WHMCS price increase, what counts as a client?

[zomex]

Hello,

With the insane price increase just announced it begs the question. What counts as a client?

Is it a user, a user with an active product, a user with a recently paid invoice?

I think I speak for many when I say that the majority of our clients do not have recurring products/services. The majority are one-time clients with their last invoice being paid years ago.

Seeing as WHMCS's licensing cost is based on client totals I would like to hear specifically from WHMCS the criteria used to define a client.

 

[aquiss]

Indeed. The email that was sent out, was honestly just so vauge and confusing.

We have thousands of closed clients, but are kept in the system for tax/vat/copies of invoice purposes.

Is costs based on Active clients or total clients, regardless of status?

 

[zomex]

Just checked under WHMCS admin > help > license information

The number shown matches the number of client accounts in WHMCS (made up of many with no invoices - affiliates, spam registrations etc).

@whmcs, you increase the price by up to 85x based on a very simple metric yet your only option for handling clients is to delete after x months after no activity.  Where is the option to delete client accounts with no service/invoices/affiliate activation?

[zomex]

Just now, aquiss said:

Indeed. The email that was sent out, was honestly just so vauge and confusing.

We have thousands of closed clients, but are kept in the system for tax/vat/copies of invoice purposes.

Is costs based on Active clients or total clients, regardless of status?

 

Indeed, that is the same for us. We can't think of anything worse than deleting accounts for the sake on licensing terms. We prefer to keep all data active like yourself.

If we enable the automatic account removal that invoices accounts with past invoices/transactions.

In my case the client total associated with my license is simply the total number of client accounts!

Compare the 2 attached pages to see if they match.

[Darthkatzs]

As much as I understand the frustration. I’m very frustrated too myself. At least try to look at the information they provide. It clearly states active clients in the licensing guide. 
 

https://assets.whmcs.com/customer-licensing-guide-2021.pdf

[brian!]

2 minutes ago, zomex said:

With the insane price increase just announced it begs the question. What counts as a client?

https://www.whmcs.com/pricing/

Quote

An Active Client is defined as any client with at least one active product, service, addon or domain.

https://whmcs.community/topic/305878-charging-structure-changes/?tab=comments#comment-1351684

Quote

Our license structure only considers active client accounts, which should be reflection of the number of customers currently actively involved with and being managed through your WHMCS installation. Older client records should have the "Inactive" or "Closed" status so would not be considered for the purposes of licensing.

if that were true, surely we could just set all accounts to inactive and not pay a penny.... no I didn't think so.

7 minutes ago, zomex said:

In my case the client total associated with my license is simply the total number of client accounts!

for those accounts who were spammers etc, are they active or closed ?

[aquiss]

2 minutes ago, Darthkatzs said:

As much as I understand the frustration. I’m very frustrated too myself. At least try to look at the information they provide. It clearly states active clients in the licensing guide. 
 

https://assets.whmcs.com/customer-licensing-guide-2021.pdf

And yet you can reply without being rude.

As we have an owned with unlimited licence, unbranded, we have NEVER been subjected to or needed to know about this in the past.

The email we got literally said our owned licence was expired from now, with little or no links to the asset information you have linked to.

[Darthkatzs]

8 minutes ago, aquiss said:

And yet you can reply without being rude.

As we have an owned with unlimited licence, unbranded, we have NEVER been subjected to or needed to know about this in the past.

The email we got literally said our owned licence was expired from now, with little or no links to the asset information you have linked to.

If you think that’s rude... 🤣

And this is no different for people with a monthly license.... This is new for everyone. We’re all in the same boat here. 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Darthkatzs

[zomex]

1 minute ago, Darthkatzs said:

As much as I understand the frustration. I’m very frustrated too myself. At least try to look at the information they provide. It clearly states active clients in the licensing guide. 
 

https://assets.whmcs.com/customer-licensing-guide-2021.pdf

Yep, missed that one.

This wouldn't be so much of an issue if WHMCS used some logical basis to determine what counts as a client or more options regarding the pruning of old accounts. They have one option under the automated settings to automatically delete accounts after x months of no activity. Of course the issue being that it would also remove accounts that have activity prior to that date. It is not a good idea from a business perspective to delete past invoices/transactions. What I'm getting at is I would hope that WHMCS are going to implement many more options in terms of client management and the ability to remove accounts with no activity, not just no recent activity.

If I was able to remove accounts that had no invoices/transactions/not active as an affiliate I could reduce client total by at least 20%.

[Darthkatzs]

8 minutes ago, zomex said:

Yep, missed that one.

This wouldn't be so much of an issue if WHMCS used some logical basis to determine what counts as a client or more options regarding the pruning of old accounts. They have one option under the automated settings to automatically delete accounts after x months of no activity. Of course the issue being that it would also remove accounts that have activity prior to that date. It is not a good idea from a business perspective to delete past invoices/transactions. What I'm getting at is I would hope that WHMCS are going to implement many more options in terms of client management and the ability to remove accounts with no activity, not just no recent activity.

If I was able to remove accounts that had no invoices/transactions/not active as an affiliate I could reduce client total by at least 20%.

I don’t think you followed it 100%. WHMCS automatically sets accounts with no active services to inactive. You don’t have to delete anything. 
 

EDIT: checking your situation you probably have mostly one time purchases. I don’t know how they handle that. So apologies. 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Darthkatzs

[zomex]

5 minutes ago, Darthkatzs said:

I don’t think you followed it 100%. WHMCS automatically sets accounts with no active services to inactive. You don’t have to delete anything. 
 

EDIT: checking your situation you probably have mostly one time purchases. I don’t know how they handle that. So apologies. 

This isn't related to even those with products.

I have checked client accounts and I'm seeing many cases of clients with 0 activity (no transactions, no invoices, no tickets, no services) as active (old accounts).

Now, I could automatically have these accounts deleted using the attached setting but doing so would also delete accounts in various cases (based on the info provided):

- accounts with manually created invoices/existing transactions

- accounts for affiliates

- accounts with tickets (for example we use WHMCS ticket system for pre-sales tickets which is not out of the norm)

This could be a issue with my installation bearing in mind it's been active for over 10 years. Perhaps a bug of some kind where in certain cases clients have not been marked inactive when they should have been.

[Darthkatzs]

1 minute ago, zomex said:

This isn't related to even those with products.

I have checked client accounts and I'm seeing many cases of clients with 0 activity (no transactions, no invoices, no tickets, no services) as active (old accounts).

Now, I could automatically have these accounts deleted using the attached setting but doing so would also delete accounts in various cases (based on the info provided):

- accounts with manually created invoices/existing transactions

- accounts for affiliates

- accounts with tickets (for example we use WHMCS ticket system for pre-sales tickets which is not out of the norm)

This could be a issue with my installation bearing in mind it's been active for over 10 years. Perhaps a bug of some kind where in certain cases clients have not been marked inactive when they should have been.

I think you should contact customer support. I cleaned out some active products from things that weren’t setup properly and after running the cron  they were set to inactive. I can’t find any old customers without active products. So this seems like a setup issue. 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Darthkatzs

[zomex]

Just now, Darthkatzs said:

I think you should contact customer support. I cleaned out some active products from things that weren’t setup properly and after running the crib they were set to inactive. I can’t find any old customers without active products. So this seems like a setup issue. 

Yep appreciate the responses.

 It's to be expected that some running issues have occurred over the course of 10 years. In most cases the accounts are being marked as inactive but there is still a considerable amount I'm seeing with no activity marked as active.

This thread can be closed, it appears to be some issues with my install and I will create a ticket with WHMCS now.

[bear]

4 hours ago, zomex said:

Just checked under WHMCS admin > help > license information

The number shown matches the number of client accounts in WHMCS (made up of many with no invoices - affiliates, spam registrations etc).

That doesn't seem to exist in owned licenses.

[jclarke]

I'm seeing the same issue, I have people who have downloaded a free module and they count as an active client since the free one time service is in their account.

At the current unlimited price,that wasn't a big deal but now all the sudden my license fee will be almost $900/month for a database of free clients!

Time to do some cleanup or import all these records into another solution or something custom.

Edited April 6, 2021 by jclarke

[Damo]

5 hours ago, bear said:

That doesn't seem to exist in owned licenses.

It doesn't show on an owned license.  I'd like to see WHMCS provide this so that we can determine what plan we are forced to move to should we stay with WHMCS.

[Vs Nu]

For Reseller We will be charged on prorated basic for new license added from our reseller portal hope i'm right ?

 

But the sudden price increased was not expected,It same like cPanel price changes..After lot of comments from user they will say like "we will reconsider the pricing" and give you some other updates (But not low as for now)

WHMCS Will lose more clients due to this !

Edited April 7, 2021 by Vs Nu

[vulcan]

This is pure greed and the doing of the Vulture Capital firm.  I had just renewed my owned license support 3 days ago.  I will be looking to move to a different solution.   I think II have time do make this move.

I have been in the hosting for the past 20 years and as of 10 years back just maintaining my existing declining customers.  Honestly I have found better and less stress free ways to make a living and I am so glad. 

This Vulture Capital firm (oakleycapital) should be probed by the justice department for the anti-trust statues violations.

[xyzulu]

/clients.php has an accurate figure of active/inactive clients. You can use the slider to include/exclude inactive clients.

[bear]

5 hours ago, xyzulu said:

/clients.php has an accurate figure of active/inactive clients. You can use the slider to include/exclude inactive clients.

Though there's no slider in mine, that works, thanks.

[zomex]

WHMCS has always been marketed as a solution not just for web hosting providers but also web designers, one-time purchases etc.

Now the issue is those of us who have used WHMCS for providing one-time cost products/services are now being charged monthly in 2021 for "clients" who have not made any transactions or accessed their account in years. While these accounts should be changed to inactive in WHMCS that is not the case. I'm going through active clients now to show that some do not even have any transactions/tickets/products yet are still "active".

@whmcs - how can you call the examples below active clients? These are just a couple I have picked out, for our install these make up at least 20-30% of "active" clients. A great way for you to make money but a very poor way to treat your loyal clients. I've been using WHMCS for over 10 years, participated in all Beta's, answered thousands of tickets related to WHMCS itself. It's a real shame to see how you treat your clients. I am not against the price rise as such, but I feel that it should be done in a fair way relative to the income/usage a business has. Counting one-time purchases made years ago on accounts not logged-in to for years as active is disguesting and one reason why Blesta is going to see huge growth this year.

"Active" client examples

Example 1 - Last login 2013, all services canceled 2013.

Example 2 - A great example for those of us who used WHMCS for one-time purchases. One-time purchase in 2011, last login in 2012. - in our case this makes up a large percentage of our "active" clients

Example 3 - A example of using WHMCS for free products. In this case web hosting trial and web design quote back in 2011. No transactions ever made, last login 2011.

Example 4 - No transactions or products, an affiliate account. Last login 2014.

Example 5 - All products canceled by 2017, last login 2017. Once again a large percentage of our "active" clients.

Would like to discuss with both WHMCS and you all which examples should and should not be active clients. In my opinion none of these should be counted as active. One I could understand is if the affiliate account (example 4) logged-in recently, that at least would make sense.

 

[brian!]

7 minutes ago, zomex said:

Would like to discuss with both WHMCS and you all which examples should and should not be active clients. In my opinion none of these should be counted as active. One I could understand is if the affiliate account (example 4) logged-in recently, that at least would make sense.

well all five have an active client status - are your automation settings changing client status on active products etc, or is that disabled ? if disabled, then nothing will have changed their status from active and I assume hence why they're counted as active...

does marking them as inactive clients change your total active clients number with regards to the license ?

2 is an active client with an active one-time product... would be interesting to know what happens if you mark that service as completed and the client as inactive.

[zomex]

41 minutes ago, brian! said:

well all five have an active client status - are your automation settings changing client status on active products etc, or is that disabled ? if disabled, then nothing will have changed their status from active and I assume hence why they're counted as active...

does marking them as inactive clients change your total active clients number with regards to the license ?

2 is an active client with an active one-time product... would be interesting to know what happens if you mark that service as completed and the client as inactive.

No I do have the setting enabled. I am very hesitant to enable it. Unless I'm not understanding correctly it appears that enabling it will automatically delete clients including those with past transactions/invoices prior to the set month. I do not wish to delete clients who have transaction/invoice history as to keep the record. If this setting would mark a client as inactive but not delete the account that would be ideal.

It's important to mention that with the setting disabled I do have over 2k inactive accounts that have been set correctly by WHMCS without deleting them.

Yes, marketing them as inactive does change the license total.

Edit: it's important to note that I have clients who have made one-time purchases, I cannot have these accounts deleted permanently. A better system would be those clients marked as inactive and then changed back to active if for example they login or create a new order. If I enable the automation setting these accounts to my knowledge would be deleted permanently.

Edited April 7, 2021 by zomex

[brian!]

7 minutes ago, zomex said:

No I do have the setting enabled. I am very hesitant to enable it. Unless I'm not understanding correctly it appears that enabling it will automatically delete clients including those with past transactions/invoices prior to the set month. I do not wish to delete clients who have transaction/invoice history as to keep the record. If this setting would mark a client as inactive but not delete the account that would be ideal.

there are two different settings...

Client Status Update

Quote

WHMCS automatically sets clients with no active products or services to Inactive status. This helps you to distinguish and filter clients effectively. However, you can stop WHMCS from doing this by changing this setting. More information on this feature is available in Client Management.

• Disabled — The system won't change the status of a client automatically.
• Change client status based on active/inactive products — If a client has no active or suspended products or services, the system will automatically set their account to Inactive status the next time that the cron job runs.
• Change client status based on active/inactive products and not logged in for longer than 3 months — In addition to the above option, the system will only set a client's account to inactive when their last login date was over 3 months ago.

and Automatically Delete Inactive Clients

Quote

Automatically Delete Inactive Clients

This setting allows you to configure client records to be automatically deleted after a given number of months with no invoice or transaction history. This setting defaults to off.

To enable this, you must select the radio option for removing clients automatically and specify a number of months that is greater than 0.

When you enable it, the system performs the Data Retention Pruning task daily and will remove clients that meet the following conditions:

• Are in a status of Inactive or Closed.
• Have no invoices that have been marked paid within the given number of months you specify.
• Have no transactions that have been entered or applied within the given number of months you specify.
• Is an affiliate with a balance greater than 0 or has made a referral within the specified retention period.

Important Note: It is the presence of paid invoices or transactions within the given timeframe that defines client records which are kept. Enabling this feature with clients in an Inactive or Closed status, that have no invoice or transaction history, will result in those clients being deleted immediately.

The client status can be changed automatically by the system. This is controlled by Configuration () > System Settings > Automation Settings > Client Status Update.

they're independent of each other in the sense that you can enable client status update, but disable the deletion of inactive clients...

13 minutes ago, zomex said:

Yes, marketing them as inactive does change the license total.

yeah, i've been testing this and i'm coming around to the idea that it might just be a straight active client count... which leads to two thoughts... 1) that it's ripe for exploitation, and 2) I bet it will be fine-tuned in the v8.2 betas to avoid the potential exploitation.

[zomex]

14 minutes ago, brian! said:

there are two different settings...

Client Status Update

and Automatically Delete Inactive Clients

they're independent of each other in the sense that you can enable client status update, but disable the deletion of inactive clients...

yeah, i've been testing this and i'm coming around to the idea that it might just be a straight active client count... which leads to two thoughts... 1) that it's ripe for exploitation, and 2) I bet it will be fine-tuned in the v8.2 betas to avoid the potential exploitation.

JESUS I am not the sharpest knife in the draw, I remember seeing this setting in the past and brushing it off but completely forgot about it. My problem seems to be that I react emotionally without thinking and actually researching. For some reason I missed this setting which is quite embarrassing having used WHMCS for over 11 years.

Now enabled and will wait for the daily cron tasks to run. Expecting to see a good drop in active clients.

On a side note checking inactive clients I found a couple that should really be active. Perhaps this will sort that too. Hopefully I don't end up with a higher active client total haha.

Thanks.

Edited April 7, 2021 by zomex