A Guide to Reselling White-Label Hosted PBX Phones
Cloud-based solutions are rapidly increasing in popularity among businesses in all industries. Research shows that 94% of enterprises now use at least some cloud services, while 62% of enterprise structure is entirely cloud-based. With this growing trend toward moving services to the cloud, communications systems based on hosted PBX phones have become a preferred solution for businesses.
Done right, hosted PBX phones offer a better, more flexible and modern way to communicate. Demand has been growing for hosted PBX since the COVID-19 pandemic, and this demand increase offers a perfect opportunity to enter the reselling business.
The hosted PBX market is expected to reach $15 billion in revenue by 2034, with a projected 13% annual growth rate. That’s more than double today’s market size. Reselling a white-label solution allows you to enter the market and meet that demand — as long as you can understand your customers’ needs and find the right service provider.
The Basics of White-Label Hosted PBX Phones
Thanks to rapidly-growing demand, hosted PBX services have entered the mainstream technology discussion for both businesses and IT service providers. Whether you’re an MSP or simply looking to diversify your revenue stream as a reseller, offering UCaaS as part of your product mix is an attractive option to generate more revenue and increase consumer appeal while growing your business.
Let’s start with some basic definitions. As TechTarget outlines, “hosted PBX” is short for “hosted Private Branch Exchange,” and describes a telephone exchange system built, delivered, and managed by a third-party service provider. In other words, this is a remote business telephone solution, running on IP addresses, that the organization using it can access entirely through the Internet.
Hosted PBX can either run in isolation or become part of a larger UCaaS (unified communications as a service) integration. But regardless of the integration level, putting your phone service into the cloud can come with significant advantages for the business willing to leverage it.
Clients using hosted PBX phones avoid the need for any on-premise equipment. Instead, their calls will go through your provider’s servers before reaching an actual phone. As an added benefit, hosted PBX prevents your customers from storing crucial data in their data centers. And, although many hosted PBXs offer the same capabilities as on-premises VoIP or even legacy PBX phones, customer maintenance costs are virtually nonexistent.
What Services Can White-Label PBX Platforms Provide?
The exact services included in a hosted PBX platform depend largely on the platform and partner you choose. That said, a few of the most-common features within this environment include:
- A voice API that doesn’t just manage your clients’ phones, but also provides access to more in-depth features like real-time call data, click-to-call integrations, and more.
- Business SMS services that help your clients communicate with their audience more quickly and efficiently. In marketing and customer service, texting has rapidly ascended to the top communications channel for most audiences.
- Video conferencing and collaboration tools, up to and including remote access and webinars for your clients to build more efficient virtual communications internally and with their audience.
- Fax solutions that replace legacy analog machines, instead digitizing the process to modernize the platforms of businesses still relying on faxing for their paper-based communication.
Of course, these are not the only features you might encounter when looking for hosted PBX partners. Some providers, for example, also offer call center support that enables SMBs to offer customer service experiences similar to larger enterprises. Others might offer integrations into your clients’ CRM or collaboration software to streamline customer and internal touchpoints.
The Benefits of Offering Hosted PBX Phones Through a White-Label Partner
MSPs looking to offer cloud PBX services face a central question: build and run their own platform, or work with a reliable partner to resell an existing solution under their own brand. In the majority of cases, the latter tends to be the better choice — as long as that partner can provide reliable white-label services.
Working with a white-label hosted PBX provider or a more comprehensive UCaaS provider allows you to meet your customers’ needs under your own brand. Selling UCaaS-hosted voice services through your partner means being able to offer cutting-edge solutions to your customers without having to build them yourself.
Related: 3 steps to becoming a VoIP reseller
More specifically, some of the reasons why it pays to join with the right provider for a better and more reliable hosted PBX phone solution include saving money and time, leveraging existing industry experience, obtaining proven tools, establishing new sources of revenue, and automating business processes.
Saving Money and Time With Hosted PBX Phones
When you work with a reputable white-label partner, you can focus on network design and other services while leaving the ins and outs of hosted PBX phones to them. In addition, this model allows you to concentrate more on running your business, providing premium customer service, and building your client base.
Establish a New Source of Revenue
Naturally, the ability to resell hosted PBX services can open up a new revenue stream with relatively few hurdles and roadblocks. Especially when you find a white-label provider whose solution is built for resale, the system is in place to create that revenue stream without a massive time or monetary investment.
Leveraging Existing PBX and UCaaS Industry Knowledge
Partnering with a white-label supplier also allows you to tap into a team of experts who are deeply familiar with the technologies and services your customers need. Rather than having to build that knowledge internally and onboarding your own team, you can continue focusing on your core competencies as your partner goes deep on the PBX piece.
Obtain Proven Tools to Help Your Clients
The rapid rise of cloud-based PBX also comes with the drawback of not every solution being reliable. By working with trusted white-label hosted PBX and UCaaS providers, you’ll be able to leverage their proven technology and lessen your chance of failure. Skip the testing and development stage, and go right into executing the implementation of hosted PBX phones.
Automate Your Business Processes
As with any white-label program, a core benefit will always be the ability to streamline your own business processes. For example, you can choose a provider who can automate billing on your behalf and whose solution integrates with critical business processes and systems, saving you hours of time and reducing the manual tasks required to offer your clients cloud PBX services.
How to Identify the Right Provider Based on Core Hosted PBX Features
Of course, turning this type of partnership into a successful reselling revenue opportunity depends entirely on which partner you choose. The rapidly growing popularity of this technology has resulted in an influx of vendors offering hosted platforms both for resale and direct business use, which makes selecting the best provider difficult.
Look for a company with a reputable track record of helping businesses successfully sell hosted PBX under their own brand. The best white-label hosted PBX providers will also offer a fast time-to-market, a simplified onboarding process, and the operational efficiencies that come with having a professional team behind you.
Beyond those basics, the right provider should also make full use of the potential features that come with moving to hosted PBX phones. With the market growing more than 12% annually between 2021 and 2027, leveraging these features becomes vital.
Cost-Effectiveness
The right hosted PBX services are cost-friendly specifically because your provider will be responsible for managing and maintaining the technology and servers on your behalf. To get started, your customers will only need some routers, IP phones, and a business-grade Internet subscription. It’s a straightforward and cost-effective setup that you can develop alongside your white-label hosted PBX provider.
Increased Mobility
Legacy PBX services require all phones to be connected to the same network to function. As a result, only users nearby can access the service. Before deploying the service, your client’s organization will need a PBX for each branch office.
Hosted PBX, on the other hand, is specifically designed to improve mobility and flexibility. Thanks to softphones and VoIP-based desk phones, your customers’ organizations have ultimate flexibility to provide voice solutions for their remote- and office-based teams. Your provider should prioritize this mobility as you look to resell their service to an increasingly distributed and mobile workforce.
Enhanced Scalability
Traditional PBXs typically serve hundreds of telephone lines. When your customers’ organizations need to expand, they must invest more into their own infrastructure with ongoing operational expenses.
Depending on how many new phones they want to add to the network, they may need to buy more on-site servers. And, as they add more phones, they’ll also need to customize dial plans for them.
Your goal as a hosted PBX reseller is to build flexibility that allows for easier scaling. Look for a provider that can partner with you to deliver services like enabling clients to add an unlimited amount of users or to upgrade and downgrade the system as needed, while better managing monthly costs.
With the right provider, the only thing clients should need to scale their remote PBX system is a web browser. In that environment, adding a new phone simply requires it to be logged into and registered to the VoIP service. If the customer provides the required information, you are good to go.
Related: How to become the best Voice over IP reseller
Low to No Maintenance
Traditional PBX system maintenance requires hiring IT staff. Considering the servers are on-site, dedicated tech staff is necessary for maintenance, whether it be full-time or external staff. A consultant from an external company will be responsible for any software updates available for the PBX, while your customers’ network administrators will require reinstalling the software and resetting the servers.
Hosted PBX, on the other hand, is a fully cloud-based service that requires no physical infrastructure to be maintained by your customers. To make the most of that benefit, look for a PBX provider that can handle all necessary software and server maintenance. The more support is available, the less maintenance will be needed both from you and your customers.
Find the Right Provider to Go Beyond Hosted PBX Phones
Moving to reselling hosted PBX services is only possible with the right solution to help in the process. But, if you find the right partner, it might also just be the starting point.
That’s because you don’t have to settle for simply reselling white-label hosted PBX phones. You can become even more competitive and beneficial for your customers by promoting comprehensive UCaaS solutions.
SkySwitch helps you achieve your goals and stay ahead of your competitors with our white-label UCaaS technology. We maintain the infrastructure, keep an eye on industry trends, and continually expand our platform’s features to give you the right solution to resell to customers.
Founded by VoIP industry veterans, SkySwitch offers resellers, interconnects, ISPs, MSPs, agents, and traditional telecom providers a fully managed platform that enables advanced communications efficiently. Get started today.