Hostbill, a ripped WHMCS?

[yggdrasil]

Ok, I recently moved to WHMCS from hostbill. Not only because they are unstable, buggy and try to nickel and dime to dead for everything but because I started to suspect something lately which I think I can pretty much confirm now that I know WHMCS a bit more.

 

The first thing that shocked me is how similar things are in WHMCS. But in WHMCS they are properly finished. The documentation in WHMCS is good, and the features work, all of them work and all of them make sense. Its like a product that is finished. Hostbill was so similar but most thing did not made sense, some things never worked as expected and some things where bugged and no documentation. It always felt like a beta software which was never really finished.

 

Then I started to see that eve file and folders path are very similar.

 

It was not until I started to implement some things in WHMCS that really hit me that it could not just be so similar and somewhere along the line they must have shared code. Even the tables in the database are similar. Example for invoices you would do a query like this in WHMCS

Select invoice from tblinvoicesitemes WHERE description...

 

And in hostbill it was

 

Select invoice_id from hb_invoice_items WHERE description

 

Really?

 

Even the way hostbill adds invoices description is exactly the same

 

Product - domain.com (startdate - enddata)

 

Exactly the same !!!

 

Then I hit me. Why did some things in Hostbill never made sense. Why some things where neatly organized and some things looked more like they where slapped poorly at the end of the day.

 

It seems somewhere along the line Hostbill just took the WHMCS code as a base, and even tables and databases, operations and logic, even the code is similar and they started to build on that. Of course its different now, but this is the only way I can explain why Hostbill looks so closely to WHMCS in its code and way it works. And this is also explains why Hostbill is more bugged by the way, as now that they start to go apart from the original code which they never wrote they start to see all kinds of problem and things which conflict and it can only get worse as time goes on.

 

I'm very glad I moved to WHMCS. WHMCS is very good in terms of quality, organized files, code, documentation, everything feels exactly like a quality software should be. Things work, features are documented and things make sense for a business or admin user in the way to operate it. The customer support here is also great.

 

This is mere speculation to be honest but I googled this and it seems other people also said Hostbill was a ripped WHMCS version 3 or something. Is this true?

 

From my experience in using both system I can say I'm shocked on how similar they are. But of course since WHMCS is older and all the things are neatly coded and work, and Hostbill has some tables in the database added wrongly (some MYSQL fields don't match the correct type of data they should hold and some columns seems to be added and naming or data on it does match or make sense with other) not to mention all the bugs and things which don't work. We can pretty much assume who ripped who. If you start to use Hostbill you will notice all kind of stupid and sloppy errors, like PHP forms don't make any type of validation input, letting you register domain with invalid characters, data columns in the database are configured incorrectly and some data is logic remains from old parts which does not really anything. Its like a total mess.

 

I'm by no way a developer. Never wrote anything in terms of software, but even so I can notice some very newbie mistakes in their coding which can really only lead to the conclusion that indeed they just ripped others people code for their own software.

 

For anyone that used both systems, you will clearly feel right at home here on WHMCS and see this is the real thing.

[mlew2]

I will put the disclaimer in for this one.

 

The opinions expressions expressed in the above post are of the poster themselves and is not really the opinion of all members nor WHMCS.

 

Not trying to make light of this I have no opinion on it as I have not used HB myself

[yggdrasil]

I will put the disclaimer in for this one.

 

The opinions expressions expressed in the above post are of the poster themselves and is not really the opinion of all members nor WHMCS.

 

Not trying to make light of this I have no opinion on it as I have not used HB myself

 

Of course its my opinion. Its my personal conclusion after using both.

Edited August 16, 2014 by yggdrasil

[lowprofiler]

We have moved away from HB as well. We can recognize every single word of your writing.

Most of the code are ripped. No offence, but that it true! Every developer whos being working deeply with these 2 software knows that.