Which alternative do you consider ?

[iso99]

I have to agree with most of you, so far HostBill is still a great software. I am only preparing my Blesta license in case HostBill reached its EOL where there are no security updates anymore. I am more concerned with the security updates and usability bugs, than getting nifty new modules. The HB core is really enough for most needs.

But while all HB drama continues, I'm continuously developing Blesta to suit my needs. I'm excited on their dev kits though I haven't seen it yet. The core is still buggy, not yet suitable for module development at this time.


PS: Does anyone knows if BoxBilling have an owned license too?

[Paul]

HostBill is beholden to the EU law governing first-sale rights. Because it is owned software, we have the right to sell it. Kris cannot deny it, and if he cancels the license, the new owner, and us, have the right to sue his pants off for breaking the law. Why he thinks the law doesn't apply to him is anyone's guess.

[nibb]

Im also like Patrick here, I'm planning an exit strategy but I will not use it unless Hostbill does something extremely stupid that affects my business. I also enjoy hostbill, there aren´t any bugs in my case which are so critical that I can´t use it. Some I fixed myself and others are not hard blockers bugs.

Overall i'm happy with the features it has and on a daily use, it works. I also like how extensible and flexible it is in terms of extra integrations. So unless they do something really awkward, I don´t plan to move.

And if I ever need to move, I will seriously just plan to put something in house, or take something basic, like Blesta, and build everything around it, if I had the money I would move to something like ubersmith but I don´t. I cannot possible spend that much in a software that does billing, for those costs I could put a monkey 24/7 creating account manually and filling an excel sheets each day and even that would cost less that those licenses.

[Cloudrck]

Seems like a hit or miss when it comes to bugs with Hostbill. It's too buggy for my setup, which no other billing system has support for. I've submitted 4 or 5 bug reports, 1 has been patched, while the others join the long list of bugs. Kind of hard when there is little to no input from anyone else when you submit it. What bug system doesn't allow for comments?

[nibb]

Seems like a hit or miss when it comes to bugs with Hostbill. It's too buggy for my setup, which no other billing system has support for. I've submitted 4 or 5 bug reports, 1 has been patched, while the others join the long list of bugs. Kind of hard when there is little to no input from anyone else when you submit it. What bug system doesn't allow for comments?

I assume because the forums where used before this and you could enter comments there. So he decided to make a bug tracker without comments. I also think its not wise, as maybe others need to put more information about the bug.

But his bug tracker is very new, so I guess he will keep adding more features eventually.

Which bugs are so nasty that stop you from using it?

[nibb]

HostBill is beholden to the EU law governing first-sale rights. Because it is owned software, we have the right to sell it. Kris cannot deny it, and if he cancels the license, the new owner, and us, have the right to sue his pants off for breaking the law. Why he thinks the law doesn't apply to him is anyone's guess.

You said in another post you are filing a chargeback, so you cannot really hold or transfer a license. You need to completely erase it or destroy the copy.

[Cloudrck]

I assume because the forums where used before this and you could enter comments there. So he decided to make a bug tracker without comments. I also think its not wise, as maybe others need to put more information about the bug.

But his bug tracker is very new, so I guess he will keep adding more features eventually.

Which bugs are so nasty that stop you from using it?

There is no excuse to not have an adequate bug tracking system. Software development can be side tracking, you can add new features, fix bugs, all while adding bugs to other areas. As soon as he opened the system, it was flooded with bugs. Mainly because you had to pay to report a bug, or report in the forums with no response from Kris, thus you had no real chance on getting it fixed (lovely closed source). I can report bugs, and receive feedback from core developers of major open source software. So why should a commercial software application be exempt from this rule? Essentially with hostbill, there is no demo, little to tell if something works, so you have to assume it does. When it doesn't after paying for the software, you now have to pay to get any real bugs fixed.

I paid $75 to have the bug in Proxmox VE module fixed, which will be patched in the next version. But I feel like an idiot because it's not right.

The internetbs module, Proxmox module, IPAM modules are broken. IPAM, is a paid addon as well. You can go to help.hostbillapp.com and look at the amount of bugs. Maybe they aren't all bugs, but people failing to configure properly, but it's hard to tell with no input from Kris

I'm not going to waste my time developing, or building my brand using software from a company with no ethic.

[Lawrence]

HostBill is beholden to the EU law governing first-sale rights. Because it is owned software, we have the right to sell it. Kris cannot deny it, and if he cancels the license, the new owner, and us, have the right to sue his pants off for breaking the law. Why he thinks the law doesn't apply to him is anyone's guess.

You're right. Did a lot of reading on it, and can't find anything that conflicts with this statements. In fact, read that whole fiasco regarding Oracle, and seems perfectly legal to resell software. Vendors cannot block resale of software that's owned, however monthly terms are different.

[UCG_Keith]

You're right. Did a lot of reading on it, and can't find anything that conflicts with this statements. In fact, read that whole fiasco regarding Oracle, and seems perfectly legal to resell software. Vendors cannot block resale of software that's owned, however monthly terms are different.

You are correct Lawrence, we spoke to an Intellectual Rights attorney and he said the same thing; as long as you own the software, you have the right to sell it; he cited Oracle and Microsoft as two examples of software companies that were sued and lost because they attempted to block an owner's ability to sell.

I really like a lot of features that HB offers.  In my personal opinion, Kris should go into his development closet and work; partner with someone that is customer service driven and let them service current and new customers.  I have made the offer in the past to buy all or a portion of his company.  Customer Service will far exceed well built applications, products and services.  At this point, HB may have irrevocably damaged the reputation.  I do not see any intelligent, informed business owner willing to risk their daily business operation on a application that is "flighty" as HB is.  Despite the features of the product.

Look at what happened to WHMCS after their last exploit; they partnered with cPanel.  I have my opinion about what is happening with HB; I have no facts but a "gut" feeling that Kris sold a lot of owned licenses (one-time fees) and he has dwindled his revenue; now he's trying to makeup for the lost revenue.  Cash-flow is King!  I think his cash flow is gone.

My advise to Kris is to leave the owned license alone; open a monthly leased license with all of his restrictions and go after his competitors client base.  Be open in HIS forum and tweets, be available on his site or Partner or HIRE someone to.  Otherwise, if Hostbill is not selling, Hostbill is dying - its as simple as that.

[electric]

No sane business person would partner with a moron like Kris, even though he is a very good coder and designer.

Can you imagine being partners with someone like Kris?  Even if you owned a majority of the partnership, you would still risk everything because it would not be a surprise if Kris decided to simply stop programming one day, or if he decided to just walk away from the software and not honor his agreement.

It is the same problem for any hosting company who is considering to purchase Hostbill right now.  They are stupid if they trust their business to someone like Kris, even though the software is nice.   

The fact is that the person making the software (Kris) is an unstable risk.  You can't trust your business with such a person, nor could you ever go into business or partnership with such a person unless you are prepared to lose everything on a day-to-day basis.

Imho, Hostill is already a dead-man-walking because of these forums here.  When Kris had his own forums over at hostbillapp.com, he could have monitored them and edited them to remove the bad stuff.  However... here... Lawrence (who owns the hostbillforums.com domain) has said he won't remove any posts.  So now there is a permanent record of all the stupid decisions and actions Kris has done.  Anyone who has a business and is considering to use Hostbill will (hopefully, for their sake) find out what a moron he is, and decide *not* to risk their business with such a person.

The only way Kris can possibly recover his dying business is to convince *existing* Hostbill license owners that he has somehow changed his ways.s

[thetrusteeco]

...
The only way Kris can possibly recover his dying business is to convince *existing* Hostbill license owners that he has somehow changed his ways.s

I have said it many times: We are his sales staff!

[Patrick]

I have said it many times: We are his sales staff!

Though what Lawrence started is very generous and i don't mind helping, at the end of the day... we all volunteered to work for free against what a "company" wants as if the software is valuable enough for us to help market it and sucker another in to this twisted mess.

I've also been reading on EU law and based on the decisions Hostbill (KBKP Software) have made - Such as: Cannot sell your 'OWNED' license, no refund policy anymore.  These two simplistic things tell me they have no lawyer, never seen a lawyer for anything regarding their business, not even once and it shows the ignorance to the law.  This alone tells me the business is unstable, not a serious venture and i'd highly recommend everyone prepare an exit strategy just in case.

[iso99]

Though what Lawrence started is very generous and i don't mind helping, at the end of the day... we all volunteered to work for free against what a "company" wants as if the software is valuable enough for us to help market it and sucker another in to this twisted mess.

I've also been reading on EU law and based on the decisions Hostbill (KBKP Software) have made - Such as: Cannot sell your 'OWNED' license, no refund policy anymore.  These two simplistic things tell me they have no lawyer, never seen a lawyer for anything regarding their business, not even once and it shows the ignorance to the law.  This alone tells me the business is unstable, not a serious venture and i'd highly recommend everyone prepare an exit strategy just in case.

I was wondering, do they still allow us to sell our Accounts like before?

I'm also afraid that no one would be interested to buy HB licenses anymore :|

[Patrick]

I was wondering, do they still allow us to sell our Accounts like before?

I'm also afraid that no one would be interested to buy HB licenses anymore :|

Right now, it's been confirmed (at least as a early as a few months ago) that KBKP Software has stated they do not allow resale of our owned licenses.  As per many country laws, including Canada as we're near the same as EU in terms of how this law specifically works is if you own the license, you can sell it after a period of 90 days of ownership. 

[electric]

Right now, it's been confirmed (at least as a early as a few months ago) that KBKP Software has stated they do not allow resale of our owned licenses.  As per many country laws, including Canada as we're near the same as EU in terms of how this law specifically works is if you own the license, you can sell it after a period of 90 days of ownership.

In other words, the KBKP company (Kris, the owner of hostbill) says you can not sell your license.  However, the EU law (where KBKP company is located) says that you can sell your license.

The risk is that if someone purchases your license and KBKP finds out about it... they (KBKP company) could close the account and cancel the license.  Of course, this is against the law, but I highly doubt a little thing like "the law" is going to stop Kris from making yet another idiotic and mind-numbingly stupid decision.