I wasn't trying to say one product was better than another. Saying one piece of software is better than another depends on what you are trying to do and what the you prefer. (Kind of like the OS debate on web servers Linux is of course best unless you are running a Windows box then windows is the best ;P I was trying to give him options. I do not think Fisherman is going to find one product to do everything he is asking for.
I think his best solutions for getting what he wants will be custom built, however he may not have the time or resources to hire a few developers for a few months to eternity
to build / maintain a custom portal for him. That being said another option would be to use some sort of framework like SiteCenter or ArticleLive and then start building onto it by adding scripts he needs like: live chat, questionnaires, etc.. I am sure there are other frameworks that could be used, some that come to mind are PHPnuke, Drupal, see link below for more.
Another option depending on what hes trying to do would be use Modernbill or something else that has integration for Plesk, cPanel, Directadmin, etc.. This would get most of the billing and account setup out of the way.
Below is the link referenced above. It has a fairly extensive list of open source CMS, e-commerce, forums, e-learning, chat(under misc), and wiki just to name a few. You would still have to integrate them all together in some form or fashion, but it could give you a head start.
http://www.opensourcecms.com/
Hope this helps.
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