Using Two WHMCS - One For Billing Another For Servers & Support

[ManagedCloud-Hosting]

Hi,

I have some questions and want to know if this is possible or not. Thanks 

1. If I want to use Two WHMCS installs - one for Billing and another for server setup and support is it possible ?

2. How to sync and automate order and account / server creation (shared & reseller) and send to clients automatically

3. How to enable  Clients login to the second WHMCS (for server and support) using single click from the first WHMCS (Billing Portal) ?

 

 

[yggdrasil]

Out of the box this is not possible. You will have to build or code a custom solution to bridge both installations.

This might be possible if you sync accounts with your custom scripts, using the API or talking directly from one database to another but either way you will need to connect and maintain the data coordinated between installations which is going to be very cost intensive to maintain or get properly working. WHMCS considers each installation to be separated and isolated.

I'm not sure why you want this in the first place. You will lose most benefits from having WHMCS as an integrated solution. The idea is to be able to have the same account information in the same system when it comes to support, billing, and product management. If you split functions, you lose most of WHMCS features.

What exactly do you want to accomplish with such a setup?

[ManagedCloud-Hosting]

23 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

You will lose most benefits from having WHMCS as an integrated solution.

integrated solution, NO not for me or many I believe :)

[yggdrasil]

23 hours ago, ManagedCloud-Hosting said:

integrated solution, NO not for me or many I believe 🙂

Then why even use WHMCS? If you are using different solutions, like one for support tickets, another for billing, etc., then you don't need WHMCS. WHMCS benefit is that it offers most features out of the box, a unified solution for a monthly cost that tries to do most things that hosting companies need (or what WHMCS thinks they need...)

If your requirement is overly complex, I seriously advise you not to use WHMCS and just use something custom build like more complex and advanced hosting providers do. WHMCS is targeted for smaller companies, there was a time it was used by big brands, but that era is long gone as with every new change they make in the software they lock in increasingly in terms of customization or integration. As today every company using WHMCS looks and feels the same and I suspect some people might not even want to buy anything from someone using WHMCS because...well it's just the same. And with their new marketplace they converted WHMCS into one big reseller, affiliate system, which means even the complete customer experience from purchases to customer care is the same. Sure, some providers might change some colors or try to customize as much as they can with addons, hooks or the API but as they keep growing, they realize it's a nightmare to maintain in because you can't fix bugs and WHMCS prices its software as enterprise, yet their long-term release is 1 years which is laughable in the enterprise market. And eventually you will have to upgrade and have all your nice and custom complex integration hit with new bugs or even break.

To mention one thing, forget ever to use WHMCS behind a load balancer. It will not work because it was not designed for that, and you would need to tweak the source code to make it happen and play nice with sessions and data while routing visitors to different installations, which you can't! That alone should tell you WHMCS can't even scale. At some point you will hit a limit on your server, or the database server and huge issues will come as you cannot spread the load. That alone puts WHMCS into a small business solution. Not even going to mention using things like Reddis or memcache or varnish...

Edited February 20, 2022 by yggdrasil

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

14 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

Then why even use WHMCS? If you are using different solutions, like one for support tickets, another for billing, etc., then you don't need WHMCS. WHMCS benefit is that it offers most features out of the box, a unified solution for a monthly cost that tries to do most things that hosting companies need (or what WHMCS thinks they need...)

If your requirement is overly complex, I seriously advise you not to use WHMCS and just use something custom build like more complex and advanced hosting providers do. WHMCS is targeted for smaller companies, there was a time it was used by big brands, but that era is long gone as with every new change they make in the software they lock in increasingly in terms of customization or integration. As today every company using WHMCS looks and feels the same and I suspect some people might not even want to buy anything from someone using WHMCS because...well it's just the same. And with their new marketplace they converted WHMCS into one big reseller, affiliate system, which means even the complete customer experience from purchases to customer care is the same. Sure, some providers might change some colors or try to customize as much as they can with addons, hooks or the API but as they keep growing, they realize it's a nightmare to maintain in because you can't fix bugs and WHMCS prices its software as enterprise, yet their long-term release is 1 years which is laughable in the enterprise market. And eventually you will have to upgrade and have all your nice and custom complex integration hit with new bugs or even break.

To mention one thing, forget ever to use WHMCS behind a load balancer. It will not work because it was not designed for that, and you would need to tweak the source code to make it happen and play nice with sessions and data while routing visitors to different installations, which you can't! That alone should tell you WHMCS can't even scale. At some point you will hit a limit on your server, or the database server and huge issues will come as you cannot spread the load. That alone puts WHMCS into a small business solution. Not even going to mention using things like Reddis or memcache or varnish...

Shhhhhh you'll upset the fans 😆

No there's a few hacky ways to achieve it, but i suspect with the recent issue where we were locked out of our own admin areas because of the failure of the whmcs ability to do proper license check servers that it's not a path to venture down either as it'll end up embarrassing you as a user of whmcs as they quietly implant more ways to control your business. 

I've actually asked every single competitor in the software space and one laughed, the others said it was insane and they would happily agree publicly not to behave that way. 

 

Back to the initial question, Please don't take this as an insult but it sounds like you're trying to smash two pebbles together to make a rainbow. It's a pointless exercise!  

Pick a billing system - they all include support, or use an external one maybe even support.site.com and have it read your db 

Same for anything else you don't want to use a singular whmcs install for. 

Aside from sanity - look at the pricing and see if it makes sense, you could get good support tools for that 😝

[ManagedCloud-Hosting]

Thanks @yggdrasil and @Bigol'tastynuggets we are using below -

--
WHMCS (Billing & Server Management)
Freedcamp (Task Management & CRM)
Tally (Accounting)
---

This requires lots of time, effort and money...we are looking for the cheap and best solution combined...

Vision Helpdesk For Tech Support, We are absolutely happy and will keep support only with Vision Helpdesk software.

[Bigol'tastynuggets]

What exactly do you need whmcs to do? Is probably the best question!

[yggdrasil]

10 hours ago, ManagedCloud-Hosting said:

Thanks @yggdrasil and @Bigol'tastynuggets we are using below -

--
WHMCS (Billing & Server Management)
Freedcamp (Task Management & CRM)
Tally (Accounting)
---

This requires lots of time, effort and money...we are looking for the cheap and best solution combined...

Vision Helpdesk For Tech Support, We are absolutely happy and will keep support only with Vision Helpdesk software.

There are a benefits to both approaches:

Using different platforms for different tasks is more powerful but as you said it requires more time and resources to maintain and you need to make all the proper integrations from one system to the other, updates, etc.

Using a single unified solution like WHMCS is just one centralized solution but it might not have all the features you need or require.

Examples:

WHMCS has a support ticket system but it's not comparable to a dedicated support platform. It also has an affiliate system but again software only dedicated to Affiliates is a gazillion times more powerful. Most of those things in WHMCS are quite basic.

Same goes for accounting which is non existing in WHMCS. Billing does work quite well and so does automation of services and customer/user management.

Edited March 10, 2022 by yggdrasil

[ManagedCloud-Hosting]

On 3/10/2022 at 6:31 AM, yggdrasil said:

WHMCS is just one centralized solution but it might not have all the features you need or require.

Yes that's true, it has very basic features and we need coding knowledge to make even basic changes. 

On 3/10/2022 at 6:31 AM, yggdrasil said:

Billing does work quite well and so does automation of services and customer/user management.

True, again billing and reporting section is very basic.