Another year has passed – a surprising and for many a difficult year, for various reasons. And while 2020 is becoming a history, we’re taking a look back to see what we managed to achieve. Here’s HostBill summary of 2020!

Constant improvements

In 2020 our fast release cycle has not been compromised and we’ve published 63 releases, so you could enjoy new improvements in HostBill more than once a week! This year we developed 552 new features – more than in the previous years! Our Developers Team also fixed 1133 bugs, so you can imagine they had their hand full with work!

New integrations

In 2020 we also significantly expanded our integration portfolio. We added 11 new provisioning modules, that allow to sell licenses (R1Soft Licenses, ActiveCampaign Reseller, LiteSpeed Licenses and Rhipe Microsoft CSP), VPN services (VPNresellers), SSL certificates (OXXA SSL), Cloud or VPS hosting (SolusioIO, Alice-IT VPS, Jelastic), DNS services (Hetzner DNS), or Dedicated Servers (DCIManager 6). We also added new LibreNMS Billing module and kept on improving our existing integration. Among many updates it’s worth to mention DirectAdmin (support for Installatron client function) or Cloudstack.

As an addition to provisioning modules, we also introduced cPanel DNS Helper and SSL Automation Helper plugins. The list of HostBill plugins joined 4 export plugins: ActiveCampaign Marketing, Vtiger CRM auto-export, Zoho CRM auto-export and lexoffice auto-export, new fraud protection app: IPQualityScore, 3 new XML invoice export modules (FatturaPA, UBL_XML, JPK_FA), new Google Analytics plugin, Private Products module and Allowed Submitters plugin, so in total 13 new plugins!

Additionally, we added client area support for Colocation Manager, client area management section for IPAM (and new Auto-PTR feature), updated Password Manager and Password History plugins, added two-way SMS verification in SMSVerification module, client area support for Mobile 2FA and a number of new functionalities to Multi-Brand.

The number of payment gateways supported by HostBill increased to 108 (with additional various payment methods available). 13 new payment modules include: Checkout.fi, WeChat Pay, ipay88, Barion, Moneris Vault, EveryPay, PayTM, Yandex Kassa, Peach Payments, Stripe Intents FPX Gateway, Redsys, QuickBooks Payments and PayVision.

The variety of domain registrars integrated with HostBill now also include 4 new domain modules: Ascio, Internet .ee, NIC.ru and .st Registry.

In 2020 we launched 2 new order pages, compatible with 2019 Client Panel Theme: 2019 Wizard and Domain Cart.

New features

The number of new features introduced to HostBill this year was bigger than in previous year, so let’s take a closer look on the most important ones.

Domain and DNS Settings

First of all, completely new Domain and DNS Settings section in admin area. HostBill is the ultimate domain management and automation software, providing all the essential tools to run a successful domain business. New addition to domain management in HostBill was the Domain & DNS section in HostBill General settings, that ensures a user-friendly environment for managing various settings related to your domain names: Lookup settings, Premium domain names, domain name suggestions, DNS templates and automation. What’s more, we also gave you the ability to add multiple connections to one domain module. Apart from that, a number of other smaller functionalities for domains were introduced, such as Domain transferred out detection, new client interface settings, new client functions (Auth Info / EPP Key) and new possibilities for handling Domain cancellation requests and domain notifications. It was pretty fortunate year for domain resellers using HostBill to automate their domain management!

Billing

In the past year, a huge new billing functionality was introduced. DIY Metered Billing allows HostBill users to define their own variables for any product or service, regardless of the provisioning module used, and add resource usage values using API or add usage manually from admin UI. This created a window of opportunity, allowing to include ad hoc charges for usage of various services by calculating and specifying the amount to be charged on the invoice!

Small improvements were made to Credit notes (which are now created in Draft state with ability to convert to final state), Credit receipts (final number after payment), recurring invoices and recurring prices (which are now updated on currency rate changes). We also made it possible for admins to control the display of the billing cycle method.

Ordering

To improve the ordering process, we introduced the Order Agreements feature, which allows to add various contracts and agreements to specific products and services and Built-in thank you page, as the last step of your customers journey.

Ticketing System

Our powerful Support Ticketing System also benefited from a number of new functionalities:  Ticket Timers to auto-execute ticket related tasks at scheduled time, new Ticket Tags management features for better organization, Slack VIP tickets, SLA policies per Ticket Department, Ticket notifications per staff member, Ticket Department access settings for Client groups & Contacts, just to name a few.

Products and services

Thanks to the newly added Product log all actions taken on product configuration and settings are now logged. New option allows to flag products as “Admin-only” making all related services not accessible nor visible for clients. This year we also made it possible to create sub-categories for order pages, to help you better organize your products and create a simple product hierarchy. We enabled to add sub-products in Domains to increase your up-selling opportunities. We also introduced some new options for product upgrades & downgrades and custom automation.

Admin area

In admin area we launched completely redesigned and improved Smart Search, various handy widgets and client viewable admin notes to enhance admin-client communication. We made some changes to transaction handling. We notably improved cancellation requests handling, added control to cancellation request types and enabled Cancelation requests reasons. This year we also launched Client Area template editor, that allows to edit basic theme options without editing files.

If you’re interested in further details, you can browse our changelog entries and other blog post from this year!

What to expect next?

In the coming year you can expect further improvements to HostBill. In 2021 we plan to release a new developer portal with refreshed and expanded documentation. We will be working on the billing engine and its new possibilities as well as advancing our key integrations and their interactions (automation and the way DNS, domains and hosting modules work together). Stay up to date with HostBill news by following our blog and social media accounts!

Taking this opportunity we wanted to wish you a happy, healthy, successful and profitable New Year!