Which alternative do you consider ?

[tallship]

You can sell your software anytime you like w/o feeling guilty at all. It's not actually worth the 200 bucks you prolly paid for it, although if you're lucky someone will think they're getting a deal because it's less than what it will cost them for a crippleware license from kbkp.

If the software stops working for the buyer, very bad things are likely to happen for kbkp.

[thetrusteeco]

Interesting thought (IMO):

If it is legal to resell HostBill licenses, and
If used licenses are in the grandfathered-in category regarding updates, et cetra,
Then used licenses are far more valuable that new licenses.

If all those former HostBill owners realized that their unused licenses are worth more than the new HostBill licenses, and
If the potential new HostBill buyers also realized that.
Then KBKP is Bankrupt.

With the current EU laws and KBKP policies regarding pricing structure and 3rd Party development, who would buy a new license when you could buy a grandfathered-in license?

KBKP must reduce the price of the new licenses in the near future.  I hope Kris is smart enough (I'd settle for greedy enough) to go to a monthly or annual license, and drop the whole owned license thing (for new customers).  As it has been said, if KBKP is going to survive, they need regular predicable cash-flow.

The used owned license would continue to be more valuable than the new licenses, but the market would drive up the limited number of used licenses to the point that they wouldn't be affordable to the type of customer that would sign up for a monthly license.

Anyone want to setup a HostBill auction site?

[electric]

Anyone want to setup a HostBill auction site?

I would feel guilty selling my license to anyone. 

There might also be some liability on the part of the seller, since they are selling software that is known to be deficient.  As long as this is disclosed to the buyer, then I suppose it's ok.

(Ie:  Selling a hostbill license is like selling a car to someone when you know the car barely works and is probably going to break down or explode within the next year....)

[electric]

Here is another (eventual) alternative to hostbill:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/whsuite-web-host-billing-system

I wish them all the luck in the world!

[CBlade]

Just curious, the 4.6.0, was both in Hostbill and Clientexec and i found similarities in the both logos, is there any relation? Is suspicious the same bug at same time...

[psybox]

Clientexec is not affiliated in ANY way, I can state this is 100% true.

[tallship]

Here is another (eventual) alternative to hostbill:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/whsuite-web-host-billing-system

I wish them all the luck in the world!

I do too. I know that name, Barlow, from somewhere. Anyway, it appears as if they're going to have an owned license option, which is the only option we would consider anyway. There's no encoding either, which is a requirement moving forward, and a wise move on their part IMO.

I don't have any background info on them or their previous projects though, and don't have an idea (other than the perks at about levels 6 through of how much their owned licenses are going to be, or if they're unbranded. Also, they haven't mentioned how much the support subscriptions are going to be either.

I think they need to spell those proposed items out in their funding plan. I was going to donate 5 bucks just as an attaboy, but the min for a place in the forums (with no announcement as to when those forums will open) is more than I'm willing to cover, considering I don't know what their plans are if they don't meet their funding goal - it's a flexi fund so they'll keep all but 9% of the funding even if they don't meet their target, and all but 4% if they do meet their target.

The prototyping looks good and clean, which is important considering how much time we spend in the back end lol, but I"m concerned that this appears to be more of a hosting billing app than a cloud billing app w/multipurpose billing like HostBill has.

Requirements we need to fill with a solution like this is:

Xen, VMware, CloudStack - Our customers MUST have virtual consoles to access their VMs, unlike most of the HostBill modules.

Quotes/Estimates system with invoice conversion once accepted.

I believe their funders should be able to operate their platform from late alpha too, which can provide them w/valuable QA and feature feedback too.

Finally, the funding drive closes at the end of this month and they haven't raised much yet, so I'm going to take a wait and see.

Depending how this goes, I might do a level 8 once I have hard answers to those questions I've addressed above though

[electric]

Here's a link to ask your questions about WHSuite on webhostingtalk:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1272713

One of the founders is active in the thread and online right now.

[nibb]

Lawrence where did you get the Ubersmith prices?

The problem with ubersmith in my case is that last time I checked they wanted to license per customer accounts. This was just completely idiotic in my case, where some people register an account and never buy anything, or those buying 1 single domain. The license would cost me more than the profits of that single customer. Not to mention you cannot offer anything free on such account system.

A software that charges per customers or devices is completely non sense, in particular in the hosting industry where everyone is making costs less and less each day, and customers want to pay pennies.

Last time I checked ubersmith was also missing very basic features for domains. So it was not an option and its surely not an option for those offering budget share hosting or even cloud services, imagine a customers with a 5$ bill per month, you would end up losing money for such customers.

I would never buy or use a software that taxes my profits. This is what ubersmith does. They tax companies based on their incomes, which is completely unfair and does not allow for open competition as they all have a minimum per account they need to charge to cover their costs.

At least Hostbill in that regards is an owned price, even for their extra modules.

Is someone testing the new v3 beta in Blesta?

How is developing going. Is it fast? Do you like what you see?

[electric]

Is someone testing the new v3 beta in Blesta?

How is developing going. Is it fast? Do you like what you see?

Development is going well.  Is it fast?  Well... it depends on how you measure "fast".  My definition of fast is if there are no bugs, yet development still continues at a decent pace. 

Do I like what I see?  Yes.  The software is well-designed, simple and efficient.  It is not as "beautiful" as hostbill, but it is still very professional and designed for easy-to-understand.

I think that the first production version of v3 is going to be fairly basic.  It will be missing some modules that people want, and some features that people want.  However, I think that once the software is released... there will be some 3rd party module developers that will be interested to create modules and add functionality.  So it won't be long before there is a lot of options and choice for Blesta v3 users.

I think it Blesta is going to compete very well with WHMCS and probably eventually overtake it in popularity once all the modules and features are available.  The Blesta "core" is well designed, and so it is a good platform to build upon.

[nibb]

By slow, I mean, it should release at least 3 or 4 new features per month. If its going to take them 6 months to add something like promotional coupons, or send invoices via PDF, or stuff like that, then its useless. At least when they start it should be fast, once they have everything it can be as slow as hell. But WHMCS is to slow and that was the only reason why Hostbill took them down in some features.

I don´t care how it looks. I don't care about the fancy CSS and JavaScript.

Any decent web designer can add this to any system.

This is what I care:

1. A robust core systems. Something open to be extended or keep on developing on it. I don´t care if the license and basic stuff is encoded, but I need something as open as possible. Not making the same mistake as hostbill where I know I can fix some bugs but I can´t because even the stupid modules are encoded.

2. A serious company behind it. Even if I need to pay them 500$ a month for support, have the option for having a commercial company behind it, not some lunatic.

3. The logic should work nice. It should allow complex scenarios of billing and ordering. Example, order pages like Hostbill which have logic, when someone select Windows Server, it hides the option cPanel, when someone configured 4 RAM, it shows another option, etc. More advanced than what hostbill has.

4. Allow prorated and proper billing.

5. No critical bugs. Like missing billing or charging wrong. Bugs are fine, but not ones which affect incomes.

6. Secure. Security is everything for me. I prefer it not storing servers passwords and other ridiculous things some software does.

7. Extensible. I need API, hook, custom modules, and read everything or change things in the database. I know you can do this with Hostbill since its just MYSQL but I need a platform where I can say "OK, I will spend days of my life here, and money coding custom stuff for it". I don´t plan to sell anything of this, its just for my own, but I need the option to be customizable and let it integrate into my own services, some which are very custom. Not cPanel, and not standard things but very custom things which I need to bill.

8. It absolutely should allow cloud or metered billing like hostbill does, per hour, per day, etc, different and complex billings way for different multiple products. Let addons for some products, offer others, etc.

9. Customer support features should be build in. I have Kayako but I don´t want this. I want chat, ticket, etc, integrated.

10. Have fun. They should have a nice community and serious companies should use it. Have the option to buy commercial third party addons.

More or less, the 10 point things Hostbill had, and it did, until Kris started to consume candy.

[ElysiumServers]

I looking at blesta right now, I'm not risking it.

Anyone care to buy my full license (unbranded)  of hostbill?

[tallship]

I looking at blesta right now, I'm not risking it.

At $99 I think it's a prudent move. There's all sorts of clamoring over the third party development explosion that will be overcoming inertia soon wrt Blesta.

I don't know what this license is or when it can be purchased:

$500 Lifetime (Unbranded + Never pay for support & updates. Ever.) NEW!

But I've owned my unbranded license of Blesta since March of 2012 and I'm quite happy to have a subscription for $39/yr.

I think an owned, unbranded license for a GOOD billing solution for $300  is a good price. That's the price that an owned, unbranded license of Blesta will be after 14 Aug) I really don't think that any software billing systems are worth more than that - truly. I see people saying they think a thousand or two is reasonable, but it isn't, considering that more and more, we're seeing completely free software that is enterprise/carrier grade ready (especially in the CRM/Groupware/ERP and hypervisor market - just last month Xenserver Enterprise became completely free and open source.

I do, however, think that that lifetime updates for an extra $200 is also reasonable, although my personal feelings are that I actually prefer to opt for the $39/yr - I think that's fair and shows support for a product that I would otherwise find myself sending 20 or 30 dollar donations toward each year anyway (that's what I typically do for free open source products that I like, support, and deploy for my customers).

If everyone thought like that, and sent the authors of free software a five dollar PayPal donation, the authors of the good software would have comfortable incomes and a full time job maintaining their creations.

Anyone care to buy my full license (unbranded)  of hostbill?

I had an open offer to purchase HostBill licenses a couple of months ago here on the boards. you can try posting your offer to sell in that thread since there are many people watching there, but I was only willing to spend between 50 and 100 dollars (That's all HostBill is worth considering how messed up and buggy it is - not to mention its uncertain future), but I've already purchased three owned unbranded licenses from others for $50 each already and don't need anymore - perhaps I'll sell them a year or two from now if someone buys the company and rejuvenates HostBill's reputation, but at this time, I think that HostBill licenses are almost worthless in the current state of the company.

You might find someone willing to pay you a couple of hundred dollars at this point, but then again you might be better off just sitting on it and waiting to see if the company is sold to someone who can turn around its reputation.

[ElysiumServers]

Thank you for your incredible well detailed explanation..

I have now a couple of hours into Blesta and I must say it is incredible basic compared to hostbill, I can't do centralized orders aside from the "General",  I can't  do upgrades to any plan, i have to manually adjust the bill and send a post-bill if a user wants to upgrade  plan.

The cpanel module is not working, i double checked,  the solusvm module only works for the first plan, the other plans returns errors.

Now I'm at a loss,  I think I'll still with hostbill,  at least I hope they don't block my current functionality.

Alex

[electric]

I have now a couple of hours into Blesta ...., I can't do centralized orders aside from the "General",  I can't  do upgrades to any plan, i have to manually adjust the bill and send a post-bill if a user wants to upgrade  plan.

The cpanel module is not working, i double checked,  the solusvm module only works for the first plan, the other plans returns errors.

If you're having trouble with the latest beta version of the Blesta software, then you should contact the Blesta developers and report those problems to them.

I'm not having any problems you mentioned.  I'm using beta version 5.