Hosting and Billing Systems

Today, many people are branching out into selling web hosting services. This is made particularly easy with reseller hosting being widely available allowing suppliers to purchase large scale hosting and sell small chunks on to consumers. With this easy access to web hosting, it is easy to make a profit from this sort of business providing you get a good original host.

Obviously this type of business can be expanded as more customers join and this means businesses often want billing sytems etc. which deal with all the processes themselves, minimising human input. There are several of these on the market all having differing features and as such, differing price. In this article, I will try and outline some of the main features of the systems in general and outline a few points about some of the programs available.

In general all of these programs let you specify types of hosting accounts including specifications (bandwidth etc.) and many link in to payment systems such as Paypal, Google Checkout or more traditional methods such as cheque and bank transfer. Also, these systems often allow you to include the purchase of domain names with a sale providing you have a reseller account with a domain register e.g. ENOM. Obviously when dealing with payments which are likely to recur, you would expect the system to be able to handle that and most programs today do.

The cheapest of all the these programs is phpCoin with a price tag of £0.00 (currently!). The system is freeWebWare allowing anyone to install it on their server without paying a penny and as such, it makes it a very attractive option for small scale hosting. The fact it is also installable through Fantastico makes it also very handy.
Although a very good system, I found it had one major disadvantage that ruled it out for me personally and that was it could not set accounts up on the server automatically. As such, it needed a manual intervention which adds time and inconvenience. Further more, the program is undergoing development of its next release and for this, there will be a price increase depending on the number of clients and also to remove the phpCoin copyright from the bottom of every page.

Another program which is available to install through Fantastico is Accountlab Plus. This program is from the same people who make Fantastico and as such, gives a similar excellent performance. In this program everything is automated (although currently there is some intervention needed for some payment method) so once payment is received and marked in the system, the account gets set up on the server automatically and the “Welcome” and “Activation” emails go out to the clients. This makes the process very simple with minimum time required to keep the system up and running. There are a vast number of payment methods in built to the system making it only a few clicks to tie in to Paypal etc. or a domain reseller such as ENOM. Also, the themes can be customised to match a business image and unlike some systems, it provides long term technical support and updates for only $15 a year (after an initial $45 for the first year).

Although there are several clients available, not all of the work on Windows based hosting. Even when you find one program that does work with your server operating system, it might not integrate with the control panel you are using and as such, it is always important to check the technical specifications required before purchasing a license when some of these can be a $170 on of payment with ongoing technical support being extra. Three Windows based systems are Whois.Cart, AWBS and Modernbill however some of these are not compatible with certain control panels.

Each program has its advantages and disadvantages and as such, it is important that you work out what you need your system to do before parting with your cash! For small scale operations, phpCoin may suffice as you will have relatively few customers to process however if you are getting 60 new customers every day, trying to create all these accounts on a server would not be sensible and as such, a more automated process would be required. The selling of domain names is also a useful area to make a profit however for things like this, often online payment is required and as such you would need the system to integrate with a payment method you felt comfortable with.

So to briefly sum up, there are many systems out there, each with individual quirks and interfaces. Have a play with demo versions on the manufacturers websites to see if they work for you and investigate the features fully. Also remember that your business may grow so consider some potential for adding new servers or handling further requests. This will help save you time and money in the future but most importantly help take a lot of the admin side out of the job of web hosting.

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