Pay as you go Pricing

Simple and Transparent Pricing - Choose between mesibo Cloud and On-Premise offerings. Both the plans come with generous free credits for you to try the service. Absolutely NO other charges than mentioned here.

mesibo is completely free for educational and research institutes, students, non-profit organizations, or other non-commercial apps for a good cause. Write to us.

Items

On-premise Deployment

Pricing when you download and deploy mesibo in your own premise

Cloud Deployment

Pricing when you use mesibo on cloud

Monthly Active Users (MAU)

MAU is counted only when a user connects to a mesibo server (cloud or on-premise) within a monthly billing cycle, a message is received for the user or any API operation is carried out on the user. To further clarify, it will be only counted as one even for multiple operations within a monthly billing cycle.

$0.01 per MAU

Concurrent Users (simultaneous connections)

The concurrent user limit will be 10% of the MAU. In our experience, simultaneous users are generally less than 5% of MAU and hence you are unlikely to cross that limit. However, in case you cross the 10% limit, it will be compensated by billing you for MAU = ( concurrent users X 10).

There is NO limit on concurrent users when you host mesibo on-premise.

Unlimited
10% of MAU

Real-time Bandwidth

Real-time bandwidth consumed by your apps within a monthly billing cycle. Real-time bandwidth includes the bandwidth used in connections, messaging, API invocations, webhooks, push-notifications, etc. However, media bandwidth used by Video and voice calls or conferences does not count towards the real-time bandwidth.

There are no real-time bandwidth charges when you host mesibo on-premise.

Free
$0.9 per GB

Real-time Database

Maximum Real-time storage used by your apps within a monthly billing cycle. Real-time storage includes everything stored by your app including messages, users, groups, etc.

There are no real-time database charges when you host mesibo on-premise.

Free
$2.5 per GB

Video and Voice Calling

One-to-one video and voice calling are free and unlimited. There are absolutely no charges for one-to-one video and voice media bandwidth. However, each call exchanges a few messages (typically 5 to 8) every few seconds, to set up and to keep calls alive, which counts toward the real-time bandwidth. The bandwidth consumed by these messages is minimal and very small.

Free

Video and Voice Conferencing

Mesibo only charges for the bandwidth consumed by all your participants. There is no limit on the number of participants. Conferencing Bandwidth depends on the number of participants and video resolution used. Refer to the conferencing page for details.

Free
$1 per GB

TURN Server

TURN servers dramatically increase the reliability of video and voice calling, especially when your users are behind firewalls, or non-cooperative routers, or symmetric NAT. The use of TURN server is highly recommended and it's ON for your apps by default. You can disable it from the mesibo console if requires.

$0.4 per GB

Message Retention

All your messages are retained indefinitely till your account is active.

Unlimited

File Transfer Size

mesibo allows you to use your own file servers or cloud services like Amazon AWS, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure, etc. for file storage. Hence, mesibo has no restrictions on file size.

Unlimited

Sign up

and

get $50 credits

to try all the features

No credit cards needed

$50 credits on sign-up

1000 Users

30 days Validity

mesibo is completely free for educational and research institutes, students, non-profit organizations, or other non-commercial apps for a good cause. Write to us.

 

Pricing Calculator

On-Premise Deployment
Cloud Deployment
Amount: US$ -

Note: Calculation does not reflect protocol overheads.

How will you be Billed?

Assume that your application has 1,000 monthly active users (MAU) and sends 20 million messages of average 50 bytes (utilizing about 1 GB bandwidth). Let's calculate what will be the monthly cost for On-premise and Cloud deployment.

The total cost for 1,000 MAU will be 1,000*0.01=$10 per month.

- For On-premise deployment, there are no other charges, and hence, the total cost will be only $10 per month as calculated above.

- For Cloud deployment, there will be an additional cost for bandwidth and storage. In this case, 1GB bandwidth. Hence, the total cost will be $10+1*0.9=$10.9 per month. Also, concurrent users are limited to 10% of MAU. So in this case, 1,000/10 = 100 concurrent users will be allowed. If you exceed that, say 150 concurrent users, you will be charged for 150*10 = 1,500 MAU.

You can view your live usage in mesibo console. Use the Pricing Calculator to get an estimate for your usage.

To know more about MAU, concurrent users, message bandwidth and storage, Refer to Notes and FAQs below.


 

Pricing Notes

Free Trial

You can get started with mesibo and use it for free. Upon sign-up, your account will be added with sufficient free credits to get you started and use the service. You can use these free credits for testing and development without paying a single penny until your usage grows, and you wish to switch to Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) plan.

Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) Plan

You can switch to PAYG plan anytime by adding the credit balance in your account.

PAYG Credits

You can add PAYG credit balance as low as US$ 50 in your account whenever you need to. Your usage charges will be deducted from the credit balance at the end of a monthly billing cycle and the remaining credit will be carried forward for the next billing cycle. You can check your credit balance in ‘My Account’ section of the console.

Limits, Quotas, and Constraints

mesibo offers free quota for both free and PAYG subscription. If you exceed these limits, add credit to your account to prevent any interruption of service. We calculate quota as defined below:

  • MAU

    MAU is counted only when a user connects to a mesibo server (cloud or on-premise) within a monthly billing cycle, sends a message or a message is received for the user, or any real-time or backend API operations are performed on the user, for example, create, edit, group membership, etc. In the case of on-premise, all messages and real-time API operations are performed through your server and hence not charged for. To further clarify, it will be only counted as one even for multiple operations within a monthly billing cycle.

  • Concurrent Users (or peak connections or simultaneous connection)

    There is no limit on concurrent users in an on-premise deployment. In Cloud deployment, the concurrent user limit will be 10% of the MAU. In our experience, simultaneous users are generally less than 5% of MAU and hence you are unlikely to cross that limit. However, in case you cross the 10% limit, it will be compensated by billing you for MAU = ( concurrent users X 10).

  • Total Users

    There is no limit on the total number of users you can create. Since we do not charge for the total users, it is possible for an app to misuse and load the system by creating unlimited users without any active users. Hence to avoid misuse and to ensure fair usage, we require that your monthly active users (MAU) should be at least 5% of the total users, if not more. If your MAU are less than 5%, MAU will be counted as (total users x 5)/100.

  • Messages

    A message is the unit of data that is sent between two users or multiple users in the case of a group message. Messages are charged by the size of messages (refer below).

    • Message Delivery and Storage

      mesibo uses cut-through switching to deliver your messages in real-time with minimum latency. However, if the destination is not online, mesibo stores the messages till the user is online. If you decide not to save the messages in the database, you can do so by setting a flag while sending messages using Real-time APIs.

    • Message Retention

      mesibo offers an unlimited message retention period, only limited by the storage quota and usage. You can anytime clear storage from the mesibo console or by using Backend APIs.

    • Message Charges

      Instead of message count, mesibo charges for offline messages stored in the database, and the total outbound network traffic at the session layer (layer 5) of the OSI model to deliver messages to your connected/online users. The network traffic includes payload, as well as protocol & encryption overheads (refer below). Note that, mesibo absorbs traffic due to TCP/IP overheads and does not charge you for that. You can view statistics of your traffic and storage usage in mesibo console.

    • Protocol and Encryption overheads
      • Protocol overhead:

        Some additional traffic between the server and clients is necessary to establish and maintain a connection. Depending on the choice of API (client or server-side), this traffic might include mesibo protocol overhead, or HTTPS header overhead. Each time a connection is established, this overhead, combined with any SSL encryption overhead, contributes to the connection costs. This shouldn't contribute a lot to overall traffic, however it can be a substantial if your client connects frequently for the short duration.

      • SSL encryption overhead:

        There is an overhead associated with the secure encrypted connection (TLS). On an average, this cost is approximately 3.5KB to 6KB for the initial handshake, and approximately tens of bytes for TLS record headers plus padding on each outgoing message. For most apps, this is a small percentage of your traffic. However, it can grow large if your client makes frequent encrypted connections for a short duration. You can selectively enable (default) or disable secure encrypted connection using client side API.

  • Connection

    A connection is counted every time when your client connects to mesibo server. Your client may connect multiple times in a day because of the way mobile operating systems work. When the screen goes OFF on your mobile device, Android and iOS usually move apps to sleep state within some duration and then disconnect all the network connections to conserve system resources and battery life. Hence, apps will need to reconnect when they come out of the sleep state. While mesibo client API takes care of reconnection and your app doesn't have to do anything extra, it is worth knowing why it happens and protocol/encryption overheads associated with it.

  • Audio/Video calling

    Audio and Video calling minutes are unlimited in both free and paid plans. Typically, 5 to 8 messages are exchanged to setup or re-connect a voice or a video call. In addition to that, minimal messages are exchanged from each end every few seconds to keep call alive, exchange quality and control information etc. The bandwidth consumed by those messages will be counted in your billing (approx ~50 Kbytes). There are no other charges for the duration of the call or the bandwidth unless you use our TURN (relay) service.

  • File Transfer, Cloud storage & File size

    mesibo allows you to use your own file servers or cloud services like Amazon AWS, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure, etc. for file storage. Hence, mesibo has no restriction on file size. You can send files of unlimited size using mesibo. Also, unlike other services which charge premium for secure/encrypted file transfer, mesibo allows you to encrypt each and every message without any additional charges.

  • TURN (relay)

    You can add TURN (relay) to add reliability to calls by assisting some users that are behind badly behaving OR symmetric firewalls (roughly less than 5% of users).

Charges & Billing

Your account will be billed at the Pay-As-You-Go rates for the following resources. Usage charges start from the billing date and consist of charges for the following resources consumed in a calendar month.

  1. MAU
  2. Bandwidth (For Cloud deployment only), for each GB
  3. Storage (For Cloud deployment only), for each GB
  4. Media Bandwidth - Conferencing & live-streaming (For Cloud deployment only), for each GB
  5. TURN, for each GB

Cancellation Policy

You may cancel this PAYG subscription at any time by stop using it. There is no refund of the credit balance.

Support

We have a great support team if you have any specific questions. You can reach us at https://mesibo.com/help

Migration

mesibo offers migration service to migrate from any existing API as part of our custom solutions.

Pricing FAQ

Q: What is Monthly Active Users?

Monthly Active User (MAU) is a key performance indicator (KPI) often used by mobile apps, online games and social networking sites. MAU represents the unique monthly active users for a monthly billing cycle. MAU is counted when a user connects to mesibo server within monthly billing cycle. To further clarify, it will be only counted as one active user when a unique user connects to mesibo server multiple times during the monthly billing cycle. A connection is required to perform any types of communication (sending and receiving messages, calls etc) between users and servers.

Q: What is Concurrent Users (peak connections/simultaneous connection)?

Concurrent Users is metric of maximum number of users connected to mesibo server at the same time in any given moment. This number does not quantify unique users at all and is a raw count of connections. Typically, CCU is 10% of daily active users (DAU) which is typically 50% of MAU. However, these metrics vary from an app to app and also depending on the nature of app. Calculating and watching CCU will help you determine the right mesibo plan for your app today and in future.

Concurrent users are also referred to as peak or simultaneous connections.

Q: What is Message Rate Limit?

Message rate limit (throttling) is referred to as the total number of messages that can be sent by all your users in any given second. Typically, a message rate/second for an application like WhatsApp is 0.05% of MAU (based on public stats). mesibo has assigned much higher rate limit than that so you should encounter rate limit only in rare circumstances.

Q: Does limit apply to Voice and Video calls?

Typically 5 to 8 messages are exchanged to setup or re-connect a voice or video call. In addition to that, minimal messages are exchanged from each end every few seconds to keep call alive, exchange quality and control information, etc. All these messages are subject to total messages limit and rate limits.

Q: Does Voice and Video calls quality differs in FREE and PAYG Plan?

Absolutely not - quality remains the same whether you are in free or PAYG plan.

However, you can add your own TURN servers in PAYG plans. TURN servers add reliability to calls by assisting some users that are behind badly behaving or symmetric firewalls (roughly 5% of users).

Q: Are there any feature differences between the PAYG and FREE plan?

No, all the features are available in all the plans. Only difference is the capacity.

Q: What happens if my apps exceed the limits of FREE plan or credits in PAYG plan?

We usually do not throttle your app immediately, unless in extreme situations. We will send you an email and also inform your backend using webhook when your app usage exceeds 50% and 75% of the free limits in the free plan OR 50% and 75% of available credits in PAYG plan. We will throttle or temporarily disable your app only if you do not take any action after these notifications.

Q: How do I know, how much I am spending?

mesibo console is the best way to keep a tab on your usage and charges. mesibo console is updated at regular intervals with the usage and corresponding charges.

More Pricing FAQ