Just got the email - going from $45 a month to $850 a month - What are you all migrating to?

[yggdrasil]

31 minutes ago, lbeachmike said:

Absolutely.  Per my previous point, you'll see a lot of small businesses get squeezed into consolidation.  This would initially hurt them, but they've tried to insure for themselves that it won't matter since they can migrate to the model you speak of and collect no matter where those customers go.  Unless those customers are being billed by Blesta.

That is their marketing plan failure right there. Some years back, people actually searched cPanel hosting and wanted cPanel. They only wanted to order hosting based or that came with cPanel. Some maybe Plesk. It sold on its own. It was cheap per server and gave you tons of value in return.

But with so many cloud companies that have their custom control panels and other solutions to launch websites and applications, people do not care in 2021.

Seriously. Who here gets sales email from people looking for a cPanel hosting?

People don't care what control panel you are using or what billing software you use. We care because we use it to work all day, but your customers only log in for support and billing and maybe check one thing here and there, and off they are. All they need is something simple that works.

[lbeachmike]

17 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

People don't care what control panel you are using or what billing software you use. We care because we use it to work all day, but your customers only log in for support and billing and maybe check one thing here and there, and off they are. All they need is something simple that works.

The customer doesn't care, but the small business owner cares - because of reliance on such products to simplify billing and server management.  Of course there will always be alternative solutions that will happily take over once the existing solutions of choice run themselves into the ground by greed.

We can see this on a macro level with many very big brand name companies that used to be relevant have become irrelevant.  Nobody is safe from such fate.  WHMCS simply has accelerated their own disruption.

[yggdrasil]

36 minutes ago, lbeachmike said:

The customer doesn't care, but the small business owner cares - because of reliance on such products to simplify billing and server management.  Of course there will always be alternative solutions that will happily take over once the existing solutions of choice run themselves into the ground by greed.

We can see this on a macro level with many very big brand name companies that used to be relevant have become irrelevant.  Nobody is safe from such fate.  WHMCS simply has accelerated their own disruption.

I'm not sure if this is related to greed, but mismanagement and bad planning. I'm afraid WHMCS hired too many people in sales and marketing instead of development. They grew to a certain point that they need a fixed amount of income to keep up. Instead of under sizing in a pandemic to cut costs, they just raised pricing.

When they keep mentioning they will improve support and things like that, I figured out their costs have increased but not their income.

Edited August 24, 2021 by yggdrasil

[lbeachmike]

Their support will most definitely improve when they have half as many customers to support 🙂

[malfunction]

27 minutes ago, lbeachmike said:

Their support will most definitely improve when they have half as many customers to support 🙂

No, I don't believe that it will.  The problem there is not the volume of support requests they have to field, it's an attitude problem which comes from the top.  Starting with their self-styled caped crusader "Head of Support".  The fish rots from the head.

[lbeachmike]

5 minutes ago, malfunction said:

it's an attitude problem which comes from the top.  Starting with their self-styled caped crusader "Head of Support".  The fish rots from the head.

I've experienced this first hand.  And in fact it almost appears as if they are generating user need for support instead of thwarting that need.  For example, there are errors in the documentation which cause you to encounter problems for which you would then typically need to reach out for help with.  Simply correction of the erroneous documentation would eliminate that need.  But then there goes those support fees. 

[bear]

2 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

I'm afraid WHMCS hired too many people in sales and marketing instead of development. They grew to a certain point that they need a fixed amount of income to keep up. Instead of under sizing in a pandemic to cut costs, they just raised pricing.

When they keep mentioning they will improve support and things like that, I figured out their costs have increased but not their income.

Interesting. Though not due to a pandemic, Kayako did that very thing, when they reduced existing support "contracts" by half. '
Kept hiring sales people and building sales centers, all the while telling us they were fixing support and putting money into developers. Blatant lies, it was eventually discovered. 

[yggdrasil]

29 minutes ago, bear said:

Interesting. Though not due to a pandemic, Kayako did that very thing, when they reduced existing support "contracts" by half. '
Kept hiring sales people and building sales centers, all the while telling us they were fixing support and putting money into developers. Blatant lies, it was eventually discovered. 

I'm sure they invested in sales and marketing. Even the blog has now nice articles, the docs are better, the website looks great. Development? Clearly not, based on the amount of bugs, and half baked features.

[ADz83]

WISECP for me in 2022 I think.    This new pricing and fvck you to owned licensees didn't affect me directly but it caught my attention and has opened my eyes to WHMCS.  I simply do not have any trust in them as a company any more and it caused me to look elsewhere after 11 years of not even contemplating a different system. 

I'm already using WISECP as my sites frontend (replacing wordpress) and will likely me migrating billing over in new year or when WISECP release v3

[ADz83]

For those that have migrated one of their installs,  Do you still have access to WHMCS Admin area after you don't renew?   Have you somehow kept it online in case you need info at later date?

Edited October 28, 2021 by ADz83

[stormy]

20 minutes ago, ADz83 said:

For those that have migrated one of their installs,  Do you still have access to WHMCS Admin area after you don't renew?   Have you somehow kept it online in case you need info at later date?

That's something I'm considering too. There should be a way to keep an "archive" install of WHMCS, with all functions disabled, for a low price (or free!) Of course you can always look stuff up on the database itself, but it's less convenient.

[ADz83]

23 hours ago, ravex said:

You can have it as a normal install

<Snipped>

You missing the point.  Once license has ended or can't call home to check Admin access is removed?

[ravex]

3 hours ago, ADz83 said:

You missing the point.  Once license has ended or can't call home to check Admin access is removed?

Owned licenses will still be usable, you just won't be able to get any support or upgrade the version.

So no, I am not missing the point.

[ADz83]

On 10/28/2021 at 11:59 PM, ravex said:

Owned licenses will still be usable, you just won't be able to get any support or upgrade the version.

So no, I am not missing the point.

 

Yes you did miss the point as the context was not a owned license.

[bear]

On 10/28/2021 at 3:33 PM, ADz83 said:

You missing the point.  Once license has ended or can't call home to check Admin access is removed?

If it's a leased license, which you infer below, the licensing is tied to being able to call home every few days (rumor says 7). If that fails, access is denied at the installation level, not by some trigger from the remote licensing server. As almost all code is encrypted, preventing that would be unlikely, if not impossible. 

54 minutes ago, ADz83 said:

Yes you did miss the point as the context was not a owned license.

 

[malfunction]

Yes, I think what he's asking is a definitive answer as to whether the ending of his leased license will result in disabling of the front end, the back end, or both.  

If it was me (not that I would be paying WHMCS for a leased license when I already have one I bought outright), I'd be considering a nulled version of the software, run on some old, air-gapped server at my location.  That way I could easily check things in the admin, run reports etc for a year or two, before finally lighting my WHMCS install on fire.

 

[ADz83]

1 hour ago, bear said:

If it's a leased license, which you infer below, the licensing is tied to being able to call home every few days (rumor says 7). If that fails, access is denied at the installation level, not by some trigger from the remote licensing server. As almost all code is encrypted, preventing that would be unlikely, if not impossible. 

 

I implied it,  you inferred it 😁

Yeah that was my thoughts.  It's a bit of the pain in the arse as I would like to keep it active/accessible for at least a year after I divorce myself from WHMCS.

29 minutes ago, malfunction said:

Yes, I think what he's asking is a definitive answer as to whether the ending of his leased license will result in disabling of the front end, the back end, or both.  

If it was me (not that I would be paying WHMCS for a leased license when I already have one I bought outright), I'd be considering a nulled version of the software, run on some old, air-gapped server at my location.  That way I could easily check things in the admin, run reports etc for a year or two, before finally lighting my WHMCS install on fire.

 

 

This is what I'm considering. 

[Jafar Muhammed]

On 24/10/2021 at 3:47 AM, ADz83 said:

I'm already using WISECP as my sites frontend

How good is their customer support?

I sent an email to them a week ago, no reply so far.

Posted a thread in their community and no answer. 

[ADz83]

10 hours ago, Jafar Muhammed said:

How good is their customer support?

I sent an email to them a week ago, no reply so far.

Posted a thread in their community and no answer. 

Been good so far in support tickets.   The forums are not very active/monitored.     I'd jump on Discord channel to chat to fellow users or drop a support ticket.

 

Alternatively use the "Send Us A  Message" option on their contact page as I think that adds message to the Admin area and notifies staff.      Their emails may not be monitored as often.

Edited November 6, 2021 by ADz83

[DennisHermannsen]

17 hours ago, Jafar Muhammed said:

I sent an email to them a week ago, no reply so far.

That seems highly unlikely. All of my messages to them have been answered within hours, mostly within minutes 😄

[Jafar Muhammed]

Hi @ADz83 and  @DennisHermannsen

They just replied to my community post. Though, no reply to the Send Message as well ( I am jut saying). 

Edited November 8, 2021 by Jafar Muhammed

[yggdrasil]

On 11/5/2021 at 2:49 PM, ADz83 said:

 

Yes you did miss the point as the context was not a owned license.

As far as I'm aware, you lose the admin access if the license validation fails. This is true both for owned or leased licenses. The difference is the owned license never expires, which means it will not trigger an invalid license message after each check, while the leased will be marked by WHMCS as invalid once you stop paying. If it can't contact WHMCS licensing servers, it will be eventually marked as invalid as well. This is true for both owned and leased as far as I'm aware.

[ADz83]

On 11/8/2021 at 7:37 AM, Jafar Muhammed said:

Hi @ADz83 and  @DennisHermannsen

They just replied to my community post. Though, no reply to the Send Message as well ( I am jut saying). 

Check your spam folders or maybe there was a typo in email addy you used on contact box?

They've been extremely helpful in my support tickets when I was using the free license and after when using paid license.  Using WISECP as my sites front end/cms at moment until I'm ready to migrate customers/billing over, probably when v3 hits or early 2022.  Then I'll be done with WHMCS after 11+ years of use.    I have loved using WHMCS and will be sad to stop using it but I can't justify staying with a company who screws people over or treats it's customers they we they have.

Edited November 18, 2021 by ADz83

[ADz83]

On 11/17/2021 at 2:37 AM, yggdrasil said:

As far as I'm aware, you lose the admin access if the license validation fails. This is true both for owned or leased licenses. The difference is the owned license never expires, which means it will not trigger an invalid license message after each check, while the leased will be marked by WHMCS as invalid once you stop paying. If it can't contact WHMCS licensing servers, it will be eventually marked as invalid as well. This is true for both owned and leased as far as I'm aware.

 

Yeah it's a shame we can't archive/access it without paying, even if not in use.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

49 minutes ago, ADz83 said:

 

Yeah it's a shame we can't archive/access it without paying, even if not in use.

Store the DB! You can view it all in sql.... it's cheaper! I wouldn't advocate using nulled regardless of how popular its becoming as an option!