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HostBill's pricing history, current pricing, bad decissions and the path to disaster [updated]
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HostBill's pricing history, current pricing, bad decissions and the path to disaster [updated]

marcmmarcm Member
edited May 2013 in General

Update: I've been checking out the HostBill forums at http://forum.hostbillapp.com - and of course unless you are a customer, you can't access anything outside of the Pre-Sales Forum. But wait, it gets even better: even if you are a customer you can't access the other forums unless you have an up to date and paid for subscription. Now at $999/year to renew, that's kind of a steep price to pay just for software updates and to be able to access the forums. My diagnosis: HostBill has gone completely bonkers!

I have tried HostBill for a short period of time last year, however I didn't like the admin area and some of the bugs it came with at the time. Customizing a responsive theme for it would have been a long and labor intensive process as well. To their credit, HostBill gave me a full refund for my branded license after almost 2 weeks of use. I paid $199.95 at the time for it.

Personally, I think that HostBill is a decent piece of software with a promising feature. Were it not for the abrupt price increases, it would have been great competition for WHMCS. However HostBill is a dollar short and a day late to the price hike, because more and more billing solutions are coming out. They are not mature yet, heck, most of them have no hosting features, however regardless of their state it's a sign that more and more developers are taking an interest in billing and project management applications.

My opinion is that HostBill is doing these abrupt price increases because of their emotional response to poor sales. I am posting this because I hope that it may knock some sense into the folks (or person) behind HostiBill and that they stop the non-sense. It's good to have competition in this market, and these price increases don't help matters. It seems that they are also trying to create the illusion of value out of thin air. Sorry, it's not possible.

Their renewal pricing for support and updates is also ridiculous: $999/year and $75/ticket with a 18 hour guaranteed response time (lol). Seeing this I would dare to wager that HostBill is a one man operation that has some 3rd party contractors doing some of the coding. I mean you have to be just one person to make such bone headed decisions without asking for a second opinion.

I think that reasonable pricing for HostBill would be $199.95 for branded and $249.95 for unbranded so that they can grab some market share and compete effectively against WHMCS. More people would convert over and they would actually make more money. Maybe in their imaginary world they think that they compete against Ubersmith, but that's just a pipe dream.

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And of course there is a catch 22 in their TOS about the 30 Money Back guarantee, read carefully:
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Below I am illustrating HostBill's pricing history:

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And why not this on the next price hike?
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Comments

  • And the less and less I like about hostbill...

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    Not to mention the costs for support...

  • PatrickPatrick Member

    Don't forget

    12 months access to updates is included by default, which is optionally renewable at $999/year.

    So your basically paying $999/year for unbranded version, and +$500/yr (extra?!?!?!?) for branded. You'd be better of cancelling at end of year and buying branded for $499 again?

  • EvixoEvixo Member

    I remember they were $299 (same pricing as WHMCS) - that was not too long ago. I can't see how they justify the extra $700 they charge now... and I guess they don't.

    But hey, it's their software and they can ask whatever they want for it - even it if means the software will die because of this nonsense.

  • marcmmarcm Member

    @Patrick - thanks, I added that info to the OP :-)

  • t3stert3ster Member
    edited May 2013

    I was thinking about purchsing it at the $199/$299 spot, because it looked quite good and the price is nice. But now, for $499, I can get 2 WHMCS branded owned licenses.
    For $999 unbranded, even 3 WHMCS unbranded licenses.

    If they at least added some new super features, this might be okay, but it seems it is still filled with bugs and no super features.

  • marcmmarcm Member

    @t3ster said: I was thinking about purchsing it at the $199/$299 spot, because it looked quite good and the price is nice. But now, for $499, I can get almost 2 WHMCS owned licenses.

    @t3ster - You can in fact get two fully owned branded licenses for the price of one HostBill branded license: $499.95 = 2 x $249.95 - just look at the magic red ring in the picture below ;-)

    image

  • jhjh Member

    Just putting this out there - maybe people are still buying it?

  • JacobJacob Member

    I doubt people are buying it with all the price hikes, but I would buy it for $199, or within the $200 region.

  • support123support123 Member
    edited May 2013

    I think they changed it just some time ago since I checked them yesterday with 599 owned unbranded.They are trying to cash the free publicity they getting now

  • i would def buy if it was in the 1xx price range
    siily hostbill

  • upfreakupfreak Member

    hostbill is now premium than whmcs? they justify the price because they aren't hacked to glory yet?

  • @peppr said: hostbill is now premium than whmcs? they justify the price because they aren't hacked to glory yet?

    Hacking depends on the popularity,very soon you will see the first hack

  • rds100rds100 Member

    @peppr maybe seeing the multiple screwups WHMCS does during a new release gives them some confidense to say "we aren't THAT bad, we can price ourselves higher".

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    It looks like the bugs in HostBill are so bad the staff over on their forums are telling people not to upgrade.

  • upfreakupfreak Member

    @ftpit yea if people still bite them at this price..

    @rds100 I can see they have more modules than I remember. Probably they want to offer deep discounts to resellers & distributors, and the marketing guy figured out they need to hike the RRP to a ridiculous number prior to that...

  • Ka-ching baby.

  • upfreakupfreak Member

    Anyone aware how they are handling nulled scripts? whmcs allows anyone to verify, name & shame , report etc.,

  • @peppr as far as I'm aware, there are no Nulled scripts out there yet for Host Bill.

    Their price hikes are erratic and really, without reason.

  • upfreakupfreak Member

    @eastonch always had nulled versions. popular among freelancers actually..

  • wdqwdq Member
    edited May 2013

    They should also have a leased license. Maybe sell it for around $10/month. They'd still make money off of it, and they would also be opening doors for people who may be just starting off, or just want to try the software for a month without handing over a decent amount of money.

  • hosthatchhosthatch Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Honestly they have a much better product than WHMCS, in terms of features and functionality. The support, however is a different case. If they could get their act together and fix the bugs quickly and provide faster support, I'd have no problem paying them that price.

    Products like these are the core of your whole company - so I think it is fair if they are charging more to create a better product, but they should really stop the daily price increases.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    They have the better solusvm module. Hands down. The developer (should that be plural?) clearly had a better vision than WHMCS but my guess is it just never paid for itself enough to be a full time job.

  • DamianDamian Member

    I have no interest in a product that I can't test, either with a trial or with a demo. In addition, $75 per ticket and an 18 hour response time? You've got to be shitting me. We charge $0 per ticket with a 4 hour or 20 minute response time, depending on the time of day, and i'm sure we have way more customers than Hostbill.

  • qpsqps Member, Host Rep

    I have trouble believing that they're selling new licenses after their recent price/policy changes... It's really too bad, as I thought for a while that they would grow into a worthy competitor to WHMCS.

  • kbeeziekbeezie Member

    A little while back I was actually pointing someone to hostbill, as an alternative to WHMCS because he was having so much problems with it, except when I made that recommendation, the price was in the 199$ ballpark which was acceptable to him seeing as WHMCS wasn't that far off for an owned license.

    You get there and it's 500$ at the cheapest... instant loss of business. They'd be raking in all the people who were not happy with WHMCS if it weren't for the "price rape" as he calls it.

  • kbeeziekbeezie Member

    @Abdullah said: Honestly they have a much better product than WHMCS, in terms of features and functionality. The support, however is a different case. If they could get their act together and fix the bugs quickly and provide faster support, I'd have no problem paying them that price.

    Products like these are the core of your whole company - so I think it is fair if they are charging more to create a better product, but they should really stop the daily price increases.

    Except at a price range of 500 to 1,000 for an 'untested' (ie: there's no trial, or assurance of working for 'you'), if support isn't there then there's no way I'm going to bother putting that money down for it. In the self-hosted script biz you don't drop a grand on a product without some decent support to back it up.

    I mean hell for a grand I expect them to be attentive, log into my WHMCS (or whatever existing client portal I use), install HostBill, and migrate all my customers and products for me. IF they're not going to do that, or be attentive with support then I wouldn't pay more than 300 for an owned (unbranded) license.

    But that's just me, and I rarely have to bother support unless it's actually their mistake, for such a high price they're practically saying "oh, you didn't read the FAQ sure we'll help you with 20 questions", and then have said new customer sorely disappointed when they can't get that.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @peppr said: yea if people still bite them at this price..

    We have a saying, the one that asks an unrealistic price is never stupid, the one that pays what is asked, is.

  • marcmmarcm Member

    @Maounique said: We have a saying, the one that asks an unrealistic price is never stupid, the one that pays what is asked, is.

    Yep, so true ;-)

  • kbeeziekbeezie Member

    Just noticed, those "owned" licenses are PER YEAR... with WHMCS you pay once, and just pay like 50$ a year for support and updates, but with hostbill you're paying a grand again (or whatever the new price is) just for updates and support?

    ... pardon my french but... FUCK THAT.

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