Vobiz sub-accounts vs partner accounts

If you run a platform that serves many customers on Vobiz, such as an AI voice agent product, a CRM with calling, or a reseller business, you need a separate Vobiz identity for each customer. Vobiz gives you two ways to do that: sub-accounts and partner child accounts. Both let you provision customers programmatically. They differ in who owns five things: balance, KYC, phone numbers, CPS (calls per second), and concurrency (simultaneous calls). This page explains each model and helps you pick one. Many platforms use both.

​

The two models at a glance

In the sub-account model, your main account (MA_…) holds the balance, the CPS limit, and the concurrency limit. Every sub-account (SA_…) lives inside it. Each sub-account carries its own phone numbers and, for real customers, its own KYC. In the partner model, your partner master account creates child accounts. Each child account is a main account in its own right (MA_…) with its own balance, CPS, concurrency, KYC, and numbers. You can top those up from your master account, but the child account owns them.

​

Side-by-side comparison

​

How each resource behaves

​

Balance

With sub-accounts, there is one wallet. Every call from every sub-account draws from your main account’s balance. Vobiz charges you, never your customer, so you decide what to show and charge your customer. That makes sub-accounts the natural fit for a markup model: Vobiz charges you one rate and you bill your customer another. With partner accounts, each child account has its own wallet. You can fund it from your master balance, and the transfer is atomic and recorded in both ledgers. If you would rather not carry a large customer’s spend on your own books, Vobiz can also invoice that customer directly. Partners often choose this for their largest accounts so they do not have to clear big invoices on the customer’s behalf.

​

KYC

In India, the number used to call a person must be linked to the KYC of the business that actually makes those calls. If every customer’s number sits on your own KYC, that becomes a problem as you grow. Both models solve it.

• Sub-accounts support two modes. personal_use inherits your main account’s KYC and suits internal teams, staging, and your own workloads. customer_use requires the sub-account to complete its own KYC and starts with kyc_calls_blocked: true until it does. Use customer_use for real customers. See Sub-account KYC.
• Partner child accounts always complete their own KYC. You start a KYC session and either email the customer a hosted link or embed the hosted widget in your own onboarding flow. A kyc.completed webhook tells you when to unlock calling.

In both models the KYC flow can run inside your product. The customer sees a Vobiz-hosted verification step, similar to a payment gateway popup, and never has to visit the Vobiz Console.

​

Phone numbers

Numbers belong to the account that holds the KYC they were bought under, and every customer calls from numbers registered to their own identity. Numbers can be searched and purchased programmatically without the customer ever leaving your platform. With sub-accounts you have two ways to get a number onto a customer:

• Buy with the main account, then assign. Purchase from inventory with your main-account credentials, which debits your main balance, then call assign to sub-account with the sub-account’s ID. The number now belongs to the sub-account and its calls run under that sub-account’s KYC.
• Let the sub-account buy its own. The sub-account purchases with its own auth_id and auth_token. Billing still routes to your main balance, and the number lands on the sub-account with no assign step.

You can move a number back to the main pool with unassign. If the number had a call in the last 15 days, a 15-day cool-off applies before it can be reassigned. Plan number moves between customers with that in mind. With partner accounts, you assign numbers to the child account from the partner view, or the child account buys numbers itself from its own wallet. See partner numbers. A useful habit in both models: create one trunk per agent or campaign inside each customer’s account. Trunks are a clean filter for cost, connect rate, and which numbers are in play, so you can compare agents without extra tagging.

​

CPS and concurrency

This is the biggest practical difference. With sub-accounts, CPS and concurrency are set once on the main account and pooled across all sub-accounts. You never pay for capacity per customer, and idle customers lend their headroom to busy ones. The trade-off is that one high-volume customer can consume the pool and leave less for the others. If you run high volumes, build concurrency control into your own campaign manager: queue calls per customer and release them at the rate each customer should get. Every campaign has its own idea of fair share, so this logic belongs on your side. With partner accounts, each child account has its own CPS and concurrency limits. You hold a partner pool and transfer slots to a customer, then reclaim them when that customer scales down. A customer’s spike never affects anyone else, and you do not need your own concurrency limiter for isolation.

​

Which one should you choose?

Choose sub-accounts when:

• You want one Vobiz bill and a single wallet to manage.
• You set your own prices and keep a margin.
• You are fine with pooled CPS and concurrency, or you already limit per-customer throughput in your own dialer.
• You want to stay the single point of contact for your customers.

Choose partner accounts when:

• Large customers should be invoiced by Vobiz directly rather than through you.
• Each customer needs CPS and concurrency that no other customer can eat into.
• Customers should own their relationship with Vobiz, including support.
• You still want programmatic control, since you hold each child account’s credentials.

Use both. A common pattern is sub-accounts for the long tail of small and medium customers, and partner child accounts for a handful of large customers with their own volume commitments. Vobiz supports running both under the same organisation.

​

Capacity planning

Default CPS and concurrency limits are sized for getting started. If you are pooling many customers under sub-accounts, or allocating dedicated slots to partner children, you will want more capacity. Higher limits and volume pricing come with a commitment plan, often as a ramp-up over a few months. Contact support@vobiz.ai with your expected monthly minutes and customer count.

​

Next steps