Most agencies that rebill SMS never think to rebill voice. That's a mistake. A Power Dialer is a stickier line item than a text blast — once a client's sales team lives inside your dialer every day, they don't churn over a $200 invoice. And the margin math is friendlier than SMS, because voice carries two rebillable dimensions instead of one: a per-seat fee and per-minute usage.
Full disclosure: I work for ReadySMS, so I have skin in the game. But the point of this post isn't to convince you the dialer is magic — it's to show you the actual arithmetic so you can decide whether the margin holds up for your client base. If it doesn't, I'll say so.
The two things you're actually reselling
When you resell a dialer, you're reselling two separate costs, and you can mark them up independently:
- The seat. ReadySMS charges per agent, per month. On the Pro plan that's $29/agent/mo (up to 3 agents), and on Team it's $69/agent/mo for unlimited agents plus speed-to-lead, lead routing, and manager monitoring.
- The minutes. Billed in 6-second increments. Pro is $0.05/min, Team is $0.0375/min, and the Free plan is $0.06/min after its 500 included minutes.
Because these are separate, you can price them separately to your client. Most agencies I've seen do the opposite of what's smart: they mark up the seat aggressively and pass minutes through at cost. Flip that. Minutes are where the volume compounds, and clients rarely audit a per-minute rate the way they scrutinize a flat monthly seat fee. (There's a whole post on that ceiling — how high you can rebill before clients start auditing the line item.)
The 10-agent model
Let's build a realistic scenario. You've got one client running an inside-sales team of 10 reps on a Power Dialer. They're a decent outbound shop, so each rep talks about 600 connected minutes/month (roughly 30 min/day of live talk time across 20 working days — dialing time between connects doesn't all bill, but be conservative and call it 600 billable minutes/rep).
For 10 agents you need the Team plan — unlimited agents at $69/seat and the cheapest per-minute rate at $0.0375. Here's your cost base:
| Cost line | Calculation | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Seats | 10 × $69 | $690 |
| Minutes | 10 × 600 × $0.0375 | $225 |
| Total wholesale cost | $915 |
Now you rebill. A defensible retail structure for a dialer with recording, voicemail drop, transfer/whisper/barge, and speed-to-lead built in:
- Seat fee to client: $99/agent/mo
- Per-minute to client: $0.09/min
| Revenue line | Calculation | Monthly revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Seats | 10 × $99 | $990 |
| Minutes | 10 × 600 × $0.09 | $540 |
| Total retail | $1,530 |
Gross margin: $1,530 − $915 = $615/month, or ~40%.
That's already healthy. But notice where it came from: the seat markup contributed $300, the minute markup contributed $315. Minutes carried more than half the profit — and you barely thought about them.
Getting to 55%: push the minute markup, not the seat
The $0.09/min retail rate above is conservative. Voice minutes are opaque to clients in a way seats aren't. A sales director knows what a "seat" of software roughly costs. Almost nobody has an intuition for what a connected minute of dialing should cost, and the market has trained them to expect $0.10–$0.15/min from call-center tooling.
Bump your retail minute rate to $0.12/min and hold the seat at $99:
| Line | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Seat revenue | 10 × $99 | $990 |
| Minute revenue | 10 × 600 × $0.12 | $720 |
| Total retail | $1,710 | |
| Wholesale cost | (from above) | $915 |
| Gross margin | $795 (~46%) |
To crack 55%, either your reps dial heavier (more billable minutes = the minute markup compounds against a fixed seat cost) or you tighten seat cost. At 900 billable minutes/rep and the $0.12 retail rate:
| Line | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Seat revenue | 10 × $99 | $990 |
| Minute revenue | 10 × 900 × $0.12 | $1,080 |
| Total retail | $2,070 | |
| Seat cost | 10 × $69 | $690 |
| Minute cost | 10 × 900 × $0.0375 | $337.50 |
| Total cost | $1,027.50 | |
| Gross margin | $1,042.50 (~50%) |
Push retail minutes to $0.13 and the seat markup up slightly, and you're through 55%. The lever that gets you there is almost always usage volume, not seat price — the per-minute delta ($0.0375 cost vs $0.13 retail) is a ~3.5x markup that scales linearly with talk time, while the seat markup is fixed the moment the contract is signed. This is the same dynamic that makes SMS margin improve as you climb tiers, just steeper. (The SMS version of this breakpoint math is here.)
Why Team beats Pro the moment you cross a few seats
Pro caps at 3 agents and charges $0.05/min. Team is unlimited agents at $0.0375/min. For a 10-agent client the plan choice isn't really a choice — you can't fit 10 reps on Pro. But even at the seats where both are possible, run the minute math:
- 3 agents × 600 min on Pro: minutes cost 1,800 × $0.05 = $90, plus 3 × $29 = $87 seats = $177 total.
- 3 agents × 600 min on Team: minutes cost 1,800 × $0.0375 = $67.50, plus 3 × $69 = $207 seats = $274.50 total.
At low seat counts Pro wins because the seat fee dominates. The crossover happens when per-minute savings outrun the higher seat fee — roughly once your reps are dialing enough that minutes, not seats, are the bigger cost line. If you've got heavy dialers, Team's cheaper minutes pull ahead sooner. There's a fuller per-seat vs per-minute breakdown worth reading before you pick a plan to standardize on across clients.
Package it so the margin survives a client audit
A client who sees "$99/seat + $0.12/min" itemized might do the arithmetic and get twitchy. Two ways agencies avoid that:
- Bundle minutes into the seat. Sell a "sales line" at $199/agent/mo that includes 500 minutes, overage at $0.12. Now the per-minute rate isn't a naked line item — it's an overage buffer, which clients read as fair. Your cost on 500 included minutes (Team) is $18.75, so a $199 seat has enormous headroom.
- Sell it as an outcome, not a utility. Speed-to-lead auto-dial, live transfer, and manager whisper aren't "minutes" — they're a system that closes leads faster. Price the system. The 60-second speed-to-lead window is the kind of concrete outcome that justifies the seat fee without anyone reaching for a calculator.
The compliance line item you should also rebill
If your client dials cold or semi-warm lists, scrub them first. The standalone TCPA & DNC litigator scrub is $0.005/contact — trivial against the $500–$1,500-per-text (and per-call) exposure a known litigator represents. Rebill it at $0.015–$0.02/contact and you've added another small, defensible margin line while genuinely reducing your client's risk.
One honest caveat: a scrub reduces exposure, it doesn't make anyone lawsuit-proof. Consent and calling practices are still the client's responsibility, and you should say that in your contract. Also worth reading before you sign anyone up — who owns the opt-in list when a client leaves. Voice call logs and recordings raise the same ownership question.
Where this doesn't work
Two situations where I'd tell you not to bother:
- Light dialers. A client whose reps make 50 calls a week won't generate enough billable minutes for the markup to matter. You'll clear $60/month in profit and spend more than that supporting them. The dialer margin model needs volume — the whole thesis is minutes compounding against a fixed seat.
- Clients who already own a dialer. If they're locked into a call-center platform they like, don't fight it. Rebill their SMS instead and leave voice alone. Forcing a migration to capture margin usually costs you the relationship.
The takeaway
Reselling the Power Dialer works because you're marking up two independent things — seats and minutes — and the minute side is a linear, ~3.5x markup that grows with talk time while your seat cost stays flat. A 10-agent client at moderate usage clears ~40% margin at conservative retail rates; push the minute rate and let heavier dialers run and 50–55% is reachable without gouging anyone.
The move is to model your actual client — real seat count, real average talk minutes — before you set retail prices. Plug the numbers into the cost calculator, or start on the free tier (500 minutes, 1 agent, no card) and watch what your own reps' minutes actually look like before you commit a client to a plan. The math only convinces people when it's their own.