Hello All,

I have been taking some advice around the forums and reading posts for some time and have come up with my own business plan that i would like to execute, before i do so however i would like top run some of my ideas past you to see if anyone can point me in the right direction.

To begin with iam going to use a VPS server to host my clients on, this server will be seperate to that of the website and billing system and i plan to host the website and billing on a seperate network.

For billing iam after some advice it is between Modernbill and Clienexec and iam not 100% which is better.

Support we are going to use a mixture of a ticketing system from Kayako utilising their Esupport suite and also a real time forum for customers using the vbulliten software.

Any further advice or suggestions would be welcomed.
Rich

I would suggest to check their demo and opt for a free trial, get acquented with their system fairly well that will enable you to choose most suitable billing/help desk system specific to your need.

Those you mentioned should work fine! I can only suggest you to search for other ticketing software so you would be able to compare them!

I have been looking over support/billing systems on and off for while

I want a "all in one" solution as much as possible, I had all but given up on that and was going to use CLientExec and cerberus help desk, but then someone here linked me to WHMCS, and LPanel.

Now i am leaning towards LPanel, because it has a pretty good support desk built in, Built in affialtes manager, and everything else I want, the only thing it is really lacking is a DirectI module

WHMCS has alot of nice things, but there support system was lacking some features I needed, I would check them both out if I were you

www.whmcs.com
www.lpanel.net

I have looked into Cerberus helpdesk and found it way to complicated for general support ticketing and didnt think it would meet my needs to welll.

All i want to be able to do is support my two servers that i am planning on running.

Thanks again
Rich

More important than all of that....

... is what you are selling. Having good "back end" software is pointless if you are not able to attract or keep customers.

What is unique about YOUR company/business/service/product?

What is unique about YOUR company/business/service/product?

and how will it *stay* unique?

For instance, while our hosting services are pretty standard fare, we run our own facility (not too terribly unique, but difficult to copy), we're in low risk geography (very unique and difficult to copy), and we use special hardware to optimize routing that is quite excellent and very expensive (high barrier to copy). We're still looking for a killer unique element that truly sets us apart, though, because none of those are really all that exciting against a background of everyone else claiming the same thing regardless of truth. It is a very tough thing to do in the hosting industry. We've had 8 years to ponder that and still haven't mastered it.

yeah. uniqueness is a main selling point.

I have been looking over support/billing systems on and off for while

I want a "all in one" solution as much as possible, I had all but given up on that and was going to use CLientExec and cerberus help desk, but then someone here linked me to WHMCS, and LPanel.

Now i am leaning towards LPanel, because it has a pretty good support desk built in, Built in affialtes manager, and everything else I want, the only thing it is really lacking is a DirectI module

WHMCS has alot of nice things, but there support system was lacking some features I needed, I would check them both out if I were you

www.whmcs.com
www.lpanel.net


I can't find a price of lpanel anywhere on their site. I was probably one of the first users of whmcs and saw it improve a lot! I would use it again.

I can't find a price of lpanel anywhere on their site. I was probably one of the first users of whmcs and saw it improve a lot! I would use it again.
https://www.lpanel.net/order.php

I probally will go with WHMCS...

Lpanel it taking too much after MB with pushing of their commision based add-on a little too agressivly IMO for ssl, merchant accounts etc...