http://www.modernbill.com/billing-software/order.php

50 Clients = $24.95/month
1000 Clients = $49.95/month
2500 Clients = $99.95/month

No more owned license options anymore - and prices are all almost doubled on leases now ;)

Wow that's pretty ridiculous.

Why would they do that? Seems like they would loose customers to the companies with the owned license options.

They likely need more money because all of their clients are leaving them!

are they only allow leased licenses ?

Just noticed myself.

I give them until the end of 2008 before they are owned by someone else.

A bit further and they'll hit Ubersmith pricing - then it'll really hit them that they can't compete!

I think there is an overall trend for web based application developers to head towards a lease/rent scheme, as opposed to owned. While it might not immediately appeal to customers, it does give the developer a constant flow of income and will probably yield to a better developed product.

Honestly, I would think that most medium-large sized hosts will not have a problem with paying higher monthly fees for a piece of well developed/supported software which is one of the core pieces of a hosting company's business. Smaller companies or starter companies, however, might feel the pinch, but there are plenty of other capable alternatives such as WHMCS and ClientExec.

Having just moved from ModernBill to WHMCS ourselves, I have to say that the migration has alleviated many of our growing pains and headaches we experienced with ModernBill. It's interesting to see where ModernBill will be heading, as far as development is concerned, after their fee restructuring.

I think there is an overall trend for web based application developers to head towards a lease/rent scheme, as opposed to owned. While it might not immediately appeal to customers, it does give the developer a constant flow of income and will probably yield to a better developed product.

Honestly, I would think that most medium-large sized hosts will not have a problem with paying higher monthly fees for a piece of well developed/supported software which is one of the core pieces of a hosting company's business. Smaller companies or starter companies, however, might feel the pinch, but there are plenty of other capable alternatives such as WHMCS and ClientExec.

Having just moved from ModernBill to WHMCS ourselves, I have to say that the migration has alleviated many of our growing pains and headaches we experienced with ModernBill. It's interesting to see where ModernBill will be heading, as far as development is concerned, after their fee restructuring.

Certainly agree with you there.

I myself pay a monthly fee for the billing software I use - and, the quality FAR exceeds what Modernbill provide in terms of lack of bugs and support (telephone and email).

While a good software developer with a good product could easily charge what Modernbill ask, I can't simply see them giving value to the $25/$50/$100 in the current state.

They likely need more money because all of their clients are leaving them!

I bet that's exactly the case. ModernBill used to be by far the most popular billing control panel for web hosts. Now it's coming in third or fourth in preference polls.

They need to get their act together, all I see is a sinking ship even though a lot of web hosting companies use them but since there are no updates available for mb v4, there is no need to renew your support/updates.

As you get larger you stop wasting money leasing products such as a billing software. Leases are to get you in the business not sustain it typically. MB is going down the tubes with each move they make, if you read the forums for the other software companies you see constant posts of people moving away from MB. Doesn't make sense to double your costs when ver 5 still almost 4 years after its initial announcement is not stable.

Having just moved from ModernBill to WHMCS ourselves...

We migrated also to WHMCS a while ago; just before our relationship with Modernbill became execrable. We have lost 13 Owned Licenses in this migration (and most were Unlimited Dev) but we couldn't have been more happier with the decision to move to WHMCS.

WHMCS is (maybe not) the best product ever but it manages the functions we need, bugless!
So far, only MB advertises this on his own website but everybody will agree: this is only a 1st April Fool Day Joke!
MB, in his good old early days, was intented to become the best billing system ever. But these days are revolved and now it turned into a pure customer's nightmare experience (and above this in a big waste of time and money).

I often wondered how Matt (WHMCS Dev) was able to handle alone and almost perfectly (ask here and there how good and fast is the support he provides and how quickly/often is WHMCS updated) what a whole team couldn't.
I guess it only shows MB devs/support team incompetence (which is not a guarantee of confidence for any future potential customer).

The funny fact is: Only MB prices increase on a regular basis.

Mouth-to-Ear is one of the best advertising model, so here we go:
If you dare about your business health (and your own too) then go for WHMCS and avoid MB at all cost. :D

Oh, it seems it's a wrong business strategy. The competition is stiff these days. Never raise a price or clients will run away.

Modernbill are probably loosing money as companies like WHMCS will easily take the competition, why would someone use modernbill when its 50 users at $25 when WHMCS is unlimited users for less than that!

WHMCS we moved to from modernbill, and its EXCELLENT, soon i seen there was a modernbill import tool to whmcs (which was also free) I transferred almost immediately. WHMCS is stable and feature rich.

And more than anything whmcs works, were modernbill was buggy

We also made the move from MB to WHMCS last year. Best move our company has EVER made - software wise. WHMCS just works and it's a zillion times easier to administer. Development is also constant and every new version provides something useful... It's easily been our best investment to date. When I think of the wasted money and time that we blew on MB - without ever getting it to function in any kind of useable way, and how it took us only 2 days to import all our info to WHMCS and start using it live to do(almost) everything we could ever have wanted to do... the difference was truly amazing... we went from stress to fresh in a matter of 48 hours thanks to WHMCS - and at a fraction of the cost... the King is dead... Long live the King.

shed49 Hosting - Norway
"Use your head... get a shed"

Did the same here and am also happy. I still visit MB forums from time to time and it has really changed. Before the developers / staff would post all the time, then they stopped (but you can still see thier old post). Now, it seems they gotten rid of thier tag (before thier alias) and removed all thier signatures.

I wonder who really works at MB now (they used to have a livecam where you can view the employess, that stopped also). I think it's pretty much over for them (they will be absorbed by another company / sold out soon enough). Especially when PHP 4 now hits it's end of life development and all the people still on MB4 (and people still on MB4 hopeing and waiting).

Did the same here and am also happy. I still visit MB forums from time to time and it has really changed. Before the developers / staff would post all the time, then they stopped (but you can still see thier old post). Now, it seems they gotten rid of thier tag (before thier alias) and removed all thier signatures.

I wonder who really works at MB now (they used to have a livecam where you can view the employess, that stopped also). I think it's pretty much over for them (they will be absorbed by another company / sold out soon enough). Especially when PHP 4 now hits it's end of life development and all the people still on MB4 (and people still on MB4 hopeing and waiting).

DNZoom (started/run by MB staff - http://www.dnjournal.com/articles/companies/dnzoom.htm) seems to have been sold off to bido.com - doesn't bode well for the future of MB, depending on how closely linked the two companies were. Having the same founders and offices though is normally a good indication ;)

Massively leaving a company, only accelerates their crisis.
As I posted in other thread you can get MB licenses from MBLicenses.com at cheaper prices.

Seems modern bill is struggling a bit, i previously used modernbill but got fe up with the price, support and quality of the system. Also a lot of clients found it too hard to use and understand. Thus i changed to a competitor (also they were offereing discounts if you moved from modernbill :P) i pay monthly lease but it';s not huge and for what i get i really don't mind.

I also managed to get direct 1-1 communication with the main dev which gives me a lot more support.

Harry

Well, it finally happened - http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=677505. MB bought by Parallels.

Dang! So that was the reason why MB stopped concentrating on it.

Also whats the status of Parallels? I never heard about them before so asking if they will be able to deliever what was promised by MB or its time to look for other options?

If Parallels = SWSoft then I guess it will be good! What do you say?

I don;t know if this is a good thing actually.
Parallels has been buying a lot of competitors lately, and when MB introduced their new pricing i suspected that Parallels was going to be the new owner.

The license scheme is the same as the new Plesk license scheme.
I think there's a lot of things that neet to be fixed in MB before they can charge what they are charging now.

We also moved over to WHMCS, and i could not be any happier :)