Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : ModernBill Review

[hycloud]

I've been hearing so many great things about ModernBill from this site so I gave it a try about 3 months ago. Ever since then I have nothing but troubles.

Four Main complaints
1. Supports sucks. A few people on the modernsupport forum were helpful though.
2. Buggy as hell. These are not just minors bugs. Lots of major bugs that prevents anyone from running a hosting business.
3. License Key and Licensing.
4. Confusing and bloated interface


Why am I posted my review now? Well, I just got an error after just paying my month fee 3 days ago:

[Error 2] Your license has expired. Please contact customer support if you wish to upgrade or renew today.

Wonderful, now I can't place orders and create new accounts.

Lets start with the licensing issue. There licensing is a pain in the ***. So modernbill is licensed to a Full Qualifying Domain Name, and not to a domain name. So guess what happens when I finally got a secure certificate registered to http://secure.mydomain.com. Need to wait days for a new key to be generated.

I had problems with all 3 items I use. Cpanel, enom, and paypal.

1. Enom - hangs during domain lookup even though it's only looking up .com and nothing else. Was fixed with the latest update.
2. paypal - getting double payments so I end up owing all my customers.
3. cpanel - won't process API queue. Got it fixed with help from people on this forum and modernsupport forum.

I also had a problem with recur billing. When the new invoices are generated, the one-time setup fee is added to the invoice when it was not suppose to.

Maybe I just had a string of bad luck. Who knows.

[hycloud]

So, I'm trying to reload new key from my account. The key is suppose to expire on 12/25/03 (Whoopie! Christmas).

Anyway, finally got my key working again. Why me key suddenly stop working, I don't know.

[snickn]

For a "off the shelf" software product...ModernBill is the best billing solution out there...we've had some minor issues with it, nothing major at all, they could definately make stuff "easier"

[WebHedz]

ModernBill does have bugs but there's not a lot of software around that hasn't!

I must agree their trouble ticket 2 days turnaround is NOT acceptable. (should be 24hr at most)

However it does everything we ask of it, no problems with enom, payapl or cpanel. My only gripe is the forums module for VB don't work very well.

[bizness]

we use modernbill and have used it since 3 came out. After trying several other solutions, we feel that it is still the best despite some small bugs.

[hycloud]

I'm not saying modernbill is a bad application. It's quite nice with lots of potential. However, I think it's grown to a size that two people cannot handle. Thus the support issue and major bugs issue creep in. Since this is a hosting billing application, problems with double payment, recur billing, cpanel, and enom registration are not small bugs. If they were, what would be the big bugs? I consider small bugs to be little cliches in the user interface or bugs that don't screw up your ability to run a hosting billing.

[uplinks]

hmm ModernBill seem to be fine to me..? only the OnlineNIC module not working well with it yet

[hycloud]

Not that I really care, but why is this "ModernBill Review" thread moved from the "Hosting Software and Control Panels" forum to a lesser traffic "E-Commerce" forum when the "PerlBill Review" remains in the "Hosting Software and Control Panels" forum? So Modernbill is not a hosting software?

[Paul-UKWSD]

I used to recommend Modernbill but will not do anymore, support is very slow. When you are running a business and major problems occur such as the recent one with batch payments you can't afford for support to sit on it for a month.

It seems they have spread the few staff too far and support as a result suffers.

[LP-Trel]

I used to recommend Modernbill but will not do anymore, support is very slow. When you are running a business and major problems occur such as the recent one with batch payments you can't afford for support to sit on it for a month.

It seems they have spread the few staff too far and support as a result suffers.

Sounds alot like cPanel too...

[arelex]

I highly recommend MB. I used MB version 2.* and switched to Perlbill. Now, I'm back to MB version 4.1 and I can't be more happy.

Perlbill Nightmare:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...28#post1686828

[lostpacket]

I have mixed feelings about MB as we are just trying to go back to it for billing our T1 and DSL customers.

We are trying to use a DEMO key right now and its totally notworking. It took use about 3 days to get installed and several conversations with their sales dept.

We use Authorize.net for the payment gateway and they say they don't see us trying to process any transactions.

As of right now, Im really fed up with the all the hassel that its taken us to get MB installed and it still doesnt work. When we told MG that CC Processing wasnt working their answer was buy the full verision.

If the DEMO doesn't work we are not going to Drop $179 for the Full verisoin. I want to see the DEMO work first.

Just my 2cents, and if anyone knows off the top of their head how to get the Authorize.net to start working that would be really helpfull.

[WebHedz]

Why not try a leased version, at least that way you will only be out $24.99 if you don't like it.

ModernBill ticket support system is pretty slow, however the support forums are great and most issues can be resolved there.

[hycloud]

Originally posted by lostpacket
I have mixed feelings about MB as we are just trying to go back to it for billing our T1 and DSL customers.

We are trying to use a DEMO key right now and its totally notworking. It took use about 3 days to get installed and several conversations with their sales dept.

We use Authorize.net for the payment gateway and they say they don't see us trying to process any transactions.

As of right now, Im really fed up with the all the hassel that its taken us to get MB installed and it still doesnt work. When we told MG that CC Processing wasnt working their answer was buy the full verision.

If the DEMO doesn't work we are not going to Drop $179 for the Full verisoin. I want to see the DEMO work first.

Just my 2cents, and if anyone knows off the top of their head how to get the Authorize.net to start working that would be really helpfull.

That's interesting since they resell authorize.net payment processing. I would assume that they have very good support for authorize.net. I guess you can get there lease license for 50 users for $14.95/mo. If it doesn't work, I guess you can always request a refund.

[Soul Hosts]

Guess I'll put out my feelings as well...

Modernbill is NOT for newbies. I'll say it right now. I'll point out some disadvantages:

1.) The initial setup is HELL
2.) The settings are scattered EVEYRWHERE
3.) The "slick" interface takes way too long to load
4.) You can NEVER get it working right, you think you might have it, but then something comes up!
5.) Invoices and payment systems are a pain in the ***...
6.) It isn't very flexible clientside wise.

I haven't had a whole lot of problems with support... Mainly because I've only submitted one ticket ever.. That was to change my license key. Though I try to stay away from support because most places say they offer good support and if they do its usually crap anyway. So I just use the forums and get help from the fellow users.

There are key things Modernbill needs to improve on:

1.) The settings... (God... They need to be more easible configured.)
2.) The wording (If your expecting any ol' person to use this, then try to simple things out for a change. Some of the things they say in there I have no clue what they hell they are.)
3.) The interface is wayyyy too "cool".. Slim it down and make it FASTER to use, not more ellegant, sometimes I only have a few minutes to do things, I don't have time to wait for every image to load!
4.) Make the client side more customizable (The order form)
5.) Try to simplify more settings within the control panel, don't try to dispurse all the settings so much... Makes it hell to change stuff...

Well... Enough of my rants... Though in my honest opinion they have a ways to go till this thing is perfect.