New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Comments/improvements/etc.
I’m based in the UK (like WHMCS), and have no interest in third-world labour. I’m looking to create something innovative for the industry.
If you manage to pull it off, here's a preview of what someone will say about you:
"His code sucks"
@jarland I expect it. But I plan on creating great code/APIs that makes such claims meaningless. I’d be glad to count you as a tester.
By that logic what's to say your opinion on WHMCS isn't meaningless?
What is your current progress of your billing system? Most codes will eventually look mess and suck after years of progression and different coding styles.
@trewq WHMCS serves many uses. It isn’t by any means meaningless; but there’s plenty room for improvement. If any providers have ideas/requests, this is a great place for them.
Nothing wrong. Exactly the same as some people prefer Nokia or Samsung or iPhone, nothing is wrong with phone too, except Apple is trying to push everyone to new iPhones by reducing the CPU power and battery on old devices, see URL for more info: https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/29/apple-apologises-for-slowing-older-iphones-battery-performance
Is WHMCS perfect, no. Is it the best out there, yes.
If you are going to create a billing software, then do it, and say that you are going to improve X or Y, while lowering the cost.
Everyone will be more interested and youll not look like a prick that is likely to give up midway.
Just to chime back into this thread on a serious note, the attitude that you display pretty much tells us you're a kid in a bedroom trying to claim you're working on a product that's far superior than what's classed as an already-industry standard product, you aren't going to have a product, it won't be better, end of story.
kthnxbai.
OK; let’s say I’ll release billing software within 30 days which surpasses WHMCS which we will be free until at least 01/01/2019. What features do providers want?
Everything that WHMCS can do but cheaper and you better remake all the common plugins too if you want uptake.
I’m sorry you feel this way. I’m no ‘kid in a bedroom’ and I fully respect WHMCS; it’s industry standard for a reason. I’m looking for area to move from forward, from a providers perspective.
Is cost really king? Plugin wise, agreed.
When you have a product that's already and industry standard with all the features people require then the only thing left to consider is cost.
@adly
if you really want opinion of people... then should create mockups like this and simply ask for it...
With all due respect, your attitude is already dismissive off the bat; just don't be a dick; several people here have you asked why you think WHMCS sucks, with evidence, too many people are quick to say X and Y sucks without providing any sort of background as to why.
If you get any sort of product out the door that remotely has feature parity with WHMCS, I'll send you 1.337 Bitcoin (you've got until 1st January 2019).
@Bitmap sorry I seem dismissive, that’s not my intention. I will elaborate going forward. I will take you up on your promise though. Feature parity by 2019 seems fairly simplistic.
This is the most retarded answer I've ever heard for why WHMCS is better. "it's not, it's like choosing an iPhone over nokia." False. WHMCS physically has more features/functions. If you choose one of the other solutions over it, there are things you will not be able to do that you could with WHMCS. That cannot be said in reverse.
The other solutions may be fine for you, and that's okay, but they are not simply equal and merely matters of preference or style.
For now. What can’t WHMCS do that others can’t?
Actually override a customer's product price consistently instead of claim to and often then invoice them anyway (blesta annoyances).
Until very recently, blesta users couldn't even email their customers through the software in mass, making it impractical for large hosts. Recently fixed, but there are a lot of little things like that totally missing from others that WHMCS has had for years.
Forget that, you need to concentrate on hitting feature parity. This is what you aren't getting, you can't start to write software with features WHMCS doesn't have first, you need to get it to the same level WHMCS is at and then work on additional.
For example, XenForo just rewrote their forum software from the ground up, their release of v2 hits feature parity with v1 (albeit some design changes and a handful of additional features), point releases (2.x) will see additional features.
I've been a coder for close to 2 decades, and the last decade was entirely in PHP. I also have a large userbase of hosting companies due to FR which I run, and a webhosting design service where I also have a userbase of hosting companies, who trust my ability to develop a good user interface. I also have academic experience in information security that I'm not afraid to brag about...
... and I wouldn't dare to attempt matching just 10% of features of WHMCS within one year or making any money out of it.
Not because I didn't think about it. I have user trust, I have access to ~3000 hosting provider email addresses, and most importantly I have decades of experience. And I still can't do it.
I need a team of ~10 people.
2 core developers: who will develop the functionality for registration, invoicing, administration, package creation, addons...
2 integration developers: those are the guys responsible for creating 100+ modules for external services that WHMCS already offers.
2 user interface developers.
2 migration specialists: you can't make money if people don't ditch their existing panel and move to yours. They will have 1000+ different setups and you'll need to develop tools to automatically migrate them.
2 support specialists: do you expect your core developers who are knee-deep in EU tax regulation integrations to your invoicing system to also respond to support tickets that say "I deleted my /libs folder and now my servers no worky!"?
And why do you need at least 2 of everyone? Because you want to match WHMCS and they also keep developing their software. By the time your 1 developer works on a feature for 1 year, their developer will also work on that feature for 1 year. You can't catch a racing car if both your cars have the same horsepower and the rival car has started the race 5 minutes ago. You need double the horsepower if you want to catch them.
What do 10 people cost? WHMCS has dedicated developers, so you can't just hire part time people if you want to match it. 10 full time developers will cost you $500,000 a year if they are not very demanding. In fact $50,000/year per developer is low wage, if you don't want "indian developers" as you indicated.
I have coding experience, design experience, a large userbase, and I still need 9 more people and half a million dollars to start something rivaling WHMCS.
You are welcome to join me, if you know 8 other guys willing to work for free for a year or two, until we start earning half a million per year.
At the end of the day all these systems do exactly the same functions - managing hosting customers and accounts and nothing is retarded here! Tell me why everyone should have the same opinion? If something is missing like extra modules these modules can be developed!
And there goes my plan to revolutionize the market with a fiverr hire. 0.o
How did you see the 'code'? It's it all obfuscated with ioncube compiled bytecode protection?
Here you go: https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/2469650/#Comment_2469650
LOL, innovation in web hosting billing.
Gonna fail real hard like nukern.
we agree we got bashed by adly for them claiming they was better than us on our vps panel we had in development, and now there trying to claim there better than whmcs, no offense but we feel this is completely in violation of the don't be a dick rule and in reality adly deserves a permaban for violating that rule.