WHMCS slow and/or timing out due to licensing server issues

[incubatec 0]

Today is the third time in the last two months that we are experience a total slowdown of WHMCS or even timeouts due to slow or no response from the WHMCS licensing servers.

This not only causes trouble in the admin area, but also in the client area. The "local cache" of WHMCS does not seem to work correctly and/or got screwed up in one of the recent 8.* updates, as we never see the issues on 7.* installations (we have 4 in total).

When is somebody from WHMCS going to seriously look at this is and solve it?

I know that I can open a ticket with WHMCS and wait a few hours for this to get (temporarily) fixed (by changing the licensing server or some other paramters only WHMCS know), but we are losing time, revenue and reputation due to those issues reoccurring. And yes, I have read the FAQs, tried with conntest=1; the traces show a timeout.

Anybody else getting a similar experience with the newer WHMCS versions?

Edited January 14 by incubatec

[incubatec 0]

Of course after posting here on the community the issue was - probably only temporarily - solved:

 

Testing Connection to 'https://a.licensing.whmcs.com/1.0/test'...
URL resolves to 208.74.120.154 ...
Response Code: 200
Connection Successful!

 

Testing Connection to 'https://b.licensing.whmcs.com/1.0/test'...
URL resolves to 184.94.192.12 ...
Response Code: 200
Connection Successful!

[Bigol'tastynuggets 22]

They've had a lot of issues recently with licensing.  One of which locked people out despite paying the exorbitant fees. 

Woeful management of their licensing servers is my opinion, as its far too common. Although I'm sure they'll act shocked if you mention it! 🤔 

[malfunction 24]

Indeed, WHMS have a habit of making their problem into my problem.  Licensing is their problem.  From my end I could not care less about their licensing and, to the extent it needs to be there at all, expect it to be completely transparent.  But the unsatisfactory reality is that I am impacted by licensing server failures, I am impacted by being forced to use obsolete versions of PHP because of their reliance on ionCube.  

[Bigol'tastynuggets 22]

29 minutes ago, malfunction said:

I  But the unsatisfactory reality is that I am impacted by licensing server failures, I am impacted by being forced to use obsolete versions of PHP because of their reliance on ionCube.  

Yeah, I'm a couple of months away from leaving whmcs and I couldn't be happier! 

With all fairness to whmcs the php/ioncube debacle is the one instance where they are not to blame, bur their choices will limit them until the end of next year! 

 

[malfunction 24]

1 hour ago, Bigol'tastynuggets said:

With all fairness to whmcs the php/ioncube debacle is the one instance where they are not to blame, bur their choices will limit them until the end of next year! 

That's just my point, they are to blame.  There are zero benefits to me from them using ionCube.  It's only purpose is to guard WHMCS' crappy source code and as mentioned previously that is not my problem.  But they make it my problem, leaving me unable to run a current version of PHP (which is quite shocking) and gives rise to all sorts of other issues with unfixable bugs, undocumented 'features', busted licensing servers and so on.  Find a way to protect your IP that doesn't negatively impact your customers, people.

[Bigol'tastynuggets 22]

58 minutes ago, malfunction said:

That's just my point, they are to blame.  There are zero benefits to me from them using ionCube.  It's only purpose is to guard WHMCS' crappy source code and as mentioned previously that is not my problem.  But they make it my problem, leaving me unable to run a current version of PHP (which is quite shocking) and gives rise to all sorts of other issues with unfixable bugs, undocumented 'features', busted licensing servers and so on.  Find a way to protect your IP that doesn't negatively impact your customers, people.

Yeah, they the worst thing is that it doesn't actually stop piracy! It just annoys genuine users. 

Locks only stop honest men!  

Also, it'd take half an hour to get the code if one so desired - certainly not advocating that, it's not my style! Plus once I'd seen it I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to knowingly store customers details on it 🤣

Ahhhhhh well, can't say I'll miss whmcs when we've finished testing - certainly won't miss the payments! Lol 

[evolve hosting 52]

@Bigol'tastynuggets which platform are you switching to? DM it if you want. I made the move from Blesta back to WHMCS about 3 - 4 years ago because there was no domain manager. It was painful because the WHMCS importer did not work.

[Bigol'tastynuggets 22]

11 minutes ago, evolve hosting said:

@Bigol'tastynuggets which platform are you switching to? DM it if you want. I made the move from Blesta back to WHMCS about 3 - 4 years ago because there was no domain manager. It was painful because the WHMCS importer did not work.

They have one now, Everything we need domain management for was gone from whmcs 5 months ago - the last one left is specialised and we had to build a module and few plugins for! 

But yeah, its easy enough when you can see what you're working with! I think a few people without technical ability struggle initially but it's probably the most adaptable on the market if you're able to spend a little time on it! 

6 installations are moved, one left - the money saved on the last one in 4 and a half months is paying for all the work we've done and it made us add new features we've been planning for a while! Will be releasing our work for free once we're up and running to help others! We've built a lot of things to adapt it to how we want it and we've partitioned a lot up into a series of plugins/modules so people can grab what they need! 

 

That and you put a ticket in, asking about functions and the staff actually know and understand the code - literally gave me my answer in a little code snippet and a couple of others as examples of manipulating it - totally refreshing to what I've been used to and we're already saving so 🤷🏻‍♂️ works for us lol