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WHMCS, Blesta, HostBill... Yeah again with this kind of subject and i feel quite confused now.
Hello LET,
well since few months i've tried few providers here and i always check what you are using to handle orders, billing, tickets, etc. I've read more about billing systems and i've understood that there is mostly 2 mains systems, maybe 3 if we count HostBill.
Lot of threads talks about comparison etc, just a quick search on Google could help. But after a while, i understand also that most answers are related to what people understand more than what was their experiences. Also, i've seen that some tools are better for different kind of uses. I would like your help to enhance my understanding by sharing with me your experience if you used on of these different systems.
Globally it could be hard to migrate from one platform to another one, so you may be sure to choose the good fit for you from the beginning.
Here is what i've understood:
WHMCS (no demo available)
* easy to use
* lot of plugins and app support (integrate with lot of systems)
* price raised a bit
* look like cPanel and WHMCS are linked to the same company
* excellent choice to provide KVM hosting
* pricing changed recently (more pricey)
* sounds like something bad changed also recently (i haven't really understood the issue, sounds like related to the owner company)
* design getting old (even if it evolved recently)
* should be able to fit your needs for years
* no need to code
* licence may be included with few providers services
Blesta (demo available on their website ; i've tried it)
* opensource (looks like only 3 files are crypted)
* different reviews about the way it's coded (some says it's well coded, some others said it's cheap code)
* mixed feeling about product support (hard to define if bad reviews were related to PEBKAC or to Blesta)
* from my experience "small enough to be maybe easy to start with"
* if your company grows it may be not enough
* more efficient with web hosting, less with KVM
* may need to code a bit because of missing apps/plugins on their marketplace
* i think it's for this one i've read also mix feelings about domain registration (or maybe WHMCS?)
* licence may be included with few providers services (for example BuyVM, NexusBytes)
HostBil (no demo available)
* modern look
* quite expensive (how it could be a good starter?! oO)
* people that are using it seems to really love it
* mixed feeling about plugins/apps support (some people said there is a ton)
* didn't seen any licence included with providers services
Well so any experience, issue, trouble or whatever you had with it is a lot interesting for me. Also if you suggest another one please let me know your review 
!
Comments
I have tried all 3 for massive period of time. Some feedback:
WHMCS
- Perfect for start. There is no other options actually. Price/features wise this is gold;
- Generic look may require time to get things customized as you want;
- Popular product, so security is always on the edge;
- The best API from all 3 panels;
- Good documentation;
Blesta
- Rudimentary billing panel. You must have programmer or programming knowledge to properly adjust it to your needs;
- No proper domain control;
- Very few billing modules;
HostBillApp
- This is may look modern, but under the hood it's almost pure garbage;
- Million of features produce million of bugs;
- Ridiculous charges for developer access to documentation;
- Good thing, you can hire them to modify HostBillApp to your needs exactly;
- Very mediocre support;
Just go with WHMCS, if you don't have money for HostBillApp or PHP knowledge for Blesta.
Do not overthink this.
whms - very few minor issues I had.
blesta - bought owned license during BF sale. but never started using it - need to start some day!
Besides everything else, that you have already mentioned, another thing that plays a big role is upfront investment.
Blesta -> Major chances, you are getting a free licenses.
Whmcs-> Monthly fees, owned by the same guys that own Cpanel/Solusvm and notorious for hiking price and charging per user.
HostbillApp-> Hefty upfront investment, making it not much lucrative for smaller players in the industry.
There is ClientExec, that for some reason, no one likes.
Box billing, a project that came back from the grave.
Our very own @Jord is working on BillingServ, looks very promising. I had the opportunity of playing with the beta and so far, it is nice without too much bloats.
I was able to adjust Blesta quite easily to my liking back then, although I needed to edit some minimal code (remove Blesta mention in footer and I think put a logo if that wasn't covered in settings). While I do wouldn't want to say it definitely works out for everyone (also taking into account the points @LTniger already pointed out) for shared hosting with cPanel + PayPal Blesta was all I ever needed and it worked great. The owned license with lifetime upates is also a very appealing deal. Naturally, WHMCS probably has more extensions, features etc.
I think back when I was looking for a billing panel it was about the time ppl were actually starting to use Blesta and since I hadn't used another panel before I could look at it - perhaps - a bit more "neutral" in the sense that I didn't know what I missed out on. I had never used WHMCS. To this day I haven't. I get that there are things that are probably better over there. Personally, I don't care though. Blesta is improving slowly & steadily and it has served me well. It covers everything I need from it. No need for me to go to WHMCS, pay monthly/yearly only to get features I didn't know I wanted/needed. Again, not to say Blesta is superior. It just works for me the way it is
I feel like Blesta vs WHMCS is a bit like Affinity Designer vs Photoshop/Adobe.
I never used Photoshop and dived right into Affinity. I love it. Apparently I am lacking feature x,y and z from Photoshop. Do I care, though? Not really tbh. If it serves me well that's all I care about. If, one day, I frequently see the need for smth. it doesn't offer I will look elsewhere again.
WHMCS - best platform in my opinion, most stable, has lots of plugin and support, but for small hosts may be hard to afford due to $16 monthly fee.
Blesta - Good software, but has lots of issues when I used it and it is very hard to configure domains, also does not look as good as WHMCS.
Thanks for the mention boss.
We are nearly at open beta stage, we've been pushing really hard to find bugs and enhance our current features. We still have some extra features to build in before we go live for beta testing. But that shouldn't be much longer.
If you would like to beta test BillingServ you can sign up via the below form and you'll receive a shiny email from me.
https://forms.gle/fTPxTij5dUAYAy2R6
We didn't build BillingServ to compete with other hosting billing systems, we built it to provide a service where anyone in different business sectors can use us.
The link does not work.
Thanks for letting me know,
OK that is weird, https://forms.gle/fTPxTij5dUAYAy2R6 try that one
We demand better pricing. $2 / month 🙋♂️🙋♂️🙋♂️
Pay peanuts get peanuts
in all fairness we are updating our website/pricing.
Oh and you get what you pay for
I agree. I've been working the same way with Blesta. Grabbed a lifetime license some time ago and it has been working almost perfect for my needs. There is no reason to try WHMCS for me.
Clientexec was free with my shared hosting service with Crocweb. It was a bit confusing but no serious problem for really basic stuff.
The nightmare appeared when I started to code a local payment gateway. Oh man that code mess: no documentation, lack of support, specific module function written in the core instead, hard-coded paths/URLs. For my payment gateway, I had to use some Stripe functions (so it had to be enabled), or I think I had to name my module as Stripe. I don't remember quite well.
Clientexec was free, but I decided to pay for Blesta instead and no regrets (except @seriesn is including it for free now)
Hope to see a promo for renewing support
so I can update my Blesta instance. I'm a cheap nightmare.
>
Of course. Otherwise it's called scam.
Blesta works too, however if you want most of the stuff ready.. including integrations for domains.. etc go for WHMCS instead.
Blesta is way behind WHMCS and HostBill and development is moving more slowly than both so the gap is only going to get bigger. I guess their devs are spending most of their time on support, but this isn't sustainable long term.
i select WHMCS. service good
I think Blesta is definitely progressing. I've seen them address a lot of convenience issues both admin and user-end recently (Late fees, CSF unblock plugin, adding more UI for admins like deleting services/users if applicable). I've also seen a lot of development on updating existing things like gateways and plugins and how the admin portal actually functions to make it more convenient.
I am optimistic about them and I am hopeful that 2020 will be the year we see some big changes that would be the deciding factor for someone choosing between the options you listed.
In terms of WHMCS, some things that are comparable for me personally is afaik you can choose a server as a configurable option when ordering (I think that's how MyW location selektor works, @MikePT? Correct me if I'm wrong) and that's one of the things I'd love to see introduced in Blesta.
Some of the other differences are things like financial reports, domain system (even though it's getting there) and the big old affiliate program. We remain hopeful though.
Price wise there's not much more to say
What would you recommend if not used for hosting/servers/vps but for paas or saas offered?
I just got myself a whmcs licence to start with one to try it out but will have to write my own plugins/modules to support the use case if I don't find sth. better on the market?
Jord's BS looks like a just bare billing core billing platform and also not self hosting available.
Ahah but i think this solution is hosted, you don't have to care about backup, high availability, etc. They handle all for you. Anyway it's not prod ready so no one can say if it will fit needs and be stable or not yet.
Totally my understanding and why i've started this thread. I've read in some recent threads that since few month Blesta is really growing in a good and interesting way.
Do you mean like adding some disk space, more ram, etc.? I've seen that with few providers. In demo on Blesta i've seen we can add options but i feel like it's not automatic if you choose to add more disk space for example (well, it could be, if you code the call i guess).
What you mean about old affiliate program? What makes it old? Haven't explored this part but it's a good point to talk about too i think. Is there any issue with financial reports also?
Correct, we can be used by anyone in any sector, not just web hosting. So we can work with clients to offer them a system that fits their needs.
We have done it with a few different markets.
But we can't please everyone, and I wouldn't want to either.
Serious providers use The Hosting Tool.
More actual physical server placement than changes to the package.
It's just been anticipated for a while. Things are looking hopeful it seems.
No issue, just differences.
Correct, we do it all for you. So you can focus on your business, growing it.
Our version one of BS has been online for the last 850 days without any issues. I think we had some maintenance before that. Our system is redundant so we can offer good uptime.
Only the best sir....
Nobody can satisfy my needs and price. At this rate I am going to develop my own using woocommerce.
And sell it for $2 / month.
I don't get it if it's a joke or real, my browser is blocking the link and a google search doesn't show something recent ahah! I'm curious!
And if you are on LET it's probably because you already support hosting industry, i guess
.
Too many memories! Way too many.
You really need to look at what you're going to use, not all these millions of features that mean nothing to you. I used WHMCS for almost a decade and Clientexec before that, wrote customizations for both, both worked fine. I've been using Blesta for the past 2 years and have had nothing but love for it.
WHMCS constantly had security vulnerabilities and I had to patch every other week. Shady billing models for support on an owned license much like Atlassian by backdating your support contract every time you renew it.
Clientexec was meh back then, didn't have a lot of security vulns but it also didn't have very many features.
Blesta has every feature I ever used in WHMCS, and seems really customization friendly.
If you are looking at offering "KVM hosting"' you shouldn't be relying on your billing panel, or any panel for that matter to do that for you. It doesn't matter if the panel offers 200 payment gateways if they aren't offering the one you want. Find one and stick with it, I wouldn't give clients 400 different ways to pay. It doesn't matter if it integrates with this and that if you are never going to use it.
Evaluate your needs and make your decision based on that.
They have affiliate system expected to be released in 4.11
https://dev.blesta.com/projects/CORE/versions/11401
And from what Paul said on their discord channel, their focus will be on improving domain management after the release of affiliate system. So they try their best to implement what their users want but since they don't have as much resources as WHMCS, so the development is not as quick as some people want.
Anyone looking into establishing a hosting company in 2020 has plenty of decent options regarding billing & automation. WHMCS is most feature rich & has tons of modules & integrations so you can't go wrong there. However if you wish to stay in the industry for long term then I suggest investing in an owned license. Blesta, HostBill, ClientExec & WISECP offer those. You should look into features of each of those & select the one which suits needs of your business & fits your budget. Blesta, HostBill & ClientExec all have basic integrations & modules if all you want to offer is shared/reseller using cPanel/DirectAdmin/Plesk & offer VPS using SolusVM or Virtualizor.
Do take suggestions from others but please make the decision yourself based on what suits your business. I know some hosts who are have been using ClientExec for ages & are happy with it.
Most of my experience has been working with WHMCS when the time came for me to decide, I chose Blesta because it suited my needs, had the option to get an owned license & also because Paul and his team are very friendly & helpful which you can see yourself by joining their discord channel.
If you are short on budget, Blesta & ClientExec can also be had bundled with shared/reseller/vps for free or minimal charges from many awesome providers. BuyVM, NexusBytes & hostEONS instantly come to mind when I think of free Blesta.
I wish you all the best with your business as well as in choosing a suitable billing & automation panel for it
First of all, thanks for your answer. It's really helpful.
Since i know Blesta i'm really interested about it. And more i know about it, more i feel it will fit my mindset and my needs. Honestly, i like when things are easy and not overwhelming. So i don't expect to use ton of plugins i just want something reliable to keep billing, support and order working at it's best.
As you said, what is important is to decide which one suits my business. I think i will know more later when my project will be more mature. For example i've still to study a bit more the market to suit my ideas, and find a backend that will be autonomous enough to reduce support requests.
No budget defined ; i expect to start really small and grow slowly ; as this activity at the beginning will be a side project / company and not my main job (i mean, probably because of support it will be a bit, but my biggest earnings for now are clearly from my actual main job).
Well i honestly love BuyVM, but i would like to try NexusBytes services (and they provide Ryzen in NYC which fits my project ; BuyVM may have Ryzen in NYC by the end of the year i think). So i'm thinking about going on NexusBytes VPS (1 or 2gb ram) and host Blesta using the free licence they provide. I may use easyengine to make the process of hosting this easyer (i can do it myself, but when tools are successful why not reduce time required by using it
?).
Thanks A LOT for your wishes ^^!
@Shoaib_A said:
Thank you for the kind mention!
@o_be_one said:
Don't forget sir, our reseller hosting also offers free blesta and it is cheaper. One click blesta installer is also available
Here is something that many have already said, just because something has a lot of features, doesnt always mean you need them
.
Blesta does a pretty decent and even actually a great job at doing things, the most minimal way.
Fun fact: Servedez started with blesta. But I had an owned whmcs licnese and a lot of custom work was done, that would have fitted my future vision, hence the switch.
Blesta is growing and more and more options will pop up as the userbase grows.
Blesta one day will sure become what Directadmin is today and that day is not too far
But don't forget BillingServ! Looks super promising and might make your life easier with @Jord hosting it for you. So you can focus on growing your business without worrying too much about the backend