Where is everyone now?

[Patrick]

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.

I think it's crazy how unbelievably skilled the developers are over there.  They didn't tap in to existing design (aside from bootstrap) but they went with their own look, completely different client area even from UBS.  UBS though detailed for some server management, it is still after all, very limited.  Hostbill (maybe even ByteCP one day in the very distant future) is IMHO the best product offered today.  The guy has the potential to be an easy overnight millionaire if he listens to his clients and gets an educated, qualified business manager. 

Sky is the limit for their skill and the care of the software.  I've seen some of his coding though and some of his variables are a little sloppy and lazy, but i won't fault them for it since i do the same thing unfortunately.  Like Electric said though, it's hard to trust them anymore.  Trust has to be earned and we i'm sure have all invested far more then a cup of coffee in to our businesses. 

Immediately he needs to do the following if he plans to restore absolute trust and show progress

• Remove the "Contact the CEO" entirely and never even think of doing something like that again
• Provide structure.  $45 renewal fee's.  OK.  Now how about a set support fee per month for unlimited contact, including phone
• Provide pre-sales
• Provide timely responses.  Though he lists 18h guarantee.  I can pull up 50+ threads of people that still have tickets open from a year ago.
• Set a price, stick with it.  Provide a refund guarantee, don't wake up one morning and play your site as if it's a lottery.
• Communicate with your customers.  Ask their thoughts, and discuss.  Communication alone speaks volumes.
• Re-open monthly leased licenses
• Re-open the ability to resell Hostbill.  At the very least to existing Hostbill customers, so we can provide this as an option to our customers.
• Re-open third party development.  This isn't optional, this is a must.  This just closes off the software to the world and renders it's value to nill

He does these things, i'd be willing to bet Hostbill would smoke everyone else other then the kids running a hosting business because they think it's easy or "cool"

[CBlade]

I think it's crazy how unbelievably skilled the developers are over there.  They didn't tap in to existing design (aside from bootstrap) but they went with their own look, completely different client area even from UBS.  UBS though detailed for some server management, it is still after all, very limited.  Hostbill (maybe even ByteCP one day in the very distant future) is IMHO the best product offered today.  The guy has the potential to be an easy overnight millionaire if he listens to his clients and gets an educated, qualified business manager. 

Sky is the limit for their skill and the care of the software.  I've seen some of his coding though and some of his variables are a little sloppy and lazy, but i won't fault them for it since i do the same thing unfortunately.  Like Electric said though, it's hard to trust them anymore.  Trust has to be earned and we i'm sure have all invested far more then a cup of coffee in to our businesses. 

Immediately he needs to do the following if he plans to restore absolute trust and show progress

• Remove the "Contact the CEO" entirely and never even think of doing something like that again
• Provide structure.  $45 renewal fee's.  OK.  Now how about a set support fee per month for unlimited contact, including phone
• Provide pre-sales
• Provide timely responses.  Though he lists 18h guarantee.  I can pull up 50+ threads of people that still have tickets open from a year ago.
• Set a price, stick with it.  Provide a refund guarantee, don't wake up one morning and play your site as if it's a lottery.
• Communicate with your customers.  Ask their thoughts, and discuss.  Communication alone speaks volumes.
• Re-open monthly leased licenses
• Re-open the ability to resell Hostbill.  At the very least to existing Hostbill customers, so we can provide this as an option to our customers.
• Re-open third party development.  This isn't optional, this is a must.  This just closes off the software to the world and renders it's value to nill

He does these things, i'd be willing to bet Hostbill would smoke everyone else other then the kids running a hosting business because they think it's easy or "cool"

Very very good points, well said, but i really doubt he will do this, since he is prisoner of his own ego, and never ever must be owner of a company, he is a typical employee, born to be commanded by someone else, some company must hire or buy his company, it is the only chance, Kris's business vision is like lemon stand kid vision, such a waste of talent (programing, layout, ergonomics).

I wonder what the other Kris think about this, he is so submissive to the main Kris that let the dung storm flowing freely? Or maybe he is so wrong that think this is the right thing to do, maybe this other Kris is the master mind behind the code and everything and the main Kris that screw everything outside this, who knows...

[bemerson]

There's a 2nd Kris?

[ezpnet]

At one point there was a Kris P and a Kris B. I do not know if there still is.

[Patrick]

There's a 2nd Kris?

Their names are also not "Kris".  After some research i found two partners who are on the business registration.  Both are Christopher's.  Not Kris.  It's in one of my posts somewhere.  Then again even though the translation in english is Chris, they could have just nicknamed themselves, Kris to keep the polish K in the translation.

Right here: http://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/topic,74.msg462.html#msg462

[CBlade]

Their names are also not "Kris".  After some research i found two partners who are on the business registration.  Both are Christopher's.  Not Kris.  It's in one of my posts somewhere.  Then again even though the translation in english is Chris, they could have just nicknamed themselves, Kris to keep the polish K in the translation.

Right here: http://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/topic,74.msg462.html#msg462

Kris is almost same as Chris in many places, here Christopher's are Kris too, thats the reason company called KBKP because Kris B and a Kris P, and i guess dominant Kris is the Kris B.

[electric]

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

Of course!  Only a fool would trust the most critical components of his business (support, billing, customer management) to software that is 100% controlled by a person who can't be trusted.

Would you continue to stay in business with a partner if you did not trust your partner?  Of course not! 

It is extremely unfortunate, but the only possible way forward I can see... as long as Kris is the one behind HostBill.... is to not use the software.  I am saying this, despite the fact that I still think Hostbill is very well designed and well constructed.

No trust = Nope. Not going to happen.

[electric]

There's a 2nd Kris?

Honestly, this is indicative of the problem I am seeing.  We don't even know anything about who owns the company or who is making the management decisions.

You can pay $75 to "Ask the CEO" who they are...  lol.

Really, if you are targeting the higher-end market, then a pretty basic part of such a business is to be somewhat transparent about your ownership, your vision, your goals as a business, etc.   Only the most foolish large businesses are going to throw money at HostBill without doing even basic due diligence... and they will quickly discover the company is owned and operated by a couple of amateurs, with a proven track record of making spontaneous and foolish decisions with no ethics or morals whatsoever.  (As evidenced by the numerous changes we've seen, how existing customers are treated, etc... )

[Patrick]

Honestly, this is indicative of the problem I am seeing.  We don't even know anything about who owns the company or who is making the management decisions.

You can pay $75 to "Ask the CEO" who they are...  lol.

Really, if you are targeting the higher-end market, then a pretty basic part of such a business is to be somewhat transparent about your ownership, your vision, your goals as a business, etc.   Only the most foolish large businesses are going to throw money at HostBill without doing even basic due diligence... and they will quickly discover the company is owned and operated by a couple of amateurs, with a proven track record of making spontaneous and foolish decisions with no ethics or morals whatsoever.  (As evidenced by the numerous changes we've seen, how existing customers are treated, etc... )

Honestly, the "Ask the CEO" is one of the funniest things i've ever seen no matter the product or website.  To charge people to ask a CEO a question lol.  I think he believes the title or abbreviation means something special.  I think someone who has contact with them, needs to remind them that in order to feel that kind of "special" you really should start making a few million first.   No company will adapt to this.

I mean check this - http://tinyurl.com/askceohostbill

Tell me how many you find.  It's one of those "No man, we're not laughing with you, we're laughing at you" kind of things.

[Patrick]

Just to make matters worse, not only are just about every provisioning module now paid premium, he decided to add "sidepad" theme to the list.  https://hostbillapp.com/clientarea/?/software_store/clientarea_themes/sidepadtheme/

No one will pay $599 for the framework lol..  Drop the price down to $39.99 or at a high number $99 and then let people choose thet modules, themes etc they need.

At least i'll feel far more justified with our exit strategy.  WHSuite is quite an option currently in development.  Something we're considering heavily even investing in if they produce more decision worthy information

[Cloudrck]

I've moved on to Blesta. The software is far to buggy and the company is too unstable.

[thetrusteeco]

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?

Well, at least someone's still optimistic.  Keep the faith bemerson!

That's 1 happy customer and counting! 

As for the 2 Krises issue: Maybe there are 2 Krises, maybe it's just 1 guy who committed fraud when incorporating his company, pretending to be 2 people ... I wouldn't be surprised, but who knows? 

Which one is the CEO?  What's the other one do?  Is there a COO?  How much to talk to him?

Regarding where is everyone now?  I can only speak for myself (Hey patrick asked):

Without 3rd Party Developers I see no future for my company with HostBill.  2 years of waiting for the Krises to fix their buggy software is enough.  I'm currently using it, but am actively looking for a replacement.

HostBill looks pretty.  HostBill has a great underlying architecture and future development potential.  But HostBill doesn't work (at least well enough for me to invest anymore into it).

I don't like WHMCS but I am using it for 2 new projects right now, because of the 3rd Party integrations.  WHMCS has huge, fundamental problems that limit it's future development and therefore I looked for an "Integration Platform" (2 years ago) that could be extended via API.  Now, suddenly, I cannot hire anyone to build a 3rd Party App for HostBill, except the Kris(es), who apparently have never heard of "Alpha Testing", let alone "Beta Testing" or "Quality Control".

You paid these guy to develop Apps?  Do they work?

Example: We're currently deploying a search engine for a client.  It's part of a project that needs a web-hosting+domains Billing system.  Is there a Solr App for HostBill?  Can I hire someone with Apache/Solr experience to build one, sure, but the price just went up by 20-500x in the past 2 weeks because developers now know no one else will buy this app.  So now it's in-house development, whereas with WHMCS, there's a 3rd Party App for that (actually it's 3 apps that need to be bridged if you want to be technical).

I have put this project on hold for almost 18 months waiting for KBKP to fix some very simple and fundamental bugs.  I cannot believe the patience of my customer.  Fortunately the world market isn't so good and so they're saving money each month it is held off, but I'm losing money!  So, instead of using the "better" software we're going to use the "future-limited" software, because the "better" software has bugs that make the project nonviable, regardless of whatever apps we build in-house.

Blesta v3 can't get here quick enough for me; I hope it develops a 3rd Party developer community.  The WHsuite promo pitch sounds good, but I would need a lot more info on that before considering even giving them $5.  If they're legit, all the best.

Regarding the future of HostBill: Good Luck Kris(es).  I hope you can turn things around.  It doesn't seem likely.  And either way, I cannot imagine ever buying another HostBill license.  Currently I wouldn't take one if you gave it to me for free, because it really has no value to me.  If I could migrate my current HostBill site to something else tomorrow I would.  To be far to HostBill, as buggy as it is, I cannot just port over to something else right now.  I would need to invest a great deal to get anything to do what I'm doing with HostBill.  As stated above, HostBill has a great underlying architecture.

Regarding the future of HostBillForums: I hope this forum survives if KBKP dies.  The knowledge base of the members is impressive.  And I certainly don't think Lawrence's asking us to not be racist, sexist, etc. drove away any members.  If it did, I don't want to associate with them anyway.

[Patrick]

Well said... On every point

[trige]

I think to forum can live healthy need make general form for billing software rather then focus only hostbill.

[CBlade]

I was almost completely discarding hostbill, like 85%, but i really LIKE this community, wht is a damn spam forum, and when its not a spam, is someone playing as Tony Stark, and rapidly humiliating you.

Please, dont close it down! How about this community found next wht forum?