Any recommendations for billing and management software that allows me to resell hosting on a virtual dedicated server?

March 24, 2009 3:52 PM

Any recommendations for billing and management software that allows me to resell hosting on a virtual dedicated server?

I am planning to buy a virtual dedicated media temple server here and prepay for $500 a year. I have several website clients that have low bandwidth and disk needs so I thought it would be a good way to either get a free server out of it and/or make a little money. Media temple says there is no problem for me to do this which is great, but they dont have any recommendations for software to run and manage these multiple website hosting plans.

The post here only has a list of reseller hosts and mentions that it should have cpanel, databases, etc. But there is no mention of software they might use to power it.

I just dont really know if there is a standard software package that would be best. Obviously open source or free would help my wallet, but something with nominal costs is ok too (hopefully it will make it worth it in the end).

Features that I am looking for (but not required):

-Billing system (I usually bill clients through Quickbooks and I have no idea how a system like this would work). It would be nice if I could set different rate plans, auto charge credit cards, etc.
-Setting up multiple websites with different bandwidth speeds and storage space
-a control panel for the website owner to use and change their settings (like the godaddy domain manager and file manager)

The features above are just thoughts and in no way mean that I wouldnt consider something else that doesnt have those features (like credit card processing). Most of my clients would be willing to write me a check for a years worth of services so I wouldnt even have to deal with processing. I know a lot of people on here like Freshbooks for billing which looks like a good service to actually send invoices out.

I dont know if there is a single piece of software that can accomplish all this or its a matter of combining systems together to make it work. your thoughts and suggestions are very valuable to my decision.

posted by schindyguy to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Cari.net servers come with some of this functionality built in through their (cari.net's) ibizpanel interface. I don't have cPanel on my server, so I don't know if it integrates with that so clients can change passwords and add user accounts and whatnot on the server itself.

I'm sure their sales folks could tell you more about that, though.
posted by wierdo at 4:48 PM on March 24

This may give you some of what you are looking for - ISPConfig. This is from the same people who do HowtoForge, and they have some examples of different control panels and configurations (some for ISPConfig, some for other Control Panels) here.
posted by ralan at 5:21 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

Haven't used any of these types of packages (since they're not what I do), but software like ModernBill or ClientExec are what you're looking for.
posted by Brian Puccio at 6:32 PM on March 24

ok now I am really stressing, I will be researching all those things you guys mentioned, but I just got a call from my developer and he needs to me to make the decision by tomorrow on what I am going to go with so he can install the first site. thanks for your guys suggestions
posted by schindyguy at 11:12 PM on March 24

Putting on my I run a hosting company hat. If you are hung up on Mediatemple then what I would recommend is using Plesk which they supply which gives end users the ability to login setup email etc + WHMCS for billing/provisioning. It will handel invoice sending, billing reports and generally 90% of the stuff your will need

http://wiki.whmcs.com/Plesk should give details on integrating it all together on your website.

I would strongly recommend that you also pick up a free MaxMind fraud account that is free for the first 1000 fraud checks to stop fraudlent signups. Also if this is your first time out do NOT enabled automatic provisioning and make sure you call each customer you don't know to check its a legit order
posted by rus at 3:05 AM on March 25 [1 favorite]

WebHostManager by CPanel is THE software for this. Except, I don't think it does billing.. There are a few good billing programs outthere, but I can't remember the names right now. (Sorry)
posted by majikstreet at 12:19 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]

rus (and all other people who answered),

thanks.. my research basically ended on parallels plesk control panel which they use already. i thought i would have purchase a license for it at $1400, but I am glad mt has it built in...I think I might just bill my clients individually and make them pay me by check a monthly or yearly basis rather than spending more money on a billing system. it would be more practical if I had 20+ clients. any other suggestions in this area would be great


also i was going to post the coupon code that let me get 75 off the 500 per year plan which made the monthly cost around $35 for a dv server. I just dont know if mefi likes me posting things like that. please let me know if anyone is interested...
posted by schindyguy at 1:22 PM on March 25

if anyone wants the code, email me or send me a private message. and if you end up buying it and use my domain as the referral, I just found out I will get a free month of service.
posted by schindyguy at 2:50 PM on March 25