WISPs because you only pay in proportion to what you earn.

Best for: Hotspot operators with variable monthly revenue.

Flat Monthly Fee

A fixed price regardless of customer count, usually up to a cap — for example KSh 5,000/month for up to 200 subscribers. This can be expensive for a small ISP but cost-effective at scale.

Best for: ISPs sitting near the subscriber limit who want total cost certainty.

One-Time License

Older ISP billing software often required a large upfront license fee plus annual maintenance. These have largely been replaced by cloud-based subscription models.

Costs That Are Often Left Out

When you compare quotes, check whether each of these is included:

• Onboarding or setup fees — charged once, before your account goes live. Jasiyo has none if you set up yourself. If you want our team to set up your router with you, that's an optional one-time KSh 500, paid by M-Pesa.
• SMS charges — most ISP billing systems bill SMS separately. Assume roughly two messages per subscriber per month when budgeting.
• M-Pesa transaction fees — Safaricom's charges apply whichever platform you use.
• MikroTik device limits — some systems cap how many routers you may connect. Jasiyo supports unlimited MikroTik devices on all plans.
• Support outside business hours — worth confirming before you need it.

How to Calculate Your True Cost

Take the base subscription cost, then add your estimated SMS spend, any M-Pesa fees you absorb rather than pass on, and any one-time onboarding fee spread across the first twelve months. Compare that total, not the headline rate.

Is There a Free ISP Billing System?

Yes, and it is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. The licence is genuinely free; the question is what the rest of it costs.

What the free options actually are

FreeRADIUS with a billing front end. FreeRADIUS is a mature open-source RADIUS server, and paired with a billing platform it can run an ISP. The billing front end is usually not free itself, M-Pesa integration needs a custom module, and MikroTik control needs additional scripting.

Cacti with FreeRADIUS. A common pairing for bandwidth monitoring and authentication, but not a billing system — there is no invoicing, no M-Pesa, and no customer management.

The costs that are not in the licence

• Server — KSh 2,000–5,000 a month for a VPS you can rely on
• Setup time — configuring RADIUS, the billing layer and M-Pesa is measured in weeks, not evenings
• Integration development — building M-Pesa and MikroTik integration is the largest single line, and it is a real quote from a real developer
• Maintenance — security patches, updates and bug fixes, indefinitely
• Support — a forum, at whatever hour your billing stops working

If you are technical, early, and proving the idea, that trade is reasonable and you will learn the fundamentals. Once you have subscribers who have paid you, downtime costs more than the licence ever did.

Jasiyo offers a 7-day free trial so you can run the full system before committing. No credit card is required.

The Cost of Not Having One

The comparison that usually gets skipped is against doing it by hand, which is not free either — it is just billed in your time instead of your bank account.

For a 100-subscriber ISP, a realistic week looks like roughly half an hour a day checking M-Pesa payments, three quarters of an hour connecting and disconnecting people, another half hour on payment queries, and about four hours of reconciliation at month end. That lands near 40 hours a month — a full working week — on billing administration alone.

Then there is revenue leakage, which is harder to see:

• Missed disconnections — subscribers who did not pay staying online because nobody noticed
• Unmatched payments — M-Pesa money you cannot attribute to anyone, sitting unclaimed
• Late reconnections — people who did pay, calling to ask why they are still off, sometimes asking for a refund

At 100 subscribers, even a few percent of leakage from missed disconnections is several thousand shillings a month. Against a KSh 2,500 bill at that size, the arithmetic tends to answer itself — but do it with your own numbers rather than ours.

Summary: ISP Billing System Price Comparison

For most Kenyan ISPs, a cloud-based ISP billing system offers the best value: transparent per-customer pricing, M-Pesa integration included, and unlimited MikroTik support. At KSh 25/customer/month, a 50-customer ISP pays KSh 1,250/month — less than the cost of one staff member managing billing by hand.

View Jasiyo's full ISP billing pricing →