Hi,
I have a client that would like to offer hosting based on a pay per usage setup.
So - clients should ONLY (pre)pay for the actual gb's used.
There would be no monthly plans involved, and accounts should be shut down (or warning sent out) when ever bw is used.

like this:
A client prepais for 100gb.
he uses around 33/month, so after 3 months his gb reserve is just about used, and he will have to "fill-up" again. He buys 100 more, and he is now able to continue.
If he didnt fill up, he would get a warning, and then be closed down.

Cpanel wouldnt be able to handle this right?
It will automatically reset bw usage on a monthly basis, and there is nothing to do about that, right?

How about other CP's?
Direct admin
plsk, ensim etc?
anyone with good ideas on how to build this setup?

Thanks a lot for your help on this :)

noone?

I'm not aware of any control panel that provides for a prepaid credit type of system, but it's an interesting idea. It would be interesting to try to figure the logistics and make a guesstimate as to how much that server will actually need for the month. You would have to make a guesstimate based on their history how much they would actually use for the coming month or you may end up with a huge overage fee if they all decide to use up all of their bandwidth in the same month. With preset limits, it would give you an easier estimate especially for new accounts. Another option you could do is actually set a limit higher than what you expect them to use and then credit remaining GB to the following month. This way you at least have some kind of idea as to the max your customers could use during a given month. You may have to manually review usage and do credits yourself if you can't find a program to do it for you. I guess if you're really good as estimating overselling then an open credit system may work for you.

thanks for your input - if this should be done, it had to be a totally automatic, hands-off thing.
Does anyone here have enough insight into other panels than cpanel to know if they could do something like this?

cpanel could handle the creation of accounts and account management, but it's not meant to be used like a prepaid cell phone.

when you give someone 100gb bw, it gives them that for 1 month. i don't think you can change the timeframe.

what you could do, is see if you could create your own reports to show what bw someone has used then shut them off and notify them they need to prepay for more bw.

but one word of caution, instead of just shutting them off, you should give them a warning when they get close to their limit

This is something that I bet our system could do. We've got our hands full right now, but with a little cron we could make this magic happen using Whois.Cart(). The modification is simple. it would involve banking bandwidth which is not terribly difficult. I'll table this on Friday - we could probably get it done by October or so.

Interesting, I gain another competitor, yet not completely. Please see Alex042's post where he refers to your system as prepaid, as it is not completely "pay-for-usage", yet it is, but prepaid is a more accurate descriptor.

To send you on the right path, none of the CPs I've ever seen are built to handle this sytem without modification.

Richard

You wouldn't require CP modification. We already have quotas being pulled from various CPs with whois.cart, right now we have CPanel and Directadmin and are almost done with Plesk 6. In reality, it's just a matter of maintaining balances - remniscient of a first year university assignment in reality. Not difficult at all, and most CPs do provide bandwidth tabulations for free. In becomes in sort a subject/observer pattern that is no real challenge. We can pretty much guarantee that we'll get this done with no modification to the control panel. It's just a matter of scheduling more than architecture.

I meant no 'competition' however - just friendly fuel onto the fire. :)

Saeven, lol, sorry. :) I was refering to broker's client as competition! ;) lol

I own a host that provides similar services as to what they want to provide. Also, what I should have said is that the current CPs won't be able to do it on their own. I had created a "leaching" program to accomplish this goal before for cPanel, just wasn't very pretty--a "done too quickly" job for an immediate use. So, you're right, it is possible.

Sorry for the misunderstand, thanks for the laugh. :)

Richard

lol.

my associations go one post above. I think that's my limit :)

I have found a programmer that will setup the system for my client. Thanks for all the answers.