running a hosting business
As the title suggests: the system is more than just a billing system. For the billing part we don’t have any very usual needs, but for the account management system we do. We have already evaluated quite a few systems, and none of them come close to meeting our requirements.
First of all I will describe the billing system:
We basically need a quite ordinary billing system that processes payments and sends out invoices and such. It will need to process credit card payments through our Authorize.net gateway, paypal payments (subscriptions), and furthermore it will also need to be able to automatically process bank transfers and money orders, but I am still evaluating to see if that’s possible at all. My bank told me that it may not be possible yet, but by October it will be – so we will possibly need to have adjustments written later (meaning that it should be written in a way so that you can adjust things at a later time). Furthermore it will also need to be able to register domain names through Enom, and setup SSL certificates through GeoTrust. We have complete documentation available on how to do this, although I reckon this is quite complicated. I will go deeper into the specific way we want it to work later, but this should give you an idea of what we need. [edit: forgot to add: something that will also be quite important is a referral system and a reseller system – and furthermore also a fraud screening system using 3rd party applications]
The billing system will be the same for Low Cost UK Hosting and Dedicated Hosting, however the Account Management Systems will be quite different, so I’ll describe them separately.
Dedicated Hosting account management system:
Dedicated Hosting is (will be) a VPS provider only. What we need is basically a management system with a client end and an admin end. In the client end the customer will basically be able to do everything he possibly needs to:
- billing (viewing invoices, updating credit card details, changing billing method, etc..)
- support tickets (we would use a 3rd party application for that, but we would just integrate it into this system by simply reading from the 3rd party system’s database).
- Statistics for bandwidth, but also average load and things like that – this works quite different from the way it works with a dedicated server. The hardware node would need a script on it that would collect the data every minute or so and write it to a database, and then this management system would have to make nice graphics out of it (using mrtg for instance)
- Service monitoring: using several remote servers we will include a monitoring service to make sure that the client’s services are running properly. We would use 3rd party system for the monitoring purposes for the biggest part.
- Emergency procedure: here the client can define what should be done if any of his services fail. For instance he could define that we should immediately try to restart the service – but he could also define that we should contact him and if we don’t manage to reach him within 30 minutes we take action.
- Upgrade system: here the client can order upgrades and it would automatically generate an invoice for the client. Once that invoice is paid the system would upgrade his VPS automatically.
- Domain panel: here the client can order domains and maintain them.
- SSL panel: here the client can order and manage SSL certificates.
- DNS panel: here the client will be able to make use of our free DNS service so that he can very easily manage his dns on our dns servers.
- Reseller features so that the client can easily manage multiple VPS’s.
- Abuse reporting system
- Reboot functionality
- Password recovery
For Dedicated Hosting this would be to order procedure (very basic):
Our staff pre-configures several VPS’s with standard configuration and inserts the account details (ip address and VPS ID) into a database (basically a pre-built queue).
Client places an order
Client makes payment
System validates and processes the payment
System gathers account details for one VPS from the pre-built queue. If the client has selected a custom configuration (for instance client wants cPanel) then the system first makes that adjustment to the VPS (which is much more simple than it sounds) and once it’s ready it sends the account details to the client.
So in other words: unless if the client selects a custom configuration, he will receive the account details instantly, which is very interesting for the client because clients don’t like to wait. If the client selects a custom configuration it just takes a couple of minutes.
The Dedicated Hosting admin end is where we manage just about everything (apart from support since we do that in the real support system). These would be the included features:
- Billing management
- Statistics per VPS (and also the ability to create reports of several VPS’s at once)
- Monitoring per Linux VPS
- Account privileges: in here we will be able to make exceptions to the rules of what a VPS hosting owner may or may not do. For instance we would be able to select here that the VPS hosting owner may not upgrade his account (for whatever reason) or that he may not exceed his bandwidth limit (ie: if he does exceed his bandwidth limit the VPS’s would be suspended automatically until the next month starts or until the client upgrades his package).
- Bandwidth management: as previously stated basically we need to be able to define what happens if the client uses more bandwidth than he is allowed to. Also the system should send out a notice to the client once he reaches 80% (for instance) of his bandwidth limit.
- Management for the services that the client has (domains, ssl, dns) so that we control what they are doing.
- Abuse tracking system: if we receive an abuse report from spamcop (for instance) the system automatically parses the report and analyzes what VPS is causing the problem. Then once it knows what VPS is causing the problem it will automatically route the complaint to the client.
- Maintaining and inserting new VPS’s that we have setup. Possibly we are also going to need to actually setup new VPS’s from this system but I’m not sure about that yet. (this is actually quite simple but I’m not sure whether we will need this).
- Recycling canceled accounts: the system would have to recycle accounts that have been cancelled so that they can be used for new clients again. (this is very simple)
- Licenses overviews and reports of just about everything so that we can keep in control of everything very easily.
That’s about it for Dedicated Hosting, it’s quite a lot because everything probably takes quite some time to work out.
Now as for Low Cost UK Hosting: the principles of the system will be the same, it will just work different since with Dedicated Hosting we are talking about virtual environments and with Low Cost UK Hosting (dedicated servers) we are talking about physical environments. I will not go into the specifics since it’s approximately the same, it will just need to be coded different. And also some things will be different: for instance an upgrade can’t be done automatically since we need to add part manually.
This would be the order procedure for Low Cost UK Hosting:
First we setup quite a few new servers with our standard configurations and we put the servers in our racks and plug them in. For now we leave the servers offline (explanation will follow)
Client places order
Client pays
System validates and processes payment
System grabs the details of the appropriate server and sends a “power on” signal to the APC power switch, so that the system gets turned on (this is just done to save power while the server is not in use, but this may not really be necessary though).
Details are sent to the client
Again, this would only work for default servers, but the more different combinations of servers we setup, the better this system becomes. If the client orders something that we don’t have pre-built a notice is sent that we have to do the customization manually and that we will send the activation details once we are ready.
As you can tell, this is just an overview of what’s included in the system (or I should say: systems – because the Dedicated Hosting and Low Cost UK Hosting systems are completely separated). I’m not sure yet what would be the best way to start out, but you’ll obviously need a lot more detailed information for each of the points that I mentioned – for now I have just described what each feature will do but I haven’t described how it will work exactly.
