Owned copy of the software - what is happening?

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

@WHMCS John can you confirm if you guys do try to censor reviews that WHMCS  ask for? Or is it all a big coincidence?  I'm curious now - It can't be a shock that people actively want to provide their feedback on a platform you've encouraged us to do so on! 

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/whmcs.com I left a review based upon my honest experience, if what I'm told is true whmcs made the decision to flag it as false when the contents are pretty much my thoughts on the company after the latest announcement and a pretty sound reflection of those same things bought up.......I would love clarity on that!

[hoya8]

2 hours ago, brian! said:

that assumes that Support only answers issues from those who pay (via a license) for that support.... you'd be surprised at what's been going on the last few years.

I stopped using WHMCS commercially back in 2019 when I got out of the hosting game - all I have now are a few devs and an old v5.3 install (with no public access) that was previously used for billing.

I decided back then that I would never use WHMCS for any business of mine again.... it's too unreliable, too buggy, poorly updated, badly documented.... life's more fun helping others use it rather than having to worry about having to use it myself, or worse still, expecting any clients of mine to use it.

i'll probably get the free WiseCP license at the weekend and have a play with it... if I was still in the hosting/domain game, i'd likely take a look at Blesta, but it wouldn't interest me to run a hosting company again... I did it for 20+ years, that's enough for me.

financially, i'm not exposed to WHMCS - the devs have less than 250 users and my dev work should account for less that 1% of my income this tax year (even if I flogged myself to death 24/7/365) - so I can walk away at any time with no impact to me if I choose to... I certainly won't be coding for any other billing solution as i've zero interest of going down that road - i'd rather just put my feet up for the next few years and enjoy myself. 🏖️

it's 2.7 now. 😎

there are some weird 5-star reviews on there - I bet this won't get disputed lol !

I can't say that it's ever had that effect on me, but there you go... takes all sorts! 🙂

WOW Brian!
You contributed so much and you are not even in the hosting game?

I will not waist my time on WHMCS again because we are leaving , but I would like to give a BIG thank-you here for all of your kind ,precious, free and better-than-WHMCS-support 's support

[johannes]

rating is down at 2.6 now

[Evolve Web Hosting]

On 4/6/2021 at 2:10 PM, PixelPaul said:

Blesta is the best one to go with from my research.

It will cost me a bit to get it all moved over. About the same as 6 months on WHMCS new pricing. So after 6 months on Blesta i should be good again without any stupid moves like what WHMCS does.

Blesta support is actually good, and they product a lot more flexible and easy to work with.

From a past Blesta user, my advice is to thoroughly test their software and make sure their feature set actually meets your needs before making the move. I left WHMCS when v3 came out. Had an owned unbranded license. Got it up and running and started to see the shortfalls of the software. Notably, domain features. In 2018, I moved back to WHMCS. The importer from Blesta to WHMCS didn’t work so I had to manually move most of the data back to WHMCS. While doing that, I found domains that had been transferred and because Blesta had no check in place to sync renewal dates and actually make sure they were still registered through us, customers received renewal invoices. Embarrassing in my opinion. I also had to manually add privacy protection off site because Blesta didn’t know how to deal with this. At that time and maybe even now, customers can’t renew their domains or any other services without first contacting you to generate an invoice for them. As others have noted, it’s been ‘in the works’ for over 5 years now. I don’t think it takes that long to write a domain manager if it’s a priority. There are many other missing features that I personally think are essential. 

I am not taking sides one way or the other for the upcoming price changes. Simply trying to warn anyone interested in switching to thoroughly investigate and make sure whichever software you choose meets the needs of your company and your customers. I wasted a lot of time that I’ll never get back  

 

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

8 hours ago, johannes said:

rating is down at 2.6 now

Much higher than they deserve! 

 

Especially as they hide from the community 

[bear]

17 minutes ago, chrisb2012 said:

Especially as they hide from the community 

That's standard corporate behavior. Anyone showing up becomes a target and feeds the anger, regardless of what's said. If no one from their side participates, the passion fades, and they can quietly clean up the bits they don't like. None of our complaints will have an effect, if history is any judge. This is a done deal, and the only direction pricing will go is up. Owned license holders are a thing of the past, once the "countdown" ends. 

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

That is pretty beautiful in a soviet kind of way bear! 

And yes, I'm fully aware they won't decide to not screw customers over, by changing their decision - If they temporarily halt it it'll just come later! It's probably the same thought process for the ones that are tanking the review page https://www.trustpilot.com/review/whmcs.com😉 

Anyone staying, is either trapped as intended or foolish! I do hope they lose their monopoly on the market though and we see others strive for a fair playing field! I for one, will be choosing somewhere else! 

[brian!]

19 hours ago, hoya8 said:

You contributed so much and you are not even in the hosting game?

I was for the first 6 years of my WHMCS time here...

[yggdrasil]

On 4/8/2021 at 11:15 PM, evolve hosting said:

From a past Blesta user, my advice is to thoroughly test their software and make sure their feature set actually meets your needs before making the move. I left WHMCS when v3 came out. Had an owned unbranded license. Got it up and running and started to see the shortfalls of the software. Notably, domain features. In 2018, I moved back to WHMCS. The importer from Blesta to WHMCS didn’t work so I had to manually move most of the data back to WHMCS. While doing that, I found domains that had been transferred and because Blesta had no check in place to sync renewal dates and actually make sure they were still registered through us, customers received renewal invoices. Embarrassing in my opinion. I also had to manually add privacy protection off site because Blesta didn’t know how to deal with this. At that time and maybe even now, customers can’t renew their domains or any other services without first contacting you to generate an invoice for them. As others have noted, it’s been ‘in the works’ for over 5 years now. I don’t think it takes that long to write a domain manager if it’s a priority. There are many other missing features that I personally think are essential. 

I am not taking sides one way or the other for the upcoming price changes. Simply trying to warn anyone interested in switching to thoroughly investigate and make sure whichever software you choose meets the needs of your company and your customers. I wasted a lot of time that I’ll never get back  

 

You are correct, but there is a big difference. You can build with Blesta without Blesta the company. With WHMCS you can't, they are locking you in for life.

At some point you will be hit with something missing on any software or solution, and you have to start customizing things. WHMCS has become less flexible over the years, some dumb things are near impossible to do or require intercepting code, like having API error messages in the users' language just to name a simple example which is a 5-minute fix on any other software on which you get access to the code.

Even if you have all the features you need today with WHMCS, at some point you will have a bug that stops everything from working, or have them remove something critical required for your modules or customization to work. What are going to do at this point? Wait months or years until they fix them? Every update is a new nightmare with WHMCS for the past 3 years now. This is not what you expect for a product they think is worth $1000+ a month.

And for me it's not even about money. It's about trust. Today they did this, I'm 100% sure as I said before, they will kill the self-hosted version at some point. Then what? Will you move to that version? And once they get rid of the per-customer license and move to a profit % license? Asking you a % of your total sales?

If you think all this is drastic, and they would never do this, this is precisely what people said about owned licenses as well and yet here we are, WHMCS finally pulling the plug.

Blesta sucks in features today but being open for me could prove more important than anything at this point, because it's a question of time until other developers will start to build the missing parts, just like Modules Garden and other companies did with WHMCS. And being open code, means anyone can contribute and collaborate with what ever stuff there is missing. It's not what is missing in Blesta today, but you need to think when WHMCS will kick you out as well, by accident or by force.

They are not interested on self-hosted licenses anymore. WHMCS is moving to a SaaS model, I'm surprised some people think this is just a price increase. It's not, it's a long planned move for years to completely change the entire company and product. WHMCS is going the vendor lock approach. Make sure you are using the product in such a way that it's going to be very expensive to move out, at this point they will just squeeze you for more money. Even if WHMCS costs $5 a year, do you want to keep giving money to such a company?

The only people that I see defending WHMCS in this situation are those that think they have enough money to keep investing on WHMCS and think this will kill smaller players, and they will have less competition, or maybe they think they are big enough to pay any licenses fee they ask or just afraid to lose all the money, time and resources invested around WHMCS.

More than anything those people are afraid their WHMCS investment is going to disappear as developers don't create modules for WHMCS anymore, or most people move to another software. Just one example, how many would even use WHMCS if it was not for the surrounding community and third party support? Do you seriously expect WHMCS to reply here to everyone for help and questions once most of us are gone? Or keep supporting more and more third party modules? They will try, but killing your brand and product has deep consequences. When people start to do what they did with WHMCS with other products, it's a question of time when WHMCS will be the next Ubersmith. That product has not evolved in years, and you will not find a single company developing anything for them anymore, their brand is now lost in time. WHMCS is going that same route. It's a dead product because they stabbed the people that made WHMCS what they are today. They completely killed new sales at this point. Those people will just research the product and find negative comments. And once slowly the existing base starts to move what are they going to do? New sales gone, existing income dropping...

WHMCS was never about quality, but quantity. It was never the best product, but it was the best for its price range as it was affordable, and it was the amount of supported vendors, modules and developers that made it more valuable. All those paying users, while not giving them fortunes of income, gave them something priceless, an ecosystem around the product which make it more a platform than just another PHP software. Those that will stay, will have hard times ahead as WHMCS needs to keep squeezing them for more money, they are hit with more lock in features, bugs and issues, and this will be a lonely place soon as well. Once the outrage is gone, WHMCS will release new features, (even more buggy than before as they try to quickly advance) and invest in marketing and promotions and why not, maybe they will even consider backpedaling in some of their decisions to soften the blow of lost income, but the masks are off. They are moving to a SaaS model regardless if you like it or not. They are not a software company anymore, they are trying really hard to be a cloud service.

And good luck with that, they cannot even keep this community running without an HTTP error every 5 seconds, wait until your business relies on them completely.

[yggdrasil]

On 4/9/2021 at 7:22 AM, chrisb2012 said:

That is pretty beautiful in a soviet kind of way bear! 

And yes, I'm fully aware they won't decide to not screw customers over, by changing their decision - If they temporarily halt it it'll just come later! It's probably the same thought process for the ones that are tanking the review page https://www.trustpilot.com/review/whmcs.com😉 

Anyone staying, is either trapped as intended or foolish! I do hope they lose their monopoly on the market though and we see others strive for a fair playing field! I for one, will be choosing somewhere else! 

I don't think they care about reviews. They will only care once they see income dropping. This will surely affect potentially new sales in the short time, but reality will hit them once people start to move off. It will take time, nobody is going to migrate quickly, but I think we are going to see the real consequences in 12 months from now.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

6 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

You are correct, but there is a big difference. You can build with Blesta without Blesta the company. With WHMCS you can't, they are locking you in for life.

I get it and I'm not saying I support their move. I simply wanted to remind anyone thinking of switching to fully evaluate whatever software they are considering. Some look great at the surface and not so great once you dig deeper. Yes, Blesta is all open code which is great, if you're a developer or have the money to hire a developer. Not so great if you don't have the time or ability to write code. I wrote some code and paid for other features / modifications but at some point, it just turned out to be more headache then it was worth. There are a couple of other up and coming platforms that I think have potential and I will be keeping an eye on them to see where they end up.

[bear]

38 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

They are not interested on self-hosted licenses anymore. WHMCS is moving to a SaaS model

^^ This. Lock them in, which makes migration harder, updates easier and income all but assured.
Maybe not this year, but watch this space in 2022 or so.

[zitu4life]

11 minutes ago, evolve hosting said:

I simply wanted to remind anyone thinking of switching to fully evaluate whatever software they are considering. Some look great at the surface and not so great once you dig deeper

I have the same feeling, but I am feeling that others users are just thinking that my purpose is just defending WHMCS, like they are credit some dollar on my account 😀. I pay WHMCS monthly, if I do not pay my admin will be suspended.

When I choose WHMCS in the past I found on that way all others billing system pointed here, I have softaculus premium on my hosting, so I could test all off those billing system easily.

After test all of them I decide that WHMCS will be better for my business as I am not a developer. So to make WHMCS more interesting, I decide use WHMCS as my main website, so this reduces me costs, no need to worry with wordpress website update anymore, So to have my website update is related to get WHMCS update wich is less complex to wordpress. Thanks to front-end module, I also have my front-end with new futures 3 times a year. We take advantage of all WHMCS futures to make it competetive for us.  I got COVID a few days ago, and while I was seek at bed, WHMCS still works for me and receiving money on my bank account.

At this moment for me WHMCS still best option, if at some moment I find a better solutions-price, offcouse I will move for sure, for me it is all business.

Let's think as a business owner and also as a WHMCS customer. There is 2 perspective. 

So far I got paid them several money, but sure I have won much more.

[Evolve Web Hosting]

6 minutes ago, zitu4life said:

I got COVID a few days ago, and while I was seek at bed, WHMCS still works for me and receiving money on my bank account.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery and no long hauler symptoms! Glad WHMCS is working for you and it is for me at the moment as well.

[brian!]

30 minutes ago, zitu4life said:

I got COVID a few days ago, and while I was seek at bed, WHMCS still works for me and receiving money on my bank account.

I hope you get well soon. 🙏

[zitu4life]

2 hours ago, evolve hosting said:

Best wishes for a speedy recovery and no long hauler symptoms! Glad WHMCS is working for you and it is for me at the moment as well.

 

2 hours ago, brian! said:

I hope you get well soon. 🙏

Thank all. Yes I get recovered. But be sure those virus are serious. On the first 5days was terrible, but I won.💪. I will start working regularly  tomorrow. All of you take care because it really can cause death.

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

34 minutes ago, zitu4life said:

 

Thank all. Yes I get recovered. But be sure those virus are serious. On the first 5days was terrible, but I won.💪. I will start working regularly  tomorrow. All of you take care because it really can cause death.

You sure it wasn't shock brought on by whmcs decision? 🤣

I'm joking of course whmcs legal team - wipe the sweat from your brow! 

Glad you're feeling better zitu!

[sol2010]

On 4/7/2021 at 4:59 AM, brian! said:

and the related kb article...

explains why transferring owned licenses was stopped months ago.... i've still got an owned license, but I haven't used it in years - I haven't paid a penny direct to WHMCS in six years, and knowing the disgrace of what's been going on in the Support department for the last few years, that's not going to change...

not removed... consolidated into one thread, but some posts will remarkably fall through the gaps and never be seen again.... I imagine the threads on WHT will be the easiest location to say whatever needs to be said.

so true - the more money WHMCS users have to spend on the core product, the less they can spend on addons, customisations etc.... I can see a lot of developers moving on due to this ridiculous change.... and a lot of users switching to nulled options... *sighs*

I will need to have a think over the Summer about whether it's worth carrying on supporting this nonsense - these forums have been dying over the last few years due to the neglect / incompetence of those in charge... the product is going nowhere... sadly, neither situation is going to improve any time soon.

I would just like to say this quickly before  * WHMCS implodes, / gets eaten by another social engineering mess   / gets DDOSed to death  / Threads are removed or / community shut down  (* delete as appropriate! )
 

@ brian!  Couldn't agree more.   I think YOU are the one that's been propping up their forums.  Have you thought about starting your own software?  I'll sign up straight away - as I am sure many others would !  Time to pick your team ?
 

 

 

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

21 minutes ago, sol2010 said:

I would just like to say this quickly before  * WHMCS implodes, / gets eaten by another social engineering mess   / gets DDOSed to death  / Threads are removed or / community shut down  (* delete as appropriate! )
 

@ brian!  Couldn't agree more.   I think YOU are the one that's been propping up their forums.  Have you thought about starting your own software?  I'll sign up straight away - as I am sure many others would !  Time to pick your team ?
 

 

 

If he decided to, I would happily invest! I suppose it all depends upon him having a spare hour to whip one up! 

 

The real trouble would be making mistakes to keep us all on the line waiting for updates 🤣

[jacksony]

Hi,

I think WHMCS will still be supported and developed next few years. Companies don't go down immediately. So it might be safe for those to still stay on next 2-3 years.

However going beyond that, WHMCS might not be the leading platform anymore with hosting companies are in the midst of shifting out already since the announcement.

Their developers most likely will be reduced by then. 

[Jade D]

34 minutes ago, jacksony said:

Hi,

I think WHMCS will still be supported and developed next few years. Companies don't go down immediately. So it might be safe for those to still stay on next 2-3 years.

However going beyond that, WHMCS might not be the leading platform anymore with hosting companies are in the midst of shifting out already since the announcement.

Their developers most likely will be reduced by then. 

Yeah we should be ok for another year or more though I wouldnt push it beyond that.

In mean time I am exploring other options available to us and will reach out to Clientexec + Blesta this week to see which product is going to be the best fit for our businesses.

This has such a knock on affect, for example, it makes no sense for us to keep our support and updates active with modules garden as there wont be any further updates to any of our whmcs owned licenses and most of the issues have been resolved.

This negatively affects them and beyond their control. If I were Konrad @ModulesGarden I would seriously consider writing a whmcs replacement considering the knowledge that his team have of the product. Furthermore they have the user base to promote the product and would succeed.

I would support any whmcs replacement product that they released.

[jacksony]

Hi,

Yes, that's the thing. We will have to give up our owned ModuleGarden licenses sadly.. And transiting our customers who are tied to WHMCS Marketplace services.

[brian!]

11 hours ago, sol2010 said:

@ brian!  Couldn't agree more.   I think YOU are the one that's been propping up their forums.

that's very kind of you.... there were many years when it literally felt that it was just me replying... my favourite time here was when both sentq and me were sharing the load.

11 hours ago, sol2010 said:

Have you thought about starting your own software?

No! 😲

11 hours ago, sol2010 said:

I'll sign up straight away - as I am sure many others would !  Time to pick your team ?

rule one when choosing a team - follow the Peter Principle... e.g, don't promote anyone beyond their proven skill set.

11 hours ago, chrisb2012 said:

If he decided to, I would happily invest! I suppose it all depends upon him having a spare hour to whip one up! 

runs over to Kickstarter lol

11 hours ago, chrisb2012 said:

The real trouble would be making mistakes to keep us all on the line waiting for updates 🤣

submit a feature request - i'll get to it in 5 years time, but keep paying your monthly subs in the meantime. 🙂

[bear]

1 hour ago, brian! said:

submit a feature request - i'll get to it in 5 years time

And yet, that's an improvement. 

Quote

rule one when choosing a team - follow the Peter Principle... e.g, don't promote anyone beyond their proven skill set.

Rule #2: Be wary of those that volunteer readily...

[UnwilfulExpenditure]

1 hour ago, bear said:

And yet, that's an improvement. 

Rule #2: Be wary of those that volunteer readily...

me me me me me piiiiiiiiick meeeeeeeeeee 

(Can I borrow a bit of cash there bear?)