HostBill in 2021 – yearly summary

As the 2021 year is ending it’s a perfect time to summarize HostBill activities throughout the year. It’s been another year of constant growth, development and improvements! Take a look at what we accomplished!

2021 in numbers

HostBill is known for its fast release cycle and we couldn’t disappoint – in 2021 we published 59 releases (more than 1 per week!) in which we introduced 504 new features, made 59 changes and fixed 913 bugs! We also launched 41 new modules!

New integrations

Speaking of new integrations, most of them (15 to be exact) were provisioning/reseller modules, which allow to sell and manage various services: DNS (Internet X DNS, Constellix DNS, DirectAdmin DNS, SimpleDNS Plus, Dynamic DNS), Licenses (Installatron, Smarter Mail, Marketgoo, BitNinja Server Security), Shared Hosting (Sonic Panel, LiveConfig, ApisCP), Dedicated Servers (Hetzner Robot), Backup/File Sharing (Seafile), Website Builders (Basekit). We also added new DirectAdmin DNS Helper addon.

When it comes to apps, we launched 2 new fraud protection modules (IP2Proxy Detection and StopForumSpam), 3 mobile notification integrations (Plivo, Phone.com, Telegram), hCapchta verification plugin and TaxJar integration for ordering. We also published updates to Password Manager and Inventory Manager plugins!

The number of domain registrars integrated with HostBill this year increased to 71, as we added 12 new domain modules (Register.be, DK Hostmaster, INWX, NORid, DNS.lu, DreamScape Reseller, Nestistar, Domain Bestellsystem, Mijn Domein Reseller, Epik, MYNIC and UkrNames).

The availability of payment gateways integrated with HostBill has also grown: this year we added 7 new integrations (PerfectMoney, DIBS, uTrust, Duitku, TriPay, Transbank Webpay Plus) including 1 crypto currency payment module Crypto.com). Apart from the new ones, we also updated a few of the existing integrations: Stripe module was equipped with new payment methods support: Stripe BACS, Stripe BECS, Stripe ACSS Debit, and for Stripe Source SEPA we added recurring payments support, new PayPal Checkout v2 integration and new payment methods for Omise.

New features

With the number of new features introduced into HostBill this year it’s impossible to list them all here, but there are quite a few worth the mentions in our yearly summary!

Ticketing System

Many new functionalities were added this year to already multi-functional and feature rich HostBill Ticketing System. Ticket reply lock improves support team work, as when a staff member starts to reply to a ticket, it becomes locked for other staff members. Sensitive reply option encrypts the contents of the ticket. We improved Ticket Billing and added Default ticket rate per ticket department. We set new rules for ticket de-escalations. We also enhanced Ticket edits and Ticket views. For 2019 theme we enabled to use gravatar in support replies. For Support Fields module we added support for External forms.

Product configuration

Flexible product configuration in HostBill is possible thanks to Forms feature, which enables clients to supply additional information using wide range of field types. This year we introduced 4 new form fields: Sequenced slider, Linked dropdown, Contact selector and Sign agreement. We also added option to include hints/descriptions for multi-item fields.

Contracts

Last year we introduced Order Agreements feature, which enabled to add various contracts and agreements to specific products and services. This year we launched improved Contracts feature – automatically generated documents that customer accepts after order (if the order scenario requires this step), with various templates available, advanced settings and automation.

Abandoned Cart

This year we added new functionality to the Direct Cart Links plugin – Abandoned Carts, which enables to perform certain actions on customers’ abandoned carts, giving you many useful options for remarketing and client management!

Billing/invoicing

A lot of new functionalities were also added concerning Billing and Invoicing: new invoice merge options, full month billing (with no pro-rata, no matter when the order is placed or when the invoice is cancelled), partial payment for credit cards, new failed payment url (to redirect the client after failed payment using offsite processing gateways) and a couple of improvements and new functionalities for final invoice settings, auto-cancellations and more.

Admin area

For admin area we added new Custom admin email templates and new staff permissions. There are new logs available (Configuration log, Credit card update logs) and new reports (Domain & Account Contracts) and you can now automatically snapshot report data from certain time period!

For client management we added possibility to divide Registration Fields into groups. New plugin enables to automatically assign clients to Client Groups based on certain criteria.

Client area

In client area there is a new page available: Cart homepage, which lists all available categories (ie. order pages) in a nice, clean and attractive manner. As we introduced mentioned above Contracts feature, Client area contract listing is now easily accessible in client area in Billing section. New client function: Downloads allows to add files that can be downloaded by customers through their Client area.

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To sum up: it’s been quite a year and we put a lot of effort and hard work to deliver all the weekly updates to make HostBill better and better. We’ll keep up the pace in coming 2022 so you can expect hundreds of new functionalities and integrations. Stay tuned!

And taking this opportunity we’d like to wish you a happy, thrilling and prosperous New Year! Thank you for choosing HostBill!

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