Hi All,

I'm curious as to what you (web hosts/resellers) think is more important in a billing system when it comes to degree and flexibility of control panel integration.

Which do you prefer?
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A system that provides very thorough integration for a single control panel (such as WHM AP v3 looks to be going for with Cpanel) but does not support the addition of other control panels. In other words, it works really well with one control panel but can't be extended to work with others.

A system that provides basic account provisioning functionality (create, delete, suspend, unsuspend, and possibly upgrade/downgrade) for multiple control panel systems (such as Modernbill), but does not provide advanced integration with any given server platform. This type of system allows for users to extend the program's functionality by adding basic modules for custom or yet-unsupported control panels. It leaves most of the more advanced configuration tasks to be performed through the control panel admin area (like WHM) or the command line.

Sort of a hybrid of 1 and 2: A system that provides enhanced account management/control panel integration for multiple control panels, however since the addition of a new control panel requires significant modification of the system's backend, frontend and database (as complex integration can not be done in the form of a simple module), users would be unable to (at least very easily) add their own custom control panel types.
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Really I'm trying to get a feel for how important multiple control panel integration is to everyone.

How many people are actually using one billing system to manage servers running different control panels?

How many people are really concerned about a system being able to scale up to a different control panel system in the future? (or are you fairly content that you will decide to stay with a particular system for the forseeable future).

The problem I'm running into is that if you try to make a system incredibly extensible (as in anyone can add any type of custom module), you're going to lose performance. That's just a fact of life. The more you hard-code things, the better the performance, but the more time-consuming and complicated it is to add in support for a new control panel down the road. At some point you reach the level of complexity where only the developer is really able to make changes of that magnitude because he or she is the only one that knows the system well enough. And that's not to say that I wouldn't add additional modules for new control panels as they were requested, it's just that if someone bought the system to use with an unsupported control panel or wanted to create their own integration module, it wouldn't be as simple as creating a generic class with 5 or 6 account provisioning functions.

So at the core the trade-off is: speed/performance vs. extensibility. What are thoughts on this?

Thanks a million for any feedback you can give! :D

Matt

i would say that a control panney is more needed than a billing system as the more managble a clients site is the easyer and more stress free it is for them.

Originally posted by EvoHosts
i would say that a control panney is more needed than a billing system as the more managble a clients site is the easyer and more stress free it is for them. Hmm... I don't quite follow your meaning. Are you suggesting that I write a control panel instead of a billing system? It's a bit late to change gears at this point--I think I'll leave that to others. ;)

Maybe I misinterpreted your post...

Originally posted by Site5-Matt
or are you fairly content that you will decide to stay with a particular system for the forseeable future).

Not in this industry :)
I am in the process of switching over to a new control panel for new servers and will have to keep servers with the old control panel for at least a further year. So I vote for a billing system supporting several control panels :)

Originally posted by Walter
Not in this industry :) Touche. :D

With regard to ability of users to extend the functionality--what are your thoughts on this? Are you using MB currently? Does it already have support for the control panel you're switching to?

Personaly I think the best billing solutions have basic support for most control panels leavind more advanced functions to be done via the control panel itself. So no 2. :)

I take it this is for BillAdmin 4? ;)

Extensibilty is not the #1 on my priority list.

I worked years as a software designer for an ERP software company - all customers needed to customize reports and such, some wanted customization at the screen level (different names for fields, different look) and very few needed customization at the workflow level. But of course the level of extensibility needed differs from customer to customer and from industry to industry, so don't take my words as pure wisdom.

Billing software is a very complicated software and even more complicated if you want to please international customers like me, the most important thing in my eyes is a flexible class design at the bottom of the software.

The most important thing for me is not support for a specific control panel (my wishlist: Cpanel and H-Sphere) but support for my payment processor (Worldpay) and some other basic issues.