I purchased an Ubersmith (http://www.ubersmith.com) license on Friday, and, what can I say...I'm in love! While it may be difficult to understand and configure at first, it's 100 times more powerful than ModernBill, ClientExec, WHMCS, etc ever THOUGHT of being -- and I've used all those programs so I can say from experience.

For the Mods (or anyone else) to verify my review...I'm using Ubersmith actively on my website now :)

The Pros - What I Like
- True "all in one" system.
Integrates my billing and support all into 1 system. It even has email piping for sales and other non-client tickets.

- Easy Page Integration
To make things easier on my customers and staff, I have forms made for reboot requests, OS reloads, cancellations, etc. With Ubersmith, I simply setup a link on the client side that puts the content right into a frame within Ubersmith. I even have it setup (through my own PHP coding) to not allow access to the form unless through Ubersmith.

- Advanced Order Management
When an order is received, it is placed into the order manager. The order manager runs a few things automatically, and then provides steps on my side. I simply hit "Process" and it moves it to the next step. This is great for me because then I know which "step" the order is on, and it even shows the Client the status of their order.

- Simple Support System
The support system inside Ubersmith does everything I need it to. It's neither underfeatured nor overfeatured. It's not bloated, it runs fast, and it does its job. What more could I ask for?

The Cons - What I Don't Like
- Requires PHP 4 (Won't run on PHP 5)
With PHP4 reaching it's EOL, I sincerely hope that they will take a more serious stance at getting it PHP5 compatible.

- No email/ticket support on the Lite License
This is my biggest complaint. If I'm paying $25/month for a software product, I hope to get support with it. Every other product out there gives free support with their product. Hopefully Ubersmith gets up with the game in this regard.

IMO a SupportTrio/Kayako/Cerberus helpdesk does the "support" work better than using the built-in helpdesk. And its applicable to any billing software in the market I think.

I was thinking about trying Ubersmith out but it seems like WHMCS is the popular thing these days.

I was thinking about trying Ubersmith out but it seems like WHMCS is the popular thing these days.

Trust me...WHMCS does not compare :)

you saying that it's WHMCS is better or worse ?

you saying that it's WHMCS is better or worse ?

WHMCS isn't half as powerful as Ubersmith IMO

Trust me...WHMCS does not compare :)
How exactly? All the things you listed above that you like about Ubersmith, WHMCS does. And WHMCS is $9 cheaper per month and comes with full support included. Looking at your site, you were using CE before so I guess you haven't fully tried WHMCS.

We are using WHMCS and while it sure does lack functionality it's more then sufficient for mantaining our web hosting business on both the ticketing and billing side. We do not do dedicated servers so I can't comment there.

The Cons - What I Don't Like
- Requires PHP 4 (Won't run on PHP 5)
With PHP4 reaching it's EOL, I sincerely hope that they will take a more serious stance at getting it PHP5 compatible.


Hope they start working on a php5 version . Really quite useless if they continue to stick with php4. Most of the servers should have php5 as default by end of 2008.

Can Ubersmith do anything that WHMCS cannt? (for shared and reseller hosting)

For the Mods (or anyone else) to verify my review...I'm using Ubersmith actively on my website now :)


From looking at the site on your sig, your support center still uses Kayako and the billing center, shared order system, and reseller order system still use ClientExec. The only place I see Ubersmith is the dedicated server order system. Are you having difficulties integrating Ubersmith for every aspect of your company? Or are you only using it for dedicated server orders by choice?

From looking at the site on your sig, your support center still uses Kayako and the billing center, shared order system, and reseller order system still use ClientExec. The only place I see Ubersmith is the dedicated server order system. Are you having difficulties integrating Ubersmith for every aspect of your company? Or are you only using it for dedicated server orders by choice?

I will be using it for everything, just haven't changed the links over yet ;)

Ubersmith is indeed an awesome product.

I spoke with Boo and his staff at HostingCon, and I told them right there that their order queue feature is by far the best feature I've seen in billing software. It makes processing a new order a breeze.

Like you said, Nick, it does take a few days of playing to get your head around the interface and some of the features (for a first time user, the order queue system can be quite daunting), but once you understand it all, it is far better than any other billing software out there.

I will be using it for everything, just haven't changed the links over yet ;)

Hiya,

I know this thread is 1.5 months old, I was just wondering if you'd mind sharing your reasons for going with WHMCS. You seemed so happy with Ubersmith last month.

Hiya,

I know this thread is 1.5 months old, I was just wondering if you'd mind sharing your reasons for going with WHMCS. You seemed so happy with Ubersmith last month.

mee too what happened?

Probably he realized they don't seem to care much about Pro and Lite customers anymore. It's been almost a year since the last Ubersmith Lite/Pro stable release came out, and there's still no new versions in sight.


Alex

It looks like they changed to use WHMCS.

I was just wondering if you'd mind sharing your reasons for going with WHMCS
It automates 99% of my billing setup...is easy to use.

Oh, and I can submit a support ticket and get a timely response.

Probably he realized they don't seem to care much about Pro and Lite customers anymore. It's been almost a year since the last Ubersmith Lite/Pro stable release came out, and there's still no new versions in sight.

I left Ubersmith for quite a few reasons:
- When I submitted a ticket, I was told to pay $70/month more or post on the forums
- The fact that the software is rapidly becoming Vaporware
- The fact that they forced me to use PHP4 to use their software.

Thats too bad to hear Nick, I like ubersmith.

I left Ubersmith for quite a few reasons:
- When I submitted a ticket, I was told to pay $70/month more or post on the forums
- The fact that the software is rapidly becoming Vaporware
- The fact that they forced me to use PHP4 to use their software.

Thanks for the response. The feeling in the Ubersmith's support forum was...odd. It doesn't feel like it's under active development, like a few other billing systems (even some open source options I've looked at). Sad because a year ago it seemed very promising.

Users don't seem to be happy, and a good portion only use it because it came bundled free with their merchant account (as it does with mine, but I've opted not to use it until I see a reason to feel differently).

I went to your site to see what it looks like on a production server rather than judge it just from screenshots. A year (maybe a little more) ago I downloaded the trial but couldn't install it b/c it required PHP installed as CLI. When I "spoke" with their tech support the response was very timely, and yet the reply I got back was along the lines of "Oh, yeah, too bad / so sad." It gave me the feeling they really weren't that interested in my business. Not a good way to start.

For the life of me I can't see why they've priced it as they have. I was fairly shocked that their Lite product goes for $24.95 a month and yet comes with no real support beyond the forums. I just assumed there must be something to Ubersmith I'd missed...so when I saw your post I went to look.

Tease! lol :) Thanks again for the reply.

Probably he realized they don't seem to care much about Pro and Lite customers anymore. It's been almost a year since the last Ubersmith Lite/Pro stable release came out, and there's still no new versions in sight.


Alex

Yeah, I saw a lot of unhappy users saying just that in their forums.

whmcs it's too language powered, ubersmith it's only in english :)

Note this post: http://forums.ubersmith.com/showthread.php?t=772

I don't know for sure, but I get the feeling that ubersmith has a few "big" customers that keep it afloat.

Otherwise, I have no idea how they can compete against the other lower-cost billing applications that offer identical functionality.

If Ubersmith have some high-paying customers, then they would really need to think twice before lowering their costs, since they'd be forced to lower costs for current customers, too... and then they'd need to quickly replace that lost revenue with new customers.. which is not easy in this market.

Personally, I don't think their business model is bad. Perhaps they would rather support a few dozen customer paying several hundred $$ each, then several hundred customers paying a few dozen $$ each. :)

With PHP4 reaching it's EOL, I sincerely hope that they will take a more serious stance at getting it PHP5 compatible.

Their stance:
Ubersmith will never be php5 compatable. Instead, we're going to work on making it php6 compatable.

Unfortunately, this was a dealbreaker for me. Well, unfortunately for them, fortunately for Matt @ WHMCS.

I hate to say it, but Ubersmith is the past. They took a VERY improper stance on php5 and their customers (ignoring lite/pro users for DC edition), they promised things that they couldn't deliver, they took a very improper stance on paypal (only NOW integrating it, huh??), it's just a mess, a very big mess.

Personally, I don't want to have to create individual order pages for each product, I'd be full of order pages. That's what an order system is supposed to do, and WHMCS does this very well.

I've tried ubersmith, the support is great, but the PROMISES are just unbelievable. OVER a year ago, Boo promised "we'll get paypal out in the next release". Has it happened yet? From what I'm seeing, it WILL on Oct. 15th, but come on now.

Ubersmith is great for datacenters, and big clients such as fastservers, etc, but if you're looking for something more realistic and down to earth (even for a lot less price), go with WHMCS, where support is always reasonable, and the price much, much more so.

Please note this recent post: http://forums.ubersmith.com/showthread.php?t=773

Too little too late.
For example, they promised "We will have paypal ready in next release". Well, that turned out to be a YEAR + later!

I don't know for sure, but I get the feeling that ubersmith has a few "big" customers that keep it afloat.

Otherwise, I have no idea how they can compete against the other lower-cost billing applications that offer identical functionality.

If Ubersmith have some high-paying customers, then they would really need to think twice before lowering their costs, since they'd be forced to lower costs for current customers, too... and then they'd need to quickly replace that lost revenue with new customers.. which is not easy in this market.

Personally, I don't think their business model is bad. Perhaps they would rather support a few dozen customer paying several hundred $$ each, then several hundred customers paying a few dozen $$ each. :)

Ubersmith has a huge base of customers still on their 'hosted' billing solution (prior to them making a downloadable version available) - lots of companies (including people like Cerberus Helpdesk, for one) still use their hosted solution and pay them $$$ every month - anything from $99 up into many hundreds.

Ubersmith DE also costs (basically) $1 per server with a $200-400 base monthly fee, and I know of at least 10 providers using it. It's not surprising to me they've focused on making those big money generating customers happy over the past year.

As to how they compete, how many other billing systems targetting your shared/reseller host offer phone support as part of a monthly fee? If I have a problem, I can call Ubersmith up and get help there and then - no booking a time with support/developers, no $75-150 fee etc...

Despite the lack of updates / PHP5 support, for me, it's stable - the only bug I have is with the second invoice that's generated for every customer (generates fine, just has some strage data in it). Apart from that, I've not had or got any issues - it's never not billed a customer, never over-billed or under-billed, hasn't ever gone down due to licensing problems etc... They've also done minor modifications for me and some quick changes within a couple of days when it was causing issues for me - pretty hard to get help like that elsewhere.

Stability is sometimes worth paying for :)

Stability is sometimes worth paying for

And, every other solution out there isn't stable? C'mon now. As much as I hate some of the other solutions out there (sans the one I use currently), many of them are "stable". Ubersmith is NOT the only "stable" solution out there, and believe me, I'd HARDLY call Ubersmith "stable". I gave it a pretty serious test a year or so ago, and stable wasn't what I'd call it.


It's not surprising to me they've focused on making those big money generating customers happy over the past year.

This is how Ubersmith got it's start. They haven't been keeping them happy "over the past year", they've been keeping them happy since the beginning. Take FastServers for example, they've been using Ubersmith for years (how I first found out about it actually), before the initial "download" versions came about. Others? Same thing. Of course they're going to keep these people happy, this is where all the money's at.

Personally, I think Ubersmith just needs to get back on track. Focus on ONE edition, and keep it there. If it's DC edition, great, pull the rest. If it's small(er), more robust, great, then pull DC. Obviously there's a complete difference between the three, and the best money for them is going to (always) be in DC edition. That's where they got their start with everything.

Looking @ it, fastservers may have already switched from ubersmith, so they may already be losing some of these high profile DC clients.

Firstly, I think it’s also only fair to clarify that Ubersmith has supported Paypal for many years, simply not Paypal Subscriptions. To me, that’s not a big deal. If it’s an issue to you, then that’s absolutely fine.

And, every other solution out there isn't stable? C'mon now. As much as I hate some of the other solutions out there (sans the one I use currently), many of them are "stable". Ubersmith is NOT the only "stable" solution out there, and believe me, I'd HARDLY call Ubersmith "stable". I gave it a pretty serious test a year or so ago, and stable wasn't what I'd call it.

My comment on stability was in reply to MrZippy’s comment “Otherwise, I have no idea how they can compete against the other lower-cost billing applications that offer identical functionality.”. You can pay Ubersmith $90/mo for a 250 client license or Modernbill $50/mo for 2500 client license. Pretty huge gap there, but, there’s also a huge gap in terms of stability of Modernbill vs Ubersmith and also the support people get. To me, that extra $$ every month is well worth it to get something I know is stable and well supported.

You are of course perfectly entitled to your opinion on what ‘stable’ is and which systems fall into that category. To me, it means everything that affects me day to day works great – the software and the company is ‘stable’. Ubersmith hits all my needs smack on – it’s well supported, the software works without issues, the features I need are all present and working, and I don’t have to upgrade every week or month to get fixes to bugs or security issues. Ubersmith has proven its self over the past year in that respect to me. I hold owned licenses to every major billing system (excluding WHMCS, which I’ve only trialled) and used them all at various points – none of them come close to what Ubersmith offers me. The only other billing system I’d remotely consider is Clientexec (as it’s backed by great support), but, their order their order process for servers (and creating the server order forms) is less than ideal in my opinion.

Ubersmith does have its problems – namely, no PHP5 support and (for some people) the lack of updates. Neither of these things affect me on a daily, or even monthly basis. While I won’t like it, it’s not that hard to leave a PHP4 server to run Ubersmith. And the lack of updates just saves me hassle, I’d much rather 2-4 updates a year than 2-4 updates a quarter. For some people, I’m sure those things are deal breakers. But they don’t affect me billing my customers, so they are non-issues for me.

Equally, you have your chosen solution of WHMCS for $10-20 per month (well featured, significantly less cost than Ubersmith), but, they had an absolutely horrible time last year with the way they implemented their licensing - http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=551692 & http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=577506.


Unfortunately, this is a dealbreaker for a lot of people. Because of this, individuals can't access their billing systems, have NO access to support, whatsoever, and lose money.

The product (whmcs) is great, but whomever Matt's chosen to host with has shut off his dns servers, meaning the rest of the world has no clue where to find WHMCS.

Of course, add to that fact that Matt is in the UK, and god only knows WHAT timie it is there, and we may have quite a wait on our hands.


Seems you weren't too happy with it back then during that ;) If history like that is what you class as a stable product, then fine. But it’s not what I’d class as a stable product. And certainly I would never keep using a product with history like that. But maybe that's the difference between us :)

With Ubersmith, I've never had any significant licensing problems (2006, a couple of issues lasting all of 30 seconds), and they have a phone number and ticket system where emergency tickets are actually treated like emergencies. Uptime is critical to Ubersmith due to all the hosted people they look after as well, and that makes it all that bit easier for me to sleep at night – their site has had a few bumps in the past 2 or so years (30-40 minutes downtime for their site, not hosted instances etc…), and, I can’t find any threads complaining of significant outages for hosted or other users – which is pretty good going I think considering how long they’ve been around.

At the end of the day, Ubersmith has proven its self time and time again over the years. For the past year, it’s done exactly what I need it to do without any issues like I'd had in the past. All of the systems I’d used prior to that (and I’ve used many over the past few years) pale in comparison. And to me, that makes it stable. Not perfect, but, stable.

We've got a hosted Ubersmith Pro setup for our billing and whilst we could host it inhouse spending that extra $80/mo for them to host it means we don't have to worry about user information as that is what we pay them for. That helps me sleep at night.

Beyond that our payment provider (protx) decided to change their IP's etc about a month ago and we got a fix from Ubersmith < 12 hours and we had zero disruption in cash flow. Its not perfect and has a few issues (with UK cards but thats a small minority of customers, and yes the ability to setup Paypal subs within the system would be a major plus for us)

The way I look at it we pay our $xxx per month and Ubersmith is always there, always works and always snappy. For something that is vital to the business I think that is a small price to pay

Rus

WHMCS isn't half as powerful as Ubersmith IMO

Ubersmith is the best.. Dot the line..

Just to give a little update here - I recently noticed that Ubersmith had released a new version (finally), so I decided to give it another whirl. Simply put - I'm quite impressed.

They fixed all the bugs that stopped from using it before.
They implemented new features that make it even better.
And best of all, they plan to have it PHP5 ready shortly after the New Year.

Needless to say - it's worth the $90/month I'm paying for it and I regret leaving :D

And best of all, they plan to have it PHP5 ready shortly after the New Year.

Wow, and it only took them, what, almost 4 years? Talk about some dedicated programmers there ;)

Wow, and it only took them, what, almost 4 years? Talk about some dedicated programmers there ;)

I'm a little disappointed with that too, but, the software is well worth the wait.

I had Ubersmith for quite awhile, with my previous business, leaving ModernBill for Boo and team.

I had the hosted version and paid them several hundred dollars a month, money I do not regret paying. ModernBill was absolutely horrid... we had a bug with our account register that would just randomly pick people and bill them odd ball amounts ($2 here, $3.87 there, etc.).

Boo and team handled our billing data migration from MB to Ubersmith from start to finish and were great the entire time we used them.

The only complaints I had, thinking back, were the delay in updates. But they weren't really big complaints for me because when I needed features quickly I'd just call them up and they would add it to my instance.

I'd love to use Ubersmith with my new business, however, no php5 is a deal breaker for me as well. I think once they get that covered, I'll consider them again. But I'm going to need to know if they are going to make another poor decision like that again... are they going to code to anticipate or code to catch up?

Currently, we're running Ubersmith for our business that handles all services. We were originally going to use Ubersmith just for our dedicated/colo clients and then after speaking with Boo and finding out the support they offer we decided to switch completely over for all of our services.

Ubersmith is by far the best billing system that's on the market. We have used ModernBill, AutoPilot, ClientExec, WHMCS, and all of them on the market and Ubersmith is by far the best.