I am becoming overwhelmed with managing everything.

Currently I use ModernBill for billing monthly, PerlDesk for support (and I let it handle and direct e-mail for billing/support), manual e-mail as well as a phone number.

I am having trouble managing client account history, their MySQL databases and e-mail administrative accounts/e-mails etc.

I am probably going to get a VDS with PowerVDS as well as keep my VDS at WebWorkzCentral (because I love them) and using both. I will use them both randomly when a client creates an account and need a way to keep track both of these. (Head ache, right). I hopefully will be able to setup the DNS with my Webmin panel in WebWorkz so either will work and work seamless with clients. I will just have to give out seperate IPs depending on the machine the account is initially setup on.

Basically I need a way to start consolidating to manage client history, support requests, sales inquiries and everything into one way instead of having to login to PerlDesk, ModernBill, Webmin for new accounts/existing accounts, Excel for MySQL information, PhPMyADMIN to manage and create databases and even another system to manage account histories if they call in via our toll free number.

I only have about 7 clients (which I know is nothing) but I need a solution or solutions (max of two or three, I guess) before I go insane and we begin online marketing.

Any recommendations or suggestions (besides taking deep breaths) before I go completely insane?

Thanks for reading all of this and I look forward to your help and supportive responses.

Well firstly, nobody said webhosting is an easy stress free business.

From experience, I can tell you if you are feeling the stress with 7 clients, it worries to think what it would be like for you when you have 50 or 60 which still isn't that much.

Best thing to do is make sure your pricing allows you to recruit staff when you reach the stage of just not being able to cope with all of it.

Basically, the way we do things is simple.
WHM/cPanel for all the client technical details and management
PerlDesk for support
WHMAutoPilot for billing
Sage for accounting

For the tech support, we have staff working on that.
You should have email pipe through set up for PerlDesk and set it to handle all billing and sales through PerlDesk instead of it arriving in your inbox.

I don't see why you are storing MySQL information in Excel.
You should have a web control panel to manage your MySQL details.

I'm not sure if clients ask you to create the databases for them or not. If they do, that is wrong. If they don't and you use MySQL to store client information on the webserver, then maybe you can use Microsoft Access to sync with the MySQL database, and if you need excel, have Access store the data copy as an Excel file or cvs file.

ModernBill is fine for billing, don't need to change that.
PerlDesk is fine for support, don't need to change that either.
It's just basically getting a control panel to handle the rest. WHM/cPanel does the job for us.

Hope the above information helps.

Yes, as stealth says, you need to implement a real web hosting control panel. This will significantly ease your burden of managing accounts, and give users more features and tools.

ModernBill and PerlDesk should be fine for running your billing and technical support activities. If you get fancy with ModernBill, you can integrate it with your control panel to automate provisioning new accounts, suspending for overdue payment, etc.

With all the automated software out there and all the high tech accounting solutions, using these is fine and reduce work, But id still keep a record of customers VIA a access Db stored locally.
If you start feeling you are signing up lots of clients hire some staff to keep track of all the paperwork.
Kind Regards

I agree with the other sloop and stealthdevil that you should get a nice control panel like cpanel/whm. The idea is to have all of your clients taking care of these simple tasks on their own. You might want to if you don't already provide some good and in depth tutorials whether they are text or flash. Put yourself in your clients place and ask yourself what you would like on your website as far as help and support goes and when you answer that question, impliment them into your site.

We are using Whmautopilot. It has worked very good for us.

It sounds to me like maybe you are trying to do too much for your clients. I've rarely had to set up a database or email account for anyone, or manage a client history. If you go with cpanel, your clients should not have much trouble managing their own db's and email, and it basically takes care of DNS for you too. If you want to consolidate billing and support into one panel, you might try Lpanel. In fact Lpanel interfaces with WHM/cpanel as well so you could get 90% accomplished right from there without even having to log into WHM.

Give your clients a good control panel and let them handle 80% of your support requests themselves. Setup a good F.A.Q. area or knowledgebase with tutotials. Maybe look into DemDemo for flash tutorials. This should take away some of your stress points already.

I would suggest taking a look at H-Sphere (http://www.hsphere.com), it is a Complete Hosting-Automation package that will let you manage your clients, make adding resources easy (your clients can do it themselves, or you can through the control panel). It also handles billing and support.

This way, you only have to log into your H-Sphere admin account, and with a few mouse clicks, you can do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you need to for hosting. Since it does billing, it will charge credit cards automatically, or send paypal payment notifications. If a customer doesnt pay, it can suspend their account. With the trouble ticket system, it keeps track of all support requests, and maintains a client history of billing/support issues.

IMO H-Sphere is FAR Superior to cPanel, since cPanel is just a control panel. With H-Sphere, you don't have to plug together umpteen many products in order to make things easy (cPanel, WHM, Modernbill, Perldesk, etc)

Staff, staff, staff - one man can not run a successful hosting company

Originally posted by fusionx1
Staff, staff, staff - one man can not run a successful hosting company

Yes, I think having 2-3 full time people is prudent when there are 7 clients ;) Never mind the fact that having employees would just give this guy another headache ...

The best solution to this problem is to get a real control panel implement. There are a lot of options out there, research them and then make the move. Doing it now with 7 clients will be much easier than down the road when you have 70 or 700.

Whatever you want to do, you'll have to do it now. Any major changes should happen now and as soon as possible.

I'm using WHM AutoPilot for billing/account creation and Cerberus Helpdesk for support tickets. I'm using cPanel/WHM for the control panel.

yes, you should go with etiher whmautopilot(not as good but a lot cheaper) or Lpanel, they both have had very good experince. Also in my experince is WHM/cpanel, they automate a lot of things and give customers the ablity to do a lot of stuff.

Well I love ModernBill and plan on getting a license for DirectAdmin.

The problem is VDS provider likes to run DNS servers seperately and a lot of the other services on other servers instead of putting all eggs in one basket, so to speak.

I intend to stick with ModernBill.

I would like to customize PerlDesk more to fit into my general site template so it looks like the entire site (at least header and footer) and do not know if this is possible.

I would also probably need to disable the support desk somehow in ModernBill so clients can utilize PerlDesk instead of creating tickets here.

OR as another solution should I just go with Kayako and forget about PerlDesk and integrate it with ModernBill? That's my main thoughts on the question.

I will try to get a control panel setup for clients so they can do their DB tasks etc. themselves.

I think I might just attempt to install DirectAdmin and hopefully this will help. Still can't figure out a way to make it so customers can successfully manage a lot of their accounts without FTP (file permissions etc.) such as DB creation.

I think I need to decide between Cerebrus and Kayaka. I mainly need complete customizability to integrate into my site design instead of just changing the logo and colors...

Originally posted by xarquid
I think I need to decide between Cerebrus and Kayaka. I mainly need complete customizability to integrate into my site design instead of just changing the logo and colors...

FYI: You can embed the Cerberus Support Center into your existing website in about 15 minutes (as well as customizing colors/logo). Our site has a quick example (click the "Support" button). If you need any help getting started you're more than welcome to PM me.

Thanks!

Greetings:

Almost three years ago we were faced with growth problems in support. Two server administrators plus a technician were faced with growing support calls, support tickets, etc.

While it has been years since we were a one-person company, we were faced with the cost of this growth; that included support and accounting being on the same page making sure customers were billed for value adds or changes that were billable.

The technician left on friendly terms, and we knew the one system administrator was looking at going to work his father.

What to do?

That’s when a potential customer introduced us to H-Sphere from http://www.psoft.net/

At first when I saw the hundreds of pages of documentation and the up hill learning battle, I cringed.

We lost one person (the technician), and we were already swamped (that was in 2002).

To keep the story short, we moved to H-Sphere. We didn’t re-hire a technician.

H-Sphere saved us so much time, it was hard to believe.

When the one system administrator left to work with his dad, even though we had a concern, we saw it was just worry that never materialized.

H-Sphere handles all of our accounting, the provisioning, etc.

While we’ve gone through re-hiring, we did so to allow growth in our managed service area. Our support costs for hosting could not be that much lower (unless we outsourced it).

Now, truth be told, H-Sphere is probably overkill for 7 customers.

However, if you plan to grow that number ten times or more, then H-Sphere can save a lot of headaches.

Thank you.

P.S. http://www.hspheretemplates.com/ has an add-on that is wonderful for allowing you to integrate Cerbus into H-Sphere.

I wonder why H-Sphere does not include an option for the customer to download a full backup of his/her account, given the fact many people say it's so advanced.

I must confess I like many features of H-Sphere, but I do think there is an important feature missing here...

Am I wrong?

Originally posted by jstanden
FYI: You can embed the Cerberus Support Center into your existing website in about 15 minutes (as well as customizing colors/logo). Our site has a quick example (click the "Support" button). If you need any help getting started you're more than welcome to PM me.
Thanks!

Already did this and got it setup. Your support and sales team is great.

Right now we're actively running on:
- ModernBill for billing.
- Cerberus Support Center integrated into MB and using Cerberus HelpDesk for tickets.
- PHPLive! for live help and sales.
- Microsoft Money 2005 Small Business Edition. I am using this to automate account managing and tracking expenses from credit cards and the checking account since none of the other solutions could do this. Is there a way to integrate it with ModernBill so it can see the "income" from those client accounts?

That's all we have so far. I am planning on setting up Cerberus with extensive tutorials etc. and links to a lot of freeware for site management, FTP programs etc. so they can read these before submitting tickets.

Trying to figure out what I can install as a control panel for clients right now and then go from there. I think DirectAdmin might work.

The main problem now is the marketing/sales end. I do have access to Webalizer (http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/) so I can monitor tracking etc. from AdWords, Overture, Kanoodle etc. etc. since I have tracking addresses (internal - server side)...and on post cards sent out if they decide to go to the site address with a unique number or a can place a number they can tell us when they call.

I think I just need a simple solution to the Sales/Marketing of products too. Internet marketing isn't bad at all with tracking and log analyzers but the local is a bit harder (keeping up with addresses, who calls back etc.) and we need a solution for that. It would really help if it was online so we can input addresses etc. and then output to print to postcard stickers.

Any ideas for Sales/CRM managers? Again you can see what we have installed above so any integration etc. is very, very good. Trying to make it so we're not in completely over our heads and bogged down with ten million programs.

I have one other guy now handling the marketing/sales and we're hitting the local market first. He just needs some tips on software or web software/scripts that I can setup to get him up and running and we can start sending out letters etc.

Originally posted by Apolo
I wonder why H-Sphere does not include an option for the customer to download a full backup of his/her account, given the fact many people say it's so advanced.

I must confess I like many features of H-Sphere, but I do think there is an important feature missing here...

Am I wrong?


Anybody have an answer to this?