Pre-sales questions

[jamiedolan]

HI;

 

I have several pre-sales questions;

 

( I would be using the system with a cpanel setup if that has any bearing on my questions here)

 

1. Assuming I use companies that you have compatible modules for, does that mean that functions such as domain registration, initial payment, and reoccurring billing can be fully automated?

 

2. Is there any planed support for the large domain registrar Moniker?

 

3. Security / PCI compliance;

 

A. assuming I use a merchant gateway, and not a 3rd party gateway, then the client information, including their credit card is stored on my server, is this correct?

 

B: Does this credit card information remain visible to me in a secure environment, so I can view it as necessary, such as if i needed to run a off-line charge or if I want to back up the information in a off-line accounting system?

 

C: Is your system designed to be run on and secure if it is maintained and run on the same server as clients are hosted on, or is it advisable / required to run your software on a dedicated server for increased security.

 

D; Assuming your software is properly installed, including a secure certificate, is this PCI compliant (assuming the other procedures such as a firewall and restricted access to your system are maintained). Is card data and other client information stored with strong encryption, not only during transmission, but while it resides on the server?

 

4. Can I customize the sign up area for different target customers? for example;

 

A: Main Isp Page With a couple options for different paid plains

 

B: Secondary site (A division of my company) that page would offer free as well as paid plans. i.e., I would not want the free plan option to show up on site A (Main ISP page).

 

5. (In order to reduce spam / illegal activities) Can you force verification with the tools such as; Mindmax or Telesign, even if your using the system to setup a completely free web hosting account, where you are not collecting credit card or other billing information?

 

6. Can the system require different levels of information from the client depending on the plan they choose, such as;

 

A. Paid account requires CC, address, phone, full Name, e-mail,.

 

B. Free accounts require full name. e-mail and phone verification but no billing info or physical address information.

 

7. Can your system, in conjunction with Cpanel bill customers for bandwidth / disk space over a set amount?

 

Thanks

Jamie

[tldagent]

Seen your post with no replies so I thought I'd help answer what I can.

1. Assuming I use companies that you have compatible modules for, does that mean that functions such as domain registration, initial payment, and reoccurring billing can be fully automated?

Absolutely otherwise the system would be useless. WHMCS automates all the above with various modules.

 

2. Is there any planed support for the large domain registrar Moniker?

To my knowledge Moniker doesn't have an API making this possible as that's not their business model as far as I know. You'd have to ask Moniker if they are going to come up with a reseller API.

 

3. Security / PCI compliance;

 

A. assuming I use a merchant gateway, and not a 3rd party gateway, then the client information, including their credit card is stored on my server, is this correct?

 

B: Does this credit card information remain visible to me in a secure environment, so I can view it as necessary, such as if i needed to run a off-line charge or if I want to back up the information in a off-line accounting system?

 

C: Is your system designed to be run on and secure if it is maintained and run on the same server as clients are hosted on, or is it advisable / required to run your software on a dedicated server for increased security.

 

D; Assuming your software is properly installed, including a secure certificate, is this PCI compliant (assuming the other procedures such as a firewall and restricted access to your system are maintained). Is card data and other client information stored with strong encryption, not only during transmission, but while it resides on the server?

I know we have several clients that use WHMCS and our product and are in PCI compliant.

 

A. Depending on your Merchant Gateway. Paypal for instance would not keep your clients credit card info. Authorize.net would.

 

B. The secure environment is up to you. WHMCS has an administrative backend and whether that's secure or not is completely on you. There are ways to secure WHMCS just as with any other online software script. We don't keep credit card information on our site, nor do we want to because there's really no reason for us to do it so I cannot answer exactly but I believe you can see the CC number in the admin area.

 

C. WHMCS can run on a secure environment on both dedicated server or shared server. Again, security measures are those you take into consideration as you would with an product. Definitely installing an SSL so you are encrypting information passed is very important. Then securing your server and all the rest is an entirely different subject. You might want to contact your server administrator and read up on securing you server or shared hosting location. We have many customers running off of reseller accounts and security is not something that comes up too often.

 

4. Can I customize the sign up area for different target customers? for example;

 

A: Main Isp Page With a couple options for different paid plains

 

B: Secondary site (A division of my company) that page would offer free as well as paid plans. i.e., I would not want the free plan option to show up on site A (Main ISP page).

A. With add-ons and configurable options yes. WHMCS is, (IMHO) the best in it's class.

 

B. I suppose you could have it show up on any site you'd like with linking but WHMCS License is per site.

 

5. (In order to reduce spam / illegal activities) Can you force verification with the tools such as; Mindmax or Telesign, even if your using the system to setup a completely free web hosting account, where you are not collecting credit card or other billing information?

We have a free trial version of our Joomla + WHMCS integrator and while it's free and we don't need any credit card info, they must still pass maxmind fraud protection and provide accurate information... so the answer is YES.

 

6. Can the system require different levels of information from the client depending on the plan they choose, such as;

 

A. Paid account requires CC, address, phone, full Name, e-mail,.

 

B. Free accounts require full name. e-mail and phone verification but no billing info or physical address information.

Above you asked about passing fraud protection right? How would fraud protection work if you don't collect information?

 

7. Can your system, in conjunction with Cpanel bill customers for bandwidth / disk space over a set amount?

I believe there are modules or add-ons that can do this. Cacti Stats is one that I'm aware of and there are probably many others.

 

Basically it can be set up however you'd like it. You can purchase extensions or modules and really go all out, however, out of the box it provides a great solution for domain registration, web hosting (WHM), and automated billing. There are other great modules such as the Licensing add-on that allows developers to license products and sell those.

 

Lot's of possibilities. I guess I'd suggest going with a trial version and then go from there.

[easyhosting]

Hi I can answere these questions

 

 

C: Is your system designed to be run on and secure if it is maintained and run on the same server as clients are hosted on, or is it advisable / required to run your software on a dedicated server for increased security.

 

WHMCS can run on the same server as your clients or on a dedicated system. We have ours running on a separate server to that of our clients, so if their is any server problems then you still have accdess to your WHMCS to be able to contact your clients and issue network issues etc.

 

7. Can your system, in conjunction with Cpanel bill customers for bandwidth / disk space over a set amount?

 

This is a feature included in WHMCS, as in your admin area when you add a proocuct and go to the 'other' tab at the bottom you will see Overages Billing, just tick this and then complete the details and this will automatically charge clients for any overage they use.

 

Thanks

Jamie

[jamiedolan]

Above you asked about passing fraud protection right? How would fraud protection work if you don't collect information?

 

Thank You for all the information, this does sound very promising. With the fraud protection for a free account, what I was talking about was requiring a user to provide a phone number to do the call / code verification on. Even if I just have a name / e-mail and I have verified they have a active us based phone, I'd feel pretty confident that phone verification would vastly reduce the number of spammers.

 

I'll look at setting up a trial in the near future so I can explore the system in more detail.

 

Thanks again,

 

Jamie

[mcorton]

Hey jamie, I'm a very new client here. Between the forum here, the video tutorials, and a few google searches, I was setup in a few days. (Could have been sooner but my pride stepped in the way and I wanted to figure it out myself) lol. It is a bit frustrating but solving one problem, solves more. Bear is a genius and very helpful. I'm a web developer and new to hosting. My experience so far has been mostly positive.

[jamiedolan]

Hey jamie, I'm a very new client here. Between the forum here, the video tutorials, and a few google searches, I was setup in a few days. (Could have been sooner but my pride stepped in the way and I wanted to figure it out myself) lol. It is a bit frustrating but solving one problem, solves more. Bear is a genius and very helpful. I'm a web developer and new to hosting. My experience so far has been mostly positive.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm glad to hear that the process is going well for you.

 

Jamie