With recent release of HostBill we’ve completely re-designed order process in HostBill. It was scheduled for a long time and as some of our cusomers demanded it – we’ve decided to give it a go, and boy we’re glad we did!

We called this feature Order Scenarios.

Each orderpage (also known as product category) in HostBill can have different Order Scenario attached.
Order Scenarios defines what steps should HostBill take after client submits order. Following are default steps:

1. Automated Fraud Prevention – if third party fraud prevention module is enabled (like MaxMind MinFraud) HostBill can verify whether order was fraudulent, and if so automatically rule out such order and prevent account from being provisioned
2. Enable Invoice – You can choose to approve this step manually – if invoice is enabled its visible in clientarea and allowed to pay – for some expensive services you may want to review order at this early stage before processing it.
3. Authorize Payment – If order was submitted with credit card HostBill can automatically authorize payment before capturing it. You can also choose to authorize it manually – this way you will be 100% sure if credit card submitted is valid and with enough funds. Not only credit cards can be authorized with HostBill – you can even verify buyer PayPal to see if its valid!
4. Capture Payment – Order good so far? Time to collect money – you can choose to do it manually or automatically, by HostBill.
5. Provision Order items – Time to create ordered hosting accounts – HostBill can do this automatically after receiving payment, just like it always did, you can also set this step to be manual and review order once again, just to be 100% sure!
6. Final order review – Account was created, but your fraud verification is delayed? You surely don’t want valid customers to wait! Provision their account automatically first and review order once its provisioned to finally mark order as active – this step is optional.

Don’t follow your hosting competition with features – invest in HostBill and always be few steps ahead!
HostBill – constant innovations – changing face of hosting billing industry since 2009!

No matter what you think about cloud hosting – its here to stay. Whether its best invention since sliced bread or just marketing hype – you can (and you should!) make money out of it.

Dont know where to start? Start with stable billing system + cloud platform that suits your pocket. Here are just couple of ways on how to bring IaaS to your customers with minimum hassle, and most importantly with fully automated provisioning trough HostBill:

Method 1: Have few more bucks to spend on hardware? Build your own cloud!

Consider OnApp – integration with HostBill includes Cloud, CDN, Load Balancers
Or try CloudStack – sell cloud/vps with rich end-client interface

Method 2: Little less money for hardware? How about Cloud VPS service?

HostBill provides feature-rich integration top VPS control panels like:
SolusVM
Citrix XenServer
Virtuozzo
VMware ESxi

Method 3: Just starting? Let other worry about hardware – time to resell cloud!

Number of VPS/Cloud hosting providers already offers HostBill modules, including:
Vps.net
Dediserve
RackSpace
Linode

Some control panel/platform is missing for you? Let us know – we can automate everything!

It’s been a week – so time for another updrade from HostBill team!
Lets take a glimpse of today-released, all new, HostBill 3.1.4:

Further OnApp improvements

Our already great integration with OnApp Cloud just get better! Your client will now have access to new backup-related features, including:

Backup->Template conversion
If you offer cloud/vps backup space, you can now add them ability to convert their backups into re-usable OS Templates from HostBill interface with just few mouse-cliks – simple as that!

Backup Schedule
If you enable Schedules in related OnApp user roles your clients will see new option in their clientarea interface – Schedule Backup. With this option your customers will be able to manage their automated backup schedules, allowing them to create daily/weekly/monthly/yearly backups.

New ticket department permissions

Now you can use additional settings in your Ticket departments including:
- Allowing staff member to reply using email
- Prevent customers from closing ticket opened by staff member
- Prevent customers from re-open ticket closed by staff member

Of course there is lot more in new version For full list of changes/fixes go to hostbillapp.com/changelog/

I’d like to take the opportunity and wish our valued customers and friends Happy Holidays and a New Year from HostBill team. Its been amazing year for us, full of great integrations, major HostBill improvements and number of great new customers to work with.
See you in 2012!

A lot has changed since last post on this blog – our development yet again gained momentum and we’ve introduced number of cool new features in HostBill. Lets take a quick tour of whats new in HostBill:

Invoice templates

Everything is marketing – even invoices sent to customers. Make sure your invoices will stand out! With new HostBill feature – invoice templates – customizing your HTML & PDF invoices sent from HostBill is really simple! Just use built-in editor to create your own, professional looking invoice, and impress your customers! No programming skills & file edits required! Learn more here

Translation tags

Now HostBill is first and only, 100% Multilingual billing system! Each aspect can be translated to your customer native language – product names, email templates, registration fields, form elements, news, knowledgebase & much more! With easy to use translation tags you can generate tag, that will be replaced with value in visitor language – simple as that! Learn more here

PowerDNS integration

PowerDNS is best Open Source solution for Managed DNS hosting available. Now with our feature-rich integration you can give your clients ability to manage their DNS records in fast and user-friendly way trough billing system interface. Learn more about this integration at PowerDNS Feature page

OnApp module re-built

Our integration with OnApp is already known as best-one available, we’ve decided to make it even better by introducing fresh clientarea template & set of brand new features. Make sure to check our OnApp feature page to learn more about recent improvements.

What we’ve recently been up to? Its been a while since last post here, in case you haven’t noticed already we’re posting updates and plugins more often on our second blog – extras.hostbillapp.com. So whats new in HostBill?

1. HostBill 3.0 has been released few days ago, featuring major domain management updates
2. We’ve introduced OnApp:LoadBalancers integration as only billing system on the market!
3. Security has been significantly improved + we’ve added built-in security manager
4. Languages are no longer kept in database, you can easily manage them through Admin: Language manager
5. I could go on like this for a long time…

…but why not develop something now? OK!

Introducing: Direct Order Link Plugin

If you’re using HostBill already you probably know that you can use Direct order link for services, so client can add product to cart without selecting one from list by visiting certain URL. Now with Direct Order Links plugin you can do much more! How to use it:

- Log in as administrator & activate Direct Order Link plugin

- While logged in, visit your clientarea->cart

- select product, configure it the way you want (add addons, set forms elements, set values, billing cycles, discounts etc.)

- click on Generate Now

- you will receive direct order link that will contain your current cart configuration – send it to customer for rapid checkout process!

See how it works:

Want to build module for HostBill? Not a problem!

We’ve been working recently on DevKits, documentation and examples so you can integrate virtually anything with HostBill now!

Whats possible?

- Hosting/App/Provisioning modules

- Connecting forms with provisioning modules

- Payment Gateways

- Plugins

- Using API

- Domain Registrars

- Custom Product Types (work in progress)

Stay tuned for next updates – I’m off  trying to hook up coffee machine API with HostBill

Kris

HostBill users recently reported issue with OnApp 2.1RC4 module.

Problem:
When creating billing plan using API its not possible to create machine as client, as OnApp throws HTTP500 + bad response error.

Solution:
We’ve created patch for OnApp Full-Featured module 2.1. To apply it please download your copy of module again from our clientarea, and extract archive contents
in main HostBill directory.

Patch drawbacks:
This patch hard-codes clients’ cpu-shares to unlimited (its not setting cpu-shares limit in OnApp), and for new machines created from HostBill clientarea it sets cpu-share to 1, despite of slider settings.

Please note:
This is temporary patch, once OnApp will fix this bug with next RC/Stable version we will upload regular version of module with working CPU-Shares limit.

Running a registered business in EU? You probably have some strict invoicing rules to follow – take VAT and its exceptions, or sequential invoice numeration for example. Lets take a quick tour to see how those can be handled with HostBill:

Tax(VAT) Exceptions

If you’re selling goods or services to company with registered VAT EU number you should not charge tax (A reverse charge). With HostBill you can turn on tax exceptions for such customers – and most importantly – HostBill can do it automatically for you!

Watch how easy is to configure HostBill to do so:

Sequential Invoice Numeration and Pro-Forma invoices

In most EU countries paid invoices are required to have consistent, sequential numeration, unpaid invoices can be treated as Pro-Forma invoices. You don’t need to edit any files in HostBill to fulfill those rules, or have second accounting software for invoices. With two mouse-clicks you can turn on Pro-Forma invoicing and sequential paid invoices numeration – its that simple!

See mentioned two clicks configuration:

…has just been released. Make sure to check out new features

Next version of HostBill is coming up and we’ve decided to show you a little sneak preview of what you can expect.

Click on image below to open video.

In this video you’ll be able to see how easy is to start selling SSL Certificates from Enom using HostBill – all certificates can be automatically configured and ready to sell with your reseller prices under 40 seconds!