Over the years I have tried various billing software packages without a great deal of success. I have listed below what I have tried and why they are not suitable and would appreciate if anyone could give me any other suggestions

Modernbill ( owned licence)- Jeeze brilliant product but is hard to configure correctly and does not support UK registrations very well, customers have found the interface difficult to use both on signup and managing their account. I have been with this project from its early days and it has grown to the point it is basically overkill for my business

Dreamhost ( owned licence)- Still attending therapy for that one

Whoiscart - ( owned licence) Cant be beat for the price but the way it handles customers does not allow for resellers very well, the registrant is assumed to be the same owner as the account which resulted in a few rougue registrations.

WHMAP ( Trial) Does not support taxation

Lpanel - Looked at but does not appear to support taxation

Drams ( Leased) trialing this just now to see if it can do what I need

Basically I need a one stop system where customer can purchase a domain ( using different details for the registrant if necessary) purchase a hosting account and be billed, autosetup of accounts is handy but only if they can be queued for activation ( I dont allow instant signups) Being able to format the domain reg into a Nominet template for UK reg is a must ( automatic reg is not important)
It is vitally important that the package supports taxation ( VAT) one that supports this at customer level and package level would be ideal. My business handles around 4000 domains and around 500 sites many of the domains are reseller based hence why the above requirements are needed.

Is there anything out there that fits my needs NOW - not something that may do it next update.

Cheers

If you have tried all these billing systems and spent money on them I think you can do this: Simply have a budget of about $200 - $250 for your billing system and then go to www.rentacoder.com or www.scriptlance.com and post your project there for a billing system customized to your needs. I am sure that you will get a billing system exactly the way you want it to be.

BVS
Thanks for the info.

Between 1996 and 2000 we used out own proprietory system but keeping it up to date was more difficult and time consumming than first envisaged, hence the reason I am looking for commercial package that will fit my needs.

If all else fails then I may have to go down this route (again).

I would recommend you going down this route since when most of the freelancers from the above mentioned sites place their bids, they normally give you one year of support or even lifetime support so you could pass on the updates to them and they should be able to assist you with it.

Good luck in your quest for the PERFECT billing software and I hope everything works out fine for you. ;)

Goldwing,

Ever thought about H-Sphere!?

Billing, Hosting, Domain Registration, Trouble Ticket etc..., all-in-one.

Regards,

:D
Did it once - never again

2 servers on cluster, one ( non cp) went down and couldnt recover, couldnt move customers to other hsphere server as Hsphere insisted it needed to delete them of the other first and as it couldn't be contacted Hsphere basically told me to P*** off.

Result 20 lost customers, 5 days downtime so hsphere is not an option, nice and integrated as it is.

So far drams looks OK other than the configuration is all over the place, just not keen on using Enom but I cant have everything so need to try and get the closest to my needs.

Going to take BVS's suggestion and just see what kind of prices ideas come back on a bespoke solution, I think his idea of the "perfect" solution may be the holy grail though :)

nice comments