I'm thinking of using The Hosting Tool instead of paying for a WHMCS license. I know that WHMCS is the greatest billing software out there, but it costs $15.95 a month for the cheapest license.

The Hosting Tool on the other hand is free. However, I've never used it. If anybody has then please share your experiences below. I'm curious to see if this program works and if people have had any issues with it.

Thanks, it will be a great help.

Not to sound rude, but if you can't afford $15 a month for WHMCS, should you really be in business to begin with?

From everything I'd read about this program, it seems to work fine. Never heard of it before today, though. Sorry.

Well I was exaggerating a little. I can afford it.
But I set myself a budget. One that I've already overspent.
I've just bought a dedicated server you see.
Am installing cPanel as we speak.
And I don't want to spend anything else until I get some custom.

Please keep sharing your Hosting Tool experiences guys.

Budgets are good things, especially from a business perspective allowing you to quantify decisions objectively in a universally measurable fashion however based on your explanation it seems you are thinking short term.

When starting a company it is always important to consider your future business position, take this as one of many theoretical examples, "In 6 months time your company has expanded to include, VPS, Dedicated, Domains, SSL, Shared and other assorted services, your daily or monthly orders exceed 50 to 100 many of which may be fraudulent"

Consider now that these services will be spread across multiple providers (Comodo ,VeriSign, Enom ..etc) and multiple servers and even control panel distributions ether on the same or separate networks.. the cost to manually setup an account and the speed vs the automation provided by WHMCS is one of the many advantages as well as fraud and support functionality.

Then consider the more important issue of moving X number of clients from the hosting tool system to the more robust WHMCS with the most probable lack of an automated import and the difference in control panel for users.

As a result I would advise much as I would for an ecommerce company, choose the system that is robust yet simple and efficient enough to start out however will support future requirements and expansion (hence magento for ecommerce) in this case however WHMCS and as a result increase your budget to save future expense.

As to host tool I have no experience with it although have read up on the features.

Thanks for your advice.
I do see your point and I will certainly look into investing into WHMCS.

However at the moment I'm having a few unfortunate problems. Please read this topic for more information.

(I hope I'm allowed to post links to other topics on the forum. If I'm not I apologise and then please remove this link as I don't mean to break any rules).

Need domain ideas. Please advise.

Basically, if you visit the above link, you'll find out that I'm having trouble transferring my domain.
Also, they are refusing to give me SSH access on my old provider. Without SSH access on my old provider I cannot transfer the accounts to my new provider.
The transfer tool in the root WHM panel requires the account you are transferring the clients FROM to have SSH access.
They are refusing point blank to cooperate with my transfer. They are refusing to accept that I have left them.
Unless I can transfer my existing clients across without causing them too much problems I am going to lose my existing customers too.

Even though WH Tool seems to be good, if you are into paid hosting, better to be with WHMCS. You must have a solid foundation if you would like to grow well into business.

Thanks for your advice. It has been most helpful.

This is only true in the case of transferring multiple accounts at the same time.
You should still be able to transfer the individual accounts:
WHM >> Transfers >> Copy an Account from Another Server with Account Password

Mhmm...I will look into that.
That is helpful information indeed.
Thanks.

WHMCS is good but costly for beginners.

Account LabPlus is best Free Hositng Billing Script




- Other Free Hosting Billing Script
1. phpCoin
2. SolidState
3. billing-software.us
4. Account LabPlus

ohh!! biggest mistake.

The Best Free New Billing Script is http://boxbilling.com/

Same as WHMCS

Thanks! Am trying out now.

Boxbilling seems good (from the demo on their website).
But still I will recommend WHMCS. You could also buy the WHMCS owned license and consider it as an investment. Finally, your earnings will be relative to your investments.

By that logic, 10 clients at $10 dollars using a $1 program would equal 10 clients at $1500 dollars using a $150 program.

Not logical.

We seem to get completely involved with paid vs free systems.
Are there any real numbers out there that show some sort of correlation between the two.