Hello Fellow WHT'ers,

We have been looking at billing systems for some time now, and we decided that ModernBill was the right choice for us.

After 3 months of using it, we had numerous complaints from clients about the bugs in the software, the slow interface, and the confusing order forms..

We have therefore decided it is probably time to introduce a new billing system; a custom made system. I have listed some things we wish for the software to do, naturally I may have missed things off, but they can always be added at a later date:

*Integration with CPanel (create, suspend, delete, & resellers if possible)
*Integration with Kayako eSupport (v1)- the helpdesk will be located "inside" the scripts, so things like form auto-filling, etc..
*Integration with eNom & 2Checkout & PayPal
*Perhapswork with vB
*Ability for clients to be able to login and:

-Check their invoices
-Pay Invoices (2checkout & PayPal)
-Order domains
-Submit a helpdesk
-Check current tickets, etc..
-View their domains & expiry dates
-View their hosting packages & expiry dates
-Integrate with the enom domain reg system, so clients can select a particular domain and edit things such as nameservers, contact info, etc..
-Subscribe to the mailing lists for a particular server.
-Update their contact info and their password..
-view their affiliate clicks & sales.
-View hosting & company news
-View support docs

*We also need a signup form, which would be able to bill things onto clients existing bills. So they can then put it onto their account, and pay from their "area".
*Also, we need to integrate with an affiliate script.

Admin features:

I am pretty sure you can think what would go here, standard financial stuff, client info, send out mail, config 2checkout, etc..

Now, the features I have listed above may seem like a lot, but a lot of the things can be done by merging multiple apps together. There are lots of eNom integration apps, Kayako is a good helpdesk, PayPal have a developer network, There are lost of mailing managers, i.e. mailman, cant remember what the other popular one is!

I am not sure what the pricing would be - but I can tell you there will need to be minimum designing involved as we have a desginer who will be doing the designing.

If you can give me a rough amount, and a contact means (preferably MSN, but AIM & ICQ can be done too..)

Also, living in the UK is an advantage ;)

Regards
Asif

This sounds like a big project. Would the web interface have to be done in php?

Hi,

Which other language where you thinking of?

Regards
Asif

Thats what I need too.. but will cost too much..(i think)

if you think it will cost too much, you 2 can get together(maybe more people) then hire somebody( or a small team) and get it done.

Plus such a light weighted solution can be a good product to sale.

Originally posted by retrohelix
Hi,

Which other language where you thinking of?

Regards
Asif

Perl.

I can do Perl but not PHP. That's why I asked.

I dont mind getting together with some people and sharing the cost - not interested in cpanel integration though :)

I second UH-Matt...

I think I talked initally with them (maybe someone else?) and the person I talked to wanted it done like 2-4 weeks...

I told him unless he was prepared to hire a team it was basically impossible.

Plus, a project of that size you are looking at a few grand at least to spend...

I'd think anything less than 2k with less than 3 people is basically not feasible (both in terms of time and effort) I think maybe around 3k with 3 people for a month or two might get the job done.

Wouldnt it be easier/cheaper to get a current billing system and then modify it?
Anyway, I would be happy to work on this, although I have little experience with enom and I suck at html/graphics ;)
Maybe if we could get a few programmers from a couple of hosts to work together we could produce a really good solution,
Just an idea anyway :)

Im in for sharing some cost getting it tailored to specific hosting business, i know some php and asp so possibly cross-platform it to help out. Get rackshack to pitch in and fund some of it they they can integrate it to there systems and maybe cut down some cost for them also. I wouldnt really be to intrested in cpanel integration but ensim integration would be nice and probably fairly simple with the scripts they provide

Hi,

Yes, I believe for an excellent system, it would work out at about $2.5k

If we all pitch in bits here and there it could work out as an excellent solution!

Instead of cutting out CPanel integration, we could just add Ensim integration, making it usable by a larger audience..

I would be happy to help with managing & hosting the project for Now

Regards,
Asif

p.s. we can't forget to add a hostcharge module ;)

If we were going to go for a billing system for use by any host it would be slightly more work, i.e. extra billing systems / control panels have to be integrated but Im sure that the extra resources available would outway the extra work needed,
If there was one or two more people to help out with the programming I would be happy to work on this project, I think that if we could get a few people it will lighten the load a little and will be better to share skills :)
Originally posted by retrohelix
p.s. we can't forget to add a hostcharge module ;)
:emlaugh:

Yes,

The main question is whether it would be usable for just hosts that develop it, or whether it will be available for purchase too.

Rgds
Asif

Yes, exactly,
Something like this does really interest me, and I would be happy to start working on the project but I would prefer it if there were one or two more developers who could help out with sharing the load,
Thanks :)

Well the availability would be an option to everyone who obviously pitched in for development time or overhead cost. I think if we could find a fairly established webhost/business that would be intrested in this that it would deffinatly be a viable option to charge other host for utilization.

However providing this opensource could lead to two other alternatives that we could look over. Opensource will allow us to absorb programmers and contributors alot easier and at the same time push some of the controlling market cp's to improve there products some.

Adding to that financially we could of course provide an opensource version with an enhanced version at a cost and or attach different modules and plugins that could come at a small cost to help offset the development cost.