As recently we’ve been receiving a lot of enquiries about the migration to HostBill from other systems, here’s a summary of how the process looks like and what to expect!

Migration to HostBill

HostBill is is not only a well-developed, constantly improving, feature-rich and comprehensive billing and automation platform. It’s also an established company that has been on the market for 15 years now! During this period we performed hundreds of successful migrations for customers who stayed with us until today, and we’ve worked out the set of best practices for migration to HostBill, so you can rest assured your data will be safe.

Our hands-on experience concerns migrating data from both: various known systems and versions as well as from some inhouse/custom-built systems, so we can migrate literally from anything.

Migration from WHMCS

For WHMCS migration we currently offer two options:

1. Unmanaged/automated migration using provided import tool + documentation. The migration tool is built to be as universal as possible so it comes with few shortcomings – especially if you use some third party Whmcs modules. It is the most cost-effective solution.

2. Managed/custom migration by our staff. With this approach we quote each migration individually based on a short interview and installation check. We then adjust the migration tool to your specific business case and modules used. This solution with individual approach is more costly and is especially meant for enterprise clients or installations with multiple modules etc.

Individual approach

Even though we’ve performed migrations from the same billing/automation system multiple times, there are no two exactly the same cases of migration. Each installation comes with different set of modules, different types of products offered and different kind and amount of data stored as well as different versions of software migrated to and from. Taking all of that into consideration we do not provide readymade migration tools to just download and run as it wouldn’t be effective. Instead we treat each migration case individually, with proper attention to every little detail, just as a custom development project, where we carefully examine requirements and expected outcome.

No migration is 100% perfect or hassle-free

During the numerous migrations that we’ve performed we’ve learned that no migration is hassle-free (but we know how to handle it). After migration there is always some data-checking required. This is why we perform migration in iterations: initial migration is a test one for client to check the data (nobody knows your clients and services better than you so you may notice if something does not look the way it should after the migration). Then we apply patches to the migration tool build for this specific case. Afterwards, the next/final migration is scheduled and takes place. Since all systems are different in general, there are some updates required after migration. i.e: product configurations, pricing/terms etc.

How the migration process looks like

If you’d like to proceed with (or enquire about) the migration, please contact us using the contact form on our website or support ticket enquiring about migration to HostBill. Then we will review the migration case by asking series of questions such as:

• What entities to migrate (invoices, transactions, clients, accounts, products etc)
• Approximate amount of data to migrate (number of clients, invoices, accounts, domains etc)
• What sort of modules/third party integrations were used in old system (payment gateways, hosting modules, domain modules etc.)
• Is there any additional development required – ie. whether HostBill offers modules used by client in previous system.

After receiving migration case details, we estimate costs and time required for the migration and once we settle the costs, we schedule the migration. Prior to proceeding with migration we do a backup – both HostBill and source system should be backed with client’s in-house backup practices. We can then perform initial / test migration to customer’s HostBill (non-production version, with emails/automation disabled to not disrupt end-client services). Once done, the customer is asked to review data migrated into HostBill. If something is missing/broken/inconsistent we patch our migration tools and re-migrate. Once we’re all happy with migrated data we treat it as final, and suggest for switch-over:

• HostBill automation, emailing, client portal is enabled
• Our customer notifies their clients about new billing system
• Customer disables old billing system (so it would not bill the clients or perform automatic tasks as suspensions/terminations).

Refugee Discount

To encourage you to make the move, which, as an important business decision, may seem a little overwhelming at first, we can offer you a ‘refugee discount’ – contact us to find out the details!