Swift Fox vs Powercode
Powercode is an all-in-one billing, CRM and field-operations platform for ISPs, built in Wisconsin since 2002 by a company that also runs a regional ISP of its own. It runs on your own server. In July 2026 it was relaunched as Powercode Command, alongside a new DHCP and monitoring engine called Powercode Link that replaces the BMU and VMU appliances Powercode shops have relied on for rate limiting and monitoring for twenty years. Swift Fox comes at the problem from the network side, as a cloud-hosted monitoring and automation platform that grew billing tools rather than the reverse. This page lays out what that means in practice, including what moving from one to the other involves. If we get a fact wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Choose Powercode if…
You want subscriber and billing data on a server you own, and your business runs on field operations: a dispatch board with route optimization and drive times, truck GPS on the map, serialized inventory with RMAs, an installer portal for phones, customer self-signup with contract e-signing, and VoIP billing. Powercode does all of that in one system, provisions Baicells and Tarana radios and Calix fibre ONTs, and now includes a DHCP and IPv6 prefix-delegation server with ping and SNMP monitoring.
Choose Swift Fox if…
You want the network layer and would rather not run the server: monitoring that reads signal and capacity from your radios, paging with on-call rotations, built-in fq_codel shaping, captive-portal disconnects that reconnect themselves, MPLS auto-balancing, DDoS protection and CGNAT, with billing and an optional hosted call centre in the same system, hosted by us, on published pricing with a free trial. We've moved a number of Powercode shops over and we help with the migration.
Operations-first vs. network-first
Powercode started from the business side. On billing itself the two are fairly even: both do recurring invoicing with proration and autopay, card processing through the same processors, and ACH by a batch file to your bank. Where Powercode is clearly ahead is field operations. It has a dispatch board with route optimization and drive times, truck GPS on the network map, serialized inventory with RMAs, an installer web portal for phones, customer self-signup with service areas drawn in KML, contract e-signing, and VoIP billing from CDR imports, and it provisions Baicells and Tarana radios and Calix fibre ONTs. If your days are mostly trucks, installs and stock, that's a real advantage.
Swift Fox started from the network side. It was built to run our own WISP: radio-level monitoring across every vendor, per-minute ping history on every customer radio, backhaul capacity measurement, MPLS traffic balancing, and fq_codel shaping. Billing, a customer portal, and a hosted call centre were added on top later, so a billing event can drive a network action without any glue between vendors (an unpaid invoice becomes a captive-portal disconnect, and a payment becomes a reconnect). On the network, Swift Fox does a lot of things Powercode doesn't do at all: signal and MCS from the radios, live backhaul capacity, on-call paging with rotations, tier-fair PFO shaping during congestion, MPLS auto-balancing, DDoS blackholing, and CGNAT management.
Hosting is the other real difference. Powercode runs on a server you provide, Powercode installs onto it remotely, and nightly backups go to your own Dropbox, S3 or FTP. If keeping subscriber data on your own hardware is a requirement, Powercode is the fit and we aren't, since Swift Fox is cloud-hosted only, with nothing on your network but a small pingbox that makes outbound connections only. How we run the rest is on our security page. Support is fairly similar in spirit on both sides: phone and email straight to the people who build the product, during business hours (Central time for Powercode, with up to four hours a month included), and in our case from an engineer with experience running a WISP, with two hours of onboarding included.
BMU, Link, pingbox and Pathbox
This is the part of the comparison that matters most right now, because Powercode changed it in July 2026. For twenty years Powercode shops ran a BMU: a Powercode appliance sitting inline in the network, vendor-agnostic, serving DHCP, rate-limiting each customer to their plan, and redirecting delinquent customers to a payment page. Powercode Link, which replaced it, is a server on your network that serves DHCP and polls your gear by ping and SNMP. It doesn't shape traffic or redirect anyone. For that, Powercode now points you at its MikroTik integration, where Command pushes simple queues and NAT redirect rules to a MikroTik router over the RouterOS API, or at a third-party inline box such as Preseem, Saisei or LibreQoS.
Swift Fox has both shapes. The pingbox is a small out-of-band box on your network (a free VM image, a Raspberry Pi image, a cloud tunnel, or a $119 device) that monitors everything and lets Swift Fox configure fq_codel queues and captive-portal redirects on your MikroTik edge router. That's the same shape as Link plus the MikroTik integration. The Pathbox is an inline, vendor-agnostic appliance: a transparent bridge that does per-subscriber fq_codel shaping with PFO fairness, captive disconnects, bandwidth accounting and TCP latency monitoring at line rate on commodity hardware (yours, or a pre-flashed unit from us). That's the same shape as the BMU.
| Piece | Powercode | Swift Fox |
|---|---|---|
| Out-of-band box on your network | Linka server you provide, installed by Powercode Support; DHCP plus ping and SNMP polling | Pingboxfree VM or Raspberry Pi image, cloud tunnel, or $119 device; ping, SNMP and radio-level data every minute |
| Shaping and disconnects on a MikroTik router | MikroTik integrationsimple queues and NAT redirects pushed over the RouterOS API | Built infq_codel queues, PFO fairness and captive-portal redirects on your MikroTik edge |
| Inline, vendor-agnostic shaping box | BMU2006–2026; updates stopped July 1, 2026 | Pathboxtransparent bridge; per-subscriber fq_codel with PFO, captive disconnects, MPLS/TE; early access |
| If you don't want a MikroTik in your core | Preseem, Saisei or LibreQoS boxa second vendor to buy, size and maintain | Pathboxsame product, same billing tie-in |
A lot of Powercode shops ran the BMU precisely because they didn't want a MikroTik router in their core, and the end-of-life leaves them needing a replacement for the shaping and redirect half of what it did (DHCP and routing go to your existing router, which is the direction Powercode has taken too, since Link is a DHCP server rather than an inline box). The Pathbox is a drop-in for that half. It sits inline where the BMU sat, works with whatever routers and radios you already have, and the disconnects follow your billing the same way the BMU's did. If you're on a MikroTik core already, you don't need any new hardware beyond the pingbox.
What each platform does
| Capability | Powercode Command | Swift Fox |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring billing, invoicing & card processing | YesStripe, IPPay, ProPay and Moneris gateways; ACH by batch file to your bank; card surcharges | Yes150+ merchant providers via Spreedly — card data is tokenized, so you can switch processors without re-collecting cards |
| Multi-jurisdiction tax handling | Yestax zones and rates entered by hand, picked by customer address | Basic tax handling |
| Inventory, dispatch & truck tracking | Yesserialized inventory with RMAs, dispatch board with route optimization and drive times, Track Your Truck GPS, installer web portal | Limitedticketing and scheduling with calendar sync and customer notifications; no inventory |
| Customer self-signup & contract e-signing | Yesservice areas from KML, install booked straight onto the installer calendar | — |
| VoIP billing (CDR rating) | Yesdaily CDR import from your switch | — |
| LTE, CBRS & fibre ONT provisioning | YesBaicells, Tarana, Calix ONTs, cnMaestro | —built for fixed wireless; fibre CPEs are monitored, not provisioned |
| DHCP server, IPv6 prefix delegation & IPAM | YesPowercode Link, included with Command | —your MikroTik serves DHCP; Swift Fox reads the leases |
| Hosted PBX with call recording on accounts | —call logs are typed in by staff | Yes, optional tieryour toll-free number, minutes included |
| Customer self-service portal | Yespay, autopay, usage, tickets, 2FA, plan changes | Yesworks even while disconnected — pay to auto-reconnect |
| Network monitoring | Yesping and SNMP through Link at intervals down to 30 s, device states with parent/child suppression, device data from cnMaestro, Tarana, Trango, Calix and Baicells; custom OIDs need Link Advanced; config backups through Unimus | Yesevery customer radio pinged every minute with history forever, plus signal, MCS and live backhaul capacity from every major vendor, and config backup with diffs |
| On-call paging with rotations & time-of-day thresholds | Email, SMS, Slack and PagerDuty alertsrotations live in PagerDuty | Yes |
| Delinquency automation (disconnect / redirect for nonpayment) | YesNAT redirect pushed to your MikroTik over the API, or through a Preseem or Saisei box, now that the BMU is end-of-life | Yesbranded captive portal — customer pays online and reconnects instantly |
| fq_codel QoE shaping to plan rates | Plan rate limitssimple queues pushed to your MikroTik over the API, or a LibreQoS, Preseem or Saisei box you run; queue type isn't documented | Built infq_codel queues on your MikroTik edge, or inline on our Pathbox, plus tier-fair PFO shaping during congestion |
| Backhaul capacity measurement | —SNMP throughput graphs | Yessignal / MCS / throughput from every major vendor, plus automated speedtests between MikroTik routers |
| MPLS auto traffic balancing (RSVP-TE) | — | Yesunique to Swift Fox |
| DDoS detection & CGNAT management | —CGNAT pool mapping is recorded in IPAM | Yes |
| Hosting & backups | Your serverUbuntu on hardware or a cloud account you provide; Powercode installs remotely; nightly backups to your own Dropbox, S3 or FTP | Cloud-hosted by usnothing on your network but the pingbox; see our security page |
| Support | Phone and email, Monday to Friday on Central timedirect to the team that builds it; up to 4 hours a month included, after-hours by service agreement | Direct support from usanswered by an engineer with experience running WISP networks; 2 hours of free onboarding |
| Moving between the two | REST API, webhooks and CSV exportsSwagger / OpenAPI docs | Import from Powercodecustomers and plans come in through our importer from a Powercode export; we've done it for a number of Powercode shops |
| Pricing | Per subscriber, monthly, quoted after a sales calllast published list (2019): $1.40 / sub at 250 subs down to $0.63 at 25,000; month to month with 30 days' notice; you supply the server; Link Advanced is a paid add-on | From $0.75 / sub / mo network tier$1.50 with billing; $50–100 minimums, no contract |
| Free trial | —demo only | 30 dayswith 2 hours of free onboarding |
Powercode information sourced from powercode.com (Command, Link and end-of-life pages, the Master License Agreement, and the public knowledge base and changelog) as of September 2026; the 2019 price list is from Powercode's archived pricing page. Powercode is a trademark of its respective owner; Swift Fox Systems is not affiliated with Powercode or Bertram Communications. If anything here is outdated or inaccurate, email us and we'll correct it promptly.
Moving from Powercode to Swift Fox
On our other comparison pages we usually suggest keeping the billing system and adding the Swift Fox network layer beside it. For Powercode we don't, because so far nobody has asked us to build sync support for it. The Powercode shops that have moved to us over the years all switched completely, and the reason was cost: once the licence, the server and the BMU or shaping box were added up, Powercode was costing them more than Swift Fox does with everything included. The BMU end-of-life makes it a natural time to look, since shaping has to be re-solved either way.
What the migration looks like
Export your customers from Powercode and bring them into Swift Fox through our importer, plans included. We check the result with you before anything goes live, and the import can be undone and redone until it's right.
Add your towers, backhauls and access points to the Swift Fox network map with us during onboarding. Customer radios get picked up from there, and monitoring and shaping start working before billing moves at all.
Billing moves on a date you choose. Stored cards are the fiddly part of any billing migration, and we go through the options with you and your processor before anything moves. From then on an unpaid invoice becomes a captive-portal disconnect and a payment becomes a reconnect, with no glue between systems.
At 1,000 subscribers, Swift Fox Network + Billing is $1,500 / mo, hosted by us, with monitoring, paging, shaping, MPLS balancing, DDoS protection and CGNAT included. On Powercode's last published price list (2019) that many subscribers was about $1,330 / mo for the licence alone, before the server, a shaping box (Preseem at this size is about $900 / mo) and Link Advanced if you need it.
Frequently asked questions
Our Powercode BMU is end-of-life. What does that change for us?
Does Powercode do network monitoring?
What does moving from Powercode to Swift Fox involve?
We want our customer data on our own server. Isn't that a reason to pick Powercode?
Is Swift Fox cheaper than Powercode?
Who builds Swift Fox?
See it running, live
Book a 20-minute demo and we'll walk through what a move from Powercode looks like with your network in mind. No slide deck, just the product and an engineer who has run a WISP.
Questions first? [email protected] · 1-866-779-1608