Should I use HostBill?

[Razva]

Hi folks,

I'm preparing to launch a new service which will sell Shared, Cloud and Dedicated. Here's a simple question, and please be honest: should I use Hostbill?

I'm a longtime WHMCS user so I know "the competition". I don't want to start a discussion about WHMCS vs Hostbill vs ClientExec vs Blesta. I just want a honest opinion from you guys, as I suppose you use Hostbill as your daily driver.

I'm asking that because from 2012 'till today HB had a ton of policy changes, price modifications and "scandals". The general feeling is that everybody - even on this forum - is dropping HB in favor of WHMCS or Blesta. Not because it's a bad software (it's decent), but because the lack of trust, lack of support and lack of modern tools (responsive order pages and client areas, anyone?).

I don't want to choose a solution than realize it was a bad choice and move everybody. It's not only time and money consuming, but bad for business and brand image/awareness.

So, should I use HostBill or should I choose something else?

Thanks,
Razvan

[BRJP]

Hi Razvan,

Thank you for posting this interesting (and mush debated) topic!

Before I continue, could I ask why you are moving away from your current WHMCS?  I am interested in the driver of why you reverse migrating.

[Razva]

The part I really dislike about WHMCS is the lack of support for dedicated servers. Everything has to be purchased from ModulesGarden and - price wise - after two years you kinda pay the same amount you would pay to HostBill. I already own both WHMCS and HostBill, so it's not a matter of funds but a matter of concept.

Let me be clear: I really, really like WHMCS! Their support is great and, with the latest update, they showed everybody that they can still innovate. But they directly told me that they don't intend to expand beyond their current target/niche (shared-hosting).

I intend to sell shared, and reseller, and Proxmox or SolusVM, and dedicated. Yes, they have decent support for shared; yes, SolusVM has an official free module and ModulesGarden sells some for Proxmox. But the overall order customization procedure is fairly limited. Just think about the conditional items, you cannot setup an order for that will show a specific RAID option for 2xHDD vs 3xHDD. Also their multilanguage support is far more limited compared to HostBill.

Another good example is cPanel integration. HostBill allows you to do almost anything you require without the need to login to cPanel, which is a godsend for the customer who just wants to setup an email address or create a database. WHMCS can't do anything directly from the control panel, except maybe creating email addresses. But man, it looks so good and they solved this so nicely: you just click the MySQL button and it redirects you directly to cPanel's MySQL section.

So as a conclusion I recognize the fact that WHMCS offers a more limited experience, as isn't designed to do many things. But what it does, it does very well, and really had 0 issues in the last 3-4 years. Compared with HostBill who has a ton of features, but clearly lacks the vision, management and - basically - a leader that can demonstrate it's ability to at least maintain the product at a decent/modern level (again, think about responsive, that looks light-years far from HB, where WHMCS already has it in production).

[BRJP]

Thanks for the response - I understand the tension.

The answer to this is very subjective and you will see extremities in answer from one side to the other.  I will post our personal experience below for you to consider against others within the community.

We have been a subscriber of HostBill since 20/10/2013 which is nearly two years.  We had a good budget to start off with so money was not an issue and (despite the various policy/company changes) still does not remain an issue for us.  We rarely require support for the product or services we offer and HostBill continues to work for us on a day-to-day basis trouble free.  We have logged bug reports which have been responded to and fixed within a timely fashion.  We have asked for money to be refunded on a support tickets that were not needed - which were refunded promptly and professionally.  We have updated the product using the Auto-Updater with little issue.  Overall, we have had a good relationship with KBKP and have little to complain about in regards to the product.  But by no means are we a 'power user' nor make many demands from KBKP.

It must be said that we joined after May 2013 where quite a lot of resentment was realised by the user community.  The termination of being able to build custom modules within HostBill was taken very badly.  It seems that a non-substainable business model chosen by KBKP was violently (and erratically) changing which made product users feel extremely unstable in the product and - by extension - the company.  Most people felt the product was good but feared the stability of the company.  There was also concerns over the testing and bugs but I feel these have mainly been addressed and improved over the last 6 months.

As said above, this is all very subjective and we (SaneChoice) can paint a positive picture because of our positive experience.  We have no intention of leaving HostBill and took that conscious decision over a year ago to 'ride any storm until the fat lady sung'.  At the time of writing, the fat lady has not sung and we remain very happy with the Opera.

[tallship]

The termination of being able to build custom modules within HostBill was taken very badly.  It seems that a non-substainable business model chosen by KBKP was violently (and erratically) changing which made product users feel extremely unstable in the product and - by extension - the company.  Most people felt the product was good but feared the stability of the company. 

That seems to be the crux of the matter, and why we abandoned HostBill for two years, being a steadfast supporter sometime prior to that beginning w/version 3.1.4 and then.... the infamous calamity that occurred, being the demarcation timestamped with version 4.5.8.

My advice would be to look for another solution, if there's one that fits into your business model, and run with that - a great contender, and one that I've been following for a couple of years since its inception is http://whsuite.com which is now in final beta.

But WHMCS would be my bet if someone was moving forward at this moment, perhaps Blesta (Phillips' is a great company, local and just down the street from here, and they even answer their phones), if you're looking at the shared webhosting market or even domreg. If you're seeking OpenVZ VPS solutions, then WHMCS meets that standard now (along with WHSuite very soon, both using SolusVM).

If you're looking to deliver quality Xen, KVM, or VMware solutions, then as sad as I am to say, it appears that HostBill is still the way to go for those who insist on everything being an owned, non-branded solution.

One thing that people never seem to mention here, in all fairness, is that HostBill, as whacked out as this particular aspect is until you learn to work with it the way that it needs to you, is the quote/estimate system, with conversion into invoices automatically upon acceptance by the client. WHMCS has some decent support here, but for a company that does onsite and remote support services billed hourly (including under support agreements and subscriptions for existing VPS customers), There really isn't anything better than HostBill for that - and as I mentioned, that having been said, as much as I would prefer not to admit.

I think when it comes to HostBill, that ANYONE who decides to use it must first build a dev farm (aka, another HostBill license, in lieu of other options that permit one to run a dev version that some may have) because of the total fear of breakage whenever there is an update, or a change to the policy by kbkp - often illegal policies. There's that imminent fear that one day, everything will simply stop working entirely upon upgrade, and that eventually, the license servers will stop responding too - that's a very real concern that is really hard to base one's business flow upon.