Its a good program.. or the best its paid 20$ more for get ModernBill ?

i try this month and the support is really slooooow !! they take more than 24h to ask simple questions, the program don't work well for spanish market and they tell that you can get a refund and when i ask for it they tell me that "we can't make you a refund because we spent time answering your questions"

so, it's not a good program for me :)

THAT is sucks, -l don't beleive that company relpy like that dont even try it until you have no options !

I normally let erroneous posts slide but this one was just a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.

Pueblosnet signed up as a customer and after realizing it wasn’t what he wanted asked for a refund. We gladly gave it to him and deleted him as a customer. He later changes his mind and tells us that it was the best thing he has used and that if we could please reactivate his account. He was a bit upset that we were so fast to delete and provide a refund after his request. Isn’t that a good thing? So we create another license for him and go through our normal activation process. Well you guessed it, two days later he says again he wants to cancel and that he would like a refund again. I told him I was sorry but I was being kind the first request because it happened so fast after the order. Our terms of service plainly state that leased licenses do not get any refunds. The user had opened a lot of trouble tickets that we answered for him throughout the week.

So to make that comment and to put it in a quote as if that was the exact phrase is out of line.

It depends what your needs are, to be honest, and I do believe some clients will be well-served by ClientExec.

Pluses for ClientExec:
I used CE for 18+ months and have been very happy with it. ClientExec makes sense to me, is straightforward, and did not screw up my clients' accounts. (I have used phpManager and OptiGold and both made miserable messes of client accounts...ugh!) The essential highlights of CE, in my experience:
Easy to configure... you can have a working, fully configured system in a few hours
Very intuitive interface for customer and host
Straightforward billing cycles -- if you want it billed out effective the 1st of the month, when you run the cycle, that's when it runs from -- no matter what day today is. (This means you can run monthly billing a couple days late and not end up with pro-rates like ModernBill)
cPanel integration, allows you to have an account created/set-up automatically with a new CE sign-up
Authorize.net and Paypal integration
A development team that is sensitive and cares.

Minuses for ClientExec:
Unfortunately these are show-stoppers for us, not necessarily individually, but certainly all taken together:
No coupons
No discounts or partial credits can be applied to regularly scheduled recurring payments.
No partial payment accounting
Cannot keep a balance "on account" -- that is, if you bill for $20 and your client sends you $50, the script can only record a $20 payment and has no way to keep track of the $30 credit.
Very slow development schedule. On one hand this software is the least buggy system I have ever used :) but on the other hand, the updates are deathly slow, so if you're waiting for critical functionality for your business, you'll be waiting for many months if not years. In the past Alberto published a road map and dev schedule, those have basically been pulled offline now though (probably a good idea so people aren't set up for disappointment when a schedule isn't met).
Releases are held up for months in the event one part of an update becomes problematic, rather than scrapping the troublesome part and moving ahead with an otherwise functional release.
Small development team with too many points of failure -- if one person (Alberto) is tied up with weather or family, the project comes to a screeching halt. :(


So Bailey has moved on. Again. My poor customers :P but to my credit I think we have finally chosen our last and best billing/support package. We have indeed moved on to Modernbill and we are hoping to go live with it on December 1st. Modernbill answers all of our show-stoppers, and then some. However, Modernbill is very complex to configure and has taken us weeks of work so far to get it semi-working. We are trying very hard and putting in a lot of extra time to make 12/1 a reality.

With MB, I am not very happy with the billing cycling -- that regular monthly billing becomes pro-rated if we are a day late -- that is not good. In the past we have waiting until the first business day of the month to run billing, now we will have to run it on the 1st and heaven help us if we don't.

Supposedly Moderbill can be run via crons so that we don't have to do anything :) MB will run reminders, payment receipts, auto-billing, etc. on its own. The documentation is sketchy on this though and I have been unable to get it to work. I told our crew that until we are sure we have MB configured correctly, not to worry about it. For the first few cycles, we need to run things manually and verify every transaction is correct.


If I had the money sitting there and had my choice of the two? I'd take Modernbill at this point, but only because there is simply no definite time-frame when the features we need, will be available in ClientExec. The features have been promised us users for a long time and they don't appear to be any closer to fruition than they were when we signed up.


Totally your call, I've no idea what you need in terms of features. :) But if you want a powerful system, highly customizable, very large user base, very active and responsive developer base (spend a little time in the Modernbill forums and you'll see what I mean!) and with a million features... Modernbill. :)

Hope this helps a bit!

:D Bailey

Originally posted by pueblosnet
they tell that you can get a refund and when i ask for it they tell me that "we can't make you a refund because we spent time answering your questions"

Sounds completely fair to me! Next time it'd be a good idea to try the demo more extensively and install and test-drive the trial, before purchasing. Live and learn.

Alberto, good for you. :cartman:

:D Bailey

bithost, misteriously there is not trial

and Alberto please tell me where i put that "the best thing he has used"

and why i get support response faster in the forum than in the tickets system?

Not going to discuss your actions any futher on this forum. If you want to reach me you can at alberto[at]clientexec.com. Just wanted to make it clear to others about the scenario that did take place. For the record I am aware that our application is not suited well for those wanting language support other than English as we are only about 85%-90% done with language translations.

Like Bailey said, it may not be right for everybody -- I found it to be perfect for us. I have been using ClientExec for over a year now. I have used different billing applications and found ClientExec to be the perfect combination for us. It is easy to setup and easy for customers to use. Yes, there are a few issues that I am waiting to be resolved.

Many issues can be resolved quicker using the Forums than a support ticket. I have only submitted about 4 trouble tickets in the last year. Each was answered in a reasonable time period in a professional manner. I may be easier than some customers - I don't expect 24x7 support with instant response at night and weekends from a software vendor.

I used clientexec for about 6 months, was an awful system. Lacked in alot of big ways. Developer(s) claimed things would be out on a date and 90% of the time it was 6-8 months overdue. Stuff to this day is still not implemented. Support via ticket system is extremely slow 24hrs + to get a response. The poster above is correct in saying community support via forum is faster.


PS: I switched to modernbill and love it, the system is 100x better than CE. However it does have a large learning curve.

I used many hosting softwares...... Clientexec may not be the most detailed or perfect

But It is very much user friendly..... both for the end-user and administrator and It is very easy to configure also.

Carry on the good work guys.

Waiting for your next release version of clientexec

Let me tell you briefly how Client Exec "cares" about their customers:

I bought CE 16 months ago... rarely used it.
Just recently decided to (finally) update my accounts.

Decided to buy the latest version and installation.

Tried to login to my "account"... and could not gain access.

E-mails to rectify THAT concern went unanswered (or, even, read)

Finally got alberto's attention via Their forum...

Which started much time-wasting bickering (whereas al just quoted policies and rules trying to justify them "losing me"... instead of just shooting me a simple QUOTE and offering to update me)

Finally.... when I asked him to compare CE to a few other billing programs (just to show that I Knew the competition)... His Final e-mail to me was "I hope you're happy" with whatever program I replace their lame-*** "service" with.

How's THAT for some great one-on-one?

Apparently- if you're Not a Gung-Ho, actively involved, website checkin', Client Exec NUT... you WILL Fall off of their radar screen.

I checked all of my e-mail archives and NEVER found anything asking me to re-up or log-in to check my status.

Anyways.... I AM looking for a new program- and that's how I stumbled upon This batch of propaganda.

Stay away from CE.... and find some program with admins who Believe in Customer Satisfaction.

yes !! that's wallywalt !!

i'm totally agree "Stay away from CE.... and find some program with admins who Believe in Customer Satisfaction."

:agree: Alberto, I commend you for creating such a well developed program. Your not going to please everyone. Thats a fact of life. CE suites our company perfect in every which way. Our clients love it as well that we have setup for them. So what if the development is slow? You can't rush perfection..:) I speak with Keith alot from CE and is one of the nicest guys in the business and is willing to help out and answer any questions you may have.

The program itself is easy to understand and it's not so complicated as modernbill or any of the others. :agree:

Alberto, I'm looking forward to the new release and can't wait to see it. No need to rush. You rush you make mastakes.
Good luck!
:agree:

This thread shows that there isn't one program that will suit all users. ClientExec provides exactly what I want - an easy to use application to manage my hosting clients. My customers like Client Exec and ask where to get it. I have multiple resellers who purchased the application after using it on my site.

While ClientExec updates are slower than some people would like, the program has proven to be fairly stable. I prefer to get fewer upgrades that work instead of many upgrades with bugs. As a software engineer working on a large program, I understand how important testing is; and how it can slow down releasing new versions.