Why the WHMCS Feature Request System is a Bad Idea

[yggdrasil]

• It's slow. Not everyone is in the US or Europe. The Request system you are using is very slow from some countries, almost not usable, giving timeouts and errors.
  
• It requires another login. (now you have 3 logins, customer area, forum and feature systems). Not friendly for users.
  
• The fact it requires an extra login means some users like me don't bother to post ideas. You should make it easy for users to submit feedback, not harder. My time and others are also valuable. Even if it takes me 30 seconds more, I don't because I'm already logged to the forums.
  
• You will not have to tell people to use that consistently when they post a feature idea in the forums. (you would just move it to the right category)
  
• You would increase the community, (people sign up to post ideas or feature request) as opposed to sending them off.
  
• Some features are not really features, people post things there that WHMCS can already do, or that you can easily do with simple tricks or extra integrations. If those people were posting things in the community (here in the forums), others would help them instead to do that or give their feedback (more experienced users that understand the software better).
  
• The comment system in the feature requests is a second alternative community. Why not consolidate them.
  
• Features and Ideas need community collaboration because some ideas are just bad and some users actually need more help with the workflow when it comes to running WHMCS or even running a business. If they don't know better, they post a feature request thinking that a software can do everything for them. Some requests are just ridiculous, and people expect WHMCS to do everything that shines under the sun or even run their business for them. Again, integrating the community here could point people in the right direction towards what they are looking or need. Sometimes using some else is better. We don't want to turn WHMCS into a monster that does everything but nothing properly. (bloated)
  
• Less work and costs for WHMCS staff. Having features in the community means central moderation and management, and I'm sure every penny saved is welcome, because that system probably costs money to WHMCS to run. (it's a service after all), vs just running it yourselves here.
  
• Users can send Features, Ideas, Feedback and Bugs, from a particular category, making it simple to see how they are different types of context or if someone else reported the same before. One centralized view.
  

 

Yes, your forum system can do this. You can achieve something similar with moderation, tags, title or predefined topic titles (like Feature_, Idea_, etc.).

 

Don't copy everything cPanel does. Just because cPanel is using that service, does not mean you should. cPanel is actually backpedaling some of those external services and putting more focus again on their community (forums). Remember a forum software today is far more advanced, and with specific plugins and things you can replicate the same feature system you have now. You are developers after all and I'm surprised you didn't figured this out yet.