I have been keeping track of all my customers manually, what does everyone here use to keep track of their customer and billing information?

Theres been alot of posts regarding this, i suggest doing a search on "billing software"

May want to try Optigold ISP. It is free if you have less than 50 customers.

whats the link to that

Sorry I had to look for it:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/products/isp/

I have it but I haven't actually used it. It looks like it supports a lot of things though.

One more thing it is free for you if you have less than 100 customers, not 50 like I said before.

Just checking to see if I have this right... Optigold only works for people who are running Win and Mac servers?

Or rather, the program sits on my Win desktop and it connects to my Linux server to 'download' orders from a MySQL database?

I think the latter would be a great system, if it exists. Customer orders online, data is sent via SSL to the program locally (e-mail or whatever), to sit as pending in an 'inbox' within the program.

From there, I select pending accounts and and connect to my merchant account via gateway, and/or batch process accounts (maybe even automaically recur bill them).

It'd ease the billing process plus remove sensitive data from an online server. I don't need the whole farm, just something that people can order online, they get added to a local machine database, which I can bill through connecting to a gateway. Any ideas?

Greg Moore

100 customers

A business is not an easy thing to start, that's why we give away 100% working copies of Optigold ISP for up to 100 customers. You can download and try Optigold ISP with no obligation

voxel just launched ubersmith ... take a look at www.ubersmith.com ... I think you will get a billing software and as well as support ticket system as an integrated package ... I am not sure what other things it can do though. I tried the demo, and it was really nice

cheers,
:beer:

ubersmith looks VERY nice... it's pretty expensive though.

I was looking forward to ubersmith myself, but then the entire night their site wasn't working (it's still not up now), so i'm beginning to doubt whether these people are up to the task or not. What they need to provide is VERY mission critical, but it's not even working. :(

hi "skeptical" ;-)

that's strange. at 8:30am this morning (the time of your post) everything was normal (the last issue we experienced was a router HSRP interruption of about 15 seconds back in May). We were pushing normal amounts of traffic and had 3 unique visitors to http://www.ubersmith.com between 8:15 and 8:42AM.

Can you give us some more details regarding what you noticed being down? A DNS problem? Connection refused? etc etc.

We take outages very very seriously -- is it possible that there was some weird routing going on between your ISP and us.

Thanks much

Raj Dutt
Voxel dot Net, Inc.

Originally posted by Skeptical
I was looking forward to ubersmith myself, but then the entire night their site wasn't working (it's still not up now), so i'm beginning to doubt whether these people are up to the task or not. What they need to provide is VERY mission critical, but it's not even working. :(

Originally posted by Get-Hosted.com
ubersmith looks VERY nice... it's pretty expensive though.

Well, I think the price is reasonable ... Remember, it also includes ticket support system as well as billing. How much will you spend on these if you are getting it separately? Having said this, I also never really know other options ... so if there is a cheaper yet better alternative, I will to be interested to know :)

cheers,
:beer:

It also seems they have a nice merchant prgoram to go with it. :)

With uberSmith you get:
Client Management
Client Billing
Support Ticketing Sytem
& Online Database for clients to check balance and pay.

Seems like a very good program, although $99 might be a little too much for new hosts with a bit over 30 customers. Especially when it isn't needed... it's more of a luxary.

I highly doubt their site was actually down, they seem to have a Very good and reliable network.

Wonder if they are willing to give a discounted price to hosts with a little over 30 customers, but under 75 or around there. Possibly... when they hit 30 customers, they are charged $30/month, and $1 extra per customer a month untill they get 99 customers... then the prices sits at the normal $99/month.

Get-Hosted, very good Idea! But I wonder if they will do this...

question...is ubersmith the same thing as cbms by voxel.net?

Apparently, CBMS is free...yet, ubersmith is 99/399 bucks a month.

Originally posted by big_smooth
Apparently, CBMS is free...yet, ubersmith is 99/399 bucks a month.

You mean, functionally speaking, the two are identical? where is the link to CBMS? Never knew about this before ....

cheers,
:beer:

http://www.zippermonkey.com/links.php?op=viewslink&sid=13

I heard it was the "Free Version" but I'm gonna check it out.

Well: "The CBMS is a full featured client/billing management system designed from the ground up to cater specifically to hosting providers. The software is a PHP script package which uses mysql. Notable features include automated invoicing, client search, multiple customizable packages for clients, and client viewable real time invoice."

and they also have TicketSmith available.

Looks like ubersmith is these two programs mixed together, with the billing software added on.

Hello All,

Just thought I'd offer some clarification on how CBMS, Ticketsmith and Ubersmith are related.

We created an open-source billing tool called CBMS, at about the same time, we released another open source tool called Ticketsmith, a support ticketing software, over the past 6 months, both these products have goon through several versions.

Ubersmith is basically the fusion of both of these two products into one integrated product.

<<EDIT>>

When I started this thread I was actually looking for something to install on my PC, I am very hesitatnt to store my customers credit card information online. Has anyone had a problem with hackers trying to get the data you are storing on your server?

Strider,

Ubersmith supports external storage mechanisms for credit cards. This was a requirement for a very large host using Ubersmith (for liability reasons).

You can put the credit card database on your own machine and the set of related scripts on your own machine too. It is completely appliance-ized and modular.

Hope this helps,

Raj Dutt
Voxel dot Net, Inc.

Originally posted by Strider
When I started this thread I was actually looking for something to install on my PC, I am very hesitatnt to store my customers credit card information online. Has anyone had a problem with hackers trying to get the data you are storing on your server?

please take any further conversation about ubersmith to private messages or emails...

thanx.

Originally posted by kunal
please take any further conversation about ubersmith to private messages or emails...

thanx.

but why, Kunal? I, as well as many others I believe, also want to know more about ubersmith and any other possible billing solutions ... So if the developers of any of these billing solutions can contribute here and elaborate their product, it would then be great! Just like the way one of the developer of freevsd and the developer of mod_throttle answer directly some of our concerns :)
Or ... are all these considered advertisement and breaching the forum guidline? hm ... hope not :)

cheers,
:beer:

mod_throttle and freevsd are free products.. where as ubersmith is a paid product... its a breach of forum rules ...

Ah ... of course ;) .... OK then ... I will direct my question directly to nopzor .... But, CBMS and TicketSmith is OK to talk about, right? Because I will also want to hear other people experience in these two products ...

Anyway ... thx for the clarification, Kunal!

cheers,
:beer:

kunal,

why do we need to take this off the forum

The rules state:
You may reply to threads with your company information and suggested services in the advertising forums only. You are allowed to post replies if people ask questions specifically
about your company or service, but you must only answer the question directly. (Skip the sales pitch, as anything other than the answer will be removed).

This thread is specifically about Ubersmith. I am answering questions. There are many threads about cpanel, billadmin and other commercial products. What makes this different?

I agree with nopzor, we are asking him direct questions about his product, he isn't spamming and there are several people here wanting this information. I personally think it should stay.

Nopzor: Any answer to this?:
Wonder if they are willing to give a discounted price to hosts with a little over 30 customers, but under 75 or around there. Possibly... when they hit 30 customers, they are charged $30/month, and $1 extra per customer a month untill they get 99 customers... then the price sits at the normal $99/month.

Kunal asked this to be taken to email since there was a post offering information that was not asked. I have removed parts of the post that were in violation of the guidelines. No where in the thread did people ask for a feature list of Ubersmith, and this sort of thing should be listed on their site, *not* in a post.

Nopzor is free to answer specific questions you have, though this *would* be better if emailed. Please keep to answering *only* the questions asked and skip the sales pitch. this may be an indication that the wording on the site needs to be modified to explain things better.

Get-Hosted,

Hmm.. I will bring this up tomorrow. I think it is a good point, as it allows an easier transition into the full priced version.

Thanks much,

Raj Dutt
Voxel dot Net, Inc

Last time i checked the logo and title was "Web Hosting Talk"

why do you guys bother having all these forums when basically they are all of the same posts. From the posts, they were clearly asking about the software from Ubersmith

WHT really has gone down hill....


"Forum for discussing all non-technical aspects of running a web hosting company, including management advice and problems, recruitment methods, payment systems, company formation and legal issues."

humm...anyway its senseless to bitch anyway...nothing will change..

Get-Hosted,

Ok. Yourself and about 14 other hosts had this same request.
From now on, the free version will be extended to 50 packages (from 30).

The only cost involved will be the set up fee. You can still use our merchant provider (which we source for ubersmith clients) with the free version. You also get all the upgrades, backups and support that the commercial version receives.

Cheers,

Raj Dutt
Voxel dot Net, Inc.

Where do I sign up? :stickout

I talked to you on the phone and you told me about the Authorize.net merchant program... Is that available now?

on the dotted line ;)

i'll have a contract sent out to you. not sure if it'll go out today, almost everyone has gone home.

the merchant program is still available.

Originally posted by Get-Hosted.com
Where do I sign up? :stickout

I talked to you on the phone and you told me about the Authorize.net merchant program... Is that available now?

PM sent... just letting you know if you don't have it auto-remind you about it.