The Good Ol' Days

[Lawrence]

Every forum needs one of these types of posts, and I figure it'd be entertaining to reminisce of such a time when HostBill was thriving, had great partners (Big ones), and was being looked at by many developers in hopes of a WHMCS alternative / replacement. Here're some images to wet your whistle.

Who here remembers when HostBill could be bought for $12.95 per month? Now that was a WHMCS killer. Dangerous pricing model to competitors.

[Patrick]

Funny, i do remember that.  Way back machine or do you actually have a screen of this?  I feel there was more passion with it back then, they seemed to really want it.  Wish i knew what changed over the years to cut off customer service all together. 

[Lawrence]

Both of them are from the Wayback Machine, but I do have an original. I always do several PRTSCRs every time I place an order with anyone, or do anything that'll require proof. Problem is, there're a good 10k shots in my history. Not about to go sifting through them!

[sth-chris]

I have to say that I've got you beat on price. Here's a screenshot for my license (which will expire in a matter of days). Even with the craziness going on right now, I'll still renew because I don't want to lose the price. I started with HB v2.6.

$79.95/year ($6.66/month)!   

[Lawrence]

I have to say that I've got you beat on price. Here's a screenshot for my license (which will expire in a matter of days). Even with the craziness going on right now, I'll still renew because I don't want to lose the price. I started with HB v2.6.

$79.95/year ($6.66/month)!   

Nice! But $599.95 is cheaper over the course of 10 years than what you're paying, as that's $4.99/mo. (Look, a positive perspective on the high pricing!)

[thetrusteeco]

10 years?   

[Patrick]

10 years?   

Well he has a point.... I'd hope you're buying software for the long haul and 10 years minimum would be a general success rate. 

[thetrusteeco]

Let me rephrase that:

Hostbill in 10 years? 

They were still offering that annual licence when I bought my lifetime license.  But really don't expect to get 10 years out of it anymore.

[Patrick]

Let me rephrase that:

Hostbill in 10 years? 

They were still offering that annual licence when I bought my lifetime license.  But really don't expect to get 10 years out of it anymore.

You know something, that's my bad.  I should have read between the lines.  LOL!!  You're sadly and yes sadly absolutely right.  I don't see hostbill around in 10 years.

[Lawrence]

You know something, that's my bad.  I should have read between the lines.  LOL!!  You're sadly and yes sadly absolutely right.  I don't see hostbill around in 10 years.

If HostBill is sold, they would have to honor the previous licenses. Unless HostBill vanishes, then I'd expect to see it last 10+ years. Bit off topic, but somewhat related.

[nibb]

I think this was of the reasons why hostbill is in troubles now. It tried to compete on price level with WHMCS and got tons of newbie users that hardly know what FTP is. They where overloaded with support and temporary people wanting to jump into hosting that did not even last 6 months, so they had no recurring revenue (like updates).

Lets take a lookt at hostbillintegration.com

Did someone tried to see how many of those websites are still online? I could not find a single one still being online. Almost 99% of this hostbill users are gone, disappeared. In some cases I could only find their old twitter accounts, but no domain or website when Googling.

Look at those screenshots and see how many are still active. I guess this was the market hostbill attracted.

Kids, resellers, and other new starters to hosting, that usually where getting a 35$ a month reseller account and hostbill and starting their business.

It was only a matter of time before they had to attract a better audience. Hostbill is already there, increasing prices literally avoids any non serious parties interest in the software. Someone that does not want to invest 500$ in their business, is not serious in the first place. So all this kids and resellers are cut off, which is a good thing because usually they do not last 1 year. So they will not pay future upgrades or yearly updates either.

And Hostbill even gave them free support for those prices, it was a question of time before they blow up. And they did. Then they started to charge to support which is ok if you ask me. Its way to high, but I understand their point.

What Hostbill should do is come with a decent update price that can maintain their business model. 99$ or 250$ a year depending on the license. 250$ would be 25% of 1000$.

Usually you cannot charge more than 25% of the purchase price. Serious companies looking into hostbill would pay a high purchase price, without a question, if the software is good and it has support, etc. They would look like Lawrence said as an investment instead of monthly high fees.

Now what nobody would do is pay an expensive software just to receive again expensive updates or renewal prices, like the 999$ updates a year they tried, this is something nobody would do. I said it several times.

I prefer a higher purchase price and then lower yearly updates. Of course Hostbill right now cannot charge to much for updates per year, because updates do not include anything anymore (all modules are extra) and they do not offer support with that either, so its not like the renewal prices is related to what other companies charge.

[Patrick]

I think this was of the reasons why hostbill is in troubles now. It tried to compete on price level with WHMCS and got tons of newbie users that hardly know what FTP is. They where overloaded with support and temporary people wanting to jump into hosting that did not even last 6 months, so they had no recurring revenue (like updates).

Lets take a lookt at hostbillintegration.com

Did someone tried to see how many of those websites are still online? I could not find a single one still being online. Almost 99% of this hostbill users are gone, disappeared. In some cases I could only find their old twitter accounts, but no domain or website when Googling.

Look at those screenshots and see how many are still active. I guess this was the market hostbill attracted.

Kids, resellers, and other new starters to hosting, that usually where getting a 35$ a month reseller account and hostbill and starting their business.

It was only a matter of time before they had to attract a better audience. Hostbill is already there, increasing prices literally avoids any non serious parties interest in the software. Someone that does not want to invest 500$ in their business, is not serious in the first place. So all this kids and resellers are cut off, which is a good thing because usually they do not last 1 year. So they will not pay future upgrades or yearly updates either.

And Hostbill even gave them free support for those prices, it was a question of time before they blow up. And they did. Then they started to charge to support which is ok if you ask me. Its way to high, but I understand their point.

What Hostbill should do is come with a decent update price that can maintain their business model. 99$ or 250$ a year depending on the license. 250$ would be 25% of 1000$.

Usually you cannot charge more than 25% of the purchase price. Serious companies looking into hostbill would pay a high purchase price, without a question, if the software is good and it has support, etc. They would look like Lawrence said as an investment instead of monthly high fees.

Now what nobody would do is pay an expensive software just to receive again expensive updates or renewal prices, like the 999$ updates a year they tried, this is something nobody would do. I said it several times.

I prefer a higher purchase price and then lower yearly updates. Of course Hostbill right now cannot charge to much for updates per year, because updates do not include anything anymore (all modules are extra) and they do not offer support with that either, so its not like the renewal prices is related to what other companies charge.

Please don't give them more ideas to change pricing.  They need to include everything that was previously included and then they can continue to decide what's considered "premium" and charge additional for that.  They can open the doors to recurring customers on a serious budget going above the typical $17/month fee but they don't want recurring for some weird reason.  It's steady income and they don't want it.  It's weird.

[tallship]

I have to say that I've got you beat on price. Here's a screenshot for my license (which will expire in a matter of days). Even with the craziness going on right now, I'll still renew because I don't want to lose the price. I started with HB v2.6.

$79.95/year ($6.66/month)!   

You're lucky if you still have that. I read a post from someone, somewhere, that they had the monthly subscription, with oodles of customers, and suddenly, with only a few days notice, they received notification from kbkp that there weren't going to be anymore monthly subscriptions, and they would now have to purchase the full blown product within a few days if they didn't want everything to shut down on them.

[tallship]

I prefer a higher purchase price and then lower yearly updates. Of course Hostbill right now cannot charge to much for updates per year, because updates do not include anything anymore (all modules are extra) and they do not offer support with that either, so its not like the renewal prices is related to what other companies charge.

I prefer a LOWER, reasonable price. The demand for quality billing software is already finding startup alternatives in the market coming online soon, with some exsiting platforms re-tooling. Just look at the groupware and ERP market - there's so much quality GPL'd software out there, and communities of users to provide both free and paid support to people who adopt the use of it.

There are always going to be kiddies entering a market, but they simply drive customers to more carefully consider providers who are accessable via phone, email, etc. (unlike kbkp), and who have been around for more than a year or two.

We're new to this particular market - the one that involves automated billing software designed for use in this market - we've been providing these types of services since we were a small, local ISP offering BBS hosting services from our massive centranet POP/offices in Redondo beach back in the late 80's, but I really like the idea of a self-managed, completely automated cloud hosting service, since we have to compete with the likes of rackspace, softlayer, and others, we have to provide the self-service with the added value of a long term managed services provider can give.

Sure, there's always people out there who will pay for onapp and ubersmith, but HostBill will never get that market, they've tarnished their name and trashed it (Their only option at this time to completely rebrand with a new name, clone their product, and release it under that brand so no one, or very few, figure out that it's really them lol).

We're going to be seeing a lot of these companies like modulesgarden and others springing into action providing modules for the rising competition between the old skool hosting & billing platforms and the new generation of GPL'd ones too - One player, that has a jumpstart on this if they truly open up their development to the community and live up to their promise of embracing the GPL, is BoxBilling - if they do, they'll see it morph very quickly into a platform that rapidly changes, developmet cycle, and has stellar support and custom developers at all levels of the tiers out there.

I don't know if BoxBilling is that product, but there will be one like it very shortly - HostBill is providing the catalyst for this genesis.

[thetrusteeco]

...We're going to be seeing a lot of these companies like modulesgarden and others springing into action providing modules for the rising competition between the old skool hosting & billing platforms and the new generation of GPL'd ones too - One player, that has a jumpstart on this if they truly open up their development to the community and live up to their promise of embracing the GPL, is BoxBilling - if they do, they'll see it morph very quickly into a platform that rapidly changes, developmet cycle, and has stellar support and custom developers at all levels of the tiers out there.

I don't know if BoxBilling is that product, but there will be one like it very shortly - HostBill is providing the catalyst for this genesis.

I've noticed this trend as well, more in the web-hosting control panel side of things, and I've been wondering how long it would take to move over to the billing side of things. 

Over in the ModulesGarden forum there was a suggestion that they build a "ISPconfig Extended" module, like the upcoming DirectAdmin Extended module.  ISPconfig is an OpenSource webhosting control panel.  And I know of 2 lagre EU Datacenters that have ISPconfig as a standard option on servers now.  Vasicka has a HostBill controller module for ispCP Omega.  There is obviously a growing market for these products.  Additionally, the zPanel community has jumped into high gear in the past 12 months.

I cannot go back to WHMCS for one of my sites, as it's core cannot ever do what I need (I confirmed this directly with Chris @WHMCS).  Blesta could take another 2 years to become useful.  UberSmith wouldn't be practical for a website focused mainly on domains.  AWBS I have never actually tried, and seems to have no 3rd Party developers (but perhaps I will try it).  HostBill...

Unless Blesta development is faster than expected, or Kris gets some medication, I have been considering using an OpenSource Billing platform, and hiring a few developers to build the mods I need.  If anyone else considers going this way, perhaps we could cooperate.