Have a license since 2012... is it worth coming back?

[dbmv]

Hostbill is charging $45 a year for updates, which makes a lot of sense so I don't mind that part.

My main concern is security, stability and communication. Have any of those improved with Hostbill?

I have WHMCS and Blesta owned licenses, but WHMCS is too focused on purely webhosting services, with very little flexibility for other things, and Blesta's development is extremely slow. It would take thousands of dollars to develop custom modules for it that cost 99 dollars with hostbill.

But all that is moot if security and stability are a problem with Hostbill.

Thoughts?


Edit : Since I have a license from that year, I *CAN* get modules developed for HB, right? Is there anything in the code that would prevent me from doing that?

[d4f]

My main concern is security, stability and communication. Have any of those improved with Hostbill?

Security: I haven't been able to find any significant issues in the current releases. It does have some issues such as no/insufficient protection against client-side attacks such as frame loading and CSRF much like most systems.

Stability: Nope. NO improvement at all. He still prefers (selling)fancy design and new modules over _ANY_ form of release testing and the number of regressions in each single update is mindblowing.

Communication: See here: https://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/topic,1775.0.html

Since I have a license from that year, I *CAN* get modules developed for HB, right?

Yes, our grandfathered licenses permit having third parties develop modules. But honestly, after writing a couple modules from data analyzers over template hooks to billing providers, I can say that due to the extreme lack of documentation and cooperation most is just guesswork. I did upload a list of classes and their public methods some time ago to this forum but even with that it's close to impossible to actually do something without resorting to "reverse-engineering" (more like decryption in this case). Of course I cannot condone reverse-engineering as it violates the ToS if not applicable  laws.

Is there anything in the code that would prevent me from doing that?

As I noted above, there is nothing in the code that prevents you. ( I don't think even the new licenses do that).
But there is also nothing in the code do help you on your quest. I may be able to help you with tips/infos if you get stuck at some point, just PM me in that case. Note; only help, no coding... got plenty of that for my own stuff =)

[hbillclient]

"Security, Stability and Communication"...well you can forget about Communication for good, unless you are willing to pay for it.

In terms of security, you should be pretty safe as any potential issues are fixed and resolved within a reasonable timeframe.

Stability in terms of the software is good enough although, there are cases when an upgrade/update somehow messes a few things here and there. In terms of business stability, not sure even Kris would know although, it seems over the past year or so nothing too drastic has happened.

And as far as the $45 yearly updates are concerned, it seems only security & bug fixes are included.I would suggest you go with the $49 Service Pack which would include access to updates/upgrades along with a free support ticket.

Since you have a 2012 license, you can develop your own modules and will have full access to the developer resources.

Thanks.

[dbmv]

Thanks guys. disappointing to hear that the business part of HB hasn't changed that much over the years.  I still haven't found anything that does what HB does, but I can't risk client data on a whim. I'm already imagining the horror of migrating data to another system should Kris decide to do something weird again.

Has he ever re-written the code base? I think at some point we all thought it was a hodge-podge of code.

[tallship]

My main concern is security, stability and communication. Have any of those improved with Hostbill?

Actually, No.

None of those things have changed.

That having been said, however, for the sake of full disclosure I must note that from my personal experience, security issues (vulnerabilities) have ALWAYS been addressed rather immediately where HostBill is concerned - which is more than can be said for most commercial software in general - so that's why I can say that nothing has changed wrt security.

HostBill is not stable - neither in regards to the release of stable code w/o breakages of existing systems or the direction of the company and it's whacked out, contradictory licensing issues.

Communication has never existed - but I believe you can still, "Pay to ask CEO about presales questions" and not get a response - so at least that is a stable feature lolz.

I have WHMCS and Blesta owned licenses, but WHMCS is too focused on purely webhosting services, with very little flexibility for other things, and Blesta's development is extremely slow. It would take thousands of dollars to develop custom modules for it that cost 99 dollars with HostBill.

I don't think I would personally characterize WHMCS in that regard. Without even mentioning SolusVM, there is Virtualizor:
http://www.virtualizor.com/

And there is a WHMCS module here: http://www.virtualizor.com/wiki/WHMCS_Module

That should solve your problem there, and make HostBill completely obsolete, thereby not having to subject your customers to any uncertainty that their machinery will cease to function tomorrow - which is a very real concern for all HostBill users.

There's also WHSuite:
https://whsuite.com

Quite promising, and as a fellow  admirer and license holder of Blesta myself it's refreshing to know that development on WHSuite is so furious and that there's so much interest in their weill documented API by third party developers.

WHSuite, after an over two year wait, is not out of beta and into production - you really should give it a look and note that there will be many IaaS and PaaS plugins forthcoming.

Edit : Since I have a license from that year, I *CAN* get modules developed for HB, right? Is there anything in the code that would prevent me from doing that?

Yes, you can, as has been covered already in the past, depending on the date of your license. There's a bunch of stuff over at GitHub you can find as well if you search on HostBill there.

The saddest thing about HostBill is what it was actually capable of doing, and then how it virtually ransomed every one of it's customers until they went elsewhere, and now the sales have dropped off to the point where even the longest running licensees have migrated most of their infrastructure and client base to other platforms.