WHMCS 8.0 Multi User - Better for majority?

[jacksony]

Hi All,

We are reviewing the multi-user functionality before we upgrade to WHMCS 8.0.

However as hosting provider, with majority of customers just need a single login details, having multiple login seems redundant and seems more like a confusion.

Nevertheless it benefits cases which a customer represent multiple entities (but that is very minority). Or for web agencies handling for multiple customers. But the fact is even for web agencies, they will find this multi user feature useless, since they handle their end customers directly at their end and WHMCS is more like just a billing system used to bill them.

So is this multi-user feature in WHMCS still a benefit for most of you?

[yggdrasil]

2 hours ago, jacksony said:

Hi All,

We are reviewing the multi-user functionality before we upgrade to WHMCS 8.0.

However as hosting provider, with majority of customers just need a single login details, having multiple login seems redundant and seems more like a confusion.

Nevertheless it benefits cases which a customer represent multiple entities (but that is very minority). Or for web agencies handling for multiple customers. But the fact is even for web agencies, they will find this multi user feature useless, since they handle their end customers directly at their end and WHMCS is more like just a billing system used to bill them.

So is this multi-user feature in WHMCS still a benefit for most of you?

Personally it's not really useful for me. Like you said, most of our customers also need only one login. The sub account contacts worked well for companies that required more than one person accessing WHMCS. I agree this will lead to more confusion, as well more messy account management in terms of fraud and people bypassing agreement or creating multiple accounts to avoid billing or bypassing free trials.

While a system like this is useful it's mostly useless without a proper role/permission system (which WHMCS did not implemented) and if it also comes together with more powerful and granular admin side management tools (which again they didn't add, they even removed some stuff...) when it comes to management.

I don't think I ever complained about the sub account contacts system before. I'm not sure why they invested on this when most WHMCS customers are also small companies and something like this only benefits bigger organizations. I never had a customer complaining about this either.

The problem is that the feature is half-baked, beta buggy. This new feature is actually one of the reason I'm not upgrading either. I don't want to document a buggy system or have people opening support tickets asking how it works or accomplish things. Its just giving us more troubles instead of solving things. I will wait until 8.1 or maybe even 8.3 until this can be more polished and better documented.

I suspect the reason they added this is that they bill per number of customers now and something tells me they want to increase that number and probably bill in the future per people that can log in. This is one way to increase the number of users in your installation and make more money on their end.

[steven99]

I think the web agency aspect where someone could have multiple clients on the same system and be able to access those clients via one login is the real draw for the feature if it actually works that way.    Beyond that for clients that need multiple people accessing an account, the sub account feature was perfect.

[jacksony]

Hi All,

Is there any significant features in WHMCS 8.0 which warrants a strong upgrade?

Seems like to avoid going into multiple accounts and confusion for customers, it is to stick to current latest WHMCS 7.10? Until there is no choice but to upgrade?

Unless WHMCS 8.0 has a function to disable mutil user account feature completely?

[yggdrasil]

10 hours ago, jacksony said:

Hi All,

Is there any significant features in WHMCS 8.0 which warrants a strong upgrade?

Seems like to avoid going into multiple accounts and confusion for customers, it is to stick to current latest WHMCS 7.10? Until there is no choice but to upgrade?

Unless WHMCS 8.0 has a function to disable mutil user account feature completely?

Well, the new 8.1 Beta has bootstrap 4 support (finally). That could be a reason if you want to keep up with modern standard designs. They also introduced a child theme, not sure what is yet but maybe it makes it easier to integrate your design, or maybe it has the opposite effect, I guess we will have to wait and see.

As for the 8.0.x, the only important feature I can think for upgrading is IDN support which is important if you are selling domains to people that speak different languages.

The reason I don't upgrade is that while you get something new you probably lose older stuff that you are using right now. Upgrades or new software are only nice when they don't affect the other things you are using.

Edited November 21, 2020 by yggdrasil

[DennisHermannsen]

3 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

Well, the new 8.1 Beta has bootstrap 4 support (finally).

And Bootstrap 4 is going to be EOL in about a year... It feels like they've thrown the new design together in a matter of days. I hardly doubt they started working on the new design before v8 was released - and at that point it would've been better to go with Bootstrap 5.
The multi user function is actually pretty great. Not every client will need it, but a few of our clients will definitely need it.

[yggdrasil]

1 hour ago, DennisHermannsen said:

And Bootstrap 4 is going to be EOL in about a year... It feels like they've thrown the new design together in a matter of days. I hardly doubt they started working on the new design before v8 was released - and at that point it would've been better to go with Bootstrap 5.
The multi user function is actually pretty great. Not every client will need it, but a few of our clients will definitely need it.

I'm aware of that. It's actually ironic that we need to wait WHMCS to update a software that is open source and free. This shows the current sad state of WHMCS when it comes to locking files and user end front code. They should not be encoding and putting open source code under their proprietary ioncube files. Other web softwares that use open source libraries don't do this. The ship them as they are and the customer is free to modify them as they see fit, that is the whole idea of why people use something like bootstrap (customization).

If WHMCS was properly built the bootstrap version would be irrelevant. Someone could be using version 3, or 4 or 5, or not even use bootstrap at all for their theme. Every other softwares does not lock you into what you have to use for the website design. But I gave up on this a long time. We need to accept that Bootstrap 4 will be with us for years to  come until they again decide to upgrade it. Having 4 after people asked for years is already a welcome feature.

Edited November 22, 2020 by yggdrasil

[Evolve Web Hosting]

4 hours ago, DennisHermannsen said:

And Bootstrap 4 is going to be EOL in about a year... It feels like they've thrown the new design together in a matter of days. I hardly doubt they started working on the new design before v8 was released - and at that point it would've been better to go with Bootstrap 5.
The multi user function is actually pretty great. Not every client will need it, but a few of our clients will definitely need it.

Current stable version of bootstrap is 4.5.3 so it's probably not a good idea that they use v5 right now.

[yggdrasil]

46 minutes ago, EvolveWebHosting said:

Current stable version of bootstrap is 4.5.3 so it's probably not a good idea that they use v5 right now.

The bigger question is until how long will v4 be officially be supported (security...)?

It's not the best scenario to have outdated code running on public websites.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

7 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

The bigger question is until how long will v4 be officially be supported (security...)?

It's not the best scenario to have outdated code running on public websites.

4.5.x bootstrap versions are not outdated or unsupported. 
https://github.com/twbs/release

 

[yggdrasil]

1 hour ago, EvolveWebHosting said:

4.5.x bootstrap versions are not outdated or unsupported. 
https://github.com/twbs/release

 

I never said otherwise.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

9 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

I never said otherwise.

Guess I worded it the wrong way so to answer your question as to how long v4.x will be supported: 2022-01-01

[Kian]

The difference between Bootstrap 3 and 4 are minimal. For the the average WHMCS user there is not any drastic change in the appearance. The main changes affect the very few companies that create templates for WHMCS. I'll never understand why WHMCS community has a fetish for pointless things:

• The urge to run the latest version of Bootstrap... just becasue 4 is greater than 3?
• SEO URLs that produce zero benefits
• New admin templates. Possibily a new one every year. In the meantime Magento, Prestashop and WordPress had 2 major updates in the last decade or more. In WHMCS we had original, blend, v4 followed by v6/v7 and now this new v8. Not to mention custom-made templates. We're talking about the backend. It must be functional not beautiful. Most importantly it shouldn't change so frequently
• Second-class features like this multi-user that from what I can see very few people wanted. The GDPR problem is real. Account deletion does not reflect on "sub-accounts". I do understand why it works in this way but in the same time I've doubts... I can't say how it should work. Bad design? Good design? I don't know what to think. The only thing I know is that multi-user raised more "wtf?" than "nice one!"

I know my opinions are very unpopular but IMO both WHMCS and user-base lost their focus a long time ago.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Kian

[yggdrasil]

56 minutes ago, Kian said:

The difference between Bootstrap 3 and 4 are minimal. For the the average WHMCS user there is not any drastic change in the appearance. The main changes affect the very few companies that create templates for WHMCS. I'll never understand why WHMCS community has a fetish for pointless things:

• The urge to run the latest version of Bootstrap... just becasue 4 is greater than 3?
• SEO URLs that produce zero benefits
• New admin templates. Possibily a new one every year. In the meantime Magento, Prestashop and WordPress had 2 major updates in the last decade or more. In WHMCS we had original, blend, v4 followed by v6/v7 and now this new v8. Not to mention custom-made templates. We're talking about the backend. It must be functional not beautiful. Most importantly it shouldn't change so frequently
• Second-class features like this multi-user that from what I can see very few people wanted. The GDPR problem is real. Account deletion does not reflect on "sub-accounts". I do understand why it works in this way but in the same time I've doubts... I can't say how it should work. Bad design? Good design? I don't know what to think. The only thing I know is that multi-user raised more "wtf?" than "nice one!"

I know my opinions are very unpopular but IMO both WHMCS and user-base lost their focus a long time ago.

I purchased the pro version of font awesome for my site, and I was not able to integrate it properly with WHMCS as they had some classes hard coded. So there is that and ended with different versions for jQuery, Bootstrap and font awesome, one for WHMCS, one for the main site. That creates more work.

I get what you say about SEO but its not just SEO but easy to remember URL's. I'm a keyboard person, I prefer to type things, including commands vs copy and paste. Having easy URL's for articles and others parts is helpful and I expect some of my customers are the same. I never cared about the SEO part but the URL structure. I would like to have my own since its the sitemap of my navigation.

I never asked for a new admin template. If someone reads my posts I never ever complained about the admin part. That is something I can suffer, but the front end the customers see not. I don't mind as much customizing the admin site and I'm ok with one single theme that works vs having a new one. I care about simplicity when it comes to staff and admin tasks, I would actually make it as simple as possible so it takes as less clicks and go from one part to the other vs making it fancy.

I agree with your points, the themes should rarely change because they are the basis on which others build their design. I agree with WHMCS philosophy here. Just ship one admin and one client theme, bare bones, simple but still nice and let others build what ever design they want on top or buy a theme from another company.

[DennisHermannsen]

Oh, I was under the influence that BootStrap 4 would get EOL'ed next year. Don't know where I got that from.

On 11/22/2020 at 6:11 PM, Kian said:

The urge to run the latest version of Bootstrap... just becasue 4 is greater than 3?

I usually agree with you, but not on this one. There's lots of reasons to want to upgrade - in my case, there's a lot of cool new features for v4 compared to v3. v4 is built centered around flexbox which solves a lot of issues.

[Kian]

The vast majority of WHMCS users ignore the meaning of "col-md-3 col-sm-6col-sm" but they still want Bootstrap 4 for no particular reason other then "I've seen it on WordPress" 😕 There are many other priorities in WHMCS (bugs and unfinished features). In my opinion Boostrap 4 is not necessary. Probably it will be just a new source of problem with very few happy users.

Edited November 23, 2020 by Kian