Hello,
First off i would like to say I've read through these forms for a while and finally decided to join up. Secondly, i am not quite sure which thread this goes into so please don't slam me if this is the wrong form. Thirdly, i am not trying to promote my project (heck it isn't even finished yet)

I recently decided that i wanted to write my own billing system. I started out making a goal of it being open source, but the more time i have put into it, the more i am feeling that i may be better off selling it. My goal isn't to try to compete with hosting scripts that are suited to large companies, but to small ones. If i would end up selling it, i am looking at something like $5usd a month.

With that preface, do you WHTer's feel it is a good idea/worth my time to sell a product like this, or do you feel it would be better released as open source?

I know that a big push is open source is "free", which is nice because then you don't have to pay for it :P (been there thought that). The problem is my time isn't free, but i remember when i was looking at other systems they may *only* cost 10-15usd a month, but when you are trying your hand at something as a hobby (or a first attempt) you do not always want to put forth more than possibly your entire VPS costs for you a month (or possibly more than your total income for a while if you resell vps or dedi's).




Attached are some screen shots of the client end of things as they stand now (*note* it is no where near completed, so please don't harass me about it)

There are so many systems out there already, so if its "good", make it free and hope people help contribute to make it better. If it's not free, it better be "great" to compete with the others.

If people want to use it in production, they will want something they can pay for so they can call you at 3AM for support -- so as far as price, you'd need to figure out how much its worth to you for that, and how much it will cost you to hire staff to support the product so you can get some rest.

By the way, what language are you writing it in? (personal curiosity) - are you using any programming frameworks to help?

I'm writing it in english at the time being, but also want to have spanish available. Only framework i am using at this time is PHP (and mysql for the database).

My other real problem with making it open source is that the fact of the matter is so many people would use it and i would receive very little help from the community with coding things that i may not know about. Where as if you would sell it, you could have some help (via hired personnel)

I'm sorry, I meant which programming language; but you answered that as being PHP.

You're not using any application framework (such as CakePHP or anything)? That would definitely help you with language translations in the future, and also allowing for other database systems (Oracle/PostgreSQL/etc.) without hardly any coding at all.

No i'm not using any application frameworks at this time, as i haven't really spent much time with any.

This originally started out as a way that i could have a support ticket form that would automatically email a reboot request with just the ip of a server to the data center i run some servers out of, and has grown from that.

Open source it, charge for support & some 'premium' functionality. Freemium is the way to go :)

Hello,

Just an opinion, but as Krishopper said, there are already a lot of Billing systems available, which are reasonably priced and can do for big as well as small companies.

My suggestion would be to seek out which niche you want to target and write addons for existing platforms. WHMCS for example is written in PHP entirely, and I believe others are too (I just have experience with WHMCS, which is quite easy to extend upon)

In my opinion, the biggest drawback of open source is that people make the same things over and over. Instead I think it would be better to collaborate to make one very good package.

You could off course charge for your addons if you wish to.

With kind regards

Here is a business model which may work for you. If you can dedicate your self entirely to making a staggering billing product which works and free and has all the necessary features, you can still give it for free but generates some income from it.

I find this from LiveZilla, do you know that software? It's cool, rather than paying $199/seat to LivePerson, you can get the same features if not better for free.

The catch is that they put relevant ads on the LiveZilla interface.

So on your billing system, pull up relevant ads which are related to the hosting industry.

Imagine, when you have 500 active small web hosting businesses running your billing system, larger big time "server/collocation/vps" companies would want to advertise on your "free billing software".

I would suggest giving it for free, but do encrypt your files, don't provide it as an open source.

Just an idea.

@David: That is one way to go, but in my experience, any premium feature you'd have for an OS project, someone will make a free version.

@Host Ahead: While i definitely see where you are coming from, writing a new extension for an existing platform would be hard to do, since most extensions needed have already been written. Also, i do agree that people will write the same thing over and over again with OS software, there currently isn't a good OS webhosting management system afaik.

@jrianto: While advertising would be an idea for money making, i don't really think many hosting companies would like advertising on their management system. Personally it would make me feel a bit uneasy.

My thought has always been to keep my software unencrypted, i know that no matter what some people are going to null the scripts, and heck even the newest WHMCS has already been decrypted and nulled. So i figure if people are going to reverse engineer the software they will do it encrypted or not

Well,
I have decided that my billing software will be released as free software, however I now am debating what license to use, and have started to consider encrypting the software.