Where is everyone now?

[electric]

I am one of the clients listed on his page with a logo. I've spent much more money on custom development with the hostbill team than on licenses & support. I can also tell you I like his new business model of catering to higher-end clients. I have no problem paying a premium fee for premium software and support. After all, the billing & support system is the lifeblood of your business. Doesn't it make sense to invest in it?

Premium software?  Seriously?  You mean you don't cross your fingers and pray every time you click the upgrade button like the rest of us?  You don't see the numerous bugs that are introduced with every new version? You don't realize that Hostbill has zero regression testing in place, and relies on production users to find an report bugs after each release?

OK... fine.  Maybe the software works great for you, and you don't see the bugs or problems. 

How do you feel about trusting your business to a person who has tried to rip off existing customers, ignores EU law regarding software resales, and has essentially committed fraud by no longer allowing 3rd party development?

Personally, I like the hostbill software (aside from the bugs).  Most of us on these forums are here because we like the software.  However, the guy running Hostbill is an absolute moron with no zero business skill and no ethics or morals at all.  You mentioned that "the billing & support system is the lifeblood of your business", so frankly, I'm rather surprised that anyone with this understanding would willingly trust Kris with such an important part of their business, regardless of how great the software might be. 

[Patrick]

I am one of the clients listed on his page with a logo. I've spent much more money on custom development with the hostbill team than on licenses & support. I can also tell you I like his new business model of catering to higher-end clients. I have no problem paying a premium fee for premium software and support. After all, the billing & support system is the lifeblood of your business. Doesn't it make sense to invest in it?

Just because you're listed on the clients page, does not make you or us any higher or "lower-end".  We have well over $100k invested in our business this year yet it doesn't change our stance on how unprofessional KBKP Software has been run.  You run the same software as us, we do not pay them for custom development, we do this in house with our salaried developers.  Yet the reality of it is, hostbill is not mature enough to "cater" to higher end clients right now. 

Maybe in another 5 years and some massive restructuring, but it will not happen this year or next year.

The value of the software is only worth what it's customer service provides.  At this time with pay walls up to even report major security exploits, it's a dying software.

[bemerson]

I knew that post wasn't going to go over well, with the mood of this forum

I would like to think that with the pricing changes he is moving to a premium product in order to be able to offer better support, regression testing, bug fixes, etc... I don't know how you can do that at a $45 price tag. You are right, it is not there yet, but I think the direction is to do so.

[ezpnet]

I am one of the clients listed on his page with a logo. I've spent much more money on custom development with the hostbill team than on licenses & support. I can also tell you I like his new business model of catering to higher-end clients. I have no problem paying a premium fee for premium software and support. After all, the billing & support system is the lifeblood of your business. Doesn't it make sense to invest in it?

I think the same way as you. Except... I am finding many show stopping bugs.

I've also spent more money on custom dev than on the licenses. I was also willing to pay $250/m for support to hostbill. But, currently, I can't talk to to them at all without paying $75 which is retarded. Bug reports sit idle... I'm not adverse to paying for quality software and service, but hostbill no longer seems to offer either? Maybe I'm wrong...

I'm just shocked. I hope Kris turns it around because it's so nicely integrated. But at this point, I think he's driving the business into the ground.

[Patrick]

I knew that post wasn't going to go over well, with the mood of this forum

I would like to think that with the pricing changes he is moving to a premium product in order to be able to offer better support, regression testing, bug fixes, etc... I don't know how you can do that at a $45 price tag. You are right, it is not there yet, but I think the direction is to do so.

Andrew? lol, he's the only one i've seen truly defend hostbill's actions and consider it their "lifeblood".  He has switched his pricing how many times Bemerson?  Where was/is this regression testing? Why the paywall to report, contact a business? I mean $75 to talk to a CEO shows signs of improvement too.  There is no "mood" to this forum specifically.  Go read Blesta, WHT, WHMCS, these forums.  Same results bud.  Many high end clients, low end clients (does that really matter?).  It speaks volumes to the greed of somebody before they even mature in this industry thinking they can take a bite of a marketshare as if they've earned something.

Hostbill has shown hostility, instability and an unwillingness to mature and progress thus far, and you want to try and state that now the two Chris's are changing direction?

[electric]

I knew that post wasn't going to go over well, with the mood of this forum

Some of us here, who are upset, are not just small-time kiddie hosts.  Some of us are long-time business owners who do well into the multi-million revenues.  Some of us know what we're talking about, and there's a reason we're upset.

I would like to think that with the pricing changes he is moving to a premium product in order to be able to offer better support, regression testing, bug fixes, etc...

In theory, yes, I suspect this is probably what Kris thinks he is doing and is what he wants.  (Although it's impossible to know, since Kris refuses to communicate with his customers, even to provide vision and direction of where he wants the company to point.)

In reality... he has made some very foolish decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with moving to such a position.  For example:

- the "Free Version" he offered, and then took away less than 48 hours later once we pointed out how stupid such a version would be.  What kind of business vision did that fiasco display?  Even the very basic of thinking would have stopped such a venture before it started, if his end-game is a high-end premium software targeted towards high-end providers like us. Nope. This move was the first to show that Kris really has no plan or goal or business strategy or even a business plan.  He's just a good coder with zero business skill.

- the removal of all monthly licenses, which would ultimately provide more revenue over the equivalent one-time license price.  Does anyone seriously think a top-tier software can't still be leased monthly?

- removal of all 3rd party development ability.  This one is pretty scary, since now you are totally "vendor-locked" and have no way to create your own module if you want some particular functionality or features.  You are forced to depend solely on Kris for *everything*, from bug fixes to any new functionality for any module.

- NO communication with customers at all.  This is very important, because I would expect a business owner who is targeting the "higher-end" portion of the industry would understand that even basic communication is necessary.  Instead, we get nothing.  Not even a periodic, "How can we improve" attempt to see how customers are doing.

- Still not even basic regression testing.  This is obvious when every new release introduces new bugs that really should have been so basic to discover if even basic regression testing was occurring.

I don't think anyone here is going to argue that Kris can possibly build a high-end business with only $45/year of recurring income.  Most people here would be happy to pay much more than that.   The money really isn't the reason why I, personally, have such a problem with Hostbill.  I've said many times that I think hostbill software is superior in design and execution to pretty much every other billing system in production right now.  (Blesta is going to give them a run, soon...) 

My *only* issue is with Kris, the owner of Hostbill.  I simply can't trust my business in the hands of someone who has proven himself to be one of the worst business people I have ever seen, who has zero ethics and morals, and is prepared to screw existing loyal customers without even bothering to say anything or provide any kind of explaination or communication

[bemerson]

Do we all have to hate Kris and dog about his business, or can some of us like it and encourage them to do the right thing? I am vested pretty heavily in this software, like I'm sure you all are, but I want it to succeed.

[bemerson]

My *only* issue is with Kris, the owner of Hostbill.  I simply can't trust my business in the hands of someone who has proven himself to be one of the worst business people I have ever seen, who has zero ethics and morals, and is prepared to screw existing loyal customers without even bothering to say anything or provide any kind of explaination or communication

Good point. If there's no more trust, do you move on to something else?

[nibb]

I am one of the clients listed on his page with a logo. I've spent much more money on custom development with the hostbill team than on licenses & support. I can also tell you I like his new business model of catering to higher-end clients. I have no problem paying a premium fee for premium software and support. After all, the billing & support system is the lifeblood of your business. Doesn't it make sense to invest in it?

I was also approached by Justina I think she is gone, there to put my company in that list.

I did not never went through it for the concerns posted before.

Bemerson

I 100% agree on with you that Hostbill needs to cater higher end clients. I was the one defending the option to remove the leased option.

I also defended paid support and I also defended the idea of charging more for the product to get higher end clients. Kris did raised prices to better fit this, then he raised updates to the same cost as the owned license, and did some other strange things that were a bit ridiculous.

Higher end clients would pay 1000$ for the software, or would before this new 4.6 changes at least, because now it seems they don´t get anything anymore besides the cores.

I also think that companies would pay a decent update price, but it can´t be high either, because you get no new features, no support and no guarantee of bug fixes what so ever.

You forget that. I also don´t mind I actually paid for support, like the 15$ tickets. But some decisions are completely akwards.

Right now yearly updates seems to be almost worthless, since there are no new features, and bugs, well there are bugs 1 year old that are not getting attention, instead he creates more and more modules which will probably also have bugs and will not keep further developed.

I found out something very basic as prorates addons is not here. The billing is a miss and hit issue. Cancellations don´t work properly, and there are tons and tons of bugs in almost every feature.

75$ for tickets is also ridiculous, even for high end companies. And now not allowing third party companies to develop modules is something that blow my mind off.

I understand hostbill needs to get higher end clients. But im not sure about you, but this higher end clients will not tolerate some things not working, or very basic features missing, or waiting years for a bug fix.

Some things in Hostbill, lack quality all together, there are misspelled words in some parts, some error messages are showed in raw in the client interface, do not have have the a translation line, like the missing captcha on sign up. Most orderpages were not tested against all browsers, it seems they work in Firefox and thats it.

I understand Hostbill is not worth the same as WHMCS is, its worth much more. Yes, but the decisions of the company behind it, make the product not to really achieve its value. Most files are encoded, even modules, I cannot even fix very basic things, and now he does not allow third party modules or developing anymore vs 200$ products which are going the very open approach. I also don´t understand how you can justify the lack of customer care, not even sales questions are being handled. No notifications what so ever, on license changes, prices, etc. Now even the forums is gone, with all the value of data that was there.

Is this the way to get higher end clients? If I was to threat my customers this way, I would be long out of business. The only way Hostbill gets away with this for now, is because Ubersmith is to expensive to some and other products lack some features. But if there was another competitor, in the same price league with similar features, he would be long be out of business.

From what I see, people don´t have a problem with paying a high end price for an owned software, its the constant costs they don´t want, reason why Ubersmith model will not work for low end hosting, or people that only focus on domains. If ubersmith had a low cost annual fee, with an expensive price, even so it would take away tons of customers.

Also, if you start to look at how Hostbill does some things, its not better than some 100$ PHP scripts, it does not really have anything particular high end in terms of technology or features, its just that it has tons of features put together, some work, some dont, and overall with all this options its a good value, when things work. Personally I was more attracted to the colo module, IPAM, the API, Hooks, and how open hostbill was presented as an extensible software, which you could develop on. But now this is changing, he is closing more and more options for this and making almost everything encoded. He is trying to lock customers in.

I would not mind paying for decent support fees, and for a better product. I also think that Hostbill market, in its first stages, was to a very low market, which send hims tons and tons of new clients, but also tons of support tickets he could not handle. Its ok to try to avoid that market, but in hosting in particular, the clients are still companies. They need to run a business, its not a hobby or some project on the Internet, they need to bill their customers and provision services with something like this, so it has to be on the serious side of quality and support.

There are plenty of options popping up now every single day, since some companies realized there is a market for this, a market that needs to point higher than WHCMS does, but not as high as ubersmith is doing.

[Patrick]

Do we all have to hate Kris and dog about his business, or can some of us like it and encourage them to do the right thing? I am vested pretty heavily in this software, like I'm sure you all are, but I want it to succeed.

We all do bud.  Unfortunately history repeats itself.  He's shown nothing but contempt thus far.  Lucky for us and most of our custom development being done in house, we can port to other software fairly easy.  If you paid them for tons of custom work then i absolutely feel sorry for your business should he continue as he has over the last year or so. 

I'd with confidence sit here and say 100% of us want it to succeed.  I personally LOVE the software as do all of my staff and no, not because i pay them.  Everyone wants to like Hostbill but it's the instability that has created such a hostile customer base.  I just visited kickassvps and what do i see?  A nice look, a welcoming contact page and live chat.  That's how you run a business.  You clearly understand business.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for KBKP at this moment in time.

I do hope it changes though, i'm sure as heck not hoping for the worst myself.  I don't want to switch my business to another software, but we will if the shenanigans continue.

[Patrick]

Bemerson: I edited your post just to fix your quote, i didn't change anything you said.  Just wanted to let you know as the quote was broken

[electric]

Do we all have to hate Kris and dog about his business, or can some of us like it and encourage them to do the right thing? I am vested pretty heavily in this software, like I'm sure you all are, but I want it to succeed.

Please don't get me wrong.  I, too, want Hostbill to succeed.  I sincerely think the software has TREMENDOUS potential and could easily dominate the market, both high and low-end.  It's really super stuff.

That being said, I have provided Kris with several posts in multiple locations (including his old forums, which he removed with zero communication before or after doing so), with what I feel is "wrong".  This is going back many months, before many of these problems and issues started happening and Kris began fooling around with his business. 

I received no response at all.  Nothing.   I know with 100% certainty that he has read them.

Despite this, he has made one stupid decision after another.  Over and over he treats his existing customers like idiots who are worth nothing, and prospective customers even worse.

Breaking up the software into individual pieces so he can charge more is fine.  Not what I would do, but I understand (despite zero communication from Kris) why he possibly decided to do that.

However, the "straw that broke my back"... was the decision to no longer allow 3rd party development.  There is simply NO WAY I can trust Chris after that decision.  It is now obvious to me that he has zero interest in his customers beyond using them to suck dry as much as possible.  There is NOTHING about that decision that is beneficial to Hostbill license holders, both current and future.  The only one who benefits from that decision is Kris.  And the major downside is that now anyone who uses hostbill is stuck in vendor-lock with hostbill only... a vendor who has proven to be less than trustworthy, with no morals and no ethics.

I simply can't trust my business with someone like Kris, even though I really like the software.

I hope that helps to explain my position.

[bemerson]

Good discussion, all fair points.

[nibb]

Im glad some here are making money, if I was making that kind of money I would be an idiot to use Hostbill to be honest. I don´t know and that is why im stuck with hostbill.

Im trying to grow my business, not work only to pay Kris and one software developer. A hosting company has tons of costs, servers, cPanel, OS, staff. I mean, the billing software is just ONE equation of all, not just the single one. Sometimes Kris seems to forget that and thinks his software is the lifeblood of a company.

Its not in my case, I can migrate platforms tomorrow, even if it mean working 72 hours without sleep.

Also, you guys invested allot in development in the software?

I was going exactly the same route and stopped completely, because maybe tomorrow he disables hooks, or API or God knows what else, and there are you will be all screwed, including the thousands you spend in custom development.

I don´t trust the software enough to start custom developing to fit my business, I don´t trust it enough to the point im only using very basic features in the software which I know are supposed to work.

No, I don´t hate Kris and I don´t think others hate himself. But he is surely a drug users or someone with with serious personal problems, for the way he strangely is acting lately.

Also, most are saying the same you did for 2 years now. He is hiring staff, he is increasing this and that, to get more developers, hire people, his company is growing, etc.

And this is not the case, its getting worst as time goes on. Maybe its just a bad time for him or the software, but not even 15 year old kids run their business this way. Its like if he takes everything very lightly, nothing serious.

Im the first person here in this forums that want Hostbill to be the best product available. Everyone here offered Kris help, he even stopped resellers from offering the license, he probably denied some people to help him out with support and I know he absolutely refused at least 2 purchases companies, that wanted to buy this company or software. So what is going on? He makes it as hard as possible to succeed. Its like if he is crying to fail, maybe he wants too. Maybe he is sick of this and just wants to go down. If that is the case, he should open the code for us that still use it.

If he is just going through a rough time, he can come here and ask everyone of us for help. We will be the first ones to help him out since we want the software to be amazing.

[nibb]

Electric, I 100% agree with you. I don´t have a problem that he ripped the software in pieces, like he did. I can even live with the lack of support and some basic bugs.

His decision to exclude external modules is something I will never understand. Its almost very clear on this decision that he wants current users to be locked in and try to squeeze them for money. And this not the way to do it. Some decisions can and will only benefit himself personally and never his software or customers. Crippling a software to make it have less features makes the value go down, not up.