Help Needed - Pay As You Go Bandwidth in 1 Gig Increments (Audio Streaming)

[pollers]

Hi,

 

I offer audio streaming all under a whmcs platform on cpanel and whm. I have been selling packages for sometime now with no issues. However people have asked me to offer Pay As You Go.

 

Basically instead of charging for listener slots and kbps streaming rates and a given monthly amount of bandwidth. People want to pay in increments of 1 gig for bandwidth, as its used - this would be affected by the amount of listeners and the kbps rate of the audio stream, so for a small audio stream with a few listeners 1 gig may last 1 - 3 months where as more listeners would use the bandwidth up much quicker.... But its a great starting point for clients to test the waters with audio streaming and budget for the increase in listener numbers.

 

As the bandwidth is nearing its full usage an email is sent to the account holder telling them they need to buy more. Or they could just log into their client area within my installation of whmcs and check their account usage etc.

 

If all the bandwidth is used and no extra is paid for then the account is placed on hold. Each time its topped up its added to the clients allowance ready for using up again, and so the cycle repeats

 

Can anyone offer any assistance with this please. Im willing to pay, but Im not rich

 

Cheers

James

[pollers]

Hi All,

 

No replies :-( Im looking at the package settings and setting the bandwidth allowence to zero with the option to buy more.... could someone assist in getting this to work as a solution?

[easyhosting]

Hi All,

 

No replies :-( Im looking at the package settings and setting the bandwidth allowence to zero with the option to buy more.... could someone assist in getting this to work as a solution?

 

this is what you need to do what you want http://www.whmcs.com/addons/configurable-package-addon/

[Troy]

this is what you need to do what you want http://www.whmcs.com/addons/configurable-package-addon/

 

I doubt it. That will allow the OP to sell bandwidth at various levels and auto-provision it on the cPanel account, but that's not what the OP asked for--he wants to use the overage billing feature, which requires cPanel bandwidth to be set unlimited or at least very high so the site is allowed to exceed the threshold established in whmcs. In addition, an even bigger question is what audio streaming platform (shoutcast, icecast) is being used, and does it update cPanel's bandwidth measurements. I'm guessing no, so the real issue is tracking the bandwidth.

 

Either way, the configurable options addon wouldn't help.

 

We provide video streaming, using Wowza, and at one point we were billing in this manner. I had to write code that would parse the streaming logs and then add the streaming bandwidth usage in with the rest. It was quite some time ago, and I can't remember if I wrote it to update tblhosting's bandwidth after whmcs updated it during the daily cron, or if I added it into the daily "all" bandwidth measurements on a daily basis in /var/cpanel/bandwidth/[domain] -- I think I tried it both ways and could only make it work halfway decently by updating tblhosting directly.

 

It was a real hassle, so we moved to pricing by viewer slots and dumped it.

[easyhosting]

I doubt it.

 

The configurable addon is exactly what the OP needs. as way for users to purchase the amount of bandwidth they require and then if need purchase more. the overage billing will not handle this as this only charges if you go over your auto assigned usage.

 

 

People want to pay in increments of 1 gig for bandwidth, as its used - this would be affected by the amount of listeners and the kbps rate of the audio stream, so for a small audio stream with a few listeners 1 gig may last 1 - 3 months where as more listeners would use the bandwidth up much quicker.... But its a great starting point for clients to test the waters with audio streaming and budget for the increase in listener numbers.

 

As the bandwidth is nearing its full usage an email is sent to the account holder telling them they need to buy more.

[Troy]

Oops, you're right--don't know what made me think he was using the overage billing feature.

 

Still, the more important question remains whether or not he can track the bandwidth of whatever he's using from streaming in cPanel's bandwidth, which is probably not the case. The configurable option addon won't be any use unless he can actually get the streaming bandwidth merged with cPanel's bandwidth tracking, and unless something has changed since I looked into it, that's not easily done.

[easyhosting]

The configurable option addon won't be any use unless he can actually get the streaming bandwidth merged with cPanel's bandwidth tracking, and unless something has changed since I looked into it, that's not easily done.

 

This is something the OP would need to open a ticket direct with cpanel about. Personally i have never offered streaming services (WHMSonic) as it is too much work etc. we decided on offering dolphin based hosting with RMS ( red 5) which allows users to stream to a point.