Hi Guys, we are about to give H-Sphere a good test for a project of ours incl. around current 1000 webhost clients. I was hoping for some feedback from you, experienced users as many of you are...Also, what alternatives do I have?

- We would need to sell both windows, linux hosting and hosted exhange
- A large part of our business is based on selling domains (ICANN accredited)
- A equal part of our business is based on selling custom email addresses
- We are quite keen on using Kayako
- We would need to offer reseller plans
- We would need to integrate with openSRS or Directi

My main concerns with H-Sphere is
- Exhange hosting not mature
- Signup forms hard to customize, not flexible and quite ugly
- Not meant for running a domain based business
- Hard to integrate 3rd party products (our email/domain based business)
- Slowness, the demo's I've seen online are quite slow (and CP design not modern, honestly not very good looking)

My alternatives would be:
Modernbill + Plesk (win/linux)
Modernbill + Helm3/Cpanel(or DA)
AWBS + Cpanel(or DA)/Helm
WHMCS + Plesk (win/linux)
Rodobi + Ensim (win/linux)
Hostingcontroller?

Anything you guys can say to point me in the right direction?

Thanks a lot for your time!

Best,

Ditlev

Sorry if I'm being thick, but if you're ICANN accredited why would you want to use DirectI or OpenSRS?

You definately want to look at HSPComplete + Plesk and also PEM. All of which are from SW-Soft.
It should be noted the different costs between the above listed in my post and using H-sphere which is per account in bulk. H-sphere doesn't directly support apache 2.2 either. Another thing to look at is support records which SW-Soft is pretty well known for being good at for larger partners although there was a recent problem with Plesk and advertising would noting - not sure what has happened really with regards to that etc.

Sorry if I'm being thick, but if you're ICANN accredited why would you want to use DirectI or OpenSRS?

We use Directi for handling our contact with ICANN, this is a quite normal method - like stargate and several other big registrars does. Unlike openSRS, Directi isnt integrated into many Control panels or billing engines, so we have written a setup where Directi talks to opensrs, and opensrs would then talk to hsphere/modernbill/etc...

You definately want to look at HSPComplete + Plesk and also PEM. All of which are from SW-Soft.
It should be noted the different costs between the above listed in my post and using H-sphere which is per account in bulk. H-sphere doesn't directly support apache 2.2 either. Another thing to look at is support records which SW-Soft is pretty well known for being good at for larger partners although there was a recent problem with Plesk and advertising would noting - not sure what has happened really with regards to that etc.

we have been looking at PEM for UK2.net - been looking for quite a while, but their pricing methodology simply didn't match our business model and after quite a long negotiation we gave up.

HSPcomplete could be an option though, and we have been thinking about that for this smaller project.

I used H-Sphere for 5 years and was happy with it.

The ability to customize H-Sphere is frustrating and it isn't setup to handle domain name transfers or management very easily.

PEM pricing is certainly not for 1000 clients. HSPComplete can be an option, depends what you want to do. We have both HSPComplete and HSphere clusters and for your needs, HSPhere may be a better solution.

I've been using H-Sphere for a good while now and am pretty happy with it. There are a few things that bug me, but H-Sphere v3 looks like it has taken major strides to improve these things. Overall I found H-Sphere to be the most complete solution for a billing and hosting panel.


Alex